Pay Ya Po Due!

Pay yaya pop due! De yap po due! All means Very good! Everything is doing very good herein upper Dharamsala, where Danny, Bree and I have been making small inroads towards trying to do what we can to help the Tibetan Refugee community here.
Today we visited a sewing factory (really a large room with about 6 sewing machines in use) run by Tibetan ex-political prisoners called Lung Tu. This cooperative is just what I had in mind in thinking of something similar to do in Nepal. The women who work here design and stitch the most beautiful bags and other products, mostly from silk. We went through their stock to pick out a few item to bring home-we'd love to help support them by selling their wares.
We also ran into a friend of Danny and Bree's from Naropa! She has been in India for a long time-many months-and Nepal too, doing volunteer work. Like others, she has found a niche where she thinks she can do some good-working with trafficked girls who have been rescued from brothels. She has hit on an idea of making Buddhist malas with them and selling them under the name "Butterfly Malas" in the U.S. Like us, she is hoping to use the money to help support the girls through educating them. We talked for a long time over dinner tonight about her ideas and ours-it's refreshing to be among people like this.
We have met a new Tibetan friend, I'm not sure how to spell his name, but it sounds like "Galick". He is in his twenties, or maybe early thirties, and very enthusiastic about helping the Tibetan youth in this community to retain something of their culture and heritage through helping them perform Tibetan song and dance. We helped him recently promote his Tibetan cultural dance and music show by helping to distribute flyers to tourists and then sold tickets at the gate (literally the gate to the Tibetan Children's Village) where the show was held. As Galick began to lose his voice after working hard all week to promote this worthy show, he asked me to help him introduce the groups and say a few words about how important it was to support Tibetan culture. I felt honored to help in anyway I could, but also a little off guard about what to say-in a hoarse whisper he asked me to just speak from my heart about the Tibetan Refugee community, the youth and how music and dance were both important parts of Tibetans retaining their sense of identity. Since last year, when Danny was "stuck" in India while waiting out political conflicts in Kathmandu, he observed the often frustrated Tibetan youth who, without country or citizenship, often felt despondent and frustrated about their future. He began to wish there was a way to match up a Tibetan "youth" with a USA college student to exchange cultural ways and knowledge and offer any skills and in general moral support for the Tibetans. Fast-forward to this year, and we were finding ourselves doing pretty much what we had been trying to do-support Tibetan youth and culture through helping them put on dance and song shows! So there I was, on stage with Galick, a microphone in hand and telling the audience of about 100 people that they in turn were doing a wonderful thing by buying a ticket and being there to see unique Tibetan dancing and song.
It was a wonderful night! The Tibetan kids did a wonderful job of creating and dancing traditional and some more modern numbers, their costumes colorful and decked out with fake snow leopard skin and shiny embroidery. There was singing and some solo numbers-and in between acts a lad from London with a drum and didgeridoo (sp?) entertained the crowd with his own type of cultural performance-blond dreadlocks knotted on top of his head and blue eyes bright with Indian spiritualism. It had been a long day of walking, walking walking...one walks everywhere in India towns, and we were exhausted by the evening's end. Walking back to our guest house, we side-stepped the old men rolling up their veggy stands, and carefully walked around trash that the cows hadn't eaten yet. Off in the distance, an amazing band of trumpets and drums played, and this went on long into the night. We found out today it was a Hindu wedding, it's hard to describe the music and singing that went on all night long, resonating off the mountain walls here in McLo.
I am off to bed-it's been another long day of walking, walking, walking and we had our Tibetan lessons today as well as the tutoring we do. For now, I'll say goodnight to all and many, many Namastes! And of course-Save Tibet!