THE CORRUPTION

OF

INNOCENCE

Beginnings

SOUTH Asia is at the heart of an international trade in human organs. The

equation is simple but brutal. Take a donor pool of desperately poor people, a

racket of ruthless human traffickers and a corrupt monitoring system and the

outcome is a booming market in body parts. But with such a group of people to

choose from, what led Radhika Phuyal, a young Nepalese girl, to become

involved in this dangerous and illegal game? The answer is simple – a rural

upbringing, a lack of education and, most importantly, an absence of any

financial independence made her the perfect victim for the criminals involved in

this multimillion dollar illegal market.

In a world in which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), at

least 10 percent of all transplants result from ‘medical tourists’ – that is those

people from developed countries who obtain vitally needed organs from private

transactions conducted in poor nations – some amount of illegal activity is

perhaps not surprising. These travellers seek out local agents who ‘source’

kidneys, in any number of ways, and arrange for the transplants to take place. At

least 15,000 kidneys are trafficked in this way each year and India is a

particularly popular destination, with its steady and readily available source of

harvestable organs. Nepal supplies many of the young girls whose organs are

removed and redistributed – willingly or not.

Thus, Radhika found herself lying in a strange hospital room in a different

country, largely because of her family circumstances, but also because she had

continued to hold onto the dream of being something other than what she

seemed fated to be.

One of six children, Radhika was born to humble yet high-caste Brahmin

farmers in Kavresthali, a small country province 7km (4.3 miles) north-west of

Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. The area is only an hour by bumpy road from the

bustling city, but first-time visitors to Kavresthali could be forgiven for thinking

that they had been teleported back centuries to a forgotten time, when agriculture

was the mainstay of most families’ fortunes. Whereas in Kathmandu, ancient,

smog-spitting cars sit snarled in traffic jams for hours on end, tethered nose to

bumper like braying donkeys, in Kavresthali, an almost spiritual silence prevails

in the steppes overshadowed by the mighty Himalayas. Only the sound of

laughter emanates from children playing hide and seek among a cluster of

humble, whitewashed single storey houses built on the edge of the village. All

around them, their parents and grandparents are bent double in the fields, sowing

pumpkin and spinach seeds that will provide sustenance for their families and

hopefully turn over a small profit at the local market.

Kavresthali is one of the largest villages in the Kathmandu District and has a

population of approximately 7,000 inhabitants. Most are involved in small-scale

farming businesses and each morning, soon after sunrise, women in brightly

coloured saris emerge from the hillsides, carefully balancing hay baskets laden

with vegetables on their backs. Possessing all the effortless elegance of prima

ballerinas and with great poise, they walk into the city each day to sell the

produce. If they are lucky, they will be accompanied by an equally industrious

husband, brother or father, who will join them to sell milk. A man with several

chickens strung around his neck represents one of the most entrepreneurial

Kavresthali families – one which has its own poultry farm.

Here, there are none of the cosmopolitan cafes or stores selling modern pop

music that now populate Kathmandu. Instead, Kavresthali’s inhabitants are

serious about the business of survival and often sow seeds in the roughly

ploughed endless fields until their hands bleed.

To most outsiders who visit in the tourist season between September and

November, life in Kavresthali might appear idyllic. The morning chill is soon

eclipsed by a burning red sun that sets off the shades of green in the lush

foothills against the cloying brown mud of the surrounding fields. The landscape

is biblical in appearance and instills a sense of tranquillity in its visitors. Yet in

the monsoon season, between June and August, the area is prone to landslides

and most tourists would not welcome the reality of living in the village then with

its limited electricity and water supply.