Our own, Bhim and Helen have visited two prisons in the last week. This is their story.
The Baglung Prison is off the beaten track in the middle of Nepali banana plantations. The countryside is so beautiful and green in the rainy season and the rivers are swirling torrents of dirty water. On the way to Baglung there was a landslide and four hours were spent waiting for it to be cleared. The main reason to visit Baglung was to see the mother of one of our beautiful children. It is so sad when mothers are separated from their children at any time. In many cases in Nepal, they are often in prison for something they did not do.
In Nepal it is easy for a high caste person to blame a low caste person for a crime and get off scott-free, while the untouchable person pays the penalty. We took about 40 books with us and a couple of mp3 players, which contain music, the Bible and important health information. They are solar powered, so they do not require a battery. We know that these items are a great blessing to the inmates.
Our “mother ” was so happy to have a visitor she cried when she saw us. At this particular prison they did not allow her to come out, we had to speak to her and pass the things we had brought for her through the bars… one apple at a time and two bananas at a time, and one article of clothing at a time.
The second prison was Lamjung, where we again took books and mp3 players, but at this prison they did not allow us leave the mp3 players. One officer was not happy even for the prisoners to have the books but he finally relented.
While we were there, we were told that in this prison there was a baby girl whose mother has mental problems. She was born in the prison and her mother has a twenty year sentence for murder. Apparently she got angry one day and threw a rock at a relative and the relative died. We asked if we could see the baby who is around eighteen months old. What a surprise for us – the lady who carried the baby out was someone we knew from our last visit more than a year ago. Since our visit she had learned of Jesus love from a lady who was previously in prison and who is the mother of one of our boys here in our Childrens Homes. She was so happy to see us. She hugged us so tightly. She said that the mother is not really capable of caring for this baby girl, so she does most of the mothering. We hope very soon to bring this precious little girl, who looks very pale, to our Childrens home.
Note: The mother is on the left and our friend is on the right.