Travelogue

(June 9th)

Greetings from Dharamsala! (disclaimer: for those who don’t know this is the Tibetan community in exile.)

Bree and I have been joined by my mom Jan as of June 6th and now the three of us are residing happily in the mountains of Northern India, none other than the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  We got here as quickly as we could, avoiding the extreme heat of New Delhi and other lower cities that simply roast you alive during this time of year.  Up here in the lovely mountains the days are cool and misty, and just a few peaks away snow is still visible on the taller of the mountains that separate us from Kashmir and the border of Pakistan.  This would make our third, or fourth, trip to this incredible, holy place, and some things are just habit now for us.  Right away we go to our favorite cafe for breakfast, and then go to the temple to offer our respects by doing kora, prostrating, sitting with the other Tibetans in prayer, and making small donations.  Then we seek out our monk friend Gendun whom we have been working with now every trip we come, to improve his English and better ready him for coming to the states when he finishes his monastic degrees and begins teaching Dharma.  He is slowly progressing, now at a basic conversation level.  We are also progressing in the sense that the more time we spend with that dude the more his brilliance rubs off on us, and the more comfortable we get with our understanding of him.  Three years ago he simply blew our minds and we wanted to spend as much time as we could with him.  Now we call him up on our Indian cell phone and make plans to hang out, fully aware of his reactions and attitudes and mannerisms.

Another habitual routine for us when we are here is to volunteer in one of the Tibetan conversational classes that happen daily.  In the past we always did it with a group called “Tibet Hope Project” and would spend a few hours each day just hearing the stories of Tibetan men and women, and correct them on their grammar as they spoke.  This year we are working with a new group called “Lha.”  This morning we stopped by their office to see what sort of volunteer opportunities they offer and found that they are more into setting up one-on-one sessions with same gender students.  Most of them have basic English skills and just need help with correcting minor grammar errors and explaining and advancing their vocabulary.  We agreed to set up appointments with students and were told to come back at 4pm.

Right now it is 6pm, we just ended our first sessions with our new students, and my life has been enriched exponentially in those few hours over coffee and tea.  The boy I was paired up with was named Tenzin (name changed for security reasons), he was 28 years old and is living in India by himself.  He walked out of Tibet, a journey he made with two monks as his companions carrying only a small bag with some Tsampa (barley food), it took him 7 nights of trekking to arrive in Nepal.  He stayed there only two months and then came to the Tibetan Exile Community here in Mcleod Ganj, Dharamsala, where he could be close to HHDL’s temple and home.  He has been here now for 7 years.  He rents small apartments, before a very cheap one that was a little far away and now a little bit nicer one because he is beginning to give art lessons as part time work, as well as tattoos.  We had a lot to share and talk about because we have both fallen in love with and studied Tibetan Thangka painting.  He told me at one point that if I could paint a Thangka then I could definitely make tattoos, at which point he excitedly offered to show me his art, his home, and his home-made tattoo gun, stick-and-hammer style, and even said I could have a free tattoo of some Tibetan symbol if I wanted.  I said I would first see the stick-and-hammer contraption he works with and then decide.

Tenzin spent most of the time after that talking about what he plans to do in the next few years.  Right now he is in an interesting transition point.  It was so refreshing to here someone talk from the perspective of being responsible for their own life.  In Nepal many young people have this ingrained vision that the only way to make it is by finding a sponsor, or getting a visa, or being really lucky.  This creates a dissappointing apathy in much of the youth who could be at least focusing on whats at hand and working to improve their daily conditions.  And in other Indian cities there is an incredible, and dangerous sneakiness and greediness, and a common mindset of stepping on others to bring yourself up and use foreigners to your full advantage.  This young Tibetan man was calm and clear and fully responsible for himself, in the most refreshingly realistic sense I’ve come across in a while.  He said that actually quite recently there was a man here making a film about Tibetan life and this community, in fact it was the same man who made the film, “The Dalai Lama Renaissance” and now he’s working on a new one, andTenzin was able to get a job by chance helping to haul equipment.  This provided him with steady income for two months.  Now that man has left and he focuses his time and energy on art lessons for tourists, commissioned Thangka paintings, tattoos and studying English.  Another friend he had met some time ago has offered to help him come to Canada and that process he is trying to go through but of course having incredible difficulty.  He thinks if it is possible he wants to do it in the next year or so, otherwise he will forget about it and focus on making his earnings here, and trying to go back to Tibet to see his family.  He has two brothers, three sisters, and both parents still living in Tibet.  He said he used to call often to talk to them but his parents began to make him really sad by saying that they are getting old and want to see him very much so he has stopped calling them as much, because its too hard on him.

