Monday, February 26, 2007

Purchasing the Nuns' Computer


Going to Hubli
My view from the back of the car...


One of the most exciting days was January 17th, the following Wednesday after arriving at the monastery. That day Phuntsho, arranged to take us, along with Chuni Rinpoche, Geshe Kalsang, and Tengye (the entire 2005-2006 Tour less Chimmie) to Hubli to help us purchase nuns' computer.

There we were also to meet some of our friends like Ngodup (05/06 Tour), Geshe Sangye and Ameircan Lobsang Wangchuck all returning from H.H. the Dalai Lama's teachings at Sera. Hubli is the junction town with the nearest rail travel to the settlement.

The computer purchase extravaganza...

We spent almost the entire day making the computer purchase for the nuns. First, Phuntsho and I had to locate the place. Remember, I had tasked the nuns with getting three quotes and identifying someone they wanted to work with? Well, they chose this computer company in Hubli and they could not have made a finer choice.

The owner of the business (shown here on the right has been in business for many, many generations and he runs his own little operation.

Once the expected and highly anticipated negotiations were agreed upon, the store's young and animated dream technical team sprang into action, with six of them all working on the one system at the same time.

This "should only take an hour" process (1 Tech hour = 4 hours) was a fun and exciting time for me... maybe for them as well. It seemed thay way - as having an new "American" client was well, new - but also one having a little western technical expertise, especially in the Corel Graphics Suite was an opportunity to get someanswers as well as some effects placed onto some photos. Upon correcting the problem they had been experienced with the photos, I topped their tutorial session with the expression "SUCCESS is Mine" flexing my muscles... in which one translated to the rest and they all repeated back the gesture... my own bollywoood movie! They in turn tried to gave me the Hindi translation of the same - which went out as quickly as it went in!

Computer Take-Away
At almost 7:45pm (having been in the computer store for over 4 hours) it was finally time to take the new equipment back to the truck and meet the rest of our friends for dinner.

Phuntsho set Ngodup afoot back to the vehicle with the flat screen monitor, while Menlo, Tengye, Phuntsho and I all haul the rest of the equipment back to the rickshaw driver. No kidding, this was something out of silk road times.

From there everything was loaded securely onto the monastery vehicle and we were then swept away to a reunion dinner in Hubli's with the entire 2005/6 Tour including American Lobsang Wangchuk (but less Chimmy Jampa who had his family visiting).

Wow! what a day to remember.


























Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Market Day in Mundgod

Meeting the monks in the vilage on
"Market Day"

I am just beginning to catalog all the images taken by Menlo and myself... to begin the task of translating all this information into a visual format so we can begin our duty of focusing in on specific projects. As the re-entry begins to normalize back at home, my experiences are starting to as well, in that I was visually, auditory-ily and environmentally mind-blown by taking this trip to India.

All that being said I hope you may be enjoying this Blog and I do appreciate all the emails of encouragement - because it helps me believe someone out there is seeing this and it has a purpose. In any event, here is a variety of pictures to check out whilst I assemble our 5000+ images into some kind of fun and fascinating format to learn more about the Tibetan Settlement in Mundgod.

Oh, and yes... I would appreciate anyone at all proofing -I just focus on getting the info out - and seldom re-read as I may not publish what has come out in these moments of spontaneity...

A DAY IN MUNDGOD VILLAGE
Here is my dear companion ...
okay guess which one? No joke... This guy was painted with something the equivalent of One Shot enamel paint for autos painted head to toe...

No joke. We actually went into the "ART" studio of the guy responsible for all that fine brush work (which you cannot see in detail from here...) trust me - its is fine -shiney work... detailed like the Mendhi or henna that they do. But the paint itself is absolutely toxic... and I felt like fainting watching the artist painting the face, eyelids, etc. of another dancer.

I guess conpared to lead-based enamel paints... the environment seems pretty benign to these villagers.

Here is Venerable Geshe Dhonyoe from the 2001-2002 with Tengye-la of the 2005-2006 Tour.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Short Video Posts...

Exciting Rickshaw Ride with Tengye and Geshe Dhonyo



Thank you Indredible India

Little Nun at Government School Receiving Award for Top Scores


India has the densest population in the world - yet still it makes room for the world's refugees. Incredible when one considers that India gave home land to the Tibetans. Still India takes on even more refugees while more and more Tibetans leave Tibet in search of spiritual freedom. Even though India makes room for the Tibetans, and schools and houses them, the Tibetans resources in India are almost entirely limited. There aren't enough jobs in India for the Indians -let alone the Tibetans. So the future is completely precarious...

