Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2011

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“A Note on the Crisis in Nepal” and Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 and Afterword

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Index of Terms

Maoists

Maoists refers to the rebel army that represent a communist wing of the Maoist Party. Between 1996 and 2006, they waged an insurgency against the Royal Nepalese Army, which represent the king’s regime. The children in Little Princes are caught between these two opposing forces. “Children had been taken by traffickers and the door to their village had been slammed shut by the Maoists,” writes Grennan (189).

Although the Maoists claim to be saving Nepal from the king’s rule, most Nepalese do not consider them to be liberators. For example, Maoists imposed a rule that every family should send one child to fight in the rebel army; when they didn’t, the Maoists took the children by force. This policy caused thousands of families to send their children away with child traffickers.

Dhaulagiri House

Using donations from his nonprofit, Next Generation Nepal, Grennan founds the Dhaulagiri House in 2006. The Dhaulagiri House functions much like the Little Princes Children’s Home, taking in children who have been trafficked away from their home villages into Kathmandu. Some of the children are orphans while some have living parents who may or may not be capable of retrieving their children. It is at the Dhaulagiri House where Grennan brings the seven lost children once he finds them dispersed around Kathmandu. Farid lives in the house full-time and provides the majority of childcare and management while Grennan rents an apartment within eyeshot of the building. When Grennan moves back to the United States in 2007, Farid continues to live and manage the home alongside Anne Howe, Grennan’s mentor.

For Grennan, founding Dhaulagiri House represents a major achievement. The building is a physical embodiment of his goal to provide safety for lost and displaced children. While living in the home, the children have comfortable beds, regular meals, medical care, access to school, and an adult support system.

The Little Princes Children’s Home

Little Princes Children’s Home is located in the village of Godawari, just a few miles outside of the major capital city of Kathmandu. Sandra, a Frenchwoman, founded the home when she discovered a group of 18 illegally trafficked children living in Kathmandu. The children, all originally from the district of Humla, were assumed to be orphans. Grennan uses the term “Little Princes” to refer to both the physical orphanage building and the 18 children who live in it.

During Grennan’s first trip to Nepal in 2004, he volunteers at Little Princes for three months. During his first trip and subsequent trips, he develops a deep bond with the 18 children. “I knew these eighteen children like I knew my own brothers,” he writes. “Godawari was home” (64). Grennan helps to locate all of the children’s families at Little Princes as well as the families of the seven children the author cares for at the Dhaulagiri House.

Humla

Humla is a district in Northwest Nepal. The district sits near the country’s border with Tibet, which is a remote area largely free of roads, airports, telephones, or other forms of communication or transportation. Humla is an impoverished region, with most people depending on food from the World Food Programme. Most people live in mud huts without electricity, meaning the region is disconnected from the major city of Kathmandu. The civil war that raged in Nepal between 1996 and 2006 caused these poor communities to become even poorer.

All of the children at the Little Princes Children’s Home and the Dhaulagiri House were taken from their families in Humla and trafficked in Katmandu. In 2006, Grennan journeyed into Humla to find the children’s families. On his trip, a series of events, including a knee injury, extreme cold, drunken Maoists, and bad weather, combine to force him into a state despair. “I wanted to be anywhere in the world except here,” he writes while waiting for a helicopter that will take him out of Humla (210).