Quick Links
Categories
Archives
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Total entries in this category: 51
Published On: Mar 07, 2006 03:02 PM
Getting an Education
I started out the day pushing 500 pounds of water
uphill on a crude wooden cart.
We are scraping newspapers off the walls of the
teachers' rooms at the Bomei elementary school. The paper is used to stop wind
from blowing through the cracks in the log walls. We use water to soften the
paper and dissolve the glue. After the walls are clean, we will putty up the
cracks and paint the walls a bright, shiny
white.
The day before, I liberally doused the walls with water, using more to make the scraping easier. I never thought about how it got to the school, which has no running water, and which is about 1/4 mile from the nearest stream. Today I found out.
The water cart looks like something Fred Flintstone would use. A few logs bound together with wire, sitting on a metal axle with two heavy spoked wheels. We rolled it downhill to the stream and filled the 55 gallon drum by siphoning in water with a hose. And then we had to push it back up to the school.
There were three of us on the job: me, another Kham Aid volunteer, and a local Tibetan man, the only one who knew what he was doing. He must have been cursing his bad luck to be stuck with us instead of a few of the elementary school students, who would have been much more useful.
Pushing 500 pounds of water and cart uphill would be hard under any circumstances; at 10,000 feet, it is torturous. Less than halfway up the hill I was ready to collapse and had to sit down, panting for breath.
After resting, and making my way back to the school, I thought about what it would be like to be a school child here. A good education carries with it the promise of a better life. If I was seeing my neighbors, or my mother and father, struggling every day hauling water, or chopping wood, or pounding mud into building walls, using tools only one step removed from found objects, I decided I would be studying really, really, hard.
The day before, I liberally doused the walls with water, using more to make the scraping easier. I never thought about how it got to the school, which has no running water, and which is about 1/4 mile from the nearest stream. Today I found out.
The water cart looks like something Fred Flintstone would use. A few logs bound together with wire, sitting on a metal axle with two heavy spoked wheels. We rolled it downhill to the stream and filled the 55 gallon drum by siphoning in water with a hose. And then we had to push it back up to the school.
There were three of us on the job: me, another Kham Aid volunteer, and a local Tibetan man, the only one who knew what he was doing. He must have been cursing his bad luck to be stuck with us instead of a few of the elementary school students, who would have been much more useful.
Pushing 500 pounds of water and cart uphill would be hard under any circumstances; at 10,000 feet, it is torturous. Less than halfway up the hill I was ready to collapse and had to sit down, panting for breath.
After resting, and making my way back to the school, I thought about what it would be like to be a school child here. A good education carries with it the promise of a better life. If I was seeing my neighbors, or my mother and father, struggling every day hauling water, or chopping wood, or pounding mud into building walls, using tools only one step removed from found objects, I decided I would be studying really, really, hard.
Posted: Wed - October 1, 2003 at 05:54 AM