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Assistance: Would like to volunteer your skills or time to help with this project, or provide some funds toward the publication of the books?
In 1995, the Kangchenjunga School Project constructed a school in Folay, the Tibetan refugee village on the main trekking trail to Kangchenjunga base camp. With funding from the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan government-in-exile and their Nepali funding arm, the Snow Lion Foundation, 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, however, 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
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 is becoming increasingly diluted. As more trekkers and mountaineers wander into the Kanchenjunga region, its culture is also becoming increasingly westernized. With these powerful cultural forces pressing in on Kangchenjunga from all sides, we are afraid that the region’s own culture and history may become lost in the fray. The goal of all of the Kanchenjunga School Project’s programs has been to help the people of the Kangchenjunga region to work to preserve their culture in a sustainable manner.
Folay is markedly different from the Sherpa towns nearby: in Folay, they 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, Folay seems, in comparison, better-preserved, more Tibetan, less affected by both
Chinese and Western influences. We believe that 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.
Oral Histories
In April 1999 a K.S.P. volunteer traveled to Folay to interview residents who had crossed over the Himalayas to Nepal in the years after the Chinese invasion of Tibet. The objective was to take an oral history as a way of preserving Folay’s Tibetan culture.
With the help of Gonpo Tseten, the Folay School’s headmaster and English teacher, Hannah Nordhaus – a writer who had conducted two large oral history projects for her M.A. degree in history – interviewed the people of Folay about their lives in Tibet before the coming of the Chinese. They went from home to home throughout the village, 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. She also recorded a number of children’s stories, including Tibetan folk tales and local mythology.
Transcription and Publication
The stories recorded during the course of documenting the oral histories ranged from the mundane to the dramatic – from a painstaking account of every yak every owned, to heartrending stories about parents and children left behind in Tibet, to a moving tale of the escape of a young Rimpoche over the pass into Nepal.
In December 1999, Bhuchung Sherap, the headmaster of the Namgyal Middle School in Kathmandu, finished the first round of translations. We are now seeking further funding to publish some of the stories.
We hope to produce three children’s books:
Would like to volunteer your skills or time to help with this project,
or provide some funds toward the publication of the books?
| Home | Current Projects: - Overview : Lelep - Health - Fridges - History - Education | Past Projects | |
