Reunion after two years
The essentials and paths covered in monsoon mud



This report mainly covers the changes at the small school; the everyday life of the children can be found in the travellers' first report >>



Arrival

We're pretty nervous as we approach the village, quite exhausted. What will the reunion be like? Will the images that have become set in stone in our minds in the two years since our first visit ultimately collapse in the face of reality?

Since we can only stay as long as the school holidays this time, we came the quick way - from Kathmandu to Pokhara on the bus, the 160 kilometre journey taking ten hours instead of six, due first to a landslide and then engine problems, then onward to Jomsom in a light aircraft. The walk to Jharkot, which took us 900 metres further above sea level, rather tired us out having had little chance to acclimatise.

White school building in front of the red temple
But then it feels like a homecoming: the roughly paved road uphill, past the little square with the fountain / well, around the bend, then our "hotel" Prakash: Dollar, Tashi and Tsewang Wangyal welcome us with rough hands and sweet tea. Finally we get ourselves together and head up to the school at the highest point of the village. We can only manage the steep steps in stages. It's quite quiet in the building, but we saw light in the classroom: there they sit, crammed onto the narrow benches, writing letters to the children in Austria. The letters from Austria had arrived just the day before after many weeks travelling through the postal system!
Mohan shakes hands with us, he beams, as do the children and those who know us call out: Miss Christina! Mister Wolf! Oh, they've changed, they've grown bigger, but we still know them all by name, and the new children - we'll have to guess, and there's a lot of laughter.

Changes

A great deal is as we remember it: life in the village, the constant flow of the days, filled with work from sunrise to sunset, but without any rushing about. The conversations and jokes that pass from flat roof to flat roof, while drying wheat and herbs and apricot halves. The sea of goats that streams past our window, bleating, with their bells ringing, punctually at half past eight. The power outages that always happen just when electricity is needed, and more generally at nightfall. The serenity with which the locals find their way around such inconveniences.
Migrant workers' child with his younger brother

However there is a lot that is new to us too: we're visiting in the summer this time, outside of hiking season. It's not quiet in the village though: there a number of building sites. The builders are travelling contractors from the lowlands. They live in dilapidated quarters and their children, who move with them from building site to building site, go to the public primary school here, but many of them simply sit out their time there, barely learning anything. What can the barely motivated teachers do with children who will be gone in two months anyway?

The workers buy their Rakshi from the locals, often from Pasang's mother. She runs the little shop in which the village telephone is to be found. A satellite connection, which used to have to be turned on when you wanted to make a call, and to which you were called by an available messenger if someone wanted to reach you urgently. "Miss Christina, telephone, half an hour please". The telephone is broken now, but it doesn't matter: the Nepalese telecom company has opened a mobile network now. You have to go outside to make use of it, often onto the roof of a house, or up a hill, and it only works every other time, but nonetheless. And so a farmer in traditional Tibetan dress, crouched on the ground, sifting barley, pulls the family mobile out of her woven belt and gesticulates as she talks to her son, who is off looking for a better life in Dubai, or India, or, who knows, perhaps even in America.

The physical connection to outside world, "the street" - an earth and crushed stone track - now even leads over an adventurous ford into the villages on the other side of the Panda Khola gorge, but the paths in the village are a problem. It's still monsoon season. Although the majority of the rain falls on the southern flank of the Annapurna massif, it rains up here too and this year it's unusually heavy. The five weeks we're there, we see maybe 3 hours of sunshine and the snow-covered peak of Dhaulagiri just once.


Our neighbour on her mobile...

And the ground has barely dried during two rainless, though cloudy days, when a gentle drizzle begins, which loosens the earth between the cobblestones, which in just a few hours mixes together with cow, yak and goat excrement to make a sometimes ankle-deep mudbath of the path; well the mud on your trousers dries and what's important is something else entirely.

Children!

The children are what's important. We get to know the new ones - there were 14 children at the boarding school on our first visit, now there are 21: 9 girls and 12 boys between the ages of 4 and 14. There was no room for the most recently enrolled girl, Dicky, to sleep at the boarding school (the Tibetan teacher already had two girls in her room). So Dicky is a day pupil at the Medical Center: she sleeps at the home of a distant relative in the village, but spends the days, from breakfast to dinner, with the other children. Every evening, two boys with torches take her back to her sleeping quarters. On their way back they stand outside our hotel until we notice them and go out to chat with them and invite them in - an offer they accept only sometimes, shyly and with a little pride.


