LAHAN, JUL 01 - Prisons can hardly be a ‘learning centre’, even more so in Nepal. However, 60-year-old Julphe Sarki, a former inmate who originally hails from Malhanwa Govindapur-8 in Siraha district has a pleasant story to relate.
Sarki, who served a one-year jail term on smuggling charge, remembers his days at Chandragadhi jail as a time when he learnt new skills to earn livelihood. He had been arrested at the prime age of 32 with his friends while he had been attempting to smuggle bones and hides of endangered animals to India.
“My friends were released on bail but I was sentenced to one year prison,” said Sarki, adding that his stay in prison had been a major turning point in his life.
“I had been arrested from Charali in Jhapa and spent a year in Chandragadhi jail,” said Sarki, remembering that he had received skill oriented training in the prison. “They taught us how to make various furnitures from bamboo and I learnt to make Muda (stool made of bamboo sticks),” he said proudly.
After being freed from prison a year later, Sarki started to make stools including other useful materials from bamboo.
“I have been selling stools in nearby market from the past 28 years,” Sarki said, adding that prison has become the best learning experience for him.
Before the prison days, he was so impoverished that he was staying in a cowshed that belonged to his neighbours. After he started selling stools and other furnitures made out of bamboo materials, he was able to buy five bigaha of lands in his village.
“I was a homeless guy and went hungry for several days,” he said while remembering those difficult days. “The skill oriented training I received in jail indeed transformed me into a dignified and much stable person.”
With the earnings from his small business, Sarki, who has received no formal education himself, was able to send his two sons to school. He said his sons are good in studies and recently completed high school (plus two).
Ask him how is business and he immediately replies, “Business is good.” Sarki manages to earn a daily income of Rs 1, 400 by selling stools and other bric-a-brac made of bamboo. He himself used to go to the bazaar to sell these handmade stools, but has stopped doing so these days due to his advancing age. Someone else now takes the stools he makes to sell them in the bazaar.
The stools he makes can be bought in such popular market areas as Lahan , Golbazaar, Mirchaiya, Gaighat, Katari, Kalyanpur, Rajbiraj, including several places.
“I am selling each stool at Rs 300 a piece,” he said, adding, however, that his small business is facing some problem due to scarcity of bamboos these days which has increased the production cost.
Sarki said he has also taught the skill he had learnt in the prison to make bamboo stools to his relatives, neighbours and fellow villagers. Meanwhile, some 40 Dalit households living in the village earn their livelihood solely by producing Muda which they later sell in the nearby marketplaces. One Samar Magar, a local, said that many people from Dalit community are engaged in making stools made of bamboo sticks to earn a decent livelihood. The increasing crime rate will surely decline if the inmates get skill-oriented trainings to start their life anew, Magar said.
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