The last day at school

Today is my last day at the school and it's only a few days until I leave India. There have been certain things about here that I won't miss – the unnecessary noise made by the students, their refusal to fill up the water tank when it run dry, the dogs barking and waking me up – but when I went outside to read a little before the students came back from McLeod (they went to attend the ceremony for the Tibetan who self-immolated in Delhi and who was taken there for burial), I had a sudden feeling. I realised that the two projects that I had been looking forward to undertaking were almost completely finished. It was a sad feeling as they had occupied my thoughts a lot in the 9 months or so leading up to them. But now they were almost at an end. I know that I have bigger things to move on to, but as this time I won't be joining already existing projects but have to lead them myself, I have no guarantee that they will work. I had the idea that I won't want to stop these projects in foreign countries; I want to do more! I want to keep on travelling and having exciting adventures.

But I have to be realistic; I can't keep doing these forever as they are voluntary and I do need to earn money. My hope is that if I can get projects up and working well then, as my name will hopefully become more known, people will start buying my books and I can earn enough money from those. That would be perfect as I would be able to give all of my time to the projects instead of finding employment which would defeat the object of my intended movement.

The one thing that I need to do is stay dedicated to my plans and expect it to be difficult to start up. It will require people changing the way they do some things, which many people are always very reluctant to do. I hope I can find the people who would already be happy to get involved – those who already think like me and wouldn't need convincing.

I intend to get publicity by asking the local newspapers to print my notification about my meetings and hopefully, they will also be interested to attend them and report on them.

I need to get straight in my mind project ideas that I can deliver to the people who attend my meetings so that they will be convinced straight away. This is very important. If they can't see how something could easily work, they might turn away.

Interestingly enough, I saw on the news today that an independent politician of the Respect Party won a landslide by-election in Bradford, crushing the traditional parties. That kind of thing gives me hope that people want change and they want it now.

I will try to give regular posts during my travels of the next few days.

The final week (of teaching)

During this week, it just feels like it's very close to my departure. I need to pack my things on Thursday as we are having another momo party on Friday afternoon so I may not have time. I just went into Dharamsala to get some money from a bank and also to buy some chains to secure my bags when I go on the train for the first time.
About my plans, I will go to Amritsar on Saturday, hopefully ariving there mid-afternoon and I hope I can stay at the golden temple as it is free. This is the Sikh capital city and it is their custom to offer free food and accommodation. I will stay there for two nights, then tak an overnight train to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is. I'll stay there one night, then go into Delhi the following evening (Wednesday). I don't need to stay there as my flight leaves at 2.15 am on the 5th, arriving at 6.45am in London.
My event so far this week is that I had my hair cut by one of the students. He's really good at it even though he's taught himself, so he did a good job for me.
Otherwise, the weather is nice and warm and right now at 6.30pm, I have my window open and am in a t-shirt. A big change from the chilblains a month ago!

As this is a short post, I will give you some more extracts from Tears of Blood:

-Tibetan women were given forced abortions and sterilised on a great scale, like 2000 cases by one team in a three month period. One woman described how foetuses are aborted at an extremely late stage: “The foetus is often removed at 28 weeks and over, when the heartbeat is already being heard. The woman is forcibly aborted and when the healthy foetus is removed, its head is immersed in a bucket of water.” “They forced me onto a table, inserted an electrical device into my uterus and left me like that for hours... Then they came and inserted some kind of spatula and twisted it round and round, scraping the foetus out in small pieces.” This was in 1990.

Since 1997... “Tibetan buildings have been torn down to make way from endless vistas of ugly concrete... Discos, gambling dens, brothels everywhere, are an insidious ploy by the Chinese to promote decadence and so to wean the Tibetans still further from their traditional way of life. Then, once they have been sucked into a life-style that is totally dependent on drink and drugs, they are no longer fit to be employed. They're finished.

In 1997, reporting on the abortion issues, a woman cried “They come and drag us from our homes, they throw stones at our husbands, they terrorize our children... The woman in the next bed to me was eight months pregnant, but they killed the baby and threw it to the dogs.”

So this is as up to date as the book goes, but it is well-known here that such atrocities are still going on and they are not showing any signs of  stopping.

Week 11 continued (25 March)

For our general water, to wash with, we collect the water that flows along the stream which goes down the road that we're on. However, it was diverted so that it could be used for irrigation. We were told it would be back after a couple of days but we were out of water. We had to pump it from another stream that is across the road and just a little down the hill. We could get enough water but it was cumbersome just because of having to get the pipes out each time we needed water.