One day we were treated to a visit to the settlement's government school, previously having met the Director or Rector. The "Government" school is provided to the Tibetan Refugees and maintained by the Indian government in their quest to educate India. Most of the teachers are Indian and the Director at this particular school is Tibetan. The school houses roughly 500-700 students, children of the 9 camps and also some who are sent there from smaller refugee camps in the region. This includes young nuns because the nunnery does not have its own school like the larger monasteries do.

I was anxious to visit the school and learn more about their Vocational Department and also their computer room. I was very, very impressed with the grace and care of the India teachers. On that day they had a special presentation of awards to the students who were top in their class and they had invited us to hand out awards to the kids. I was not well dressed (same old t-shirt and jeans) and did not feel energetic enough to do so - hoping my partner Menlo (who is the more externalized one) would do so... in any event, the Rector appealed to us that this would be extremely meaningful to these children and Menlo thought I should be the one to do it. According to the Rector, to have someone else from the International Community take interest in the children's education (which they hold in such high esteem) would benefit the children, the teachers and the parents.

Of course my thoughts went to 'Who am I - no one ... and what could I say to make a difference here in the life of these children? '

As soon as I saw the first little girl however, this one here in this picture, my heart sprang wide open and I knew what was important. To tell them to "keep going" and that "education is the most important effort they can make at this time" and remember the "international community does care about them". And so it went on for about 25 children, each of which I spoke to one on one - each individually, to keep encourage them to keep on striving as we keep working in the International Community for the survival of their culture.

With that said, I have included in this blog below an appeal from the Rector of this school. If anyone is interested in this school and would like to assist their Vocational Training programs by offering up the funds for one or two computers (roughly $850/each) please contact me so we can figure out the best way to make that happen. Here are pictures if the school's present Vocational Training program. Although approached with so much zeal and earnest, one may only imagine the limitations of this classroom.

If this porject speaks to your heart out there... Please contact me info@tibetech.org
Please read on

Dear Melanie
This is the Rector from CST Mundgod at Karnataka India. We cherish your visit to our school. Our children loved receiving gifts from you on the Indian Republic Day celebration in our school.

It was very different experience for the kids as you made them feel very special and good with your affections and beaming smile at them.

We treasure those moments. We also enjoyed sharing those brief moments in our Camp no 3 and school. We long to look forward meeting you along the journey of our life.

Melanie, you have seen that not only this school is one of the biggest Tibetan school located in the heart of Tibetan settlement, we are the only school that has vocational studies for the senior students. One of the main shortcoming of the school is the use of Typing instead of computer application course in the school. I wonder if there is way there by which someone can sponsors some computers for our school which will be very useful. I know you will look into this matter as you have seen the condition here.
Good bye ! and best wishes.

Rector Norbu Tsering from Mundgod
Tibetan settlement

Monday, February 12, 2007

Let me clarify

Hi there friends.
Well alot of people have inquired about my astonishment about the conditions at the nunnery and may have a misconception about the relationship with the monasteries and their perceived lack of support by the monasteries. While it is true, I found some of the conditions very disturbing at the nunnery, I think its important to point out a couple of factors - all my own projections of course, when considering how well the nuns do in comparison to the monks.

To being with, the monasteries have been at it alot longer than the nuns... the Gaden Monastery for example has been around since the mid 1400s. With the exception of the Chinese incursion of 1959 where only 50 high lamas survived (the rest were slaughtered) the monastic system had some tried and true mechanisms in caring for a lot of people.

There are 3500 monks in the two colleges of Gaden and while I think they are doing better, I by no means think they are doing well - except in the area of turning out perfected spiritual beings.

Its all very subjective. The monasteries have the benefit of World Tours which raises both funds and awareness of the monastic work and their plight of trying to secure that culture in exile.

People have heard things like the Gaden Monastery has five restaurants... and then ask me why -if the monastery is sporting five restaurants - they do not help the nuns..? It's important to understand the monastery's "restaurants" are really no more then dilapidated buildings with a sort of Noodle enterprise inside, where monks or lay people can have a simple variation from the regular meal served by the monastery. These "restaurants" are by no means our standard of a restaurant... hardly. In fact, watch this blog as I will be soon posting pics of the restaurants.

The nuns of Jangchub Choeling nunnery do not get any exposure that the nunneries in the North of India may get through tourism. This settlement is in a protected area and people don't come here to vacation. So their exposure is minimal, which may contribute to their ranking as the top nunnery in spiritual debate. Still, this isolation limits their resources which is part of our work, to translate their entity into cyberspace and also a new pamphlet for those in the international community wishing to lend their support.

