In the heat of Everest seasons they would collect “donations” on hiking trails and then things got really ugly. 10 years after the Maoist rising in Nepal things are turning out different.
(Nepalitimes) “I was in the middle of writing a test, they didn’t even let me submit the paper. They took us up a mountain and we had to learn about communism.”
Former Maoist child soldiers are now in their mid-20s, and most have children of their own. The struggle to survive after the war has been more difficult than the war itself. They say they were brainwashed to abandon ‘bourgeois education’ and to join the rebel army.
Karki, a veteran of several battles says: “Our biggest mistake was to quit school. When we were discharged, it was too late to go back to studying.”
