Ever since I read a world race blog once upon a time ago about bar ministry I have been looking forward Thailand for the chance of doing bar ministry. The idea of talking to a woman trapped in prostitution while she was on the job, and giving her hope has always tugged on my heart strings. My poor mother was so scared for Thailand because that is where a lot of racers have the chance to do that as ministry. Little did we know that Nepal would give us that opportunity!
Ministry in Nepal has been different everyday. We have done soccer ministry where we play soccer with kids from the slums and feed them, a prayer walk through the slums, a prophetic painting day, and on this particular day we did ‘cabin ministry’.
Cabin restaurants are restaurant fronts for prostitution in tourist areas. There is one section of Kathmandu that is the main bus stop (where all incoming buses let off tourists), a market, and a hub for cabin restaurants. For ministry that day we broke up into groups of 8-10 and rode the packed busses to the market. The bus rides alone are an adventure here! They fill public buses to probably four times their capacity and shove people into every nook and cranny. My first bus ride I sat on the hub right next to the driver and had to shift to my left every time he shifted to 1st gear. I asked him if I could drive and he smiled and said yes! But never stopped the bus to switch seats with me!
After we bobbed around on the bus for 45 minutes shifting to different nooks and crannies and people loaded and unloaded the bus we were happy to be standing on solid ground again. As we walked our local translator and guide told us to be looking for a restaurant that is dark, with women working in it. Then we just go talk to them. Simple. We walked around for a while and application was not as simple, there were a lot of restaurants on the ground level that was slightly basement level in that we had to drop down four steps to be standing in the restaurants. We walked past, looking into many restaurants wondering if they could be cabin restaurants, and we never really knew where to stop.
We walked past a tiny restaurant on a corner using white curtains decorated with grey and pink crawling vines and leaves as doors. They were pulled to the outsides leaving a gap where I saw a Nepali woman smoking a cigaret behind a counter. We have to go into that one I thought to myself. We got across the intersection and our translator stopped, turned around while tilting his head up toward the sky lost in thought, or prayer.
“Did you guys see that?” the translator asked.
“The restaurant on the corner?” I responded.
“Yes, we have to go in there.”
“Do we have too many people?” a squad mate asked.
“Probably, lets split up.” The translator broke us up into smaller groups, and my group of two girls and one guy headed back towards the restaurant on the corner. I descended the couple of steps first, eager to see where this story would play out, and saw two tables that comfortably sit four people each. At the far table I saw three men playing cards, and the close table three men sat drinking and chatting. The restaurant was full. I stood on the last stair thinking do I walk in and see if they move? do we just turn around? do I say hello to the woman standing at the counter to my left? I scanned the tiny restaurant one more time to see if there was more that I had missed, and then the back door opened. A well dressed man exited the door and through the opening I saw curtains hanging. The curtains were white, with a pink design on it. At first glimpse they looked just like the ones from the front of the store, but the design wasn’t quite the same.
Hot dang this is real. This is a cabin restaurant. I realized I hadn’t mentally prepared for the situation I was walking into. I don’t think the you can fully prepare yourself to walk into a restaurant set up to cover prostitution, hoping to talk to women who want to be rescued from the industry.
“It’s pretty full” I admitted to my teammate behind me.
“Let’s go to the place Jacob wanted to.” She responded, reminding me our third teammate had walked by a restaurant earlier that he wanted to check out.
“But we can come back, right?” I inquired as I walked back up the stairs feeling defeated already. We turned left and headed up the dirt road past some market shops and I could not stop thinking about the curtains behind the door. I knew I had to go back to that restaurant, but I knew that that exact moment was not the right time. We went to the restaurant Jacob had seen, but they actually walked us to a different room and turned on the lights when we sat down. The only service we got was a guy asking us what we wanted, and then returning with the thee sprites we ordered. We made a game plan to send the two girls back to the restaurant, and have Jacob come in 5 minutes and try to sit at the next table alone. We were hoping they would be more willing to talk to Jacob if he wasn’t with two American girls, but also hoping the waitresses would be more comfortable talking to just two girls. So we finished our sodas and headed back to the restaurant on the corner.
