The Parks Family Foundation:

My musical career began and ended when I was in Graduate school in Los Angeles.
One summer, my friends went to Europe to play at the coffee houses.
They tok a weekend in /morocco and "rainbow" decided to amil Hashinsh
to his favorite friends.    He was cought at the post-office and sentenced to LIFE
in prison. His parents could not breat thesentence. His frioends stayed the summer ...
but wen classes began ..  had to go home.  Aservant was hired to bring fod ..
but Rainbow was not appy .. He said "do anything to get me out".

His friends found a sleezy lawyer that promised to get him out ...
So they went to Paris to wait ... A week ;ater Rainbow arrived in Paris.
The lawyer has taken him out of th eprison ,  gave clean clothes and a ticket..
AND a suitcase... "do not bother at baggage claim"  was his nly instruction.
The suitcase surely contained Hashish.
Was this good,  bad,  corrupt .. ???
That was a POWERFUL LESSON for me !

Years passed .. I and many others lost engineering jobs in 1970.

I had always wanted to live in Peru..
So I went and began, developing a river touring business.

Mostly, I lived in the Peruvian Altiplano.
I became involved with numerous students and helped them find schools
and plan for their futures. 

In the summer of 1972, I was invited to teach engineering at
the University in Ayacucho, Peru ..   

On september 11, 1972 President Allende of  Chile was murdered in his office.
The USA CIA was the prime suspect.
All of us foreign teachers were hustled off to the local jailhouse.

Since I had friends in high places, I got out quickly and headed back to the river.
I retuned to small hydro consulting.
Soon had a home in Pichri.
The local indians had nice farms of yucca and fruit.
Their farms were highly desired by the local church.
I began to teach how to get their land protected ...
The church recommended that I leave town or be killed.
So I came home .. alive.

Years went by with travel to many places.
In the fall of 2000 I found a note on the bulletin board of our Bangkok hotel.
It invited travellers to visit the Thai prisons and especially  Nepali.

I began writing two of the men and soon had a web-site wit 20 inmates.
I began writing news paper articles and got more involved in the problems.

I decided to go for a Nepal-Thai prison exchange treaty.
It seemed possible until the maoist war broke out in Nepal.

Years went by and I was sopending thousands of dollars.
I founded the Foundation to help with donations.

The work continues ...

Ben PArks   August 2005



REFERENCE SOURCES : Nepal Drug laws

Nepal Research.org


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