Those couple of days became Indian days and went on for weeks. Just this morning, I was alarmed to hear the sound of naturally flowing water into our water receptacle again. It must have been more than two weeks that the stream was dry. Things that we might ordinarily take for granted...

(In the village where I went on Thursday)

Since my fire-fighting escapades, I recovered from inhaling the smoke after a couple of hours and life became normal again. (!) The teachers had been asked to prepare a quiz for Saturday morning. It was kind of thrown at us in a meeting again but it didn't take much preparation. I thought of 5 geography questions and the others did the same for their categories. We held it after breakfast on Saturday and I ended up hosting it (meaning I introduced it and just carried on from there). It went well and was a close contest and was fun. 

On Friday, I had 2 consecutive lessons with the middle group. They are the most fun to teach as they get involved more than the other groups. Last week, I had started to tell them about space bt didn't get much time so I continued it this week. They had so many questions that I went into explaining things like meteors leaving their marks on planets and how one probably made the dinosaurs extinct. It was eye-opening again to see how little they had learned about these things but as it's a subject I love, I was more than happy to tell them all I could. At the end of it, I had the feeling where you know something has been a great success. It's really good to know I've been able to educate people in more ways than I am expected to.

I decided not to go away this weekend as I wanted to work on things for the next big project. I needed to get my presentation notes in order as well as start looking for somewhere to live in Wolverhampton. I looked on the flat share website but I'll probably have to wait till I get back to really start looking as obviously, I'll have to meet people and visit houses.

When I was sat reading The Valley of Fear, a Sherlock Homes story, I kept getting distracted by thinking about my next plans. I had the idea of seeing if I can get permission to use a closed youth centre to start lots of my ideas which are on my site. If so, I could also hold meetings there which would make it easier to do and maybe I could hold them more often. Basically, it was like a big realisation that I had found what would be perfect. I went out to have a walk and think about what I could do there and as soon as I got back to my room, started writing the letter to the council. I'll need to find out if there indeed have been youth centres closed, but if there are and I can get permission, this could be the catalyst in really getting my movement started. I hope to email the council in the next week (once I know the situation) so I really hope I can get over this first hurdle. If so, things will be looking very good. :)

So, into my last week at this school I go. It feels strange as I've got used to our way of life here and now I have to let it all go. But that's why I like to live in places more than visit them; I can get a good feel for how life is if I'm somewhere for at least 2 months.

With this positive feeling that I have right now, it's not really appropriate to put another quote from 'that book' so I'll leave it for a few days. However, on the news this week, the Chinese have said that they will phase out their theft of organs from executed prisoners over the next five years. By that, they mean that in five years' time, the rest of the world should have forgotten about this issue.

A walk through the village

So far, this week has gone quickly for me. I've been doing the usual things but this morning, my lessons finished early so I went back along the walk that Ken showed us to read in the sun. I made a video on the way for you to get an idea of life in an Indian village called Lower Sukkar.

While I was trying to upload that, I saw lots of smoke coming from the valley by the school. It wasn't dying down so I went to look. It seemed that the usual arsonists had been having fun with the dry weather and there was a good chance of it spreading and causing a forest fire.
I wasn't going to sit by and let that happen so I got a bucket and went down to the nearby streams to throw water on the few small fires. I succeeded with stopping the ones near the top but had to go down to tackle one that I couldn't reach. Fortunately, there is another stream below it and I managed to get water to it. I didn't really get into any danger in case you are worried, but of course I inhaled some smoke as I was doing it. They turned out to be Indians' ways of disposing of their rubbish. They fill a bag of everything, including plastic, set fire to it and throw it over the hillside. This may be a cultural thing but it is absolute stupidity, I don't mind saying that.
I'm just glad I managed to prevent a forest fire.

That was not the type of post I was expecting to share with you... 

More quotes from Tears of Blood

I realised that I forgot to add some more quotes from the book. I wanted to show you how up to date the accounts get, so here are a couple that happened in 1988:

Prisoners who were released had to pay for the food they'd eaten in prison and would be arrested again if they didn't pay within a given time. “They set trained killer dogs onto the nuns and emptied urine buckets over their heads. They applied electric prods to their private parts. They strung them up to the ceiling by their thumbs.”

“At times, they laid us face down on the ground, stripped us to our underwear, hands outstretched, and beat us. More than once they dropped a huge iron rod from a great height onto our backs... they would trample on our hands with their huge iron-tipped boots. They kicked us in the face and stomach. Buckets full of urine were put on our heads... the guards... roaring with laughter as the urine and excrement streamed down our faces and bodies. They would take the momo that was our lunch, dip it in the filth and force us to eat it."

Let me just remind you - most of the world is supporting China by relying on its products. This cannot be ignored any more.

