Helping out Schools in Tibet

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have gotten to visit some really remote villages where Gar Rinpoche has schools. In a journey of life altering experiences it might be hard to pinpoint what has had the most effect on me, but this would definely have to be up near the top of the list. Coming here at all, unless you are interested only in yourself and relaxing on some vacation should have some effect on you, and I think you would have to have your eyes closed pretty tight not to notice something .

What I do is visit these schools with Rinpoche's brother and take pictures for sponsors and people who want to give money to Rinpoche to help. In the next few years a large number of pictures of this sort that you see may have been taken by me.

I have wanted to do something positive to help since I arrived here, but some of the things that I have seen in the last few months have had the deepest impact. For those who don't understand these are the truly indiginous people who from one perspective don't live in the same world as us. Many of these places are hours and hours of off road driving away from the nearest town, so they are very self sufficient. They don't go to the store to get the things they need, they live their way of life the way they always have...mostly farming.

Some places don't have a school at all, just students with a chalkboard sitting under the overhang of a corral with a chalkboard;
some have 100 students sitting in the same one tiny classroom.

I was asked a very good question: why do these children need to know english if they are so remote or indiginous as I mentioned? My answer for this is without assistance it's very difficult for these children to do anything but live the way their families have...they are not properly equipped to go and do anything else. By learning as much as they can, especially english, they have a better opportunity to make something of their lives besides farming.

Many are very difficult to get to. The first place we visited had one road to get in..it was wedged in between a river and the side of a mountain and we had to wait quite a while for people to clear the rocks that even our jeep with a 4 wheel offroad package couldn't get over. The road itself wasn't really wider than the jeep and it was a very dangerous journey where we DEFINETLY could have fallen into the river. Another place had old wooden bridges we had to cross where it was safer to get out of the jeep and walk across...again the jeep not much woder than the bridge. I was told that only recently had they decided to risk using a vehicle to get to this location...the safer way was to go in by horse. On our way leaving there was a supply truck that had become stuck on a bridge and was definetly going to be there over night in the cold. Luckily at this particular part of the path the river was shallow enough for us to make it across otherwise we would have been stuck there too!

When I got here I thought about starting an NGO and it is still something that I eventually want to do. On the other hand, why re-invent the wheel? Gar Rinpoche is already providing a massive help to many communities and I want to help him and I hope that others reading this, and especially those who are a part of the Drikung Sangha realize that there are people that need help out there in the world. These are children that you can help educate, that you can help give a better opportunity on life to.

Another thing I would like to do is help to get some more teachers over here. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's up for this kind of adventure. And there are many schools that would love to have an English teacher. In fact I believe that it is just that most people don't know that the opportunity is out there, and that they would be up for it if they knew.

I will continue to write about this, obviously it isn't something that I can work on a whole lot at the moment being so far removed from people or electricity. But I think there are seeds that are being planted right now, and a desire growing that will still be there when I am in a better position to help.

If you are interested in making a donation please visit these websites:

http://www.garchen.net/gargon.html http://www.tibetaid.org/gargon.htm