My host family in Mcleod Ganj

My Tibetan home stay family is fabulous. My mom (Ama La) is cute as can be: she speaks great English but cannot read or write; she learned entirely from hosting students over the years. My dad (Pa La) is older and speaks no English. He just paces or sits there cutely with his prayer beads. He is chubby with a big, round Tibetan face, small, friendly eyes and life-well-lived wrinkles. He has short, white stubble on his head and face and a pouted, contented expression. I cannot exchange a word with him, but I love him anyway! Ama La came here when she was five so she has been here most of her life, but her husband did not escape to India in exile until he was 19 (I wish I could ask him more about it!) There are some pretty harrowing stories of escapes out of Tibet; in the Conversational English classes, one of the students said he trekked through Tibet's snowy mountains for 21 days in hiding to make it over the Nepalese border before coming to Mcleod Ganj. This story is not an anomaly; this is the norm, I have learned.

My parents have six grown children all living away from home: among them a monk, a doctor, and a son studying in England right now on one of two scholarships given to Tibetan students jointly from the English and Tibetan governments. They are such proud parents! Their house seems very, very nice. I imagine that their children take very good care of them. It is cement with real glass windows, painted walls, and even wood-patterned sticky focus paper on the floor. They have a mini wooden elk head on the wall (which cracks me up) and a bathroom with tile floors, a western toilet, a mirror, even a shelf with a variety of toiletries! They have toilet paper, for Christ's sake! I assure you, this is well off. They have a shiny Trinton Sony tv that is at least 16"x20" that they sit and watch world news on constantly. I have realized that the tv is the center of life of many of our Tibetan host families, and with good reason. For the past half century, these poor people have been clinging onto hope, waiting for help. What a way to live—constantly waiting, in an in-between state. They have their own local Tibetan station with constant information on the Dali Lama and the latest influx of refugees (roughly 6,000 exiles leave Tibet each year, and today Tibetans are outnumbered by Chinese on their own land.) Within ten minutes of talking, my host mom and I were already commemorating and congratulating each other on Obama's win. For them, it is seen as one more small window of hope that the world will become better! It is quite disheartening that these people must pay such close attention to what is happening around the world now when only sixty years ago they were living literally in the dark ages in the Tibet plateaus with no electricity, real roads, or even the use of the wheel. They went from complete seclusion to full emersion; what would world issues have interested them?! I hate politics-->I wish that I could sleep at night and ignore them altogether. But since my country's decisions and my culture so profoundly affect the entire world, I am obliged to care. The Tibetans, though, did not affect anyone.