A couple of months ago I was invited by my colleague, Madam Tashi, to
visit the local temple here in Chamgang which has just started housing novice
monks. She was suggesting that since our school is becoming increasingly well
resourced, perhaps some of our fundraising money could be spent at the local
lhakhang. There are nine boys, all under the age of ten, who have just started
living there.
 |
| Head Teacher, Lama and Young Monks |
I haven't had time to
research and think too carefully about what's involved in placing girls and
boys into monasteries and nunneries at such a young age - it strikes me as
being a little bit young - but sometimes the families can't care well enough
for the children themselves so the practice of placing them into a religious
institution has become very widespread in Bhutan.
 |
| The Lhakhang |
 |
| The Dorm |
As it is a small local monastery, it survives on donations from the local
community and gets no stipend from the central monk body (or so I'm told). As
the monks get older they will be able to perform more and more services and
more money will be given to the monastery in return. At the moment, however,
the monastery is effectively working as a kind of proxy orphanage.
When I went to visit the young
monks looked pretty miserable. I'm not sure exactly why this is, whether it's
because they're young and they miss their families or whether it's because the
head teacher there is super strict with them and beats them for their
misbehaviours and/or inability to learn. Corporal punishment, sadly, is still
very common in both secular and monastic schooling.
We were particularly curious about the plight of one small Indian boy,
"Dorji", who had been brought to Bhutan to be someone's
"babysitter" (read: house slave) but when that family couldn't get
the right papers for him (and presumably his family in India couldn't keep
him??), he was taken to Chamgang's monastery. He cut a pretty forlorn figure as
the smallest of the boys, struggling to learn Dzongkha, uncertain about his
future in Bhutan.
When I asked
the lama what they could most use, he said a hot water system so that they
wouldn't have to keep making fires to heat stones to heat their water for
bathing. He also said a fridge would help them keep vegetables fresh for longer
in summer. I have to admit that the young monks' unhappiness had made me a bit
wary about how much the lama and head teacher were keeping the monks' best
interests at heart but I couldn't be sure so tried to give the benefit of the doubt.
 |
| Lama and Cat |
I was, however, still
a bit suspect on the hot water system idea as I had a feeling that it would
only be used for the lama and head teacher's showers because many people I have
met here are crazy about saving money on electricity bills. However I reckoned
it would take an almost superhuman level of resource mismanagement not to put a
bunch of vegetables into a fridge, for the teachers and the students. I also
suggested that sports equipment and library books could be useful for the
students in their free time on Saturdays and Sundays and might help them to
enjoy themselves a bit, to which he agreed.
Some dear friends in Australia who had generously donated $AUD500 to the school
agreed to have their donation redirected to the goempa and the day after mum
and dad left we finished doing the shopping with the help of our school vice
principal, Madam Tandin: warm jackets for all the monks and two teachers,
badminton rackets and shuttlecocks, footballs and volleyballs, a big stack of
English and Dzongkha books and a brand new fridge in monk-ish maroon.
 |
| Shifting the Fridge |
 |
| Dorji Gets a New Jacket |
The monastery committee insisted on
a nice lunch for us which despite being super tasty, later gave Lucy and I some
momentous food poisoning (ah, the irony). Most of the monks were still looking
pretty unhappy when we went for the formal presentation of these gifts but they
lit up when we busted out the badminton rackets for an impromptu game. They
were also really happy that the book purchases included the comic version of
Bhutan's first animated kid's movie, Ap Bokto, which is a currently a huge hit
here. Perhaps a temporary job, but a job nonetheless.
 |
| Receiving the Stuffs |
 |
| Dorji Gets His Rafa On |
 |
| Havin' a Hit |
 |
| Happy Dorji |