He then described to me the process that is sneaking back into Tibet, an idea that rarely crosses peoples minds.  He has tried to do it the legal way by going to the Chinese embassy and asking for a passport but of course they treated him with complete disrespect and made it almost impossible, so he hasn’t gotten one yet.  As I wrote earlier it is a 7 day hike, and highly risky with all the Chinese police who are looking out for Tibetans crossing illegally.  He said with surprising calm, calculated and well-thought out sentences that if you’re caught it means getting beaten by police and thrown in jail for 6 months and having to pay hefty bribes, but then you are free to visit your family.  Unfortunately though he has heard that recently the penalties have gone up to 5 years in jail.

We had such an amazing conversation together and I learned so much and made an incredible friend.  I am going to be helping him create a website for his art soon, just a wordpress sort of thing like this HANDS in Nepal site that I myself only learned how to create a few months ago.  If he can learn English and computer skills, especially web design, I think he will be pretty well set up as a Tibetan artist here in Dharamsala.  So that was just the last 2 hours, before that many things happened today.  We even had breakfast with our monk friend early this morning, after he invited us the previous night.  This meant simple ommelletes and Tibetan bread and his own special Amdo tea that he always serves.  During breakfast we visited and learned about whats going on with HHDL and the temple activities, and made plans to meet daily at 12:30 for an hour English lesson.  We found out that right now The Dalai Lama is in France, doing some teachings, and is due to come back sometime in the next few weeks for a visit.  His birthday will be coming up soon on July 6th and that will be a big, 3-day celebration for which he will be returning.  We also learned that this month is a very auspicious month for Tibetans because the Buddha’s birthday is in it, so that means that the classes at the Dalai Lama’s temple are on hold and instead all day prayer sessions are taking place, for which all the monks at the institute and all the Tibetans living here show up for.  They all sit around with prayer wheels, malas and Buddhist texts, chanting and praying together for the well-being of all living things.  They bring the whole family, babies and elders and all, and even special tea cups for tea that the monks bring around in big thermos’ once in a while for all to enjoy.  It is something really special to be able to sit down and experience first-hand, hundreds of sweet Tibetan people gathered together for such a sacred purpose.  Our Tibetan friend in Nepal had told us before we came here that the “Miss Tibet” competition was happening around this time and we were so excited and surprised by this news.  We had really hoped to see it, but alas it happened on June 5th, a few days before we arrived.  I looked it up online and found some interesting photos and news about it, it is cool to see a beauty pageant contest in which traditional, cultural heritage is exemplified.  I’ll leave you with this link…     http://misstibet.com/

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(June 1st)

Well its been too long since writing here.  We left Nepal for India on May 24th and during that time there was a lot of political upset happening which resulted in many strike-days.  Every other day seemed to be a strike so half our time was spent on these little holidays at home.  We had an exciting opportunity to meet with the executive director of Next Generation Nepal, the organization created by the author of the recent best-seller “Little Princes.”  We had been e-mailing with her, Hallie Tamez is her name, and trying to find a time and place when our schedules would overlap.  It was only on our last day in Nepal, the day before our flight to Darjeeling, that we had the opportunity.

We walked into the garden area behind the Kathmandu Guest House in Thamel where she spotted us from a table next to a big beautiful tree.  She was drinking tea and greeted us with a huge smile creasing her tan face.  A Nepali scarf on her head and the most malas I’ve seen anyone wear, she was definitely in her element in Kathmandu.  She began by asking me what HANDS in Nepal was all about and I did my best to cover all the needed topics and story of what we’ve done and how its happened.  She was soo interested and happily curious to hear about how dedicated we are.  She was a little surprised at how grassroots we were.  She has experience working with several different aid organizations and in fact was working as a donor-consultant in Nepal before joining and becoming head of NGN.  That job had her flying to Nepal to research local non-profits and then report to large U.S. donors about there validity, helping to decided where best to send their money.  She was so savvy about what it is to be an established non-profit in another country and after I finished rambling about all the amazing things we are doing with HANDS, she began to unleash her FOUNTAIN of information into our brains.

