Wow -- it has been more than a MONTH since I've updated the blog.
It is actually October 15th -- it's just that I uploaded some pictures of Nepal back in September with the intention of writing back then so the date of the posting is incorrect. Anyway... I'll give a quick recap and then we can move forward.
Briefly, the last few weeks have been wild.
I ended up getting the trip to Nepal... which I had been pitching but looked doubtful that I'd actually get to go. Nepal involved a busy shooting schedule and then I came back to Delhi and put the pieces together quite quickly. Almost immediately following the airing of those stories... I was heading to New York and then Hong Kong (those details to follow).
A bit of me fell in love with Nepal. It is wild that you can travel around India for hours and hours by air and get off the plane... and the cities look oddly similar. However flying from Delhi 1hr 15mins to Kathmandu is like flying to a different world. These great old temples are littered around the city... I felt like I was living in one of those James Bond flicks (I later felt this way in Hong Kong as well). The nation is one of the poorest in the world - somewhere around 85% of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. It is incredibly dark at night with only that mood-setting poor quality fluorescent light illuminating bits of areas surrounding little shop fronts or stalls.
We did a lot of driving and exploring the country. One of the stories took us high up into the mountains outside of Kathmandu to a Maoist village. It's extremely rare to get into these villages in part because it's just so hard to reach them. "Refugees International" says that 80% of Nepal is under Maoist "influence". During the 10 year long civil war (there's now a sort of fragile peace) it was quite difficult (ie. dangerous) to travel around the remote regions of the country which added to the difficulty getting to see these Maoist camps.
The scenery was breathtaking and despite our long drive... there were times that I just had to stop the car to get out and take a picture.
I took these pictures of the young Maoist fighters on a sort of military parade. You can see all of the schoolchildren around them watching (wearing their blue shirt school uniforms).
The Maoists have been fighting to make Nepal a communist country and follow the ideals of China's Mao Zedong... who ushered in the Cultural Revolution in China. They took up arms about ten years ago (1996) and started fighting the Royal Nepal Army (now just called the Nepal Army) for control of Nepal. While they never were able to overtake the RNA... they put up a good fight -- one that the RNA has never been able to really squelch.
With a ceasefire intact the Maoists are trying to show more of a political image than a military one -- which is part of the reason that they invited us up into the mountains. We also got the rare opportunity to interview "Prachanda" the rebel leader of the Maoists - I believe it is CNN's first interview with him. Prachanda has been underground for the better part of the last two decades and very little is known of this man who, as the Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), is both the military and political leader of the movement.
The Maoist supporters welcomed us with open arms. We arrived to a road lined with hundreds of villagers singing and clapping. As the sort of "guest of honor" they put flower garlands around my neck and wanted to shake my hand. It took quite a bit of time just to get up to the village... shaking so many hands.
The warm welcome was clearly choreographed to show these people and their welcome as warm and inviting... contradicting the view of them as shadowy supporters of a rebel insurgency. I think we treated this welcome appropriately in the story... making sure the viewer knew what was happening... but we got some great pictures!
At one point during one of our long drives we pulled off the road so the driver could get something to eat. We walked into this little shack and I ended up sitting at a table in the back with some other "diners". (I wasn't eating... just sitting). But... I was struck by how welcoming these people were. We couldn't communicate - in fact no one ever said a word. But these three guys were very happy to have me share their table at the restaurant. (My driver ate inside). I was struck by the beauty of this place... sitting in a little ramshackle roadside restaurant -- looking out at these rice paddies.
While in Nepal I also worked on a story about the practice of selling young girls into slavery. The girls... sometimes just 7 or 8 years old are sold into slavery by their own parents to make money for the family. Called "Kamlaris", the girls are shipped off to cities like Kathmandu to work as domestic helpers for other families. The girl's parents get between $50 (usd) to $100 per YEAR for the services offered by their daughters. The girls don't see a single cent. But, as is the case with many of these stories... as awful as this is to imagine -- it's the girls themselves that often ask to be sent off as Kamlarlis (according to the parents) because their families are too poor to pay to support them. Of course, many of these girls work for a few years and then end up being so cut off from their original life, families etc... that they end up getting into the sex trade. Oy... just so many problems... we are so lucky.
Just after these Nepal stories aired... I got the very sad news from my mother that my grandfather, whom we all called "Ba", had passed away. I got the news as I drove home with several colleagues from a cocktail party that my boss had thrown for us. It seemed so terrible to get this news... and to be so far away. I knew immediately that I wanted to get home as soon as I could to be with my family. Of course, about an hour after I got this news... a friend from Los Angeles arrived at my house in Delhi. And... the next morning my friend Steve, who lives in Mumbai, came to visit as well... in a long-anticipated trip to Delhi. It was great to have Steve around... and we went for a long walk in Lodhi Garden... a beautiful old garden in south Delhi with ruins of tombs scattered throughout the park. That evening I flew to New York.
While it was sad to be home under such sad circumstances... it was so, so wonderful to be with my family. The family came together from all of our various corners of the world and the States... to be together... to have long evenings and chats about Ba... it was just incredible to be home.
There's more to say here... but I feel like I've carried on for quite a bit.
I'll add tidbits in future postings... but wanted to get blogging again.
xx
S