to india...

Blog entries

July 1, 2006

The blog entries from this trip will be combination of personal tales and professional reflections on all that I've seen and that which I've learned in interacting with the cultures I'm submerged within. I'll bring everyone up to speed briefly and go from there—the images from these adventures can be seen at www.capture-media.com/gallery -- please excuse the crudity of the website, it’s a work in progress! Enjoy!!

I spent a large portion of the month of June in India, working in McLeod Ganj with the Tibetan exile community. My intentions are to document the various aspects of cultural preservation that the Tibetan government in exile has instituted to maintain identity while living in exile and a non-violent stance towards achieving autonomy in Tibet. While I had many preconceived notions and thoughts prior to arrival, many questions have risen regarding the state of exile, the relevance of cultural identity and heritage and the proponents of non-violent action. Many of these questions will be posted here, so feel free to participate in this debate; for other's ideas are more efficient and more exciting than just my own meanderings…

My journey began in Delhi and wow- what an experience. Then I headed into the Himalayan foothills to Dharamshala/McLeod Ganj, the location of the largest Tibetan exile community and the government in exile. I hired a car, against my better judgment, and the journey was quite an experience. While the 12 hour return bus ride was almost as hair-raising, the small size of the car and the ambitious and over-zealous 20 year-old driver were a test of nerves. For those of you who know the type of backseat driver I am, rest assured those habits of mashing the non-existent break on the passenger side floor of the car have ceased to exist. I managed to find a beautiful room, with an amazing view, meet an interesting and very wonderful group of friends from both America and Indian. The Americans I met were also working within the Tibetan community trying to provide the basic necessities and educational opportunities for both exiles and Tibetans living in the TAR (Tibetan Autonomous Region—China). They are passionate about their work and the opportunity to chat, eat good food and trek up into the hills was priceless.

I also met a freelance writer from India and we worked together trying to work our way through the many layers of the Tibetan community. She's also very passionate about her writing and addresses many social issues facing her country and the international community. She also offered me a place to stay in her home in Delhi, an adorable flat which reminds me of the Love Shack on the Outer Banks (those of you who have seen the shack will appreciate this!). She gave me a better taste of Delhi and I now look forward to returning to her city, if only I could get the cab drivers to stop overcharging me!!

While in Mcleod, I had the opportunity to experience so many wonderful things; photographing the Dalai Lama, having dinner cooked by monks while watching World Cup (they have a nicer TV than me!), teaching a monk some English (he associated America with Bush, so each time I had to correct him with "Bush, Bad" —yes-republican friends, I did impose my politics on the monastic community!!) trekking to amazing views and having fresh goat milk chai from a shack underneath the milky way, at 10,000-ish feet while listening to world cup on the radio, sharing a birthday breakfast and dinner with good friends, watching monks debate at the Temple during sunset, walking the Kora at sunrise…..

There were many intense moments as well; as previously mentioned—the journey itself, interviewing recent refugees arriving from Tibet and hearing of their journey and their lives in occupied Tibet, interviewing political prisoners, recent escapees and listening to stories from nuns of being tortured in prison, interviewing a leading political activist in the Tibetan's struggle for freedom, trying to find the media location for my shoot at the Dalai Lama's teachings—realizing that there was no media location as promised—and turning around to see His Holiness walking up the stairs where I was waiting, seeing the reaction to people as they saw His Holiness, photographing the Tibetan children's village and having a 3 year old Tibetan refugee trying to climb up my camera bag (and wiping my lenses with his little fingers) and looking at me with eyes that still tear at my heart—eyes that are asking me where his mother is and eyes that merely said, 'please pick me up, give me attention, and take me to my mother' and many more moments…

I have made the journey to Nepal and have started my internship with http://www.nepalhumanrightsnews.com/ . The Nepalese are refreshingly nice and my host family is so wonderful. I am now apart of the family, though I am close to the same age as the parents. I will be working with both the Tibetan communities and the Nepalese populations and will be covering human rights issues. And there are many here, ten years of conflict with the Maoists have affected the population in various ways and I will be working mainly on children's issues (child soldiering, children orphaned from war, homelessness and disabled children as a result of conflict as well as women's issues) It seems that most of my work will be in Kathmandu and the surrounding areas (so don't worry mom!) and maybe a few trips to the villages. I hope to explore a little as well while here, but there is a lot of work to do! Nepal is now restructuring its government and hopefully will be providing more opportunities for its people, for the country is one of the poorest in the world and at certain moments, teeters on the edges of state failure.

Well, I hope you made it this far! I'll try and update this regularly assuming I can find some fast internet access. Dial up is the norm in Nepal!

