ACHHAM, Nepal — Next
to an abandoned stable now used to store firewood; a reluctant young mother
crouched to pass through a tiny door into a dark, musty room. Barely looking at
her baby, she glanced around the mud walls at the place she was raped. It was not
strange for her to be in this space, haunted as it was with violent memories,
because she still sleeps here each month when she is menstruating.
Chaupadi is the ritual
isolation of menstruating women. It is a tradition practiced in Achham, a
district in the remote Far Western region of Nepal. Each month, women sleep
outside their homes in sheds called “goths,” in stables or in caves. They are
deemed impure and treated as untouchable. They eat separately from their
families, cannot enter their homes and often have to wash at a separate tap.
The practice has roots
in Hinduism, though many scholars in Kathmandu, the capital, consider chaupadi
a bastardization of the Vedic precept that women sleep apart from their
husbands during menstruation. But in Achham the majority of women still
practice this monthly separation.
Communities believe
that to break the tradition would bring devastating bad luck: crops would fail,
animals would die, snakes would fall from the ceiling. The imagined
consequences are so dire that few dare to test stopping, even when the practice
brings deadly consequences. Women have died from asphyxiation or burned to
death when they built fires in the cramped sheds to shield from the Himalayan
winter. Others have suffered rape and deadly snakebites and jackal attacks.
It takes two days to
drive to Achham from Kathmandu, and most people don’t bother. The impoverished
district is better known for sending migrants south to India than for drawing
more cosmopolitan Nepalis in. It is in this isolation that the chaupadi
practice became entrenched.
The practice has
gained some national attention and is widely denounced by women’s rights
activists. In 2005, the Supreme Court of Nepal deemed the practice illegal, but
the distant court decision has had little impact on the daily lives of women in
Achham.
More influential has
been the slow spread of awareness that comes with increased connectivity. The
construction of roads and the implementation of solar power in remote villages
have led to the slow permeation of televisions and cellphones that offer a
window into other worlds where chaupadi is not taken for granted.
Countless
organizations have also campaigned against the practice through radio shows,
awareness campaigns in schools and town meetings, and by declaring villages
chaupadi free.
But social change is
plodding because faith in the tradition runs deep. In only a few villages have
women started sleeping inside when they are menstruating, but in many villages
there is a growing discussion about the monthly ostracization. Some girls who hear
messages in school want to quit the tradition but are restricted by more
conservative parents. Some families stopped the practice, but when bad luck
followed, it reignited their faith in the old ways.
And some, like the
young mother who was raped, cannot imagine life without it. “Things are done
according to tradition here,” she said.
If she has a daughter,
she said, “I won’t do anything different — I’ll send her to the goth.”
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