Pupils in the state school uniform

Every morning there is a cheerful commotion in front of the hotel as the children who attend Nepalese lessons at the public school outside the village come past and see whether Mr. Wolf and Miss Christina are up and about. They wave to us and look very distinguished in their school uniforms, which are incidentally something new. The basic black shoes are polished every day by the children, Dolkar Tshering sees to that, and when the road is very muddy, the children balance from stone to stone in order to make it to school still looking reasonably smart.

We teach every other day: English with the big kids, arts and crafts with everybody. They love it and since our first visit Mohan has made creative work a regular part of the timetable. There are picture and handicrafts all over the rooms, some made independently, some with other volunteers who have visited in the meantime, bringing materials and ideas with them. The transported installation is dismantled and then they realise:

Lego!!
Window! Doooor! Wheel! How can I put it? What is this? Look, a fence! Houses are built and the first vehicles. We are once more amazed at how peacefully and cooperatively the children play together. Ultimately the second half of the group joins them. They show the same amazement and then enthusiasm. Over the next few weeks every free minute is spent in the prayer room. The number of bricks rapidly decreases, until it is discovered that some children have hidden their constructions by the low benches so as to avoid their immediate disassembly...

When we come to teach one day some of the children have white paste here and there on their faces, necks and hands. Chickenpox! They laugh and we look it up in the dictionary. It's "Schafblattern" in German. It makes its way through the whole group over the next few weeks and apart from occasional complaints about the itching the children are fine and are nonetheless always around.

It's uncomfortable in the school kitchen this year: a big kerosine cooker booms and bangs, it's pretty scary. Mohan tells us that due to the heavy monsoon this year making the road so bad, he wasn't able to get enough gas at a reasonable price and wood has become so expensive that Rishikant, the cook, has taken the wood stove out of commission. Without sunshine the solar oven in the courtyard is of no use either and so our meals are accompanied by kerosine vapour.

Special days

Claudia Canz from the German development agency, who secures the financing of the school together with us, has now joined us.

We have intense discussions ahead of us, on the organisation and the future of the project, but first of all there is an exciting undertaking: Mohan, Amchi Nyima, the four oldest pupils, we three Europeans and two additional helpers will be camping high in the mountains for three days and gathering medicinal herbs. Mohan is occupied with preparations for days: gathering equipment: tents, documents, sleeping bags, work tools, kerosene, provisions, packhorses...


Karma and Ngawang with packhorses

Then it all begins. Early in the morning the three horses are loaded up in the alley behind the monastery. One of them bolts and there's chaos in the alley. Karchung, Mohan's nephew, brings everything back under control, thank God nothing happened. Our little caravan treks through the village and up the ridge of Togo Danda. After a while we split into a fast group and a slow group. The latter group includes us Europeans, the Amchi and the children, because they need time to gather plants and we need time to breathe. We're used to Jharkot at 3550 metres above sea level now, but now we're rising to 4200 metres and it's a new challenge for our bodies. The fast group moves on ahead to set camp.


Home for 2 days, 4200m above sea level

When we arrive at the camp the five tents are almost completely up. The field kitchen is established under a canopy. A small kerosene cooker was brought along and so we have Daal Bhat with mushrooms and tea. It tastes unbelievably good. Then we start looking for plants - we are told what we need to look for. Three different plants, the Tibetan names for which refuse to stick in our minds. Back at camp the roots and leaves are sorted and washed.

The Amchi conjures up a delicious dinner, which we eat crouched in a circle. A fire of dead branches is kindled and the kids dry their sodden shoes until the air smells of plastic. We still have dry feet in our comfortable Austrian mountain shoes.

The next day we climb higher, up extremely steep paths, 4500m says Mohan. Claudia's altimeter can't confirm it, it goes crazy and shows 6000. Whatever the truth, it is extremely tiring for us, but the children climb about as if there's nothing to, picking about on the ground for special roots, push us along and also carry the heavy sacks full of what has been gathered thus far.