Week 10 continued, 18 March

We had some bad news later in the week as the father of one of the students died in an accident. He then went away for some days and the support from the other students meant that some people didn't sleep much. One of the classes ended up not performing well for the last two days of the week in the lessons so we hope that they'll recover from it for next week.

It also meant the plans for the director's party on Saturday had to change. The students were going to do some dances and had been practising in the afternoons but Tibetan tradition states that after a death, there should be no singing or dancing for the next nine days.

Ken showed us a walk around the back of the school one afternoon through a village area. I found it very pleasant there. It had lots of quaint, rural buildings, the usual collection of farm animals and was a nice surprise to find, even though it is so near to us. 

Saturday was a bit different. The highest level class did their presentation in the morning, which consisted of two comedy sketches. They went very well and had us laughing a lot. One was about a corrupt vet who would treat anything or anybody as long as he could get money from them. The second was about two lovers and the man had to prove his love to his girlfriend by doing anything for here. She ordered him to attack another man in the park and he ended up getting beaten up by that man after all of his three attempts failed.

The director attended this and we still had some games after the show. We first played bingo and I won a bar of chocolate for getting a line of numbers! We then played volleyball which was good fun, although my team lost both times. Then we went upstairs to the terrace and played table tennis. I couldn't remember the last time I'd played it but did quite well and I'd like to play it again before I leave.

We played darts which everyone was equally hopeless at. We played 'round the clock' up to 10 which took a lot of effort. Ashley also taught the students how to use the hula hoop and those rhythmic things where you swing two weights around in coordination with each other. The students also demonstrated how good they were at skipping. Especially Choephel, who did more than 400 on two occasions. I tried and after successfully skipping the first time I tried it, I couldn't do it again. That was a shame as I was thinking it could be a good thing to do to get back into shape a bit in my last couple of weeks here.

After that, I went up to McLeod with Ashley as we'd both wanted to do some things there. We got there mid-afternoon and the weather was probably the hottest we've had so far this year. I went around the stalls buying some gifts and I met her again later. We had coffees and fruit juices (which we rarely get), used the internet at café terraces and went to Jimmy's Pizza, which we both enjoyed. As we were spending the time together, we got to know each other better and it was good to chat about lots of things and good to get to know someone new. We decided to stay overnight so booked a room each at a hotel that she found. It was only 500 Rupees, which was cheap considering hotels have put their prices up this month. We had a beer on top of the Indian restaurant I've eaten at twice before and went back to sleep.

After getting a hot shower (once I'd battled with the taps to make the water actually flow from the hot water tap), we had breakfast and I sorted out my overnight train ticket from Amritsar to Agra for the few days after I finish at the school. It's a long journey so I managed to get a sleeper train but will have to change in Delhi. It was more expensive than I'd expected (1300 Rs.) but at least I've got that sorted out. Ashley advised me to book it while I was here as the places go well in advance. It was good that I took her advice as it was quite difficult finding a train even with over two weeks to go.

We read our books at a café, had lunch at Four Seasons and got the buses back. It was hot again as we got back to the village so we hope it will stay like this, especially so that it's warmer in the evenings.

It's brought the lizards out in full force, so that should be a sign that spring is properly here.

I've just seen, via Facebook, that it's Mother's Day today, so as usual, from being in a different country, I didn't know. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I've also recently heard that you people are still having that Easter thing over yonder. :)

Wed 14 March

Lessons have continued fine this week. With the arrival of Ashley, she has teamed up with Margo to split classes into two groups so that all 5 teachers will have enough lessons. They're getting on with it well and I let Ashley watch one of my lessons today, along with giving her some teaching tips.

The weather has been ok so far. It has been quite cold during the night on some days but it's mostly sunny.

The founder of the school, Lugyal turned up yesterday. He lives in Switzerland but has a holiday so came to visit. It was nice to meet him; he's a friendly man and easy to chat to.

I finished reading Tears of Blood on Sunday and would seriously recommend it to people as it really is time we stopped ignoring the Chinese dictatorship before they get too much control over the world.

Before I give you some more extracts from that book, the one I've started reading is rather different. It is a story of an Englishman who went to volunteer in Ecuador (nearer to Quito) and his humorous accounts of his time there. Apart from the dreadful use of English, it's an easy and fun read and it reminds me of many things from there. It's called That Bear Ate My Pants!

Anyway, going back to the serious things, here are another couple of quotes from the book about Tibet.

