From Brahma to Buddha, Spring 2010

The other day Margie, Jeremy and I volunteered at a conversational english class at the Tibetan Refugee Center. The lady I was paired with was a young, shy, but confident nun. She giggled nervously as she sat next to me but three minutes into our conversation she was laying her whole life story on me.

When she was 13 years old, she ran away from home and became a nun at a nunnery located in the mountains above Lhasa, Tibet's capital. Sometime in the first three years of her "nunship" the Chinese police came in and divided the 100 nuns into 2 groups of 50. The other group was moved to another place and her group stayed in the nunnery. For 3 months, the Chinese Police tried to force the nuns to read a book about the evilness of the Dalai Lama and the rise of the Chinese government. When the nuns refused, the Chinese police told them they couldn't eat until they read it. The nuns still refused, so for 3 months they would only eat at night secretly while the police were sleeping. Everyday for those 3 months, during the time the nuns would usually use for prayer and meditation, the police would read to them about the 'evilness' of the Dalai Lama. When the police did this, the nuns would keep their heads down and close their ears. The policemen tried to manipulate the nuns by saying that the other group had accepted the book and renounced the Dalai Lama, however this was a lie. At night the policemen would go door to door and try to listen in on the nuns, if they were speaking against the chinese government or talking about the situation in Tibet then they would be put in prison. Finally, after 3 months, the policemen left and the two groups were reunited.

At the age of 16, she decided to escape to India with 2 of her friends who were aged 12 and 11. One night they sneaked out of the nunnery and walked an hour to Lhasa. They did not tell their fellow nuns or their families because they didn't want anyone to try and stop them or be worried about them.

In Lhasa, they found a group of 20 who would be hiking through the Himalayas with a guide. They would hike at night and rest during the day because the Chinese police would be out patrolling during the day. In one village they stopped at, a young Tibetan living there went and told a Chinese Policeman where they were in exchange for some money. The whole group was sent back to Tibet and imprisoned. The guide was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In prison, she was crammed in a small cell with the other women from her group. They all had to sleep next to the overfull toilet and they had headaches and vomited from the heat and smell. They were given a handful of flour to eat for the whole day. After a month in prison, she signed an agreement saying she would never try to escape to India again.

When her and her friends got out, 1 of them went with her to try and find another guide. They finally found one to take them across, this time in a group of 30. In her group, 3 turned back and 1 old man died. During the day they would hide in caves and fall asleep to the sound of a tiger breathing in and out coming from the darkness. Since she was 17, she was older and would take care of the younger kids whose families had enough money to send only them. It took 35 days to reach Nepal. When she reached Nepal, she called her family and told them, they were shocked because they thought she was at the nunnery this whole time.

She has now been living In Dharamsala for 12 years and rarely talks to her family. Soon after she reached India, her sister was released from prison. She was taken as a political prisoner and tortured for 5 years because she was demonstrating against the Chinese government. When she came out of prison she was starved and had broken ribs a long with permanent health issues. Her sister still lives in Lhasa after being released and everywhere she goes she is followed by Chinese spies.

The way this women told me her story so bluntly made me realize that it was just one of hundreds of thousands just like it. Everyone at the refugee center can relate. I have no idea how they can keep going on knowing that they will probably never see their family again nor their country again.

-Haley