As we descended the stairs the far table was empty. We laid claim to the table and began to whisper to each other about if we could each stomach another soda. We decided to only order one to split, just as the well dressed man from our first visit came to the table.
“Can we get one sprite, please?” I asked with a smile.
“Just one?”
“Yes please,”
The man turned to the counter and the back door opened again. A beautiful Nepali woman came out wearing a flower dress with a pink zip up jacket. I made eye contact with her and waved. She nervously looked down and went to stand by the counter. She stood by the counter and looked back at me.
“Hello!” I offered with a warm smile. It was only returned with eye contact. I looked at my teammate who shrugged her shoulders, just as the soda bottle landed on the table.
“What do we say?” I asked, again aware of how unprepared I was.
“I don’t know? Does she speak English?” She inquired, as the woman began to walk in our direction and sit on the bench opposite the tiny restaurant from our table.
“How are you?” I tried again, which was greeted with a small giggle.
“She doesn’t speak English” I heard from the man behind me, to which I turned towards with a smile on my face.
“Oh, do you speak English?” I responded.
“I don’t understand” He replied after a quick pause. He then continued to smile and shake his head. “What country?” He asked.
“United States.” I chatted as the girl went into the back room. “Did you grow up in Nepal?”
“OH! United States! I love New York!” He tried to chat. However, I never did figure out if he had been to New York, or just knew the saying that’s on every shirt. 5 minutes had passed, since the earlier restaurant so Jacob came down the stairs. He sat down next to me, and immediately my new Nepali friend shut down. He would not speak to me, and wouldn’t even look at Jacob. I turned back to face my table and update Jacob. We recognized we weren’t making any progress without speaking the language so we sent a teammate to grab our translator. Jacob and I looked around the restaurant and waited for our translator who came down the stairs pretty quickly.
After updating the translator on where we were at, he went to the washroom (a we use to explore more of the restaurant for back rooms) and saw the certain rooms in the back. He came out saying “this is for sure a cabin restaurant.” We chatted about our game plan, but we were unable to engage with employees of the restaurant, so ultimately we decided to move on. The translator took my money to pay, since I only had a 1,000 rupee bill and wasn’t sure if they would break it for two sodas. Our translator handed the well dressed man from the beginning the money and they began to chat.
Jacob and I made small talk as we looked around the restaurant desperately wishing there was something that we could do in that moment.
“Ready?” Our translator asked as he headed towards the door.
“Lets go.” Jacob replied as we both stood up to walk out of the restaurant.
“So that guy,” our translator began with tension in his voice, “owns that restaurant, and asked for my phone number.” Mind you, the group we are working with has a rule that we don’t give out contact information, but we can grab it. This rule is mainly for the women working there, but it’s still a good rule of thumb for all people in the restaurants. “I said no, obviously,” the translator continued, “but he said this is a new business, and he is trying to make it grow. I think he thought I was a buyer and wanted me to keep bringing foreigners in. He tried to tell me the back rooms were ‘family rooms’ but when I asked why there were two he said guys and girls come and sleep in the other one. He wants to open a guest house, and expand his business. What do you guys want to do?”
“Can we buy a girl and go talk to her?” Jacob desperately asked, looking for an answer for what we could do.
“Maybe, it depends on how much they cost.” The translator responded. We ultimately decided on not buying a girl, but we still had time left in ministry that day. With the remaining time we actually found a second restaurant – so second blog to come soon!
This day was eye opening and emotionally challenging. I knew that restaurants like these existed, and I knew I wanted to some ministry in it, but I felt very unprepared for the day. I’ve never felt so helpless, all the while being so distraught over the wellbeing of a stranger. I am thankful that we went with a local missions group who now knows the location of atlas one restaurant and can send more help.