If you're still awake, I have posted some Mind Meanderings regarding the issues of an exiled community, the pursual of peace and autonomy through non-violence, the place of cultural identity within the context of modernization and so on. Please read and comment—open the debate. It could be more productive than actually working at your computer—that's no fun, or playing solitaire—Kelly!! And those of you who know me and my politics will understand that some of these have strong political opinions, though not directed at specific institutions or governments, these are merely questions based on my interpretations, nothing more, nothing less…

Thanks for reading and miss you all!! Can't wait to see everyone again!!!

c

Can hope maintain peace?

Is it possible for the Tibetan people to initiate and maintain the last peaceful struggle to achieve autonomy to show that it can be done? And if such a goal is unattainable through non-violence, then is peace throughout the rest of the world merely an unattainable objective? Is mankind, as a whole, unable to accept the spiritual implications and requirements of non-violence? Can man simply not accept that peace is achievable through diplomacy and that profiting off of the deaths of others is not a viable solution to the evolution of mankind? Or does war and peace truly boil down to the pursual of commodities and natural resources coupled with the profiting from military mobilization and the peace-making process? Is war hidden behind the shroud of freedom and democracy for everyone whilst the true motivation for invasion is the commandeering of monetary gain and positions of power?

Historically, states have not bothered to hide the fact that they were invading to commandeer the resources of another. Today, states invade the sovereignty of another in order to retain the natural commodities desired by the aggressor and the intention is hidden beneath liberation and protection from dictatorships and autocratic regimes. This is acceptable to the general public, one can easily digest the notion of spreading the desirable conditions of human existence, opportunity, freedom, and the pursuit of further inalienable rights, but the travesty lies in the easy acceptance of a veiled truths- hidden at times by various avenues of media; a deceit that kills innocents and destroys the cultural strands woven over centuries of time. Are we so blind as to not see the tragedy that our own consumption and desires for material wealth bring to other societies? Or is that consumption merely the end product, or means of modernization and can that consumption help build poorer nations into a status of development that becomes self-sustaining? If that is the case, then are we as a society ready to embrace and accept the means of modernization and development through the spreading of consumption of cheap material goods and when this type of sustenance reaches a capacity breaking point (for truly, there is only so much physical space in this earth for cheap Chinese goods) and the resources needed for such production come at the cost of human lives and cultural heritages, will society accept that violence and war will be used to attain the power and control over such resources?

When does non-violence become as detrimental to a society as violence? Is the slow deterioration of a population who've existed for thousands of years an acceptable bi-product of pacifism or would the direct and indirect harm to non-combatants in a violent conflict situation be an acceptable outcome of a people's struggle to regain freedom, particularly if the autonomy they seek is of a questionable nature in the international community? If so, what constitutes the boundaries of acceptable collateral damage—and can cultural identity and heritage be considered under the definition of collateral damage, or does that merely apply to human lives and the ability to pursue the basic rights of life, such as breathing, shelter and eating? Is cultural identity quantified in the definitions that justify violent action and the situations for which war may be pursued? Or is it merely a secondary element to the harming of non-combatants? Yet, what if that cultural identity is the element which defines the non-combatant, that keeps the population of civilians alive, or is that merely overstating the relevance of cultural identity to a population of people, particularly in the era of modernization and globalization?

Is it better to whither slowly or expedite the demise in attempting to save what no longer exists?

Cultural Preservation vs. Cultural Integration

If the opportunity for true freedom is not attainable is the salvation of a cultural heritage while living in exile enough to satisfy the Tibetan people? Hope is a theme that I keep returning to. Hope, without hope there will be no peace. Does cultural preservation help build and maintain hope? Or should cultural integration be the approach to survival? And if returning to the homeland is no longer an option, do the Tibetan people merely assimilate completely into their host countries, or are the cultural preservation institutions strong enough to sustain a permanent exiled status? Is permanent exile a healthy environment to live within? Or at some point, does the Tibetan population except that a free Tibet is not an option and resign to exist no longer as an autonomous body, but to maintain existence in a cultural and historical perspective. And does that mythico-history of Tibetan culture keep the future generations from finding a new homeland, a new country within which they will no longer feel the desire or need to cling to the exile status?

Does cultural identity truly play such a vital role in the preservation of heritage? Furthermore, is cultural identity relevant in the era of globalization, particularly when that cultural identity prevents certain peoples from advancing into modernization?

Is the mythico-history of the Tibetan culture an element of self-suppression? Or is it the means to maintain and engage the future generations who cling to a mother land they have never seen but yearn to return to? Is there a danger in clinging to such mythico-histories, or does the danger lie in dispelling such stories as merely myth? While in exile, are those mythico-histories the fabric of continuity and the element of hope that the people need to maintain their identity and their heritage?