Village Neighbors
Tibet
July 1999
Helen has a PhD from Harvard. I think she was a chemist. She wore expensive clothing and had a very expensive camera. She was delicate and her every move indicated that she lived a gentile life. So when we sat down to eat dinner at this restaurant in Tibet, I was quite taken aback when Helen jumped up and ran over to speak with these women. She recognized their dialect as her own. Up to this point, she had not told us she was from Tibet. Her family left sometime in the early 1960s. She has few memories of this place but these women resonated with her. So she ran over to speak to them, only to find out that they were from the same village.
These women had walked five days to come to this festival we were attending. They all started the meal by spitting in their hands and rubbing them together to wash the dirt off. Then one woman pulled out a big bone from her bag and cracked the bone at its joint and passed it over the women on the other side of the table. Everyone took a bit. Lunch was served.
Helen was offered a bit but declined the offer. She did want a photo of these women and they were only too happy to pose.
As I watched Helen pose with these women, I couldn't help but think about what a difference a plane ride made to Helen's life. Where would she be today if her family had not fled from the Chinese government so many years ago.