A prisoner's account from 1960: A monk interviewed said “Even when we had broken limbs from the beatings and the torture, we still had to work. We would get frostbite because we had nothing to protect our hands and feet. Sometimes it was so cold that the flesh on our hands would tear off and stick to the shovels. To make us change our thinking and support Chinese rule in Tibet, they hung prisoners upside down in empty rooms and beat them with batons. Sometimes they forced other prisoners to do the beating, so that the Chinese would not have to take the blame.”

In 1979, delegates visiting Tibet made up a list of the things that had happened during the 30 year occupation by China:

• 1.2 million Tibetans, 1/5^th of the population, had been killed or died of starvation.
• 6,254 monasteries and nunneries had been destroyed
• 60% of Tibet's literary heritage had been burnt
• Amdo (an Eastern region) had become the world's biggest gulag, with 10 million prisoners.
• One in every ten Tibetans were in prison. 100,000 were in labour camps.
• Forests and Tibet's unique wildlife had been wiped out.

I will post more and they tell stories of events up to when the book was published in 1999.

Week 9: 5-11 March

We were back into teaching this week and with the new timetable, Monday was difficult to get into, for both the teachers and the students. Starting lessons at 8 seemed like a big difference but we got used to it after a few days. It was also strange to have no classes in the afternoon. With the continuing good weather, it meant it was good to have the time to do other things. I only really read or used the internet (we have got the connection fixed and it has been running better now). I've been downloading loads of free books but should stop as I've too many to read already!

We had Thursday off as it was the day to mark the end of the Tibetan new year period. The manager had asked me the day before if I wanted to change rooms. The one at the back of the house was free as the cook had to go to another room and the new teacher was arriving on Friday. I took a look at it and thought it could be better. It was mainly the noise that was the problem in the bedroom I have been using. I decided to change and used Thursday morning to make the move. It felt like home as soon as I got my things arranged. It's smaller and feels like being in students halls again (!) but it's noticeably quieter so I'm very happy with it.

Ashley arrived at Friday lunchtime and in my time, she was the first volunteer younger than me. She's American and in her twenties and I helped her settle in by showing her round the school and taking her up to the village to buy some things.

On Saturday, I didn't want to go away but there was another event in McLeod which was to mark the anniversary of Tibetan protests. Ashley and some students went and there were speeches. The Dalai Lama was there but he didn't speak. They then marched down to Dharamsala.

I got a lot of reading done and I have nearly finished the Tears of Blood book as well as reading some Russian short stories. I also wanted to repair the stone path at the front of the house as some stones had come up. It was good to be doing something like this again and I think I did a good job by laying stones deeper and wetting the soil to get it compacted. These are the before and after shots.

I looked around to see if I could do something else and noticed where they had recently burnt the paper rubbish so I used some stones and broken bits of our wall to make a simple fire area next to the organic waste hole I had dug in January.

I also went up to the shops and luckily still had my camera in my pocket so took a photo of my friend whose shop I always go to. He called me an honest friend because of that, and kissed my hand, so it's nice to know he respects my desire to help him out with his business. He, like many Indians, questioned me about getting married. It is usually one of the first questions you are asked here. He was persistent with his questions but I just told him I'll wait and see what happens!

I asked my students to write about their holiday for their week's homework, expecting them to tell me about enjoying spending time with friends or family members. Here are a couple of extracts from the homework:

“My brother came to India... I heard lots of news about my family. He also took some photos and videos. During the years they really changed a lot, changed everything. I can't recognise my childhood place because everywhere they have built new houses. I have a strong desire to visit but I am scared of the violent Chinese rulers.”

“I used to call my family during the new year but this time I was terrified to because of the Tibetan issues, especially my home town of Nagpa, which is controlled by force these days.” (This refers to martial law, which I have read about in Tears of Blood.

To give you another insight to the Chinese occupation, in 1960, Tibetans who were being held in the gulags (forced labour camps) described the conditions they experienced:

“Amidst famine, we lost our sense of shame and dignity... we ate ropes, leather bags... the men in our prison ate rats, frogs... some even ate the worms that were found in excreta... Another killed an eight year old boy and ate him... Within three years, two-thirds of the Tibetans imprisoned there were dead.”

If by now, you are thinking “Well, at least that is all in the past”, I'll give you more quotes over the next weeks. In fact, I will also write a post midweek as well as on Sundays.

