Imagine 65 children between the ages of 4 and 9 chanting a prayer before drinking a cup of tea. This is what we woke to in the early morning light at Nacmche Bazaar on July12th. Mugs of hot black tea breathed steam in front of each child. The prayer was Tibetan and carried the sound of a thousand years. Some children held their hands
together in serious prayer and contemplation, some drifted off in day dreams, while others scrunched their 4 year old faces trying to remember the 10 minute prayer. These
are the 65 children that attend the “Home Away from Home” boarding school set up 4 years ago by our friend Tsedam Sherpa and his daughter Kami Sherpa.
During the earthquake the building that housed the children was damaged and became too dangerous to continue inhabitance. Tsedam had rented the building with his own money and the land lord did not have the means for repair after the earthquake. Although most of the
children pay tuition, Tsedam and Kami run the school as a non profit, with much of the funding from Tsedam's pocket and foreigners who sponsor a child.
The school created because children were walking from as far as 2 hours (one way) to go to school 6 days a week, often meaning irregular attendance. Can you imagine a child walking to school every day 4 hours round trip in American society today?
This morning the children were gathered around their cups of tea in prayer in Tsedam's tea house. They had no where to stay and Tsedam offered the rooms in his hotel to
house the children. After seeing the situation we knew very quickly that some of the money you had donated should go to the school. We originally had thought supplies but after speaking with Tsedam and Kami we came up with a better idea.
Tsedam was going to use some of the land next to his tea house to build a boarding house that would house 65 to 70 children. He had borrowed $30,000 from the bank, was using his own money to build the school, in addition to offering up his own land. We decided that $2000 dollars would go to Home Away From Home with another $1000 to be donated April of 2016.
As I said in an earlier report, this school on a micro level is run as well as schools with budgets of millions of dollars. The curriculum is made up of foreign language studies,
folk music studies, dance, math, sciences, and social studies. The amazing Sherpa values are instilled in children at a young age and upheld in the school. There was no fighting over toys, no crying, no entitlement, no such thing as bullying. Each child helped one another, shared, respected each other, and were joyous happy little beings. Discipline is taught at a young age and it was amazing to see 65 children behave and have an exceptional grasp of respect and responsibility. We felt good putting a percentage of your donations toward
this entity and these children.
As the 10 minute prayer came to an end I expected ruckus and mayhem. The abrupt end to the prayer cast a silence and imbued place with a sense of peace. Each child
calmly picked up their cup of tea and sat quietly sipping and day dreaming.
Thats where we were at on July 12th