Buddhist monk shares plight of Sikkimese children
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POLSON — Several almost-new pencils left on the floor in a Hamilton school made Lama Paljor want to gather them and take them back to his country.
School supplies are scarce and prized in Sikkim, the Himalayan country where Lama Paljor and his brothers grew up, and even short pencils are used until there is nothing left.
Lama Paljor laughed and smiled while describing life in his home village of Zuluk, elevation 9,400 feet. It’s home to about 600 people, who migrated from Tibet and Nepal over the Himalayas for religious freedom and the promise of a better life. They survive by working on the road and doing tasks for soldiers in an army camp on the Tibet-Sikkim-Bhutan border. It’s a struggle for people to get enough to eat and wood to warm their small homes. Most of the homes have no glass windows, just tin sheets; and the people weigh their roofs down with rocks to keep the tin from blowing away during storms.
Since the Zuluk people are refugees, they are not citizens of Sikkim and get no services. The only way out of poverty is education, Lama Paljor said.
The nearest school for Zuluk children is in Padamchen, 10 kilometers from Zuluk. The road, however, makes the Going-to-the-Sun-Road in Glacier Park look like a long, straight interstate, according to Winter, one of the Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation staffers.
Many children were not attending school because of the road and the long trek, so Lama Paljor organized an educational hostel in Padamchen where 50 boys and girls eat, sleep and study.
Lama Paljor and Valerie Hellermann, Project Manager of the TCEF, stopped in Polson on a fundraising trip to Helena, Seattle, Wash., Billings, Portland, Ore., and Kalispell.
The pair gives lectures, and sometimes Lama Paljor creates butter sculptures to inform and educate his audience. The pieces he created in Polson took him about three hours.
In Sikkim, the monks use yak butter to craft the sacred art pieces. Due to a shortage of yak butter in the United States, Lama Paljor uses Crisco and 10 percent paraffin in warm climates. In Montana he can use just Crisco, he noted. Kneading in different colors, Lama Paljor sculpts the pieces by hand — flower petals, animals, human figures, swans, snakes — for use on a shrine or in a home. The fragile pieces easily last for a year, Lama Paljor said. In the monastery, they have five sculptures, and they make a new piece for each New Year.
TCEF and Lama Paljor were raising funds for not only the Zuluk project, but also the Good Star Academy, a boarding school for 115 children, and the Tibetan Grandparents program. School books and supplies are needed, as well as computers and a big generator to power them so students can connect with the modern world. Also on the list is a solar hot water heater for the Good Star Academy and sinks.
TCEF will be teaching the people to make soap for their own use and to sell. TCEF also takes interested Americans on service trips. Last year the villagers got sewing machines, one of which was a treadle machine that needed assembly, so they’ll be making quilts. Hellermann said TCEF also plans to buy some tools and set up a woodworking shop this year.
The service workers will also be “school nurses” this year, testing eyes and hearing and completing medical records for students.
Most of the money raised is in the form of sponsorships for children for $45 per month, which pays for school, food and uniforms, and $30 sponsorships for grandparents, many of whom are refugees and left their families behind in Tibet. “We always accept donations,” Hellermann said.
For more information, contact TCEF at 406 443-6078 or www.tibetanchildrenseducation.org
