A Tibetan Refugee Guides a Mustang Village Toward Open Education.

Tenzin Chomphel first arrived in Ghiling, upper Mustang, in 1959. He had no idea that decades
later, his life's work would be to see the village thrive.
Tenzin Chomphel stands on the edge of a cliff, looking out into a vast expanse of peaks,
plateaus, and gorges. Despite the shade of his fedora, his milky eyes squint in the harsh
sunlight, but his gaze is sharp. He's 72, but he doesn't look it.

We're on the road that connects Nepal's almost-mystical upper Mustang region to the rest of the
country. There's no one or anything in sight from where we are—just a staggering zigzag of the
most bizarre rock formations, a clear blue sky, and a steady wind.

Chomphel abruptly breaks the silence by pointing to the pasture land just below the rim and
saying. "During the summer and monsoons, that's where I'd come with the goats," he says. "For
days on end, it would just be me and hundreds of goats." Life was peaceful in many ways. But I
didn't realize life could be anything other than what I had at the time."

Chomphel worked as a shepherd when he was ten years old in Ghiling, a village in upper
Mustang. However, he is not from the village. During the failed Tibetan uprising in 1959, he and
his family—his parents and five siblings—came to this small, sleepy village.

"Tibet was a beautiful dream," Chomphel says. "We were free-roaming nomads." It had been a
very pleasant life. My parents raised sheep, yaks, and even horses. But when we left, we had to
abandon everything."

The family found refuge and a fresh start in Ghiling. While he earned Rs50 per year as a
shepherd, his parents and siblings supported themselves by weaving blankets, roasting barley,
and working in the fields. Life was difficult.

Chomphel would look longingly at other children who would attend the village's newly
established government school, Shree Jana Jyoti School, every day as he rounded up the goats to
take them out to graze. "Like everyone else my age, I wanted to study." But we needed to eat, so
I had to work," he explains.

After six years in Ghiling, the family was able to save enough money to travel to Pokhara, where
the International Red Cross was running a Tibetan refugee camp. "My parents wanted us to live
among the Tibetans so we wouldn't forget our culture and language," Chomphel explains.
Around 1965, the family left the Mustang village, with young Chomphel never expecting to
return.

He attended school for two years at Pokhara's Tashi Ling Tibetan Settlement Camp, where he
learned to read and write. He also did other small jobs in the camp to help support his family,
such as working as a laborer for the Siddhartha Highway construction project, for which he
claims he was paid Rs2.50 per day.
 Chomphel then attended the Butwal Technical Institute for a construction vocational training
program when he was 19 years old. He finished his course in five years and graduated as a
trained construction site overseer. As part of his training, he worked on the Bhairahawa Airport
construction site, but he quickly realized that this was not what he wanted to do.

"So I returned to Pokhara and took a job in a restaurant, where I tried my hand at everything—
waiting tables, cooking, and handling the front desk." "Five years have passed," Chomphel says.

Then came the watershed moment.

With the money he had saved, he decided to open his own restaurant, 'Pool-of-Peace.'

Call it luck or Chomphel's sharp business acumen, but his all-day breakfast restaurant was a big
hit at Lakeside in Pokhara.

He quickly made a lot of money. Chomphel felt financially secure for the first time in his life.

"Up until that point, my life had been nothing but work, work, work." I had no time to think
about anything. During that time, I had the opportunity to ask myself more in-depth questions. "I
wanted to give my life meaning," Chomphel says.

Chomphel, a devout Buddhist who is deeply connected to his cultural roots, then embarked on
his own pilgrimage.

He began his journey in India, visiting Ladakh, Manali, Mussoorie, Bodhgaya, Varanasi, and
Kushinagar, all of which are home to important Buddhist sites. "I then traveled to Europe for
nearly a year and a half, visiting Italy, Holland, Sweden, France, Germany, and Switzerland,"
Chomphel says.

During this time, he also started a textile company, which he ran for about 10-15 years.

Life was now pleasant.

But Chomphel had not yet found the answers he sought. But he soon found them, in the most
unlikely of places: Ghiling.

It was 1998. John Sanday, an architect, was looking for help with a project to renovate two of Lo
Manthang's largest monasteries. Chomphel was an obvious choice: he had a technical
background, had previously lived in the area, and could speak English, Nepali, and Tibetan, a
language that shares many similarities with the upper Mustang dialect.
Chomphel returned to upper Mustang for the restoration work, as well as Ghiling, which is on
the way to Lo Manthang.

