Corner View ::: School ::: in Ladakh

After summer break I never really landed in blogland. Also Corner View's first topic "school" cried for skipping.
I'm a teacher and the German school politic is so crazy, I'm not very eager to talk school nowadays. From this summer in Hamburg elementary schools classes on craft, wood, sewing are almost cancelled and on art very reduced. And this is just a minor (though not in my eyes) crazyness.

Thanks to Ian from An Englishman Abroad memories came back to my most exciting teaching experience.

While spending time in the Himalaya in 2004 a friend of mine introduced me to Dr. Tsering Palmo and her Ladakh Nun Association.

Ladakh is the most northern region of the huge state of India. Most parts have the Hindi religion. Ladakh on the other hand is characterized by the Tibetean Buddhism.
The small city of Leh is the capital.

Traditionally most of Ladakhs familiys (and Tibetean at least in former times) send at least one boy to a monastery (called "gompa") to become a monk and get educated. The girls stay home, not being able to read or write and so on.

Dr. Pelmo seeks educations for the girls as well and their chance to study and practice the Dharma (Buddhist wisdom).
She also undertakes the labor of spreading information about health and so on in the tiny villages all over the vast country. Often those villages are hard to reach, only by foot with a duration of days.

During my revisit in 2005 Dr. Pelmo informed me that those were the weeks where she gathered young nuns from those villages. They get English lessons by a native speaker Lady, intense Dharma studies and more.

Dr. Pelmo asked me if I could help out somehow, not knowing that I'm a teacher.
So I offered what I can and organized 3 afternoons of paper craft. My purpose was giving fun to the girls and women and more important, enable them to teach this to the children of kindergarden age in their villages. Because this is what they will be doing.

Folding boxes, hats and ships is not one of the skills to survive, but for sure it lays traces in the brain for further education in all senses.

For teaching I needed all my senses. English was the common language, but not spoken by all.
The candle was not for a cozy atmosphere (with paper around!) but electricity was broken, as it happened every day for some minutes or hours.

Complete concentration.

My adventure was to get the supplies. There is no MacPaper.
This color orgy of pink and yellow for sure was not my fav choice but you use what you get.

The young women mostly enjoyed working the ships. In the middle of the desert part of the Himalaya. I told them storys of Hamburg and the harbour.
Cultur exchange :-)
Proudly the wrote their own name and the name of their villages on the flags.

For the lotus blossoms I got napkins from my daily restaurant. Your eyes might be big by now.
German chocolate Leh! That was the treat for the last day.

With a lot of labor and a lot of love the home of Leh's nuns gets nicer each year (picture from 2005).

Leh is situated some hundreds of meters higher. Down I rode my bicycle. Up I got a lift with the 'school bus', that took the nuns to the Temple for religious studys. The boy just put my bike on the roof.

:::As always money is always appreciated.
If you want to offer something, feel free to follow the first link to Dr. Pelmos page or go to this Dutch site, also in English and German. :::

Little kitten also enjoying the class :-)

Thanks for reading the long post and following me to a very special place on this beautiful earth.



Jane is turning over the hosting of Corner View to other participants. Go to her post for further information.