TRAVEL: MARY RUSSELLreviews Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of NepalBy Conor Grennan HarperCollins, 308pp. £16.99
KNOW NOTHING about Humla? You will when you’ve read Conor Grennan’s action-packed account of how he traced the parents of 26 children who were stolen from their homes in the mountaineous Humla region of Nepal, then trafficked down to Kathmandu, where they were set to work as water carriers and dishwashers or simply used as cute little begging accessories – the younger the better.
Grennan, in the style of Eric Newby, starts off in self-deprecatory mood. He gets lost, is afraid of things, has trouble picking up the local language. Like a good storyteller, he ensnares us with humour and adventure: young man going around the world with his mates, trekking to base camp in the Himalayas before volunteering for two months in the Little Princes Orphanage in Kathmandu, where he learns that the children aren’t orphans at all.
Then he gets serious and reverts to official mode – easy enough as he worked for eight years in the EastWest Institute, both in Prague and in Brussels, before taking a year out in 2004, at the age of 29.
What he discovered in the orphanage was that, during the civil war between Maoists and forces loyal to the king of Nepal, a crafty opportunist persuaded cash-strapped parents in the remote region of Humla to pay him to take their children to a place of safety where they would get a good education. The parents sold their cattle to raise the money demanded of the rogue, who then took their children, some as young as three, pocketed the money, told the youngsters their parents had died, then set them to work in Kathmandu.
Are these children sad little victims? Not a bit of it. They are noisy, cheery and resourceful and give Grennan a hard time, swinging out of him, using him as a climbing frame and generally educating him in the ways of their world. When it is time to leave he promises the children that he will return – and he does, with enough cash to set up Dhaulagiri House, a home for Humla children.
Then, armed with digital camera and biographical notes, and accompanied by a team of porters and guides, he sets off for Humla to locate the “dead” parents and bring them news of children they had given up some five years previously and had since heard nothing of.
Grennan’s father is the Dublin-born, US-based academic and poet Eamon Grennan, to whom Conor attributes his writing skills. He must have been especially grateful to his father when, meeting up with some Maoists, and feeling that a US passport might not be welcome, whipped out his Irish one instead.
His account of trekking to Humla will enthral any hillwalker. His description of the children, who found empty toothpaste cartons more fun to play with than the cheap plastic cars he bought them at the market, is endearing. His admiration for the local welfare official who handled the business of trafficked children with skilled diplomacy (one person who had bought a child was a bank manager) is generous.There’s also the business of what makes good travel writing. I once contributed to a travel anthology the editors of which banned what they called “toilet stories”. They were wrong: Grennan’s description of an NGO worker’s helpful demonstration of how to use a hole in the ground is hilarious. He might, however, check out the words convince and persuade: they are not interchangeable.
This book is mainly about the little princes of Humla, but be warned: it’s also a love story, though I’m giving nothing away except to say that Grennan and Lizzie are now living happily ever after in Connecticut while the children they helped are back with their parents in Humla. All’s well that ends well.
Mary Russell is a writer and broadcaster with a special interest in travel
