This document summarizes an ethnography about children in Nepal. It describes scenes of poverty-stricken children searching a filthy river for coins and a young girl caring for her siblings. Over half of Nepal's population lives below the poverty line. While some children enjoy privileges, many work at a young age or beg. Girls in particular miss out on education due to domestic responsibilities. The document also discusses cultural attitudes towards discipline, gender roles, and children's freedoms in Nepal.

1. Children of Nepal: The
Tragedy and the Joy
An Ethnography
by Zoë Biehl

2. Young children searching for coins in the Bagmati River
A young Nepali boy around the age of seven or eight waded in the shallow, sacred
Bagmati river outside of Pashupatinath Temple, shoeless and wearing only a shabby
crimson overcoat many sizes too large for him. In his hands he grasped a long strand of
twine—tied at the end was a circular magnet. He would toss this invention into the
water—upon which floated a concoction of garbage and the ashes of recently cremated
bodies returning back to the earth, freeing their souls to become reincarnated once more.
Hindus who made their pilgrimage to the Pashupatinath Temple would throw offerings

3. into the river as well: usually one or two rupees—which was what the young boy was
searching for with his magnet.
Others watching the boy would ask our guide, Binaya, “Is it okay for him to be
taking the offerings like that?” Binaya replied, “Once you offer it, it is no longer yours.”
No parents or other family members seemed to be around, causing me to wonder
if this boy was an orphan, or homeless. Nobody paid any attention to him as he searched
patiently for several hours—perhaps he scavenges this river every day. Does he have a
house to go home to? A family to comfort him at night? Enough food to eat each day?
This young boy searching for coins in a river of filth and death is not the only
child like this in Nepal. Many children stricken with poverty could be seen on a daily
basis, anywhere you went. Fifty-five percent of Nepal’s population lives below the
international poverty line of a dollar and twenty-five cents a day, according to UNICEF,
as of 2010 (Nepal Statistics).
For example, in the ancient Newar town called Bhaktapur, a woman wearing
threadbare clothing walked over to our group of rich and privileged tourists, begging for
some rupees. With her was a small girl around the age of four, covered in dirt and
coughing profusely. None of the twenty-two of us gave them any rupees—most of us
ignored them the best we could.
Binaya had told us before to never give any rupees to beggars. I wondered why;
did he believe in the caste system of no upward mobility? Did he think we would get
robbed or harassed by the beggars? Yet, ignoring the homeless is not exclusive to
Nepal—in fact, in every city I have been to (including New York City, Chicago, Helsinki
and Avignon) the homeless seem to be invisible to most people. In Helsinki, I only saw

4. one homeless person the entire four weeks I spent there—an elderly woman with no coat
on in sub-zero weather. I gave her a few Euros, and immediately my two Finnish friends
began yelling at me, “Don’t give money to gypsies, they are bad!” If I could go back in
time, I would have given some rupees to that woman and her child in Bhaktapur.
Later on in the trip, in Kathmandu, I decided to give some begging children fifty
rupees. I simply handed it to them as I passed by; the way people drop coins into the cups
of beggars on the streets of New York City or Boston. Suddenly I realized the young boy
was following me, his little legs trotting beside me trying to keep up. “Ice cream!” he said
in English. He pointed to a store across the street that must have sold ice cream. “No, I
just gave you rupees, you can go buy the ice cream!” I replied, overwhelmed by the
motorcycles and cars zooming six inches away from me on one side, and crowds of
people rushing by on the other. Eventually the boy gave up on following me. I wonder
what he ended up using the rupees on!
However, like any country in the world, not all children live in squalor on the
streets. At the lodge we stayed in for a night in a small village up in the mountains was a
fat and happy baby that many of us in the group crowded around and played with. He had
warm, clean clothing and had big chubby cheeks and rolls of fat on his arms and legs—
the way a baby should be!
Yet, the parents were not around. Parenting seems to be much more relaxed in
Nepal as compared to the United States. Children were frequently seen roaming the
streets free of supervision, and usually older siblings watched over the younger ones,
usually older sisters.

5. It was clear that women have the main role of caring for children in Nepal. Not
just mothers, but daughters as well. Often I would see an eight or nine year old girl
carrying a toddler around on her hip, or a sister grabbing her younger brother’s arm right
before an attempt to run into a busy street (shown below).
A young girl protecting her younger brother from oncoming traffic
In Nepali, the word for sister is “didi”, which is very similar to the English words
“mama” and “dada”. Simple words like these are very easy for young children to say, so
they can effortlessly call the person that cares for them most. Perhaps Nepali uses “didi”
for the word sister because it is the sisters of the family that have a huge role in caring for
their younger siblings.