She went into a little about the exact work that NGN is involved with, re-integrating falsely “orphaned” children with their families, which was indeed amazing to hear first hand from someone who has experienced such things as introducing kids to their parents that they believed were dead, and even showing the parents the fake death certificate made to convince their children, and also discovering houses in Kathmandu where these displaced children are kept, half-starved in dirty, dark rooms wasting away before finally being sent to a childs home where the “orphanage” collects money from good-hearted foreigners and keeps it for profit.  She in fact had just visited a local house that had been discovered, ,uch like the one I have detailed above, where she said unfortunately a few of the kids didn’t make it.  As she said this we really felt it and it became clear again who this was we were meeting with.  She blew our minds with stories and her overall attitude and travel savvy ways.

Now we are spending our days in and around the Holy City of Shiva, Varanasi, or Beneras as it was originally named.  It is a 6,000 year old city, and it really feels that way when walking around.  There is no place like it.  Tight cobble stone alley ways make up the “old city” where we are staying, right next to the river Ganges.  The river banks are ancient sandstone steps leading down into the water, where there are throngs of people everyday lining up to cleanse their sins by taking a dip.  Also, the rivers edge is lined with cremation, burning grounds known as Ghats.  These are also the reference points for everything around the old city.  Its interesting to constantly be referring to places like “Pandhey Ghat” and “Meer Ghat” and “Assi Ghat” in order to find our way around, its only when you stop and think about it that you realize what you’re talking about; an ancient stage for families to bring their dead, the most desirable place to be cremated, and a close shoe-in for being freed in liberation at death.

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(May 11th)

Hello!

A lot of time has passed and now I will explain the plan for the rest of our trip and work, as well as inform you that I am currently in the process of updating a Photo’s page; so while I’m writing I am uploading pictures of our recent community development work in the villages.  The computers are painfully slow so for each picture I have about 3-5 minutes of time to write while it uploads, then on to the next.

The development work consists largely of bringing the community together to discuss topics of importance.  The first obstacle we face is explaining that we, HANDS in Nepal, are not here to give the answers or fix the problems.  This takes some skillful explaining but it always clear by the grunts of surprise when the message has been clearly communicated. NGO’s, non-profit groups and aid programs and quite the norm in Nepal so people are very savvy to the way things usually go with them even if they have no direct experience of it.  It is assumed that foreign aid workers come to rain down donations, money, and the answer to their problems which usually ties back into a monetary idea of development.  Bottom line, will you give us money?  Anyway it is difficult but rewarding to convince a community that we are simply there to help them get to their own answers.

The meeting will begin with questions like what do you see the future of your village as?  What would you want it to like?  This usually brings funny responses, “we want to be like Switzerland!”  “What?! well, what do you mean?”  We found it also difficult to begin a dialogue through translators, and often the problem was that what we said would be translated to the group, but their questions and comments weren’t being translated back for us.  We decided it would be best to hire someone as a personal translator who we could pay to simply translate everything, both ways, and we have actually now found a perfect someone for that, a young sherpa girl by the name of Jangmu, 24 years old, sweet and gentle and as interested and curious, and dedicated as we are.  A good match for sure.

After the first question of what do you want for your future, we work backwards and ask things like, “what do you have now that works well and should be supported?” and “what things could be changed for the better?”  etc.

The most important thing is for them to begin critically thinking about what they can do, what they have to do it with, and whose going to do it.

Right now Bree and I are in Kathmandu doing as much as possible before going back out to Darkha, and Fulkharka.  We got sick last week and had to spend 2-3 days recovering, a difficult thing to do when there are so many things we need to get done in such short time.  Now we are very healthy again and plan to leave tomorrow morning for the village.  There we will stay with our newly befriended translator, Jangmu, and interview village people in an attempt to create a written history of peoples lives there and understand better the different changes the village has undergone and the difficulties they have faced.  We are also really interested to hear what the women in this village have to say about their life and challenges.  Around the 16th we will travel by jeep to Fulkharka to do a similar thing, interviews and questioning a few community meetings, and also participate in the huge festival for the Buddha’s birthday on the 17th.  Then we will return to Kathmandu to tie up some business here, get things situated, and then head off for a short trip through India.  We will be meeting my mom Jan Sprague in New Delhi on June 6th, and will then go directly North to Dharamsala and spend 1 1/2 weeks working with Tibetan refugees and visiting friends we have there.  Then we will return to Nepal with Jan to hopefully make one final trip to Darkha and Fulkharka to finish everything we can, and say our goodbyes for this year.  Bree and I leave July 1st for the states, my mom has other plans of staying and doing some other work, like stocking up on Nepali goods for her store that she plans to open, as well as get to work on fixing up a womens sewing cooperative.

