Kham Aid Foundation Books for Schools Program

Delivery Team Report

April 29, 1999
by Pamela Logan

Dear Friends of the Kham Aid Foundation,

I'm in Chengdu, getting ready to take a field team to Dege next week. Yesterday I met with Tsering Tashi, who was responsible for delivering the books provided by our Books for Schools program. This program was paid for by a grant from the Pforzheimer Foundation in New York, and we think it's made a huge difference for a lot of Tibetan kids, who do not have access to a variety of literature in their own language. The program director is Badeng Nima, who is the first Tibetan to earn a doctorate in education.

Badeng Nima selected a list of 32 individual titles plus four series, which we then purchased in quantity. The books were all published inside the PRC, by various nationality publishing houses such as the Sichuan Nationality Publishing House. The books are all in the Tibetan language, and include story books, reference books such as dictionaries and copybooks, and nonfiction works on various aspects of Tibetan culture, e.g. traditional medicine.

The books were shipped to Chengdu, to Tashi Tsering's apartment, then to Kangding, where they were repackaged into sets. Then Tashi Tsering and his friend Yeshi Dendrup hired a truck to take them to the far corners of Ganzi Prefecture, delivering the books to remote primary schools. Some secondary schools in the county towns also received books, as did the Tibetan College in Kangding. Most of the schools are government-operated, but some are privately funded. The total number of schools was 85, with a combined enrollment of about 10,000 kids.

What I want to tell you about is the experiences of the delivery team, which were told to me yesterday in a tea house by the Min River in Chengdu.

The pair spent 20 days on the northern road, between Kangding and Dege. During this period, Tsering phoned his home from Serxu and learned that his father was gravely ill. By the time they got back to Kangding, his father had died, and Tsering had to go home to help his family. So Yeshi carried on by himself, completing the deliveries on the south road, between Kangding and Batang. Altogether it took a month to deliver the books.

The most remote place they visited was an encampment at 4900 meters above sea level. The people here are herdsmen, and live in yak hair tents for the most part. The government erected a school house, but then they could not find any teachers willing to go to this remote place. So the people were without a school for some years until a local man who could read and write decided to step in and teach the children. He has more than 50 students, ranging in age from 7 to 16. Because the teacher is not a government certified one, the local education bureau was ignoring this school, and sent no books or equipment. The school was very, very happy to receive two sets of Kham Aid Foundation books!

Later Tsering Tashi reported the condition of this school to the authorities, and persuaded them to send 3000 yuan (about $380) to the teacher as a one-time compensation for his work.

Near this encampment is a monastery whose chief rinpoche (incarnate lama) happens to be a friend of Tsering. Tsering saw how rich the monastery is, and how poor the local people are. "They give their wealth to the monastery," he told me. "They are so poor they even eat fish!" (Tibetans normally eschew fish for a variety of religious reasons). Later he spoke to the rinpoche and got him to promise to start a school at the monastery. The rinpoche said he will offer classes to boys and girls in medicine, handicrafts, and Tibetan language.

At one point, Tsering Tashi and Yeshi Dendrup were meeting with some county authorities , and the officials tried to dissuade them from going to a remote village. "The elevation is too high," they said. "It's bad for your health." Tsering replied, "I am Tibetan!" The officials said, "You are? With your pale skin we thought you were Chinese. Where are you from?" Tsering said, Songpan." This is in the Amdo region, where the dialect is so different as to be practically useless in Ganzi. Tsering's skin is pale because he works in an office, and doesn't get much sun. I find it interesting that sometimes Tibetans cannot recognize each other by racial characteristics. Needless to say, Tsering and Yeshi prevailed, and successfully made their delivery.

Tsering told me, "When I went to the chiefs of the county education bureaus and said I was bringing books, they weren't very interested. They are looking for cash! But when I took the books to the schools, they were very excited, very grateful. They said, 'thank you so very much!'"

We pretty much cleaned out all the publishing houses of Tibetan books suitable for children, and there was some money left over so Badeng Nima proposed to translate a science book for children into Tibetan, and print it. There are no existing children's science books in Tibetan, and science as hugely important for development, so we felt that a science book would have the greatest impact on Tibetan children's futures.

Badeng Nima selected a four-volume series called "Children's Fun Science." The books explain with words and pictures a great many things about ordinary life, such as how a lightbulb works. After organizing the program, Badeng Nima left China for a one-year stay in Norway and the U.K., so he handed over responsibility for the translation effort to Tsering Tashi, the same guy who masterminded delivery of the books.

The first task was to translate the book from Chinese to Tibetan. Four professional translators were recruited to do this. One of them, a 70-year-old man named Denden with 40 years' experience, came out of retirement to help with this project. They were all volunteers. They worked closely together to ensure consistent usage of scientific terms used in the books. The translation took 43 days.

You might think that publishing and printing a book would be a straightforward matter, but in China nothing is straightforward. The first consideration was the copyright. There is a regulation in China that works translated from Chinese to minority languages do not have to pay a copyright fee to the original author; however the rule does not cover illustrations, and these books are heavily illustrated. So Tsering had to negotiate rights for the illustrations, with the result that some of the original drawings will be used, and some will have to be redrawn.

Next Tsering had to negotiate with the Sichuan Nationality Publishing House, (which is where he works) for typesetting and publishing the book, getting a proper ISBN number for it, etc. Normally the house charges 6,000 yuan per volume, which would have been prohibitively expensive. However he argued that we are not trying to make money from this effort; the books will be given away, and was able to get them down to 8,000 yuan for the whole series. We are planning to print about 3,000 sets, a total of 12,000 volumes.

At this point, the books have been typeset, but not yet printed. If some of you are interested in buying quantities of the book, do let me know as soon as possible, because we can increase the print run. Unfortunately, I don't have figures yet on the cost per set (which would have to include shipping) but if you contact me I will try to work it out in the next week or so.

The science series will be delivered by mail, and by KAF field teams, to schools later this year.

Pamela Logan