The meat of the story

This is the 61st episode of Diaspora Diaries, a Nepali Times series in collaboration with Migration Lab providing a platform to share experiences of living, working, studying abroad.

I interrupted my Grade 11 education to go to Malaysia to work as a security guard. During the Maoist era the environment in my college was not conducive to studies. I stayed on in Malaysia for eight years. 

Overseas earnings helped me support my family and buy land, and more importantly, to spend on the treatment of my father’s heart condition.

Our duty was 12 hours and we were on our feet all day checking in visitors and employees at the gate. Nights were slow and all we did was walk around with our dogs and check every hour on our radios. Sometimes, the boys also sang dohori over the radio as we passed the long nights. 

One memorable part of my security job was that we were each assigned a dog, and were also evaluated on how well we trained them. My dog’s name was Amy and I grew very fond of her over the years.

Read also: Must love dogs, Eliza Sthapit

During drills, we wore protective clothes that prevented us from getting hurt if we were bitten, and as a lightweight, I was easily attacked and trampled.

But I was sent home unexpectedly because I had encouraged new Nepali workers to demand higher wages since they were paid less than me for similar work. That felt unfair, but no one wants a foreign rabble rouser. 

For some time after being sent back abruptly, I felt bad because I was not mentally prepared to come home. I had planned to stay for another two years, and had made earning plans accordingly. 

For a year in Nepal, I studied for the EPS which was started in 2008. Going to Korea had not picked up strongly then. I saw my friends and villagers migrating to Korea one by one, and decided to give it a try.

In Korean language class, the teacher used to say “Anyhow कोरिया जौँ”, and all we wanted to do was get to Korea. We had to study hard and I gave it my all. I used to write the Korean names for every object so it was etched in my memory. Whether it was a phone or bucket or plate, it would have the Korean word for it and my walls and ceiling were full of Korean words. I passed. 

Read also: Bringing Korea’s prosperity to Nepal

My migration to Korea was a bit dramatic. It was two days after the earthquake, and we were at the EPS office in Gwarko for our documents and caps and tshirts. I did not get to properly shop for Korea. Even though I was unprepared for the trip, the frequent aftershocks and the closeness of death made me desperate to leave. I was relieved to get on the plane and escape.

In Korea, I grew capsicum. The work was easy, except for a couple of months. Night duty as a security guard in Malaysia made it difficult to pass time, but in Korea, I was working around the clock and lost track of the hours.

My wife and I studied in the same language school in Nepal. She was assigned to a strawberry farm. We got married in Nepal a few years later, and wanted to work together. 

I found a new job in a pig farm, where I asked my employer about the possibility of bringing my wife to the same company and he said that if he was happy with my work, he would hire her. 

That was enough incentive for me to work extra hard and I picked things up fast which made my employer happy. That’s how it is overseas: things are easier if you win the confidence of your employer. They eventually hired my wife, with whom I worked together for two-and-a-half years. My employer increasingly relied on me while also investing heavily in our knowledge and growth. 

Every morning, he used to teach us about pig farming for an hour or two, which has been invaluable for us till today, covering a range of topics including raising piglets, vaccination, artificial insemination and how to breed them on rotation. He was full of good life advice, too, including for our post-return plans.

In 2020, we decided to come back to Nepal. By this point, I felt like I had learnt everything that I needed to know about pig farming. My wife and I wanted to run a pig farm in Nepal on a rotational system, something that is not practiced widely here which puts farmers at a financial disadvantage.

We returned to Nepal during the early stages of Covid. It is strange how I left during an earthquake and returned five years later to another crisis. After eight months we started our Unnati Bangur Hamro Bangur Farm in Panauti.

Just as things were picking up, we had to go through a devastating loss when the African swine fever hit Nepal. Back then, I was spending all my time in the hospital because my newborn had a heart condition, and four months after his birth, he passed. 

There was African swine flu detected in my farm, after which we had to shut it down for almost a year. These multiple losses took my wife and me to a dark place for months, before we had to gather ourselves up and restart work.

Thankfully, things are going better now. This is the nature of business, you need to exercise patience. Things are not constant. Profit, loss. Supply, demand. 

Rates of meat have gone up now because many farmers exited the market after the swine fever. We were patient, and now get significantly better rates which has helped us recover.

Read also: Meat, money, and the middle class

The meat available in regular meat shops is very different from what we offer because our pigs are fed quality feed, not waste, and are given proper vaccinations. We have good buyers like Hankook Meat Shop run by fellow Korean returnees who look for quality produce. 

The challenge of working in Nepal is that there is no proper differentiation by quality of meat, and no traceability to the farms producing the meat which makes farmers less accountable for consumers’ health. It harms those  practicing ethical farming.

Manufacturing is more popular in Korea among Nepali EPS workers, but it is work in the agriculture sector that is more useful after return. I brought most of my equipment from Korea along with me. 

Read also: Social remittance, Upasana Khadka 

When we returned for good, our suitcases had no personal items like chocolates or electronics, they were full of farming equipment like vaccine guns and pig tooth nippers.  

Even now, I tell my friends in Korea to bring me farm equipment when they come home on breaks, and that I will buy them the usual blankets and chocolates to gift to their families in Nepal itself.