"I was truly disheartened to see Ghiling after 34 years." Things hadn't changed much. There was
no progress: no running water, no electricity. "The villagers needed and desired assistance,"
Chomphel says. "I thought the only way I could help them was through education." Because it
was education that had aided me."
He began his journey to provide better education to Ghiling's children with the help of his friends
and the nonprofit American Himalayan Foundation (AHF). By the end of 2000, he had assisted
in the construction of Ghiling's first kindergarten. AHF has been covering the kindergarten's
operating expenses. Chomphel's first project was the construction of Ghiling's first kindergarten,
which he completed in 2000. There are currently 20 children. 
The children were overjoyed to be fed and cared for, and the parents were relieved. This was due
to the fact that while the children were at the center, the parents could concentrate on their work.
More parents enrolled their children as a result of this.
Then, in 2002, Chomphel and a group of friends established Maitri Ratna Nepal, a non-profit
organization through which he would carry out development work in Ghiling.

Their primary focus at the time was on remodeling Shree Jana Jyoti School, Ghiling's only
school and the school Chomphel aspired to attend as a child. The school had failed to provide
quality education to Ghiling's children for decades, leaving the majority of the village's parents
with no choice but to not send their children to school. The few families who could afford it sent
their children to schools in distant towns. The school was founded in 1966, but until Maitri Ratna
Nepal took over the administration, it only had five students who had completed class five.

The two-room school has been transformed into a proper educational institution with a hostel, a
science lab, a library, a volleyball court, and a basketball court thanks to the intervention of
Maitri Ratna Nepal. To accommodate more students, a new hostel building is being constructed
with government funding. The school is currently operating under the community school model,
with the government and Maitri Ratna Nepal providing joint support and coordination.

"It was not easy to build a school with this kind of infrastructure in upper Mustang, especially
given that motorable roads had not yet reached the village," says Kunsang Dorjee Lama,
chairperson of Maitri Ratna Nepal. "Tenzin and the Maitra Ratna team have delivered
construction materials to the school on the backs of donkeys, amidst knee-deep snow, to ensure
that work does not stop."

190 students have attended the school as a result of Maitri Ratna Nepal's efforts. The school's
kindergarten currently has 20 students, and grades 1 through 8 have a total of 76 students
enrolled. After completing grade 8, students will be required to attend higher education in
Jomsom, the largest city in the Mustang district, before moving on to larger cities such as
Pokhara or Kathmandu.
In addition to Ghiling students, the school has students from 12 other villages in upper Mustang.
There are even students from Manang's neighboring district.

"Many parents have difficulty sending their children to school in remote areas such as Mustang
because they are not close by." However, Shree Jana Jyoti provides free hostel services and has
established itself as a good school in the region, so parents feel at ease sending their children to
study," says Karma Gurung, a former student who is now a science teacher at the school.

Gurung is one of the first students to graduate from the school after Maitri Ratna became
involved. She later attended high school in more developed areas such as Jomsom, the district
headquarters, and Lalitpur. She received financial assistance from the nonprofit to complete her
Bachelor of Education at Pokhara University.

"Tenzin has always supported me, and it is because of him that I am an educated woman,"
Gurung says, adding that she returned to her village to teach at the school solely because of
Chomphel. "I've seen Tenzin give to Ghiling my entire life, and I believe it is my duty to do
something for the village as well."

Chomphel insisted on the school emphasizing local language and culture, with various cultural
functions taking place throughout the year.
"One of the core ideas behind the school is to preserve and promote our cultural values and
traditions," says Ghiling Ward Chairperson Jamyang Tenzin Gurung. "Thanks to Tenzin, our
school has become a model school throughout upper Mustang." People take generations to
accomplish what he has done for Ghiling over the last two decades. Seeing his work, the
government has also expressed interest in assisting the school, and we hope that we can now
upgrade the school to a high school." Chomphel has also established an apple and apricot farm in
Ghiling under the auspices of Maitri Ratna Nepal, with the intention of using the proceeds to
further the development of the school and village.

Chomphel's contribution to the community extends beyond the school. He leased land from the
villagers and established an apple and apricot farm in Ghiling with over 1,500 trees under Maitri
Ratna Nepal. The farm has been in the works for six years, and all profits will go directly to the
development of the school and village.

Because of everything he's done for Ghiling, the people of the village regard him as their own,
and he as theirs. It makes little difference to him or them that Chomphel is still a Tibetan refugee
on paper.

"It doesn't matter what a person's nationality is; what matters is what you feel for each other and
how clean your heart is," Chomphel says.

Living and working for Ghiling has also provided Chomphel with something valuable: the
answers he's been looking for all these years.
"I've realized that serving others is what gives life true meaning." "To feel responsible for your
people, to help, love, and give without expecting anything in return," he says. "That is the true
meaningoflife."