Entrygate to Keureni
Girl on the phone
Due to a lack of demand for unskilled workers in Nepal, many are seeking work abroad. The workers are mostly young males from rural parts of Nepal, involved in work on construction sites or in factories.
Approximately 14% percent of the Napalese population are working abroad in countries like Qatar, Malaysia and the UAE. The nepalese workers are sending 4 billion US dollars home each year, making up 28% of Nepals GDP.
One of the villages supplying such workers is Keureni, a Village approximately 8 hours from the capital, Kathmandu. Photos from this series are made there.
Mina is 40 years old. She has been married to her husband since she was 14 and has had 3 sons since then.
Her husband is working in India and her oldest son is home from his work in Qatar
Englishclass at Shree Bag Bhairab Primary School, a village school with 43 students.
Mina on the phone with her husband.
Her husband has worked in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Qatar and is now working on a poultry farm in India.
He has come home before the contracts ends a lot of times, leaving the family with travel expenses and job agent fees that aren’t paid off. Each time costing them around 2.500 USD.
He is talking about quitting and coming home early this time as well
When Minas youngest son Niron, 19, didnt pass class 12, he got a job at a restaurant a few hours away from home, but quickly quit due to bad working conditions. He is now walking up at 5 every morning to train in hope of joining the Naplese army. He would rather join the Indian army because of the higher pay, but they don’t accept Nepalese, he says.
Mina in her kitchen doing a videocall to her daughter in law and her newborn grandchild.
Mina wakes up at 5 in the morning, goes to her slot of land for checking out her crops and spends the most of her day at her house. She spends her day talking with her family working abroad or in Kathmandu and listening to music. She “would be bored and lonely without wifi”.
Clothes drying on the roof.
Many houses are made ready for building a second or third floor on top of the existing house for when the families have saved up enough for another floor.
Milan, Mina's second son, has recently worked in Qatar, but is back in Nepal for the birth of his first child.
He went to India for a job a few days before, but came back when “job agents” wanted him to pay around 1.500 dollars for him to get the job, so he came home instead.
Nerouse, 16, on his way to the spring to get water
Razzak bored during class and a picture of a flood.
A few days later, many parts of Nepal were hit by heavy rain and floods. Luckily the school was not affected. The roads to the village got blocked for a few days by landslides
The local restaurant
Dinesh outside his house
