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

During his three years in Nepal, Grennan works tirelessly to keep the children he encounters as safe as possible. Despite his efforts, there are far stronger forces working against him: war, poverty, a disarrayed bureaucratic system, and child traffickers. For example, in Part 1, Grennan returns to the Little Princes Children’s Home to find an unfamiliar man leaving the property. Staff inform Grennan that the man is Golkka, the infamous child trafficker who had victimized all the Little Princes and their families a few years before. Golkka’s purpose for visiting the orphanage is to remind the staff that he still holds power over the children and their future and that he could re-traffic them at any moment. Grennan is frustrated that the Nepalese government knows of Golkka’s whereabouts but has failed to arrest him, which reflects the country’s feeble laws and enforcement system. Unable to protect the children from the danger Golkka represents, the author writes that “I found it difficult to control my anger against this man who seemed to be getting away with this, making a profit off the lives of children. It wasn’t my fight, maybe, but I wanted to join it anyway” (41).