6. A woman who spoke to our group about gender and inequality told us that
because older sisters have to take care of the younger siblings, they have no time to go to
school. As a result, many girls have no basic education and are illiterate. She also
informed us that most parents desire sons over daughters, which is a large problem in
Nepal, leaving many female children unwanted.
Binaya informed us of this point, as well, earlier on in the trip. He told us that
many parents must make the choice of which of their children to send to school, because
they cannot afford a uniform (all schools in Nepal require a uniform) as well as school
supplies for all of their children. Therefore, the sons are always chosen because it is the
son’s job later on in life to take care of the parents as they become elderly and need help
with a source of income and someone to take over the house. Daughters will eventually
get married and move away, so their future is not as important to most parents as their
son’s future is.
In fact, Binaya recalled meeting a pregnant woman in Nepal who had thirteen
daughters already, and she told him that she would not stop having children until she had
a son! This example truly exposes the extreme gender disparity that is so rampant in
Nepal.
Though there is substantial gender inequality, there are people working towards
equality in Nepal. Jagan Suba Gurung, a woman who lives in the mountains in a small
Gurung village and owns and runs a guesthouse for trekkers hiking the Annapurna
Circuit, is a wonderful example of an ambitious and motivated person working hard for
change and equality in Nepal.

7. Our group had the immense honor and pleasure of meeting Gurung and speaking
to her. She told us about gender inequality and the various ways she has helped women
become more educated and have more power and rights. She is the one who informed us
about how girls have no time to go to school because they must take care of their siblings
at home. Gurung created a childcare center in her area for children to spend their days
at—she informed us that currently thirty-one children attend the center, with two trained
teachers caring for them and educating them daily. This has allowed mothers to have
more time during their days because there were now fewer children to look after. She
explained to us, “Most women do not know how to control the birth.”
Now that the mothers had more time available, they could go to the gender
education meetings Gurung had set up to educate adults—male and female—about
women’s issues such as gender inequality, birth control methods, and women’s rights.
Adult literacy classes were set up as well to further educate parents. Mothers and
grandmothers who never had the time or money to go to school when they were younger
suddenly had an opportunity to learn to read! Gurung was nominated for a Nobel Peace
Prize in 2005 for improving women’s lives in Nepal.
It is clear that women have the largest role in caring for children in Nepal. It
seems to be rare to see men in public with children at their side. The first man I observed
with a child in Nepal was in Bhaktapur, three days into our journey.
The man was with a toddler barely able to walk on his or her own. The toddler
was being fussy, and the man (Father? Uncle?) took the bundle of sticks he was holding
and whacked the child on the head. The toddler looked shocked and then immediately
began to bawl loudly. The man looked indifferent and ignored the child’s cries. This was

8. the only form of explicit child abuse I witnessed in Nepal, though I suspect corporal
punishment on children in this country is probably commonplace.
I tried very hard to interview someone on the different methods of discipline used
on children in Nepal, but did not succeed in obtaining any useful information from
anyone on this matter. A large obstacle in my way was the fact that all of the Nepalis that
we were exposed to, such as tour guides and porters, were all men. I felt uncomfortable
asking the men about punishment and methods of discipline of children, whereas I
probably would have been more at ease with a woman.
The very last night in Nepal, I was very stressed out and upset that I never had the
chance to interview anyone about methods of discipline. I was at a bar talking to the
owner, who bought me a drink and was showing me pictures of all the attractive white
tourists he has met. In a moment of desperation, I interrupted him and said, “Can I ask
you some questions about children?”
He cut me off and said defiantly, “I do not know about culture, I am a party boy.”
So I sadly left Nepal empty-handed in regard to my search for answers about discipline.
However, I did notice something interesting while in the National Mountaineering
Museum in Pokhara. Hanging on one of the walls in the museum was a drawing of a
parent (it appears to be a mother) holding a girl’s hand and striking it with either a
wooden or metal pole. The girl has an expression of anguish and pain on her face. The
caption read: “Flogging as a Meaning of Education”.

9. “Flogging as a Meaning of Education”
There was no other explanation to this sketch to be found, but it shows that in
Nepal hitting your children seems to be an acceptable form of “educating” your child,
unfortunately still rampant in a wide range of countries around the world, including the
United States. I hope I do not sound ethnocentric—I do not mean to criticize Nepal or
any other country’s culture, but with topics such as child abuse I struggle to sit back and
simply say that it is cultural relativism and therefore should be respected.

10. Cultural relativism is the concept that what is considered good and bad, what is
socially acceptable and what is not, is the result of a culture’s traditions and beliefs. It is
based on the premise that all cultures are equally valid. It sees that values emerge in the
context of particular social, cultural, economic and political conditions and therefore vary
enormously between different communities.
However, does the belief in cultural relativism justify and rationalize repressive,
harmful, and/or dangerous practices some cultures may take part in? Was it okay for the
Nazis to kill Jews because it was a part of their culture? Should the practice of slavery in
the United States be respected as a part of our culture? Is it justifiable to idly watch a
woman being raped in the Congo and allow it to happen, because it is a commonplace
practice in the country? Should the world allow the United States to deplete the world’s
resources, practice fracking, or deny millions of its citizens simple rights such as basic
health care, because the country values money over people’s wellbeing?
If all cultures are relative, do we face moral nihilism? I have struggled with the
concept of cultural relativism. I try my hardest to respect every culture’s practices, even if
I do not understand them. But when it comes to basic human rights, I feel apathetic and
cowardly to simply shrug my shoulders when I see child abuse or sexism or murder—in
my culture or any other culture—and deem it culturally relative and therefore offensive to
criticize the practices. I believe that human beings should have basic human rights no
matter where they happened to be born, and this most especially includes children.
Now, obviously I was not going to go up to the man I saw hitting his child and try
to educate him on how I think it is wrong to use corporal punishment on people. That is
not my place, especially in a foreign country. I witnessed many things I would have liked

