The Street-kid Entrepreneur

I met Ram Ballav sitting at a scrubbed pine table in his eclectically decorated Ramsterdam Café. He is a short, jovial Nepali with a straggly beard and mischievous eyes, whose features hail more from the Indus than the Himalaya. The building is little more than a shed with an unlined tin roof, concrete walls on three sides, and a glass wall facing the apocalyptic smog of a busy thoroughfare. The windows have external roller shutters which are closed at night, so the building resembles a large garage surrounded by a jungle of pot plants.

The bower bird of Boudhanath

The walls and shelves are cluttered with odd pieces of paraphernalia that Ram has collected in his 38 years of life, from bottle top collections to a large Australian flag hanging proudly upside down. Perhaps his predilection to collect is relic of the time when he was a penniless child plying the streets of Kathmandu. A smattering rickety of tables of various heights is matched with cane or plastic chairs like a hipster café, and there are hundreds of books and DVDs on display.

“Simon, do you think we could do music shows here?” he asks, sucking on a cigarette.

“Of course mate, it’s perfect,” I assure him, assessing the homely ambience. “We can call it the Monthly Music Lounge.”

Starting with a monthly show, The Lounge grew to being a gig every week – up until Covid hit that is. I have seen how this open-hearted man created a community hub in a region where night-life is almost unknown. We once had to drag him bodily out of the police van following his arrest for allowing us to keep drinking after 9 pm!

Humble beginnings

Ram was born in the sub-tropical flatlands between the great Himalayan range and the border with India to a subsistence farming family. Whatever they needed that could not be grown on the family plot, his father traded for home grown tobacco at a weekly market.

Tragedy strikes

Ram’s father died when he was five of an unknown illness. Apparently, their family did not believe in modern medicine, trusting instead the local shaman. With no man to help tend the fields, Ram’s mother took him and his younger brother back to her remote family home, high in the Himalayan peaks.

Life’s tough in them there hills

By 9 years old, Ram was working as a shepherd earning a measly Rs 500 per year, which was worth around $20 at the time. A local man offered him that sum every month, should he come to Kathmandu and work in a factory which sold Tibetan carpets right across the world. There might be one in your living room.

The breadwinner

Ten-year-old Ram vowed to work there for one year, then return home and give his saved funds to his mother. He worked hard in slave-like conditions 12 to 15 hours per day along with other children, drawing only minimally on his salary.

Unthinkable cruelty

When the year had elapsed, Ram went joyfully to his employer to collect his wages and return to his family. He was immediately fired and told he had no claim on his hard-earned. So, at the age of eleven, he found himself destitute in the streets of a city he knew almost nothing about with no way of getting home. In fact, he no longer even knew the name or even direction of his village.

Life on the skids

A small gang of street-kids took him in and showed him how to survive the bitter winter by snuggling up with sleeping dogs. They told him where he could hide his belongings during the day, and how to eek a few rupees out of rag-picking or begging from foreigners. His first English words were “One dollar please.”

Kindness is king

Then one day his luck changed. A Swiss charity took interest in his little group and began taking an interest in them, eventually admitting them into their children’s home. On a visit to the clinic, Ram met his second mum to be, Jenn Cleary, A young American blues singer. Tears well in his eyes each time mentions her, so thankful is he to her for transforming his life.

A taste of business

At 15, he found part-time employment working for an American who rented out rooms to foreigners. Quick to learn and eager to work, Ram became acquainted with the tastes of the strange Buddhist devotees from around the world who flocked to live around the holy Boudhanath Stupa, a Buddhist Mecca of sorts.

His first enterprise

After finishing school, Ram rented a tiny space on a side-street where he stocked the best range of CDs, books and pirated movies in town. He watched films obsessively and became the human Wikipedia of cinema for the area, able to name almost any movie from description of a single scene. His amazing knowledge and happy-go-lucky demeanour ensured the popularity of his shop.

Moving on

When the time came to leave the children’s home, he set his knowledge to work, and with the assistance of his previous employer, rented an entire flat, letting out the spare rooms to foreigners. He now owns a three-storey building with a range of bedsits and apartments, although he still sleeps in the café himself.

Single parenting Kathmandu style

A short marriage a decade ago gifted Ram with a bright and talented son, of whom he has sole care. The two of them live more like brothers than father and son, sharing a love that fills Ramsterdam Café with light each time Benju performs CCR on his guitar.

Genesis of the music lounge

When Ram first asked me if we could organise performances in Ramsterdam Café, he explained that because his second mum was a musician. Given that he can’t afford to go to the USA to see her play, he wanted to create a venue where she could perform. This was the driving force of Ram’s wish to create a café in the first place – to honour the person who helped him all those years ago.

A family lost

As for his real mum, she knew nothing of him for seven years. She came repeatedly to Kathmandu searching desperately for her missing child, and one day stood unwittingly only metres from the door of the Children’s home while Ram was inside.

Reconnection at last

When Ram was 17 years old, he encountered the very man who had taken him from his home so many years ago just walking down the lane. Rather than being angry with him as one might expect, Ram was overjoyed, and the next weekend, they travelled together to his ancestral village.

A stranger in his own home

Ram prayed that his mother would recognise him, and posed as a visitor from the city. After sitting with his mum and grandmother in the family tea hose for an hour, he had almost given up hope. However, when his younger brother returned from collecting wood, he flew straight into Ram’s arms. It was tears all round after that, I believe.

Ram’s message to the world

Firstly, to all the street-kids, and people who are doing it tough; “I was just like you,” he says. “Be honest and you will have a better life. Just be honest.”

“As well,” he added, “I want to tell those foreigners who sponsor one child for a few hundred dollars every year that I have such a great life now because of one woman. I feel so grateful that I met my second mum.”

Covid strikes a bitter blow

In March 2020, I said goodbye to my dear friend and musical collaborator and made a last-minute dash for home. What would become of my friends in Nepal, I could not know. Covid has been tough all round, but imagine building a business from nothing based on the tourist trade, only to have your entire market wiped out overnight. Almost two years later and travel is still at a trickle. Unlike Australia or New Zealand, there is no safety net, no business assistance or special benefits – just the mortgage and very little trade.

Your turn to help

Hopefully things will improve for Nepal before too long, but right now Ram has bills to pay. After surviving the streets as a kid and two years of depleted trading, he needs a little help. Anything you can spare would be fantastic! Just click this link and get out your card.

Ramsterdam Go Fund Me campaign

Then, next time you visit Nepal, you too can visit the iconic Ramsterdam Café!