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by Ozzy-Dave
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
September 9, 2003
SOS Children’s Villages was founded in 1968 by an Austrian man, Hermann Gmeiner, to improve social infrastructure and facilities in needy areas and to realise his dream: that one day all the world’s children would have a home.
We visited two villages in Nepal: one in Sanothimi, near Bhaktapur in the Kathmandu Valley, and this one in Pokhara. It was an emotional experience, one best left to a simple extract from our diary.
A Diary Extract ...
Today we visited Pokhara’s SOS Tibetan children’s village with our two new friends – Michael from the guesthouse and Yhamo, a lovely Tibetan woman we met in town. Apparently, it’s Nepal’s only vocation centre, where students learn computing, secretarial skills, carpentry, even construction of solar panels and water storage tanks for rural villages and refugee camps. I wished we could stay and learn, too.
There are a dozen houses where the orphans live, and schools for kindergarten and primary levels. The high school is two kilometres down the road, but plans are in place to resite the facilities here.
At the orphanage, we are guided by Dolma, the English teacher’s wife, and we’re ushered into the administration office where we’re offered tea (not that yak butter Tibetan stuff, thank goodness).
Dolma grew up in a Tibetan refugee camp in India, where she was educated at a Catholic school. Her sister’s fate led her to a Red Cross camp where she met and married her Swiss husband, and Dolma is now arranging for her eldest daughter to be adopted by his sister so she can relocate to Switzerland and have the benefit of a Swiss passport and education.
Dolma’s mother carried her out of Tibet during the invasion of the Chinese when she was two years old. For weeks, they walked across the mountains at night, hiding from the Chinese during the day until they arrived in Bhutan. Talking about it still clearly revives memories better forgotten.
She says that Chinese aircraft would scour known routes in the daylight, shooting at the travellers. Many died on the way; many more lost fingers and toes to frostbite. Her eyes glaze over and she appears to slip into a melancholy reverie as she talks, her voice declining to little more than a whisper.
Dolma is 44, the same age as Karen. Same planet, but a way different world. I can’t believe people can treat each other so badly, and we’re both consumed by honest and raw emotion. I can see it in Karen’s eyes.
The children here are obviously loved and happy. Pictures of the Dalai Lama and pop stars litter the walls. Colourful spreads cover the beds. Dolma says that because of the interest in Tibet now, the children have benefited by generous donations from the West.
It’s places like this that restore a dangerously eroded perspective that poisons me.
From journal Reach for the sky in Pokhara