Yeshi's Story

Yeshi was born in Tibet to a nomadic community which he described as "two days from electricity." The Chinese invasion of Tibet led to increasingly harsh conditions. His family and many others suffered torture, shootings, and famine. One uncle, he recounted was shot in the head but didn't die. He would point out the divot in his forehead where the bullet entered. When he was a child, the family had a radio and would sit together and listen to the Dalai Lama. Listening as a child, Yeshi made his first wish for his next life: meet the Dalai Lama. His second wish he made the first time he visited a city with his father. It was overwhelming, filled with people and lights and televisions, and his father was constantly dragging him away from the flickering screens. When Yeshi saw boys and girls his age in clean uniforms on their way to school in the city, he looked at himself and made his second wish: go to school. He only made two wishes for his next life, but they both seemed impossibly improbable. 

When Yeshi was thirteen, his brother decided to attempt an escape to India. The Chinese had made life in Tibet untenable. Yeshi resolved to accompany his brother, and that week they ran away from home together towards the Himalayas. They hid in luggage for six days, then spent nights trekking in progressively colder weather with less and less food up into the mountains. From their group of 47, they split into two groups. HIs group of 23 included himself and his brother, as well as an old monk and a family with a one-year-old and a two-year-old strapped to their backs. They crisscrossed an icy river, losing the skin on their feet slipping on rough, icy stones. On the Nepalese side of the Himalayas, they lost their way. After three solid days of snowfall when the group was subsisting on one spoonful of dri (yak) butter each day, three of the group turned back to find food. Soon after the rest of the group turned back down the Tibetan side, seeking food and firewood rather than starve waiting on the mountain. They already were suffering from snow blindness and frostbite, but miraculously they reunited with the three who had left before them, who had found a village and brought what little they could to the group. That night they thought they had lost the old monk to wolves, but in the morning he appeared out of the mountains, having found a cave to shelter in. Reinvigorated and reunited, the group crossed the Himalayas again, alternating the leader who would test the snow ahead for any hidden crevasses. By the time they reached the pass that night, the wind was a constant battering ram. It was impossibly cold without shelter on the mountaintop, and the group decided to take a risk. They could slide down the snow towards the bottom of the mountain and risk falling into a crevasse in the dark, or they could risk freezing to death in the wind on the mountain. Possible death outweighed certain death, and they slid down the snow. By a stroke of luck everyone made it through the ordeal unharmed, and they met a nomad who spared a tiny bit of rice which they paid for dearly and ate with elation. The group finally got a full meal at a nearby village, and it was a feast after so many days of starvation rations. They still had to travel at night to avoid deportation by the Nepalese police, and were guided along a path so narrow that everything had to be carried on their heads. 

Their luck ran out in Nepal when the police caught the group. Their guide had taught them a few simple phrases and warned them vehemtly against saying they were on their way to India since only refugees were making that trek at the time and the Nepalese police were sure to deport Tibetan refugees back to Chinese-occupied Tibet. When the police asked Yeshi whether he was going to India, he knew he needed to say no. He said yes. The guide, thinking fast, assured the police he didn't know what he was saying and didn't understand the language (which was true), and they were all held together awaiting the police decision. The guide organized the group to protest for food, making a racket demanding to be fed. In such a small Nepalese town, food was scarce at the best of times and feeding 23 detainees was beyond the inclination and capacity of the police force. Rather than deal with the group, the police released them. 

Once at the Nepalese border with India, the group crowded into a lowest class train car with barely room to breathe, let alone stand, that took them all the way to Delhi. The Tibet office in Delhi sent them to Dharamshala to start their lives as refugees. In Dharamshala, that second dream of Yeshi's was about to come true. Although he was thirteen, Yeshi had never attended school. He spoke only his local Tibetan dialect and knew no written words. He was placed in a class of 38 students, four of whom had never attended school, and given the chance to learn. He distinctly remembers a day when every child stood except him, because he didn't realize he needed to stand when the teacher arrived. The bus ride was long, the food was terrible and he was perpetually hungry, but he studied hard and participated in every way at the school. He did his work under the light of the streetlights, filling notebook upon notebook with repetitions of letters until he could write and read with the rest of his classmates. Those six years were hungry years, with only four cooks for 800 children at the school and never enough food for any of them. Yeshi recounted that kids thought sunken eyes with dark rings was the typical "Tibetan newcomer" face, not realizing that it was a sign of malnutrition. Despite the challenges, the effort paid off and Yeshi made it through to high school. Of the 38 in his class, he was one of only three who graduated. High school was a major improvement - at Upper TCV they had food whenever they wanted, and it was good Tibetan food. High school was followed by college with a degree in business and commerce, then six years and a master's degree and politics and activism around raising the voice of the Tibetan cause in the United States. 

Yeshi wanted to return to Tibet to train Tibetans in business and entrepreneurship, creating a Tibetan business base to rival Chinese domination in the area. He was refused. He wanted to start replanting the Tibetan mountainsides deforested under the Chinese regime. He was refused. He thought of his journey to India, and thought that he was caught because he didn't know languages. He could help Tibetans by teaching languages. In his room he started a tiny language exchange, which was the first incarnation of Tibet World. In the four years it has been operating, Tibet World has served 2500 students with 1500 volunteers, and has grown into a hostel and center with ten staff. It is difficult to stay afloat since Tibetans in India are termed "guests" rather than refugees, so they are afforded none of the rights of refugees or of citizens, but it is part of Yeshi's new wish. The hostel welcomes volunteers and visitors who join in language conversation groups, yoga, meditation and cultural events. The current curriculum is based on "compassion + wisdom = happiness." Tibetans do not have much, but Tibetan values and Tibetan culture can serve as a model for peace. Yeshi worked faster than his wishes, so now he has a new wish: a peaceful world, with Tibetans as role models for peace and compassion. World peace starts not from countries, he insists, but from individuals. As individuals, we must work from the heart. Work from the heart, and the mind will follow. 

If you are interested in staying at Tibet World or helping them continue their work, visit their website at  http://www.tibetworld.org/