Little Princes by Conor Grennan

Farid speaking with Hari, the part-time house manager, who had just arrived from his other job over at CERV Nepal. They stopped when I came in, reading my concern. Sandra waved me to sit down with them.
    “That man who just left,” she said, nodding out the door. “His name is Golkka.”
    “Who is he? I thought we didn’t let strangers visit the children,” I said.
    “He’s not a stranger. The children know him,” she said. Farid snorted derisively. Hari said nothing. I waited.
    Sandra continued, “The children know him because he is the man who took the children from their villages. He is a child trafficker.”
    Then, for the first time, I learned the story of how the children at Little Princes had arrived in the small village of Godawari.
    Golkka, like the children, was from Humla, a district in the far northwest corner of Nepal, on the border of Tibet—the most remote part of an already remote country. It is completely mountainous, with no roads leading in or out. Most villages there have no electricity or phone service. There is a single airport; from there, the entire region is accessible only on foot or by helicopter. Many children growing up there have never seen a wheeled vehicle. It was in Humla, impoverished and vulnerable, that the Maoist rebels had created one of their first strongholds.
    Golkka found that there was opportunity in such a place: he could have access to cheap child labor. He rounded up children orphaned by the civil conflict, a conflict that had thus far resulted in the deaths of more than ten thousand soldiers, rebels, and civilians. He forced the children to walk many days along narrow trails through the hills and mountains—trails that must have resembled the challenging paths up to Everest Base Camp. They walked until they reached a road, where they could catch a bus to Kathmandu. Once there, he kept them in a dilapidated mud house, offering them up for labor. If they wanted to eat, they were forced to beg on the streets.
    When tourists discovered the children, they came to the house and asked what they could do to help. Golkka realized he had something much more lucrative on his hands than a mere workforce. He began bringing in volunteers to visit and care for the children. When they bought mattresses so the children would no longer have to sleep on the cold mud floors, Golkka thanked them, and then promptly sold the mattresses as soon as the volunteers left the country. Clothes brought for the children were similarly worn until volunteers left, then taken from the children and given to the trafficker’s family.
    Sandra met these children while volunteering. She vowed to break the cycle of corruption. She raised money from France and offered to take the children off his hands. Golkka sensed another opportunity. He demanded payment, about three hundred dollars per child. This would be a small fortune in a country where the average annual salary was around two hundred and fifty dollars. Sandra refused to pay, but continued working with the government and other nonprofit organizations to secure the children’s release. Eventually, pressure from the Child Welfare Board and other organizations grew too much for him, and he let them go with her. Those eighteen children became the Little Princes.
    Three months after the rescue, neighbors reported that Golkka’s crumbling home was filled again. He had gone back to Humla and gotten more orphaned children.
    “Why wasn’t he arrested? Didn’t the Child Welfare Board know what he was doing?” I asked.
    “They know. But Nepal’s laws are weak. He was the legal guardian of the children—he had found family members to sign custody to him. He could do almost anything he wanted with them,” said Sandra.
    “So we can do . . . what, nothing?”
    “You have to understand, Conor, this is very serious,” Sandra said, leaning forward. “We had a volunteer here four months ago. She tried to build a case against him with UNICEF and the Child