Day one of Humla field trip, Simikot to Raya
Torn apart by trafficking and separated by thousands of miles, two sisters—and two families—come together in Nepal.
Image: Two girls play together in Humla, Nepal | Photo by Eric B. Wilson
Sunitha is a typical teenage girl living in Spain. She likes talk with her friends, listen to music and spend time with her family.
Sunitha, though, has an extraordinary story.
In 2005 she was adopted from a Nepali orphanage and taken to Spain by her adoptive mother, Ana, to begin a new, happy and fulfilling life. Some months later, after Sunitha had learned to speak Spanish, she was able to express to Ana that she remembered she had a sister, but her memories were very confused with “facts” she’d been told in the orphanage.
Five years later, her sister Bindu was rescued from the orphanage and temporarily placed under NGN’s care. Shortly after, when her mother, Kanchan, was found living in a village not far from Kathmandu, Bindu gladly returned home.
Pieces started to fall into place. In 2011, NGN made contact with Ana through our European partners. We explained that her daughter was not an orphan, as she had been led to believe by the orphanage. Sunitha’s birth mother was very much alive.
In July 2012, an amazing thing happened: Sunitha and members of her Spanish family traveled the thousands of miles to Nepal to meet Kanchan and Bindu—a life-affirming moment!
The two families spent three days getting to know each other, confirming that Sunitha’s vague and confusing memories were indeed things that happened during her childhood in Nepal. They began to bridge the great gap that unfortunate circumstances had created between them.
The really amazing thing? Neither Ana nor Kanchan, Sunitha nor Bindu, could speak each other’s language, or even a shared language. They bonded through warmth and a mutual understanding of each other’s situation and challenges. The time they spent with one another made it clear that they linked and would remain so.
A week later, Sunitha and Ana returned to their home in Spain, already looking forward to seeing their new-found family members once again just as their new-found family members were already looking forward to seeing them.
