Arrival of Kargyak Postman and Other News from the Battlefield

Surprise!! In the first week of May we discovered ten envelopes in our Surya mail box (the Czech one). Postage stamps with Mother Teresa, stamp dated April 12, 2014, location: Padum! Mail from Sun School! The letters must have been through a truly adventurous journey: one of the governmental teachers or villagers brought them from Kargyak to Padum on his back through the snow-covered valleys, and bearing in mind the latest mid-May news that the road from Kargil to Zanskar has not been opened yet, it is obvious that the envelopes must have been taken to the outer world by an army helicopter!

Having opened the letters impatiently, we found a bunch of letters and drawings from our Sun School pupils! The children send regular information for their sponsors, writing about themselves, their families, about Sun School, their teachers and life in the village. They report about snowy Kargyak, they reassure us about their diligent studies and teachers´ watchful supervision; Sun School girls write about knitting workshops with Madam Tsomo, bigger children mention intensive preparations for His Holiness Dalailama´s Kalachakra teaching that will take place in Leh in the first half of July and where the whole families from the whole Zanskar are planning to travel. The letters and drawings show the progress the children again have made: our 2^nd class pupils, with whom we started as with lower KG children and together were fighting with the first letters, have beautiful handwriting and they write almost without mistakes. The texts and drawings of elder students demonstrate further advance in English, as well as in fine arts:) In two words: enormous joy!!! Through the children´s letters we are also extremely happy about our teachers: the whole mail project was initialised and realized by themselves, without our involvement. The mail from Kargyak is another piece of evidence that the school management has been handed over to good and responsible hands.

Apart from surprising events in the form of a Kargyak postman, we get the information about the school and the village regularly via phone calls with the school teachers and managing committee. Our local correspondents report that snow on the hills of the valley has been slowly melting away; fields have been ploughed and are ready for the spring sowing. All Kargyak men have gone to the holy mountain Gomboranjon to build a new doksa for the upcoming yak season. As for more distant regions, the road connecting Srinagar with Kargil was opened last week, whereas Padum is still cut off from the rest of the world, as the works on uncovering the Padum-Kargil road from snow are still in progress. We hope the road will be open soon, allowing the trucks with necessary supplies to reach Padum where after long winter the shops are running out of everything, and letting all people waiting for the way back to their families come home. 

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