Pema Dar Tso, age 26
recorded in McLeod Gange, Himachal Pradesh, India
August 23-24, 2005
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My very first memory is of being a very young child, and of getting an injection. I was quite sick, and I was crying, and I remember that both of my parents were there. We were nomads, and because I was sick my mother had brought me to the closest small town. Then I remember, not long after that, I remember my uncle hitting me. I was very scared of him. I think he was hitting me because I maybe cried too much, and I was sick, or something like that. He was my father's brother. I also remember this uncle pouring cold water on my head. We had a big ladle, and he was using it to pour freezing water on my head. It was cold! I was so scared of him. He didn't have any children of his own. Maybe he wasn't very patient with children.

My memory of being young isn't very good. My parents got divorced, and maybe that's why I don't remember so much. My parents got divorced when I was around eight years old, I think. I'm pretty certain I know what year I was born, but I don't know my birthday. I think I was born in 1979.

When they divorced, I went with my mother. I didn't know why she was taking so many things with her. We went to a different house. She didn't have a house. She had some animals and she had some pots. We were nomads, and half the time we were farmers, and half the time we were nomads taking care of animals. Our animals had to be taken high in the mountains. Those animals wouldn't have survived here in Dharamsala. They had to be taken high in the mountains where there was grass for them to eat. The other half of the year we farmed, and had a small house. It was a very simple house, more like a little building. It didn't even have windows. Well, it had one tiny window, like this (makes small circle with fingers.) The door was very simple, and wasn't very nice. We built these houses from stone, and made some sort of cement and applied it with our hands. There were lots of little holes between the stones, and you could see inside. The doors were made by hand out of wood, very simple, and they didn't fit so well. Some of the doors locked, and others didn't.

My father stayed in his house, because it was his parent's house-in Tibet, the wife usually goes to stay with the husband's family-with his parents and his brothers and their children. So when they divorced, my mother had to leave and find a new home. She was very busy with the animals and the small farm, but still she had to build a new house. So she brought rocks to build the walls, and had to make a floor, and also get some plaster for the inside walls.

I was the only child my parents had, but I have a half-brother and three half-sisters. My father remarried, and he had four more children. When my parents were together, they had four children, but three of them died and I was the only child that survived. Of the three that died, two were born before me, and the other was born after me. It was very common for children to die there... so many died. Nomadic people in that area didn't have any hospitals to go to. There was nowhere for pregnant women to go to get a checkup. Some children died before birth, some at the time of birth, and some after birth. The child that was born after me died when it was about three months old. I think most people didn't even know if their children were sick. People there were working so hard, many times they just didn't know, and thought maybe the child was just weak or something. Of course, the young children couldn't tell anybody if they had pain or were ill because they didn't know how to speak. Another problem is that the parents didn't have any education. So, many children died. It was very common.

Before my parents divorced, I sometimes had other children to play with, some boys and girls who were neighbours, but not very often. When I was quite young, sometimes I worked, especially helping with the animals. My mother was very busy, and didn't have time to look after me, even before the divorce, so I often stayed with my grandparents-her mother and father. But when I was young, especially when I was about five and six years old, I was sick most of the time, so I didn't play very much or work so much then. I remember my uncle hitting me very often, and he didn't like it if I went to play.

After the divorce, I stayed with them even more, because my mother was even busier. After the divorce, when I was eight or nine, I began to work almost all the time. My main job was to look after the baby animals-baby yaks, baby sheep, all the younger animals.

By the time I was twelve or thirteen years old, I could go very high into the mountains, very far away, and look after the big animals-yaks, sheep, horses. Every year I got more and more responsibility, and then I started doing farm work too. Every spring we had to plant the seeds in the ground. Because we were nomads, we had to do everything by hand. There were no factories there, so there were no machines. Mostly we planted tsampa (high-mountain barley), but we also planted some vegetables. We didn't grow any fruit. You cannot grow fruit there so high in the mountains; it was too cold for fruit. But we were able to grow some vegetables, mainly spinach and carrots. The carrots were very fat and round, not like the carrots we can get here. These carrots were white in color, like white radish. We also had some potatoes as well, but we couldn't harvest many of them. They didn't grow very well. But mostly it was tsampa we grew.

