I live with my parents in Kathmandu. Life at home is hard. My father is always drunk and doesn’t have a job, so my mother has to work. She works in construction, carrying bricks all day long. I thought I should help her, and one day a friend told me I could get a job at a restaurant in another part of Kathmandu. When I got there, I was offered work as a waitress. The restaurant wasn’t nice – it was dark with lots of flashing lights. I was afraid, but they said I shouldn’t worry, because I wouldn’t have to do anything I didn’t like.
But this wasn’t true. The clients arrived and the boss told me I had to be kind to them. Later, they told me my clothes weren’t good enough for this job, and they forced me to put on provocative clothes and then forced me to dance naked. I had to let them touch me. At first I told my mum that I was going to school, because they let me go home in the evening. But then one day everything changed: they told me I couldn’t leave and they forced me into prostitution.
My mother got very worried that I had been trafficked, and started looking for me. Finally, somebody told her about an NGO, Maiti Nepal, that helps victims of trafficking. She went to see them and they used their contacts to help find me. I was finally able to go home, and now I am studying at a school for trafficking survivors. In my class, all of the girls have been through similar experiences. One girl was sent to India and forced into prostitution when she was just 11; others lost their organs after traffickers took their kidneys.
I found out that the men at the restaurant had planned to sell me to a brothel in India. I was so lucky that my mother found me. If not, I don’t know where I would be now.
As told to the Guardian.
