Demi Tour of the World

Individuals, organizations, companies : Sponsor a child or sponsor a school it’s cheap and enlighten your and the children’s future.

Last week miss Tsultrim ask me to take photos of the new musical instruments bought with funds especially for this purpose from Graines d’Avenir (seeds’ future, french association). 2 ungyen and da.nyen, a drum set, an electronic keyboard…
The music teacher came to see me, ‘It was the only school where I taught whith no instrument. I teach in 6 schools.’
What he wass not saying: schools are not really fond of solidarity while coming to let their material. Futhermore many child, wall, teacher, material depend on outside money  which inevitable as a school is not a business and need famillies and governement’s help.
The music teacher also forgot to tell is fees are high if compared with other teachers. In in his clothes and behaviour we can see he focuses on the West. Would he plan to go abroad?

If the music muses are now satisfied, the building is still to sell. The tensions are still high. These days Miss T., who never read newspaper, read carefully the articles about the kidneys black market. She says that may be one of the doctors involved in the traffic is part of the practionners’ group which is interesting in the building… may be but “the doctor’s name starting by a ‘B’ ” he’s still not printed/wanted.

Four children from the school need a sponsor. So I had to take them in photo to send in Japan. Finding a sponsor can sometimes last for years said the headmasters.

However, Miss T. stressed that the more needful would be a fund to pay part of the rent… and the bills. Only 5300 NRs (1 nepalese roupie = 63 dollars) are needed per month for the rent but the landlord request to pay the water bill per room, where a room is an average size (so some represent two!) and not all of them give access to water and anyway not the same amount. This way the average water bill is around 250 Rs per room and there are 40 rooms (=10.000 Nrs!) It’s said that’s the price to pay to get water all the time while Boudha lacks water.
With a fund, at first the children would get fruits and vegetable for lunch to change a bit their daily dhal bat, if enough is given every month, the school could also raise the teachers’s salary. In Nepal most won’t even think of becoming a teacher just because of it. For not helping, all basic prices have increased with the lack of them: fuel, oil, gaz, transports…

12 Wednesday. I bought 2 ducklings. It was massive maoists meeting day with buses over-filled of people shouting Lal Salam. No damage to report.

the 19 was democracy day. Some schools closed but for us it was a good opportunity to show the children how to vote. For the purpose we used a sweet box coming from London via Izzy’s luggage. We explained the role of an elected representant, the meaning of voting boots and also different ways to vote, included with hands up. For real the nepalese elections should occur on the 10 April.
 To help me I had two representants of a democratic country (not yet the case for Nepal): Noemie (smiling) and Lucie (standing up).
It was a special pleasure to see the children also smiling while voting.

The previous day I made the same children work their imagination by writing a dialog between each of them and Gandhiji who’s coming back 60 years after having been assassinated. Hard, hard ! not to help they had technical problem as you can see on the photo!
Nonetheless that they live in Nepal which is not their country made them produce interesting questions… sometimes. To see them, wait a bit, they’ll have to type it on their own and start to fill their new blog : http://school-in-nepal.blog.com
In class V, Sonam is a boy of perfection in all topics, math, english, sport or music and he loves drawing. He drew a very weak Gnadhi with a big head exhausted by carrying a weight of 100g. But after I told him Gandhi walk lot more miles than lot of people could, he gave more strength to Gandhi. Beware, the new Gandhi comes to kick your ass! This young tibetan boy loves reading and has already got ideas of his own. On the question does God exist, no will be his answer without any hesitation… but wouldn’t have thought that Buddha thought alike!

Serious matter and samsara

Samsara is build into a wheel which finds its strength to turn around with ignorance suffering. Following Dharma, Buddha’s teaching, we’re all trapped in this Wheel of Life where our birth depends on our previous lives.

May be the cold helps… and being far from home… and poetry, but compassion surely does the main work. These last days I’ve hold the tears, building a pool around my heart.