The group searching for plants at 4500 m

It keeps drizzling, my expensive rainproof jacket proves itself to be only expensive, visibility comes down to nothing, except at the highest point, where we briefly see the looming rock stacks between which we are walking.

We are very glad when we finally reach our camp again. The clouds open up and far below us we see the Panda Khola gorge, the hillside opposite with the villages of Dzong and Putak and Chongur. A little later the fog is back and there is a deep, grumbling grunt: our small tent city is surrounded by a group of prehistoric-like, almost motionless creatures - a large group of wild yaks!

Unexpected: yaks

The next morning we cleared the pasture of all traces of our being there and the little caravan returned to the village. There is another guest at our hostel now, an 84-year-old Manangi, who came for the Yartung in Ranipauwa. His walking is laborious, but riding across the Thorung La Pass (5420m) without accompaniment, that's no problem for him! And he is also the first rider to have gallopped on his horse around the Yartung course through Ranipauwa.

Yartung is a kind of harvest festival, with the procession of traditionally-dressed riding delegations from the villages, with dances, singing and lots of Rakshi, and with horse races at which the groups of riders are pitted against each other. It's not so much about speed, as about putting on a good show. There! There! Our Sonam Wangdu! He has borrowed a horse and takes our breath away as he thunders past, concentrating, shining with happiness and speed.


Horse racing at the Yartung festival:
Sonam Wangdu at the starting line for the next leg

Departure

On the final Friday before our departure Mohan convenes the school committee, as well as the the project children's parents, many of whom have undertaken a two day walk to be here. We sit on benches in the monastery courtyard, the sun is shining. Rishikant and the children serve tea - in porcelain for the westerners, instead of the usual metal mugs. The meeting is about the current state of the project and plans for the future. And about a reprint of the book "The Tibetan Way", which is published by the Medical Center and is now sold out, and a small contribution to the project budget. We discuss how a percentage of the parents could be involved in the maintenance of the children; in money or barter as they are able. We report on the money raising campaigns of our students in Austria and pass around photos. The committee thanks us and the parents beam.

Waiting on a square

A group separates from the people standing around, they push children towards Mohan and talk to him. Mohan nods, shakes his head and takes particulars. No, we don't have any room for any more children, but as soon as something comes free, then maybe. You'll have heard: perhaps we can manage to do what we're dreaming of, extending the boarding school and the school, then we can take in more children, yes, I've made a note.

And then we are given gift: rice, tsampa, buckwheat meal, dried fruits, even beer. And everyone present lays a katak, a blessing shawl, around our necks, until we look like white cones and we bow and feel quite touched and abashed as the sun shines.

The sun is no longer shining in the afternoon, but something continues to shine as we move on to Lhadup with the entire staff of the Medical Center and some mothers and friends, to the only big flat field around.

On Lhadup field

Football is played with great energy, while on the other side of the field, the girls have laid down next to a spring in a sea of little violet flowers, tussling, chattering, singing, dancing. The three mothers who are sitting with us can see that their children are happy here as they watch the goings-on with smiles on their face. Seeing this perhaps makes it a little easier to leave the children here.

In the end the boys have had enough of football, they cool the faces in the clear spring water and drink from their cupped hands - and one of the boys from the village, whom we have given the nickname of "Cowboy", sings a Tibetan folk song and the others join in.

Tshering Lhamo, the youngest one, turns a row of somersaults in the setting sun. Is this all really real?

When we think back to that time, we still ask ourselves the same thing. It is a rhetorical question. It's really real. It is a possible moment, possible alongside many other, sometimes less happy moments.

A tangle of girls
When we came here for the first time, we were rather happy-go-lucky: we wanted to get to know the country, to experience something, to sympathise, to help for three months and then say goodbye. Our role has changed in the meantime.
We are responsible for the future of 21 children. We are also partly responsible for the moment among the violet blooms. There is no ultimate farewell, only for a while: until we return. We hope to return with the good news that a big school in Salzburg isn't forgetting about a tiny school in the Panda Khola valley.

Christina Klaffinger, Wolf Pichlmüller

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Changes >>
Children! >>
Special days >>
Departure >>

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