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(May 1st)

Attention All Nepali Product Lovers!

We have decided to make available to all of you the awesome, traditional Pote (Pothay) necklaces!  There is a market in an area of Kathmandu called Indra Chowk where these wonderful necklaces are made.  It is a dark, tight area that you would never know existed unless you had been informed by a local Nepali or a travel book.  Below are some pictures of our visit there today, and here is the offer we are making to all of you:  pick any two colors, or just one if you would like it simple, and specify in an e-mail how many, and of what colors you would like and we will personally go and have them made.

They are about the equivalent of $10 a piece so we are offering them at $25 and having the extra $15 go directly into our current project funds.  If you would like a more elaborate one that will be $5 more.  So, our new friend Samsul Hassan (pictured below the “being human” shirt) explained a little about them.  Traditionally they are green or red, red a sign of marriage and green a sign of prosperity for the couple.  Any other colors are purely fashion.  The prices are broken down into “strings” and each string has 3-4 lines of beads on it.  For reference the ones that are laid out on the red clothe are “6 string” pote necklaces, which is the basic we are offering for the $25 price.  (the one Bree is featured wearing is 8 string).

Samsul Hassan, your friendly pote dealer

Color Choices:

Black – Green (light/dark) – Gold – Yellow – Red (light/dark) – Peach – Sea Green – Blue (light/dark) – Coffee

(if you see something in the pictures you like but I have not specified just let me know)

Select any one or two of the above colors and specify if you want it mixed or solid color and whether you’d like 4, 6, or 8 strands, and we will have it made and deliver by hand to the U.S. where we can easily have it sent to wherever you like.

Orders need to be placed through the e-mail;  handsceo@gmail.com

We can have this done anytime from now until July 1st when we are returning to the U.S.  Its best for us if you can place the order before May 20!  If not though its okay and we will try to manage.

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(April 27)

Dear Friends!  Bree and I are back in the city now after 7 days of rough village life.  Its been a crazy time of travel for us.  We flew in from Hong Kong and arrived at midnight, my brother Kelsang was waiting patiently at the airport, for 3 hours he said, and escorted us back to our family’s home where we dropped into bed.  The next morning we woke at day break, ate a quick breakfast with tea, then headed out to catch a bus to dhading.  4 hours later we were beginning to fall into a daze, staring out of the dirty bus windows down into the deep valleys.  We obediently got our bags and stepped out from the bus and then arranged for a ticket on a jeep going in the direction we wanted.  We had a snack, and then off again bumping along at a slow pace on the most extreme jeep trail you can imagine; straight up the mountain, then down it, then up and around the next one, then down again, then repeat that 5 times and add another 4 hours to ourslowly fading minds and finally you arrive in Darkha.  That is you arrive at the bottom of another mountain where the jeep road ends and now have to hoist your bags onto your back and begin the arduous hike up.  For us it was a true test of travel endurance.  We finally dragged ourselves into the home of our good friend Ram who has been working with us for a few years now and there sitting on his porch was Debbie and her two girls, happily surrounded by all the local Nepali kids.

That was our journey, and from there it never stopped.  We began immediately the next day with our first community meeting, a learning experience through and through, and then each day after was either spent trekking to a new village, or working in the one we were.  We visited the village of Fulkharka where the second school organized by HANDS was being built and to our delight it was practically finished.  Bhupendra, the man being worked through from Fulkharka, is a top notch guy and had kept detailed records of every aspect of the work to show us.  His village presented us with the most beautiful welcoming ceremony as well, complete with Nepali dancing and singing, all the songs were about their appreciation for our efforts.  It was an amazing, touching moment.  The Dworak family, who funded the building of this school and previously had met Bhupendra were on my mind a lot during this, it was so beautiful I couldn’t help but think of how much they would’ve loved to see it.  Luckily we took several videos so they will be able to see it.

The trek to Fulkharka was much further than expected, almost 9 hours away in a different region all together than Darkha, but still in the Dhading district so still under the same municipality.  Though its a far walk it was well worth it and also provides a wider sphere for our work to be branched out into.

