Week 10: Familiar faces

12/07/09

At the beginning of this week the UWC group returned from their 10 day Markha Valley trek and went off on their homestays with their Lamdon student hosts. We saw a few of them at school and asked them how the trek was. The answer from most of them was “tiring!” but I reckon they all enjoyed it nonetheless. The teachers did their ‘homestay’ at Mr. Tundup’s guesthouse so we had a good time catching up with them about UWC and Singapore. On Wednesday we went to dinner with them and some of Bill’s sherpa staff in town. We went to a really good Tibetan restaurant called Tibetan Kitchen and ate momo’s (of course), thukpa and lots of paneer. Penny Jackson, who I’d heard of through being part of Himalayan GC at school, was also around as she’d been helping out on the UWC trek and is staying in Ladakh for a bit to help Bill with the medical camp in Nubra next week. He has arranged for nine dentists, an eye doctor, a women’s health doctor and a number of general practitioners to come to Ladakh for a week to run a medical clinic at the Lamdon School in Diskit, Nubra, for the students and the general public in the area. The team and Bill have also gathered a huge amount of medical donations and necessary equipment which they’re going to bring over to Nubra with them.

At the school we had a really fun class on Monday with the younger girls. A while ago Tom and I bought a small book of Tibetan folk tales. We brought this to class with us and read out the beginning of one of the stories about three beautiful daughters who couldn’t find the right men to marry. They weren’t allowed out of their house except one day they begged their parents to go to a big festival happening in the town. The students then had to get together in groups and think of how the rest of the story would go and then act it out in front of their friends. This worked really well because they didn’t have to spend so much time thinking of how to start which usually takes a long time. One of the groups’ stories had the daughters get attacked by three bad men at the festival. Then three good men came and rescued them. Inevitably the sisters got married to the good men in the end and they all lived happily ever after.

As Jason has now gone back to the U.S. Yueng Chen asked us if we’d like to come and stay with her. Although it has been great staying with Mr. Tundup and his family, we thought it would be really nice to stay with Yeung Chen who is such great company. It would also mean staying in a proper house as opposed to a guest house and it’s also just up the road from the school which is very convenient. So we moved in with her on Friday morning and immediately made friends with her 7 year old nephew Smanla who is very easily entertained by making and destroying card houses and playing ‘catch’. Smanla’s parents live a couple of hours away from Leh but he lives with Yeung Chen so he can go to Lamdon School. Yang Dol, who came to Nubra with us the first time, is also still at home on break from university in Jammu.

The Lamdon School exams start next week so unfortunately we’ll have nothing at all to do in Leh. Therefore, when Yueng Chen asked us if we’d like to come to Nubra with her (she has been asked to go along to help the medical team) we were more than happy to do so. We’re not sure what we’ll do but Yueng Chen said there might be a possibility of us helping out with the medical camp which would be great. So we got Bill’s permission to tag along and set off with Yueng Chen in a jeep on Saturday morning up and over the Khardung La again and down into the beautiful Nubra Valley.

Yueng Chen had to go to straight to Diskit to bring the exam papers to the school but as the other people in the jeep were going on to Hundar we decided we might as well spend the night there as we really liked it the last time we visited. Hundar is apparently the oldest village in Nubra and was once well known for it’s production of iron from the surrounding mountains. To get there you also have to pass the sand dunes alongside the river. Apparently the sand dunes form there because when the river level drops the fine sand along the banks dries out and is blown through the valley; the part of the valley where the sand dunes are found is the widest part of the valley and therefore has the less wind energy so much of the sand gets dropped there. Although I’ve found out a little more about the valley since being here the last time I still wish I could come with a geologist or a guide to tell me more about this incredible valley!

Week 9: Joss’s loss of wisdom

05/07/09

This week all the students started serious preparation for the upcoming exams. Although it’s great that they all have such a good work ethic we unfortunately found ourselves with no older students to teach because they were too busy for extra classes. This means we have temporarily stopped work at the boys’ hostel all together but we have some work to do at the girls’ hostel. For the next few weeks we are going to be teaching the class 6 students who are typically around 12 or 13 years old. We have had to change the structure of our classes a little because some activities are a little too demanding for our new students. For example having hour-long debates is out of the question. Instead we have been focusing on dramas and games that encourage the students to practice their spoken English.

Joss also had three of her wisdom teeth taken out by Jason and Yeung Chen this week and is just about getting over the discomfort. For someone who has a fear of needles Joss did really well with the anaesthetic injections and the extractions. I think she found it easier having a friend remove her teeth because she was really calm throughout. I even got to play a vital role (haha) in the whole thing because the electricity went out just after the injections so I had to operate a very complex piece of equipment to keep the suction going - a foot pump.

After Joss had her teeth out she felt pretty woozy so she went home and I had to take one class of about 35 grade 6 students. The class went quite well although the younger students aren’t so shy around me anymore so they don’t mind getting quite hyper when they are doing fun activities. Sods law would have it that on the day I was teaching on my own the use of the study hall would be disputed. When the girls had just settled down and started performing their dramas about 20 older students burst into the room, didn’t realize I was there and promptly ordered the younger students out. This sparked a spirited argument that lasted about 5 minutes and eventually the older students realized the younger students weren’t just playing around and agreed to share the hall for the last 15 minutes of our class. Unfortunately after all the excitement it took a while to get back down to work! All in all it was a tiring class!

This week was also the famous Hemis festival which meant that, aside from my tiring class and sports on Saturday and a time slot that the boys were busy studying in on Tuesday, there was no school for most of this week. Mr. Tundup told us ahead of time that the reason for going to the Hemis festival, the masked dancing, is made somewhat redundant by the fact that it is always so unbelievably crowded that you probably won’t even catch a glimpse of the dance itself. Bearing this in mind we accompanied Jason, Yeung Chen, Yang Dol and Smanla (Yueng Chen’s nephew) to a masked dance in Choglamsar which was basically the same dance as in Hemis but with a much lower attendance. We really enjoyed the masked dancing and traditional music that went with it although we didn’t stay to watch the whole performance because it was such an incredibly hot day.

We were sad to say goodbye to Jason this week as he flew back to Alaska a few days after the masked dancing. We have really enjoyed his company over the last few weeks and it’s a shame he had to go so soon.

Tom Kemeny