Nomad school in Tongren, China

Up here in Tongren, a small grimy lost township near Xining in the feet of the Tibetan Himalayas, with some heavy industrial work seeming to animate the area but still permeated by mud huts and communal brick living quarters, the scene is very different. The people are physically in contrast to those on the East coast of China, rugged and tanned, and were you to tell me that they originated from villages in the Bolivian mountains or elsewhere in Latin America, I would have believed it. It is strange how different peoples around the world can resemble each other in this way, a thought that struck me again today when we went to go visit a nomad school in the wilderness, 3800m above sea level. Getting here was already a task in and of itself - a four hour flight from Shanghai, a three hour drive up to Tongren and then another four hour drive deep into the Himalayan precipices. The mannerisms of the children we met, altering shyness with vivacity and outbursts of spontaneous interaction, reminded me a lot of the children we worked with in Mumbai and in the north of Argentina. Me and my friend questioned this ‘common humanity’, and discussed about whether people are born as clean slates, tabula rasa, or inherently in a certain way. However, that is a subject aside. I just found it funny that my interactions and personal emotions evoked when we met the school children was so similar to those I had had in those previous times- a certain shyness, a feeling of intimidation and a bit of overwhelmed-ness, in a situation where really there is no logical reason to be shy around a group of children. It’s just a case of numbers perhaps, and here especially of not being able to communicate (that is something that I am actually enjoying much less here in Tibet- the total inability and utter incapacity to even get across the most basic of phrases).

Our arrival at the school

Curiosity, confusion, apprehension, shy smiles...

We rounded the corner with the car and were suddenly greeted by two hundred children lined up on the muddy road, chanting out incomprehensible words and placing scarf after scarf over our necks, subsequently following us into the school, a maze of heads bopping and staring behind us.



Finally warming up to us

A smile though is indeed a common language and today I felt my heart warmed so many times by a genuine smile and look shared with one of the children, a meeting of energy across a sea of people and a moment shared. I wonder how they would have seen me, imagining myself through their eyes, what they could possibly think about this tall alien yellow haired creature who walked into their school for a few hours, handed them out apples and noodles, and left.

Tibetan nomad girls

Lining up for lunch hour

It was inconceivable how isolated the children were, almost three hours from the closest town, Tongren, and that town itself being two hours from the airport. The road getting there was trial to be reckoned with in itself, and I found myself gripping the door handle and watching in disbelief as the driver, with deftly practiced agility, skillfully navigated a maze of stony bogged down potholes and sheer precipices at a breakneck speed. Just contemplating having to navigate these roads every time you would want to go anywhere - even to get food, how do you do it? – is unfathomable. You are truly, completely isolated if not by socio-economic status but by geography alone.

Good luck navigating these roads

The view from the drive up to the nomad school

The landscape appeared so barren, so hostile, totally inhospitable, so that when passing huddles of nomad tents erected on top of scraggy stone foundations, you cannot help but struggle to realize that these people who are living a life so completely different to yours are humans just like yourself. Sometimes I get the impression that in such moments,  it is as if we see snapshots of how other people live but from a very distanced platform. On a side note, I think that this is also why I appreciate nature so much, because it something you can partake in irrespective of any other factors, and it is an interaction that is truly personal and lived internally- you do not need to show a person an emotion, struggle to get your words across, or feel self-conscious about how you are acting, when you are in nature. It is something that is just perfectly there, in the moment and without distraction.

A final cautious peep