Do I think there is an inequity between the monasteries and the nunneries. Of course. But not by virtue of the action of the monasteries. No, but by virtue of the circumstances of life in exile. I believe the Gaden Monastery supports the nuns in the ways that they can, while trying to keep their own situation in motion. The Gaden Monastery provides teachers to the nunnery and the new Gaden Shartse Hospital which is now open but has no equipment or funding, has been designed to service the entire settlement, including the nuns.

Home Sweet Home & More to Come


For those of you visiting this blog please come back often as I will continue to post our experiences over the next two weeks.

I am so grateful to be home and tomorrow morning I will return to work at Sonic and there is also plenty of work waiting for me as well. It is interesting how scarcity leaked into my head. In truth in my life, there is no lack of anything - and compared to where I came from - I am so thankful to be borne an American.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting specific experiences and project goals. Here now I will return to the experience of teaching at the Gaden Shartse School because for myself, this was the most enriching experiences. The young monks of Gaden Shartse attend this school six days each week with a regimented cirriculum of English, Grammer, math and then Tibetan Grammer.

Here as I mentioned earlier there is a computer room with some old Windows 98 machines but no computer teacher.
Here we installed Math Rabbit and Reader Rabbit much to the delight of all the monks - young and old.
It would cost roughly $1500 for a computer teacher for one year. That is 6 days/week computer training. Only $1500 for such a huge impact on this world.
Computer training would be very valuable to the monks (as well as the nuns) as there are programs which can better further their English, they could wirte to their sponsors using WORD, have some directions on Mavis Beacon Typing Teacher and also be able to perfect their dharma studies as we installed the Tibetan Sambhota keyboard convertor.

As it sits now, the monks go in the computer room in the afternoon and just click away on anything that comes up... they are trying so desperately to understand but they have no knowledge of the computer. Consequently, they read and reread the I/E window that comes. For the one or two that have had some computer experience (say when they go home to visit their families), they help the others on Mavis Beacon Typing teaching. To me, this is like a starving farmer living atop a potatoe field... they have so much zeal for the computer - and natural aptitude. They just need a little help. As soon as I get some time I will begin to look for a grant which may help pay the $1500 for a computer instructor for them:)

Monday, February 05, 2007

More pics


This image is from the Camp #4 Nursery School


Hi everyone. We are in Bangalore now and I am ready to melt down. Yesterday almost the entire city shut down because there are some water disputes between neighboring states. They closed everything down and have told us to stay off the streets.

The monks who drove us here could not drive home because of potential riots and rockthrowing. They came by this morning to make sure our ride was all set from the hotel tonight and they were going to begin the 10 hour drive back. Oi Vay.

Well I hope I can load these pictures... and I hope I can make it home soon:) Love you all!


Here are the young nuns with their new computer & final lesson

Friday, February 02, 2007

Pics hopefully

Jump into the fire

Moments after I posted my last blog while trying to upload some pictures - the connection to the so called broadband crapped out as usual and I then learned that there is no broadband here at all - just a "faster"versin of dial up.

One of the things that happens to me when I get really tired is that fear moves in and in reading my last blog I see I was operating in it… its like when you see an animal get struck by a vehicle… you want to help but in relationship of the enormity of the situation - one can feel so helpless…

Probably the most gratifying of all the experiences here for myself has been working with the little monks in Geshe Sangye's school. The Gaden Shartse School is where all the monks from maybe 3-17 go to school each day from about 7-5pm on top of a heavy regimen of spiritual practices.. The school has a computer room consisting of 12 - 15 computers running Windows 98 and Mavis Beacon Typing Teacher. That is about it - there is no computer teacher so we have been trying to spread our time evenly and where we think we can make the most impact. The nuns have been tasked with doing some tech savvy tasks and tomorrow we will return to check on their progress and turn over the laptop. Even small tasks we take for granted (such as moving one computer to another room) -is huge for the nuns - as in the past they would have to hire someone to do this. So today they should be moving their computers around and in the am we will head back over there to see how they have done and spend one final day of computer tutorial.

The young monks in the school are soooo delighted to do anything on the computer. I am so thankful to Mitzi, Saul and all the drummers for the event as that helped to purchase software such as READER Rabbit & MATH rabbit which absolutely thrills the little monks. Now they have something to facilitate their English while learning to use the computer. Principal Geshe Sangye (from the Gaden Lhope Tour) is also delighted to . There are some older monks also with keen interests so today I will be giving some desktop publishing pointers. If and one has some older (windows 98) children's computer software - David & Susan are coming here on the 11th and they could perhaps bring it with them. Anything used in the elementary situation - alphabets, math, etc.