It is as a teen I first feel sympathy for the Tibetan cause in the same spirit that made me admire Gandhiji’s sathyagraha.
China invaded Tibet in a period of history called decolonization. The British Empire let do while Nehru promised to stay still. Some years later China and India were at war and as a consequence of partition, while the Tibetan government in exile settled in Dharamsala, Indira Gandhi, Nehru’s daughter used the SFF (Special Frontier Force) to secure the border with Pakistan and protect Hindus stayed in Bangladesh. The SFF, composed from Tibetans in exile, was first established with Kampas, West Tibetans whom fathers helped the XIV Dalai Lama to run away safely.  Samsara?
From his Great Leap Forward Mao threw his Liberation Army on the world’s roof to free Tibet from old beliefs and feudalism. Still today, on the name of progress and freedom China liberates natural resources for in the ideas of colonisation Tibet is in a Special Free-Trade Area. Just like Africa is big cake to share between foreign powers and dictators and Central America is USA’s garden.
Not only Tibet is strategically well situated in Central Asia but it contains, except Ganga, the main rivers of Asia, from west to east: Indus, Sutlej, Brahmapoutre, Salwen, Mekhong and Yellow River. So important is water that is said to be invaluable, a reason to make people pay for it, a reason to use it as political pressure.
In Tibet, Tibetans must speak Chinese, they are impoverished, treated as a minority, pictures of Dalai Lama and freedom speech are banned. All Tibetans have relatives who’ve been incarcerated in a Laogai (work Camp) and died few days after being back from it.
As in colonies it occurs often contradictions are well spread:
The non religious China interferes in all monasteries, kidnapped the young Panchen Lama when he was 6 and presented to Buddhists a Chinese Panchen Lama. I met a Chinese English teacher who works in Tibet, she told me she didn’t understand why there is no literature available about the Dalai-Lama because in her home town, Shanghai that’s not a problem. While prostitution is barred in China, in Lhassa it is common to see prostitutes. In Tibet, NGOs are all controlled by government.

As a teenager, whereas my History teacher taught the death of imperialism, I bound in my head Tibet’s annexion, Gandhi’s assassination, Liberal economy speech and the wars and dictators here and there. I merely saw the Tibetan’s situation as a sum up of the world’s turmoil.

And here I am, at 27 in Nepal, narrow buffer country, hence unstable and pressurized from inside and the international, mainly squeezed between India and China. So Nepal is on the road of Exile. On this road Miss Tsultrim, ex-students of TCV (Tibetan Children Villages, schools set in India by Dalai-lama’s oldest sister) in Dharamsala decided to stay and work as a teacher in Kathmandu. She’s one of those Tibetans who flew Tibet, whose father died coming back from a laogai, whose all family has scattered. With Mrs Bijaya they decided to found their own school to help the Tibetan community.

My dry tears feels my hearts because this school, named after a sacred lake by mount Kailash, rents part of building on its way to be sold. Manasarovar Academy is not like its lucky neighbouring big boarding school which belongs to an important lama who owns several monasteries and a lucrative school in US, no the small primary school’s future is threatened by its landlord’s priorities. He’s a not-so-important lama who needs to feed the monks of his monastery in India and want to fulfil a good karma (what makes turn the wheel) project: building a statue of Buddha.
While French people say “l’habit ne fait pas le moine” (having the suit don’t make you suitable for the priest’s job), even lamas are trapped in Samsara.
To feed the two directors of the school long sleepless night, a group of doctors is interested in the building and there is no such thing to believe in as a world of Good and Evil.
The building would cost 60 millions Nepalese rupees (1 euro = 90 NRs). Of course the first idea is moving, renting another place but the teachers look at me in despair: “These days they don’t build buildings to accommodate schools”. The school would need to stay around because that’s where Tibetans live. I wondered about building but the land because of schools (build with foreign currencies) and monasteries (about 28) is very expensive. For 124 pupils it would need two ropanis (about 280 m2) worthing 20 millions NRs and then adding same amount of money to erect humble walls.

Such thin is the thread over eviction probabilities, a Tibetan school incarnating the education of Exile.