Tibetan Children's Book Project
Aim: To help preserve Tibetan culture
and history and create learning materials by publishing stories
told by Tibetan elders, before this knowledge is lost to new generations.
The Kangchenjunga School Project (KSP) is a non-profit organization
dedicated to promoting education, health and environmental sustainability
in the Kangchenjunga valley of northeastern Nepal. Since 1989, KSP
has built schools and health clinics, installed drinking water systems,
and implemented health and environmental education programs.
 I first traveled to Nepal with KSP in 1995 to help
install a water system in Folay, a Tibetan refugee village seven
days’ walk from the nearest road, on the way to the base camp
of Mt. Kangchenjunga,the world’s third-highest peak. In 1994,
KSP constructed a school in Folay with funding from the Dalai Lama’s
Tibetan government-in-exile. The Folay School has been able to provide
Tibetan and English language instruction for children in the region.
While the school is supplied with some books written in Nepali and
English, there are very few texts in Tibetan for the children to
study. This project aims to fill that gap with stories the children
will find entertaining, meaningful and educational.
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Cultural
Preservation
As more and more refugees leave Tibet, and as the Chinese government
imports its education system, its ethnic nationals, and its own
version of history into Tibet, traditional Tibetan culture has been
increasingly diluted. As more trekkers and mountaineers wander into
the Kangchenjunga region, its culture is also becoming more westernized.
With these powerful cultural forces pressing in from all sides,
we are afraid that the region’s own culture and history may
become lost in the fray.
 Folay is markedly different from
the Sherpa towns nearby: in Folay, the villagers speak Tibetan,
wear traditional Tibetan clothing, and are in most ways more connected
to the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharmsala than to their Nepali
hosts in Kathmandu. For those who have seen the terrible degradation
of Tibetan culture in Chinese-controlled Tibet, the traditional
culture of Folay seems, in comparison, less affected by both Chinese
and Western influences. Cultural preservation is essential to ensuring
the survival of the Tibetan people, and this project aims to capture
the memories and traditions of the Tibetan refugees in the Kangchenjunga
region.
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Oral Histories
I hold a Masters degree in history and have conducted
a number of oral history projects aimed at preserving the memories
of the past. When I first visited Folay in 1995 and met the village’s
elders, I realized how important it was to capture the oral traditions
of Tibet’s refugees before these stories are lost to new generations.
 In
the Spring of 1999, I received a grant to return to Folay and interview
residents who had crossed over the Himalayas to Nepal in the years
after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. With the help of Gonpo Tseten,
the Folay School’s headmaster and English teacher, I interviewed
the people of Folay about their lives in Tibet before the coming
of the Chinese. Gonpo and I walked from home to home throughout
the village, sitting by the open fireplace that occupies the center
of every Tibetan house, drinking reams of yak butter tea, and asking
the villagers about their experiences under Chinese rule, about
their crossing from Tibet into Nepal, and about their lives now.
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Children’s
Stories
The stories the Folay elders told me ranged from the mundane to
the dramatic – from a painstaking accounting of every family
yak to heartrending stories of fear and frostbite and hunger and
homelessness, sad reminiscences about parents and children left
behind in Tibet, hilarious tales of Ah-Gu Tenpa, the Tibetan trickster
who makes fools of friends and enemies alike, and a moving tale
of the escape of a young monk over the pass into Nepal.
From these stories, I created four children’s books:
- Two illustrated collections of children’s stories recorded
during the oral history project
- An illustrated story about the Chukdu Rimpoche, a young monk
who escaped to Nepal with his uncle and aunt after experiencing
great persecution in Tibet.
- A history of the town and its residents, with stories of their
escapes from Tibet and the founding of the town, which is steeped
in mythology.
Two of the books have been produced and are awaiting distribution
in Kathmandu. We plan to distribute them to Tibetan schools across
Nepal and India. Two other books are in production. The books are
printed in Tibetan, with English on the facing page. We hope to
distribute them in 2004.
Look for future project updates on this Web page. If you are interested
in learning more about the project, feel free to drop me an email.
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To learn more about the Kangchenjunga School Project,
visit: www.kangchenjunga.org
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