Home from Dharmasala, India
How can I look at joyous healthy children playing on a well equipped playground with proud doting parents looking on, and not think of the young naked children I saw in India running around an open trash area near the side of a busy street rummaging for food or begging with outstretched hands for something to satisfy their hunger?
How can I enter a large open market filled with fresh wholesome food and not think of the marketplace of those vendors in Dharmasala sitting cross-legged in a space just wide enough for their gaunt bodies and long enough to display their meager offerings of a dirty bundle of scallions or a torn basket of fly infested potatoes and cabbage?
How can I turn on my faucet and flush my toilet at home and not think of the filthy gray contaminated water running in a deep ditch alongside the narrow streets, while a dozen thin rusted metal pipes poking out of the ground nearby convey this unsanitary water to the community?
How can I walk through my tree lined neighborhood of comfortable homes and cars in the driveway, and not see in my mind’s eye the massive tall concrete structures in India, with each designated dwelling no bigger than a small bedroom where an entire family of adults and children exists cramped everyday?
How can I not breathe in the fresh aromatic smells of a Colorado mountain morning and not remember the dank pungent odors of cow and dog waste and exposed trash wafting from the streets when I made my way to the school in Dharmasala?
How can I teach another student in a massage class and not see and feel to my core the enthusiasm, shear joy, and excitement of the Tibetan refugees who came each day to my class with a kind of thirst for knowledge I had never experienced in all my years of teaching? This, despite their history of struggle and adversity that scars them physically, but ceases to define who they are. Their smiles and voices will always ring in my heart, and continue to teach me about the profound resilience of the human spirit.
These sights, thoughts, and smells will forever be a part of me. They will serve as reminders of a short period of time in my life when I dared to venture out of my comfort zone of my home, my community, and my country, and step into another world where living day to day took on a whole new meaning.
- Gaye Franklin, Massage for Peace Ambassador
Tags: India, Tibetan refugees
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