Rudra Bahadur Darji curses his life for being born as a Dalit, the "untouchable" caste. The Aythos' staff recently visited his village in Nepal and this was his message, translated by our staff.
Dalits? I wonder all the time asking myself that, who created the word “Dalit”.
Dalits are the untouchables. Yes, it is true that we are untouchable, nobody touches us, nobody wants to invite us into their house, nor do they come to ours.
We are always discriminated against by other so called “higher caste people.” We are considered backwards everywhere we go.
We don’t have much land, we don’t have big houses, we don’t have roads, we don’t have electricity, and we don’t even have clean water to drink. It feels like it’s dark everywhere we go, our life is full of darkness.
Once an NGO made a cement tank for us, but even God or nature is jealous of us that he cursed us with a landslide and destroyed our tank. We were even helped with the water pipes but the so called “higher caste people” took it away from us. We have to drink water with stones and mud.
I live with ten family members. My daughter-in-law and I are working as tailors to make some money. The income is not enough, for sewing one Kurtha (Dress) we get NRS 200 (US $1.92). Sewing is the occupation that has been carried out by our ancestors and we follow in their footsteps with few other options. This is the occupation of the entire village even though we have few customers. Sometimes we even have to sew clothes in an exchange for maize and rice as we lack land to farm on.
I think we could have a better life if we weren’t Dalits.
Aythos came across Rudra and his family in this Dalit village, saddened and inspired to make a difference. With your help Aythos can solve the water scarcity issues of the village and develop farming programs to bring in profits. Donate today to bring hope to Rudra's family and village.