There is a whole lot more to tell but I will close here with one last piece of news.  The Maoists have struck again!  Today, our second day back in Kathmandu, a strike or Bhanda is in effect and everything is closed!  It is only for one day and the reasons behind it are still unsure to us but the main drama is that Debbie and her girls are across the city and have no way of getting back!!!  Last night they decided to splurge and go to our good friend Rajan’s Yoga Retreat center for a little r and r, very well deserved, and then they were going to come back today to our family’s house, have a big momo feast and get their bags ready before their 9am flight tomorrow.  But now, darn Maoists, everything is in full-Drama mode and it is uncertain how they will ever get back here.  I called Rajan who said that they will walk with the Yoga instructor back to Thamel, a decent walk in itself, and then they might have to trek all the way back to Karma’s house if a car can’t be arranged.  Rajan said the strike might be lifted after 4pm so we will see.  One way or another I’m sure they’ll get back in time to pack and make their flight.  Their flight, by the way, is to Kenya where they have plans to take a whole orphanage out on a safari for 4 days, and then spend another week and a half working there.

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(April 16)

Hello! Bree and myself, Danny, are in Hong Kong’s international hub of an airport waiting for 10 whole hours before we take the last leg to Nepal, a mere 61/2 hour flight.  We’ve been lounging around, exploring the fascinating sights, and trying to find a place to lay down for a nice nap.  In tow we have two backpacks, a shoulder bag and my mandolin.  We unfortunately had to give up Bree’s main backpack to the authority at the gate of our LA-Hong Kong flight when we were told it was too big and bulky.  We tried to negotiate but to no end so we now do puja and pray that it will be waiting on the dusty Kathmandu baggage claim.  We’ve been talking about this trip for so long that it is really surreal for us to be here doing it now, but also extremely exciting.  Nepal is just hours away, I can smell it already!

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(April 11)

The count down is beginning, slowly the days go by and we inch closer to our departure.  Wow, it is strange and exciting to be doing this once again, for the 4th year in a row.  That first trip I never thought it would become this regular, this established and now here it seems so normal to me.  I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to say that.  I have an amazing family in Kathmandu, and in California, and now in Colorado.  All these places are dear to me in different ways.  They all contribute important pieces that make my life what it is.  Now I feel quite ready to head to my Kathmandu family, my Tibetan tribe, and my Darkha peeps, and get my fill of that life for a good 3 months.  I can already tell it will be too short, but now I am more comfortable with the confident knowledge that I will go back again.  Dabble dabble, living a global life, a dream come true.  Now I just need to include Europe, and that is in my plans, ahem!  I am investigating the possibility of doing a study abroad in Spain for an upcoming semester.  I still have a good amount of elective credits that I need to crunch and chomp through and I came to the conclusion that I might as well be in an interesting environment while doing that.  Then it will just be 7 more classes at Naropa to get my certified degree in Peace Studies.  Thats right and I’m proud of it!  A BA in peace, a nice little credential for my line of work.

So this is the countdown, 4 more days, Friday I have my last class at Naropa during which I will turn in all my work for the semester.  Then at noon I get out, will have lunch, maybe a nap, then do all and every U.S.A. activity I can until it will be time for Bree and I to be driven to the airport by some friends.  Our plane will leave at 9:20pm, we’ll fly to L.A. and then get on the international flight heading west at 1:00am.  Then its to Hong Kong for a huge layover of 10 hours, we are debating whether or not we will muster the courage to leave the airport and explore for a few of those hours, and then finally we complete the journey all the way to Nepal.  Its something like 23 hours of flight time.  Pure insanity, but thats the effort you got to take to get to the complete other side of the world!

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(Intro)

Hello to all our friends.  Bree and myself, Danny, will be leaving for Nepal on April 15th.  We will arrive after a total of 23 hours of flying in Kathmandu on the 17th.  From there we will depart the next morning (or so we hope) to head out to the village of Darkha.  If everything works out according to plan our professor Debbie will already be there waiting and as soon as we show up the work will begin!  We are planning on doing a plethora of community development work with the focus being on holding meetings where we can interview the community and find out what issues are present.  Debbie has found that in her own work it has been most beneficial to conduct these interviews as much as possible to slowly flush out the serious issues that might be too sensitive to otherwise mention in casual conversation.  We plan on keeping very detailed journals on everything we do and I hope to be able to transfer as much of that as possible onto this blog for all of you to read!  Apart from our work in Darkha and Kathmandu we will also be writing about the usual travel adventures that become daily routine while in an exotic foreign locale.  Check up on this page, the Travelogue, for frequent postings!