11. to change in Nepal. By the same token, I am witness to a plethora of issues in the United
States that bother me, such as a pseudo-religious but powerful minority that attempts, and
generally succeeds, in imposing its rightwing agenda on the rest of us, claiming they
abhor government interfering in people’s lives when it comes to carrying automatic
weapons or whipping their children with a belt, but have no qualms about denying basic
human rights to same-sex couples or trying to mandate that a woman has no right to
choose what happens to her own body.
In a small Tibetan community near Kathmandu, one of our guides, Padam, took
us to a ramshackle carpet “factory”. It was a room with four women who were hand
weaving intricate carpets on simple looms. They worked quickly and nimbly—clearly
they had been making carpets in this room for many years. One student in our group
inappropriately asked, “Do you get paid well?” to one of the weavers, who looked up
with an expression of embarrassment and shook her head, her hands still expertly
weaving the carpet she was working on.
I decided to do some research on these carpet weavers and found some upsetting
information: a lot of the carpets are made using child slave labor. For example, in
December of 1998, police raided a dilapidated carpet factory in a semi-urban community
north east of Kathmandu. A twenty-year old worker had escaped the factory and
informed police about the place. The police found working inside the factory twenty-
three children between the ages of thirteen and twenty, who were being forced to weave
carpets in exchange for meager amounts of food and substantial amounts of abuse
(O’Neill, 413).

12. In fact, according to the International Center on Child Labor and Education, there
are 2.6 million children between the ages of five to fourteen working in Nepal as of 2007.
Of these 2.6 million children, about 1.4 million are not provided a salary for their work
and 1.27 million children are working in the “worst forms of labor” (Poudel).
It is clear that there are many children in Nepal who do not have a sufficient
quality of life. However, during my three weeks in Nepal, I only ever saw three children
crying. The majority of them were happy, giggling, grinning little kids full of curiosity
and wonder.
For example, in a mountain village in the Annapurna mountain range, I observed
a group of young children helping each other carefully crawl under a barbed wire fence,
in order to get to a small field to play in. They had races against each other, lining up
their sandals in a row to create a makeshift finish line. Next, the children wrestled each
other roughly, dragging each other by their feet, pushing each other to the ground and
roughhousing with each other.
Children race each other in a mountain village.

13. While I was watching these children at play, all of a sudden one of the boys began
to urinate on the other children! The others shrieked and moved out of the stream’s path,
giggling excitedly. I heard from other students on the trip that they had also seen children
urinating in public on or near other children, as well. I wondered why this was an
accepted practice for children to partake in.
Perhaps because there is such little privacy in their lives—often sharing beds with
one another, showering in public, etcetera—they do not perceive urination as “dirty”, the
way many Americans (who almost always urinate in private, and value privacy much
more than the average Nepalese person) do.
Children growing up in Nepal seem to have more freedoms than American
children do, in certain aspects such as being allowed to roam the streets without adult
supervision. However, with these freedoms come harsh responsibilities, such as having to
work at a job beginning at a very young age, and taking care of their younger siblings.
Three weeks is barely enough time to scratch the surface of any culture, especially
when one is limited by not speaking the language or knowing the customs. While the
picture I may have portrayed in discussing the children of Nepal may seem stark and
harsh, it is also filled with the bursts of pure, unadulterated joy that characterize children
the world over.
It is like the crumbling stone facades of the buildings flanking alleyways filled
with garbage, mud and debris that one saw everywhere in Nepal. But look up, and see the
strings of brilliantly colored prayer flags, the bright symbols of luck, happiness,

14. prosperity and longevity, and see that boundless hope for the future shining in the faces
of those romping, giggling children playing in the field beyond the barbed wire.
Children giggling in Bhaktaur
Children are the hope of any culture. They are, quite literally, the future. When I
saw the joy in those little faces, even when their tummies were empty, I saw hope for
Nepal, and for all countries, if we can learn to open our minds and our hearts, and, like
Jagan Suba Gurung, actively work for ways to improve the lives of all our children, no
matter what culture they come from.

15. Works Cited
"Nepal Statistics." UNICEF. 02 Mar. 2010. Web. 05 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/nepal_nepal_statistics.html>.
O'Neill, Tom. "Anti-Child Labour Rhetoric, Child Protection and Young Carpet
Weavers in Kathmandu, Nepal." Journal of Youth Studies 6.4 (2003): 413-31.
EBSCOhost. Web. 05 Feb. 2012.
Poudel, Nirakar. "North American Secretariat on Child Labor and Education."
International Center on Child Labor and Education. 05 Aug. 2007. Web. 05 Feb. 2012.
<http://www.iccle.org/050807.php>.