“I am 18 and I have 2 kids. My first child is three years old.”
She is from Bihar, India. She lives in this basement home, underground, renting it of a Nepali house with 10 others. A small wooden plank bed shared by the whole family. A common toilet that looked like an open sewer. Rats and cockroaches as pets. She lives here with her two children, mother in-law, husband, his brothers and a father in law who is a drunk.
Many from Bihar come to Nepal looking for a source of livelihood, working as sewage cleaners, rubbish collectors or just any odd job where they can make a daily income. Living around dumpsites and slums.
“The Bihars are very hard working people, they keep the country alive doing jobs others don’t want to do.” – a local trader.
The Bihars are discriminated as the lower cast in Nepal, the outsiders, the government does not give them any benefits or support. They leave their villages and come into Kathmandu looking to find a source of income to support their big unplanned families. Some have been living in Nepal for almost 20 years. Yet there is this wide community difference between humans living in one space.
(Kathmandu – Nepal)
