Pande Bhai
Stories like his are what motivate us to create the change we want to see in Nepal. We returned to Nepal to help people like him. He is more than just an airport driver to us. He is the symbol and the reality of most immigrants in Nepal. His dream for his children is the Nepalese Dream for us.
The first time we met Durga Bahadur Pande (Pande bhai) was at a small office next to Kathmandu’s notorious Tribhuwan International Airport. He was in his early thirties, his pink shirt was slightly faded, overused jeans, and with a shy smile, he entered the room. He was a father of two girls and was desperately looking for a stable job in the city. Finding a job, enough to sustain your family is still difficult in Nepal.
Taxi no. 1010
A friend of his from eastern Nepal had told him he could get a job as an airport taxi driver 1010 which would earn him a good $300 monthly. Airport taxi driving is a high-paying job, it’s equivalent to the salary of a local bank manager here. This was his chance to stay in Nepal and create a better future for himself and his family. We didn’t know him, he wasn’t recommended through any family or friends and there weren’t any common elements between us. To add, we weren't sure about the project and felt very uncomfortable having to decide that day without much information. But being an immigrant once, I knew what it felt when you really need a job and it felt that this driving job was more than a job to him. But as legal contracts and laws in Nepal almost do not exist, we had to make sure we could trust him, know more about him & his motivation.
He explained his story timidly — he was a returnee labor immigrant, while his younger brother was still in Saudi Arabia working for the past 10 years. He needed the job to feed his family, was his answer. After a few other questions about how he would manage the taxi & the 2.3 million rupees loan for the vehicle, the room looked tense and there was a sense of uneasiness.
I looked at Pande bhai & joked,
“This feels like a police interrogation doesnt it?”
He smiled & finally opened up and said,
“I was a police officer during the civil war in Nepal”.
His Story
During Nepal’s decade-long civil war from 1998 till 2008, roughly 70,000 Nepali men & women died in the so-called people’s war. No matter which side they died, for the Maoist rebels or for the security forces, Nepali brothers & sisters died and most of us agree that it is was a national tragedy. Pande bhai with his teenage energy and childhood dream to become a cop ended up in the armed police force of Nepal stationed at the Lukla Airport, the gateway to Everest Base Camp.
Eventually, Lukla area, with a small airport mostly run at the time for tourists, turned into a Maoist rebel region. During a midnight Maoist assault to the police check post, Pande bhai ran in the middle of the night down the mountain for his life. After having found no escaping route as the rebels had ambushed and cornered, he apparently jumped into the river Dudh Koshi to save his life. We are not able to verify the authenticity of this jump but Pande bhai bravely explains it like a scene in a Bollywood movie. We did verify that he had been in Armed Police Forces and had been stationed in Lukla and to this day he walks with little unease with his injured leg.
After surviving the injuries from the jump and losing faith in war Pande bhai resigned from his police duties. After a year of not finding any other opportunities in Nepal, he ended up leaving Nepal as a labor immigrant in 2008. It was the same year a peace treaty was signed between the Maoist rebels and the Nepal government. As Nepal transitioned from a constitutional monarchy to a federal republic on paper, Pande bhai transitioned from being a cop to a worker in a wood logging company in Malaysia. This is the story for many men in Nepal who are in need to create better lives for their families. Pande bhai is just one of the thousands.
His fortunes didn't work out in Malaysia either and he ended up returning to the new Nepal. It was during this phase we happen to meet Pande bhai for the first time. It was a leap of faith then and it is a leap of faith now. Pande bhai was selected as our driver for the airport taxi 1010 project with a model of owner-driver partnership where the owner had to put the initial capital & the driver had to work to pay back the initial investment & bank’s monthly installments for the vehicle. The partnership has worked more or less, obviously with a setback during the pandemic and regular lockdowns but there is an element of trust after 7 years of working together.
Pande bhai now wants to bring his two daughters & a nephew to study in Kathamndu from his village in eastern Nepal. He wants to change the lives of his two daughters by giving them the opportunity he was not given. Having only studied till grade 8 he hopes his daughter’s lives will be easier and more secure than his if they would be educated in Kathmandu. This necessity to bring them to the capital led him to a search for an apartment here. Apartments in Kathmandu are very expensive for low-wage workers and thus Pande bhai had a smart idea of renting a bigger place and running a cheap hotel near the International Airport. His clientele is mostly labor migrants coming to take their flights to the Middle East or returning back to Nepal. He came to us asking for some capital to invest. Having put all our initial savings in Shram program we hadn’t any. But slowly understanding his project & thinking about our Shram program idea, we saw a common interest.
The Project Partnership
This interest has now created a project for Friendship Hotel. This low-end hotel with 15 bedrooms is close to the airport and next to Pashupati Temple one of the holiest temples for the Hindus. The partnership is between Pande bhai, his brother who is still in Saudi Arabia, and Shram Program. Shram Program is providing 25% capital and 5% partnership into the Friendship Hotel.
While the Pande brothers hope to create a better life for themselves and their children, we at Shram hope to create a pilot project on capital investment to labor immigrants and returnees back to Nepal.
We at Shram want to create a hub at the hotel for upskilling workshops and orientation to the leaving or returning immigrants. We hope it will expedite our impact as people are more receptive to listening just before moving to a foreign land or just after returning back to Nepal.
The immigrant hub & the transition time will give us a platform for further activities related to immigration & upskilling in the future. This is our hope. We at Shram do realize that it’s quite risky to invest in hotels during the pandemic. Also, our impact on immigrant issues through his hotel is a long shot. However, we believe people like Pande bhai deserve a chance. Together we feel doing something even small is better than doing nothing during this pandemic uncertainty…only time will tell.
What do you think? What pandemic projects/ideas are crossing your mind, what are you working on?
Let us know — #Togetherwecan !