Tibetan Foothold by Dervla Murphy Read Free Book Online Page A

Khambas, have very hot tempers, and when drunk on chang or arak (their beer and spirits) they quite happily resort to fisticuffs. But fundamentally they are neither aggressive nor vindictive and their quarrels are always short-lived . In Simla I watched a practice soccer match between some of theboys at Chota Simla School and there wasn’t one deliberate foul in the whole sixty minutes. Moreover, if a boy accidentally fouled he stopped playing immediately and apologised to his opponent. Incidentally, Tibetans seem to be wonderful natural footballers, though the idea of organised team sports is foreign to them, and this school recently beat five others to win the regional championship.
    But the most endearing of all the Tiblets’ unusual traits is their generosity, which seems particularly impressive when one remembers how very little they have to be generous with. If a parent brings buns or sweets the lucky child will often divide them up and hand them round to those near by – without any prompting from anybody. Similarly, when I go on my rounds in the Dispensary with special foods for certain cases, the privileged patient will take a few mouthfuls and then point to those whom he considers are being unfairly neglected. It’s indescribably touching to see a worried five-year-old sitting up in bed looking from his mug of savoury soup to the mugs of soggy rice given to the others and emphatically indicating his disapproval of this injustice, before finishing his meal with an obviously guilty conscience. Unfortunately I can’t explain that food suitable for one case would kill another, so even those who can feed themselves have to be supervised at meal-times or the sharing of sieved spinach with dysentery cases might have fatal results. Some Tibetan children have already been sent to Europe and others are to follow soon. I dread to think of the effect our civilisation will have on them.
    Most Tiblets don’t seem to form any special friendships: they play or chat together indiscriminately. Europeans often remark on their lack of playfulness, in our sense of the word, and attribute it to malnutrition. Obviously there is an element of physical lethargy involved, but I feel that some visitors to refugee camps over-stress this and misinterpret it as a symptom of misery, forgetting that Tiblets are not as restless as Western children and can be perfectly happy sitting immobile for hours on end, talking to each other quietly but animatedly. Yesterday provided a good example of the inherent self-discipline of these youngsters. Before lunch I captured Sonam Dorje, aged about six, and laid him on a bed in position for percussion treatment. Then Olivercalled me to help fix a drip on an emergency case so I abandoned Sonam Dorje, taking it for granted that he’d amuse himself until my return – but when I came back three-quarters of an hour later he was still lying exactly as I’d placed him, wide awake yet quite content to await developments for as long as might be necessary. And he is certainly suffering from no lack of energy, because when I’d finished tapping him he romped off and was soon to be seen aiming stones at a target rock down the mountainside.
    All the children have names, except one chubby two-year-old who was found a year ago beside the body of his dead mother in Kalimpong. (I have now christened him ‘Ming Mindu’ – ‘The Nameless One’!) However, there are no family names in Tibet, apart from the nobility, and the range of Tibetan names – which are often common to both sexes – is strictly limited, so each child has a number written on a piece of cloth which is hung round its neck. Many Tiblets also wear as ‘necklaces’ a picture of His Holiness and a piece of red cloth blessed by a High Lama and guaranteed to protect them from evil.
    The chief complaints here are bronchitis, pneumonia, TB, whooping-cough, chickenpox, measles, mumps, amoebic and bacillary dysentery, round-, hook-, tape-and wireworms,