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

Grennan returns to Kathmandu to meet Liz and two of his college friends, Kelly and Beth, who have also come to visit. All three visitors stay at Grennan’s spacious apartment near NGN’s Dhaulagiri House. During Grennan’s trip into Humla, Farid has helped to rescue 26 different children, who are now all staying at the children’s home along with the six missing children Grennan helped to locate. The seventh lost child, Bishnu, is still missing.

Grennan and Liz immediately bond with the new children at Dhaulagiri House. “The kids spoke little English, but as I had learned long ago, language isn’t always necessary when interacting with kids” (229). The author is impressed by Liz’s quick bond with the little girls, who fawn over her. Although at first the two found it hard to interact in person in comparison to the ease with which they communicated via email, the lovers develop a close relationship in Kathmandu within a few short days.

Once Liz and Grennan’s two college friends depart from Kathmandu, Grennan travels to Godawari to reconnect with the children at Little Princes. He brings with him a slideshow of images and a folder of notes to show the kids their parents. It’s an emotional event as Grennan narrates the slide show and each child recognizes the photos of their parents. The author prints out photos of the children’s parents and passes them out to the kids. However, two of the children, Priya and Raju, are true orphans. During his travels, Grennan confirmed that their parents had died. As the brother reaches out to receive the photo of his parents, just like the other children received, his older sister reminds him their parents are truly gone.

As the weeks pass after Grennan’s return to Kathmandu, some parents from Humla begin to appear at the Dhaulagiri House to retrieve their long-lost children. “Even when I found the parents, I doubted, somehow, that connections could be made” (241). Adverse poverty and a lack of roads, telephones, and transportation separated the Humla parents from their children in Kathmandu. Despite the divide, once the parents have the exact address of the orphanage, some parents came for their children.

Liz returns to Nepal a second time after she finishes volunteering in India. Together, “Life was beautifully simple: get up, go hang out with the children, see some touristy stuff in Kathmandu, have a typical Nepalese lunch at some small café, pick up the children from school just around the corner, help them with their homework, spend the evening hanging out with them” (243). With Liz in Nepal, life feels perfect for Grennan; his two main passions, the children and Liz, are in one place together.

When Liz returns to the United States after her weeklong visit, however, the author worries about the difficulties of a long-distance relationship, particularly as Liz attracts a lot of attention in New York City. One thing he does know for sure: he wants to marry her.

Gyan of the Child Welfare Board helps Grennan and Farid locate Bishnu, the seventh missing child. Bishnu is being kept as a domestic servant by a wealthy bank owner, who is hesitant to give up the child. The author gets in a physical altercation to block the bank owner from taking Bishnu back. With the help of Jacky of the Umbrella Foundation, they are able to extricate the man and save Bishnu from his indentured servitude. Finally, Grennan and Farid have recovered all seven children, and they savor the accomplishment.

Back in the United States, Liz continues to communicate with Grennan on a daily basis. Grennan convinces Liz to return to Kathmandu for a third visit in April 2007. But each visit is bittersweet, as Liz must return home to her job, dog, and family. “I was in love with her. I thought about her constantly. I missed her. She was my best friend. Yet I never saw her,” he writes. Grennan is torn between the children of Nepal and a life in America with Liz. Ultimately, the author travels to America for six weeks to propose to Liz, who accepts.

Grennan returns to Nepal an engaged man. For a time, the author continues to work with Farid to locate the missing families of trafficked children. As a team, they are efficient at locating families, though the act of actually reuniting families is proving even more difficult. “Every parent was overjoyed to find their son or daughter again,” he writes. “But when they learned that their child was being well taken care of, they were suddenly reluctant to take him or her home” (266). NGN attempts to provide stipends to impoverished families to support them and their children, but by providing money “we were, in effect, rewarding precisely those people who had chosen to give their children to traffickers” (267). Ultimately, Grennan and Farid decide to let the children stay at the Dhaulagiri House as long as they need, allowing the parents to visit as often as they are able. Over time, the children and their parents reestablish their bonds, often leading to the parents taking the children home to their villages.

Once Grennan returns to the United States, he marries Liz, and they have a baby boy. Farid continues to work and live in Nepal, caring for the children at the Dhaulagiri House. Farid takes many of the children from Little Princes to Humla to visit their families for the purpose of a slow reunification. “At the end of two weeks, not a single child from Little Princes wanted to leave Humla,” Farid reports to Grennan (278).