Opening their home to others

Pradeshani Chaudhary sits inside her mud plastered thatch house and looks out at the half-raised brick wall of her new home some distance away, dreaming about the day she and her family will move into the structure.

The front yard is piled with bricks, iron rods, and other construction material and tell the story of how Chaudhary’s life has changed since she was a slave bonded to a landlord under western Nepal’s Kamaiya system.

Chaudhary is now chair of the Bijayasal Community Homestay in the village of Bani in this district in the plains of Nepal’s southwestern corner.

homestays by former bonded labourers — Entry gate of the Bijayasal Community Homestay.

Pradeshani was born into a Kamaiya family and grew up working alongside her family in the farm of her landlord, planting paddy, tending to the crop and harvesting it in return for rice that was never enough to sustain the household. So the family looked for other ways to earn money to buy food.

“We went to the forest to pick sal flowers to sell, and with that we bought rice, but we still did not have enough,” recalls Pradeshani, now 50.

In 1996, Pradeshani married Bhagiram Chaudhary who was also from a Kamaiya family which lived on undocumented ancestral land on the banks of the Mohana River which was ravaged by floods every year.

Bhagiram’s family then had to borrow money from their landlord, and unable to pay interest or capital he and two brothers went to India to find work to pay back the loan. Pradeshani and her father-in-law continued working as bonded labourers back home.

This was when Nepal’s Maoist conflict spread to Kanchanpur, and Kamaiya families in Kanchanpur decvided to also fight their own non-violent struggle for liberation from landlords with support from the non-profit Backward Society Education (BASE), established by young activists from the Tharu community.

Many more bonded labourers, who had been conditioned into believing that it was their fate to be enslaved, joined the movement after they became aware of their circumstances.

Pradeshani’s father-in-law was among those who joined the movement.

On 17 July 2000, Nepal officially eliminated the Kamaiya system, liberating over 18,000 bonded labourers. Those emancipated now needed a place to live, but they had received neither reparations nor rehabilitation.

Like many others, Pradeshani’s family did not have a paisa to their name, and saw no alternative but to protest. This time, Pradeshani joined the demonstrations herself and after a year-long struggle the family got a plot of land in Bani village.

“It was a time of war, and the army threatened protesters accusing us of being Maoists,” Pradeshani remembers, “So we had to be satisfied with what we were given.”

A total of 558 former bonded labourers including Pradeshani and her family were resettled at the Mukta Kamaiya Basti in Bani. This was where Pradeshani and her husband Bhagiram arrived with their two children, with just a blanket and the clothes on their backs. They built their first mud house.

They now had a roof over their head, but no income. Bhagiram returned to India to work as a labourer and when he returned four years later was trained to install hand-pumps. Pradeshani trained in cultivating watermelons, cucumbers and vegetables by the river.

But the 2007 flood washed away the farm. “It took everything from us, and the sand made the land unsuitable for cultivation, we were back to where we started,” Pradeshani recalls.

In 2011, the Janahit Mahakali Community Forest launched a homestay program and Pradeshani together with five other former bonded labourers enrolled. They were ineligible for a bank loan because they did not have land titles for collateral, but managed to borrow money from a microfinance.

Initially unaware of how to run such a business, they had to navigate operational and bureaucratic hurdles. Processes and the interest on the loan was adding up. But today, the homestay is doing well, and the partners have paid off their loan. They make a net profit of Rs700,000 a year.

"I have never been happier,” says Pradeshani. “In the peak season, I earn more than my husband does.”

Pradeshani says the work required to operate their homestay is the skill they know best, and it has also allowed mothers to look after their children as they work. “I have not once regretted opening the homestay,” adds Pradeshani. “It has brought many positive changes to my life.”