Week 8: 27 Feb – 4 Mar

The week has started quietly as expected. I've given a few tuition lessons but mostly I'm having to think of how to occupy my time. I have started reading a book I borrowed from Ken: Tears of Blood, which is about the history of Tibet since the Chinese invasion that started in 1950 and continues to this day. It is a compelling read and one that I would like more western people to read as the world has ignored China's atrocities for more than 60 years. I would like to give a quote from one of the interviewees accounts to give you an idea of why we should be trying to get away from our links with China and stop supporting their economy by buying everything they manufacture in bulk. This comes from reports in 1959 and 1960 to describe what happened if the Tibetans opposed the Chinese who wanted to 'liberate' them from their peaceful way of life:

“The methods employed included crucifixion, dismemberment, vivisection, beheading, burying, burning and scalding alive, dragging the victims to death behind galloping horses. Children were forced to shoot their parents, disciples their religious teachers... Monks were compelled to publicly copulate with nuns and desecrate sacred images before being sent to a growing string of labour camps in Amdo and Gansu.”

To put this into context, this system of abuse is still going on today. The world has been ignoring it. Most of the world is buying goods from China and therefore supports it and depends upon it. Now imagine that if the Nazis remained in power in Europe. Would you be happy to buy the goods they manufactured, knowing what they did to people? The Chinese communists do the same; there is torture and forced labour happening in the same ways. But we are blissfully ignoring all of this and paying attention to the fact that we can buy their goods cheaply. Do you think that this is acceptable on our part?

Wed: We have the next two teachers arriving on Thursday, two days before the Americans leave. This means a problem with sleeping arrangements but as some students are still away, the manager an the cook will sleep in the students' rooms until the sheds are free. I plan to make them feel welcome and help them out as much as they want as I know it can be hard to arrive in a strange country and get settled, just like I experienced.

Rute asked me if I preferred India or Ecuador. This was an interesting question as I haven't really thought of it like that before. I would actually say I prefer Ecuador. This is for various reasons. Obviously the two can't be compared easily; I have done very different things in very different countries but I feel that I couldn't really connect with Indian culture as much as Ecuadorian. I like to be able to go to cafés or other simple things like that but where I am living, this is not really an option. I only go to the Norbulingka café to use the internet (the service is terrible) and it is usually fairly empty there. I'm sure it would be different if I was living in a city but as I used to think about going to Asia, I find it just too different for me to be able to connect with.

Also, in Ecuador, there were more volunteers and more of a social aspect to it, which I liked. We went away for weekends together but here there is very little to visit nearby, as I said before, so it is less interesting to live here because of that.

It's also not as 'Buddhist-orientated' as I'd hoped. Whereas most of the students would say they follow Buddhism, it doesn't have that feeling in general. They are generally nice and compassionate but in the end, they are young adults who are discovering western culture through the TV here.

I have possibly been feeling more like this because of it being the holiday and having too much free time on my hands. After this week I'll have 4 more weeks of teaching and I hope that I feel more positive once we get back into the routine.

(This is an example of the kind of food we eat at school- this is a noodle soup. Most of it is soup-based, other times with rice but it is generally nice.)

Fri: Two new teachers have arrived, one from Australia and one from America. They are both older people again and I have being giving them information about how the school works and so on. They seem nice, calm people but want support as they are not very experienced as teachers. We actually have another coming next week, due to an error in giving places. There isn't enough space to sleep five teachers so I don't know what will happen regarding that.

Sat: I went up to McLeod with Ken and the new teachers yesterday, although I didn't spend much time with them. We ate lunch together then I checked into a hotel while they saw the temple. They left after that but I saw Maggie and Kendall and said goodbye to them. I then went on a candlelight procession in honour of three Tibetans who are on an indefinite fast outside the UN building in New York. This is to try to get the UN to actually take some action and stop ignoring the Tibet issue. I was pleased to join it as I missed the previous one. I met two students there as well and we went to a speech in an open area. The candles were placed on the ground that spelled out the words “Wake up UN”. After that, I went to eat and read a Sherlock Holmes story. I had never read any before but I am enjoying them. They are short enough to read over a meal and I read another one at breakfast. The weather up there was much nicer – sunny and warm so it was finally nice to be outside, walking round the streets or sitting on a terrace reading. 

I went back in the afternoon and the students were all returning. It was nice to see them again and after feeling like I wasn't that enthusiastic about being here the other day, it felt better again.

 (These are fried momos from McLeod. You get four for 10 Rupees, about 15p and they are really good.)

We were given the next week's timetable and it will be different from now on – the summer timetable which starts an hour earlier (teaching starts at 8) and all lessons happen before lunch. It would have been nice if we had been informed about this change but I've got used to this kind of thing now...

The other new teacher is now due to come next Saturday so we don't have to worry about the complications just yet.

I went for a walk on Sunday morning and Margo said she wanted a couple of things for her room – a curtain rail and something to hang her clothes holder on so I said I'd find some sticks and make them for her. It was good to be able to make some things again after quite a few weeks.