Crossing Borders, Building Bridges

By Naila Awan

You slowly make your way across the snow-covered terrain of the Himalayas. You are embarking on a journey - a terrifying journey that will envelop the majority of your youth.   You are leaving your family behind to travel with a paid guide to a foreign country where you will be free to learn the principals of your faith.   The life ahead of you is one in which you will live in a village with other youths and be surrounded by monks and nuns.   At the age of 6, your whole life is about to change.

This journey is one that approximately 5,000 Tibetans, the majority of whom are children, make each year.

Such circumstances are what the anthropology department hopes to allow students to more fully understand.   This summer, for the first time, the anthropology department will take approximately 25 students to Dharamsala, India, and Lhasa, Tibet.   Students will learn about experiences of a government in exile and circumstances surrounding the lives of refugees.

  "Students will interact with monks and nuns. They will be assigned language partners who they will get to know on a first name basis," said Deborah Akers, a visiting assistant professor who is helping to initiate the program. "They will gain a strong sense of what monastic life is like."

While in Dharamsala, students will live at the Sarah Institute, a monastery, and be provided with numerous volunteer opportunities. One of these opportunities will be to work at the Tibetan Children's Village, where large numbers of refugee children live.

This structured program will include teachings on Buddhist philosophy from the Dalai Lama's personal translator, as well as workshops focused on such topics as human rights, health care issues, political prisoners and conflict resolution. A man who works in the Dalai Lama's office will teach Buddhism and meditation, and a head monk will instruct students the Tibetan language.  

Students will also interact with representatives from different non-government organizations, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

"The Tibetan government has extended the red carpet," Akers said of the government in exile. "They are excited to have this happen."

"Students will have a chance to interact with the department of education and ministries including women's affairs, health and human rights," added Homayun Sidky, an associate professor of anthropology who is organizing the trip.

While in Dharamsala, students will also visit the Tibetan Art Institute, created by the current Dalai Lama in an attempt to preserve Tibetan culture and art forms. At the institute, master craftsmen and artisans work with their apprentices. The work done at TAI includes metalworking, paintings, appliqué, woodcraft, sculpture, textiles and dankas, which are scripturally based, evocative symbolic devices that are used as religious icons.

Students will be able to move in and out of the art studios as they wish.

For the second part of the trip, students will cross the border to Lhasa. Travel to Lhasa will occur after students have learned about the Tibetan language, culture and religion.   The purpose of this is to allow students to see how the country has been taken over by the Chinese, the attempts of the Chinese to eradicate the Tibetan culture and to allow them to see the changes that have affected the country.

"It will contextualize Tibet for them [the students] and show them a different way to psychologically handle responses to conflict," Akers said.

While on the trip, which will cost $5,300 plus the cost for six credit hours, students will also be required to conduct a research project.   Participants will have the opportunity to work in any of the government archives and with any of the ministries.  

Research will be conducted on a variety of topics by students who are studying pre-med, pre-law, political science, religion, anthropology and religion.   Pre-med students may look at the special Tibetan form of medicine, which includes a large pharmacy of herbal treatments and a specialized procedure for taking pulses.   Students preparing for law school will likely research the various legal issues surrounding the international conflict over Tibet.

While on the trip, participants will take field notes.   They will complete their independent studies, which will be structured in the way they wish, after returning home.

"I hope that I can get a better understanding of the situation," said Aggy Stevens-Gleason, who graduated from Miami in spring 2004 and will be traveling to Tibet with the program. "I want to experience it first hand, because I do not think that one can truly understand the full scope of the conflict from reading about it."

Stevens-Gleason became active in such organizations as 'Students for a Free Tibet' after being assigned to study Tibet for an undergraduate class.   She said that she hopes after this experience she will be more able to help people better understand the current plight of the Tibetan people. Stevens-Gleason also plans to use her time in India and Tibet to do a case study on the overall situation before attending graduate school in the fall.

Maria Muller, a senior political science major who will also be going on the trip, feels that traveling to India and Tibet could be her first step toward her future career path - she hopes to study human rights law.

"I look forward to being challenged, and having my thoughts and thinking rearranged by people with different lifestyles and thinking," Muller said. "What I will learn will contrast the way I think about things and have been taught about conflict and power in today's world."

Muller added that she is looking forward to gaining more insight on such topics as conflict zones, refugees and conflict resolution.

Through this pilot program, it is hoped that students will gain a better understanding of a different aspect of spirituality.

Until this year, the anthropology department had hosted a trip to Australia.

"We did not find it to be as rich and rewarding as this can be," Sidky said of the Australia trip. "It was more of an eco-tour - not as intellectually satisfying."

The idea for the Tibet program originated when members of the anthropology department were visiting the Nepal Center in Kathmandu.   At that time, they had the opportunity to interact with a large number of Tibetans who were visiting the Buddhist shrines.

"We befriended several Tibetans and started       talking to them," Akers said.   She added that it had been easy to admire the Tibetans they came in contact with, for, although they have had to endure so much, the many hardships the Tibetan people had encountered was in no way reflected through how they spoke or acted.

Akers said that she hopes that the relationships formed through this program will grow and flourish.

"We plan on building and perfecting this program," Akers said. "It would be nice to reach a place where we could do a semester abroad."

Akers added that she hopes that this experience is one that students will be able to take with them - that it will help build awareness that will transfer to the way they will interact in their professional lives.

  "I have a sense this is just the beginning," Akers said.

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