Sometimes I was at my mother's house, and sometimes I was at my grandmother's house. It took about one hour to walk from one to the other. I almost always had something to carry from one house to the other when I would go, even when I was quite young, and sometimes the things were quite heavy. Most of the way, I had to climb up or down, the path wasn't very often flat. Most of the time I went alone. There weren't many wild animals, so I didn't worry about that, and I wasn't afraid of any of the domestic animals like yak or sheep or horses. But I was very afraid of the dogs, the big mastiffs that were kept by almost every nomad house for protection. These dogs are so big. They're not wild, and they belong to someone, but they're only friendly to their owners. Most of them were chained, but they were very wary of people they didn't know, and it was very scary. If they weren't chained, they would bite people and maybe even eat them. These special nomad dogs were so big and so strong. While I was walking these dogs would bark and growl at me so much. I can't tell you how afraid I was. My grandparents had dogs too, but they were friendly to me because they knew me. My mother didn't really have time or food to feed them, so she didn't keep any dogs. Also, she liked things to be very clean, and it's difficult to keep things so clean when you have dogs. I did get bitten many times, too. Sometimes dogs got off their chains, but usually the problem was that some families had five or six dogs and would keep three or four chained up but let one or two wander around freely. Some of the dogs were never kept on a chain when they were puppies, and they were usually okay. But some were kept on a chain the whole time they were puppies, and they were very mean. If they got loose, it was very dangerous. Most of the dogs that were let loose were loose so that they could protect the domestic animals from wild predators, because there were quite a lot of them too.

When I was young, my mother never had a chance to do what she wanted. She was like a servant, and not only her, but most women in Tibet. It was part of the nomadic culture. That also meant she didn't have time to look after me. My father didn't really know how to look after children. Children there didn't have any toys, and there was no power there, so there was no television or any kind of entertainment.

Anyway, I was sick a lot. I think the main reason I was sick was because I was so afraid, especially of my uncle. I really did suffer a lot. I remember it very clearly. There was often something I needed to take to my grandparents' home, and when I would leave my mother's home to go there, I would be so sad. Of course, I had to go. I didn't have any choice. And when I would then leave my grandparents home to return to my mother's, I was afraid. I was afraid of the dogs and I was afraid of people, too. There were also poison snakes, and I was afraid of them, too. They weren't very big, but they were very poisonous. I didn't see any snakes when I was working as a nomad with the animals-it was too high for them there. But when I was working on the farms, they were there.

Actually, my father is not a bad man, but he doesn't talk much. He's a very gentle man, but he doesn't really care for other people. He doesn't care for me. He just doesn't speak much. It's kind of funny, but he's not a bad man. My father's mom died early in my life, and so did my father's father. I know my father's mother loved me, but she was so old already I didn't see her very much. But I know she loved me. When I went off to take care of animals, she would save white sugar for me sometimes while I was away. By the time I got back, it would be a little bit dirty, but she did save it for me.

I saw much more of my mother's parents, but my mother was their oldest child, and they had lots of younger children of their own. Some of their children, two of my mother's sister, were about my own age, so my grandparents had more love for them because they were their own children. Also, my mother's mother was ill for a very long time, and then she died. My mother's father-well, I love him, but I don't really like him. He was so rude, so mean. He was always angry, so I didn't like him.

So my life was always difficult. I also had two aunties-actually, three aunties. One auntie I didn't know very well. She was older, and she was part of a separate family. And two other aunties were quite young, maybe two or three years older than me. They weren't so nice to me. So my mother was too busy, my grandparents were sick or busy, my father was there at his house. So I did see these two aunties sometimes, but they always made me work. They always told me to do this, and do that, and do this, to do work at their home. But it was like I didn't have any parents, so sometimes I went there to see what they could do for me. So it was like that.

Then my uncle got married. He had a new wife, and then I stayed with her. I had two uncles who stayed with my grandparents. My youngest uncle was like my grandfather. He was so rude. He hit me all the time, and hurt me so much. My older uncle hit me too, but not so much. My younger uncle was such a bad man, you know. He was smoking, he was drinking, and he didn't like working. He would come home sometimes in the middle of the night, and sometimes he would hit his wife, and he yelled at me and hit me so much. My two aunties hit me sometimes, too. I wasn't much afraid of them, but I was completely terrified of my uncle and my grandfather. It didn't hurt very much when my two aunties hit me.

So after the winter I would come down from the mountain to plant seeds in the spring. We had no machines to help us, but we would put big bags of seed on the backs of the horses. So I would work on the farm for the entire spring, and when summer came, while the plants were growing, I would go back up in the mountains to live as a nomad again. While we were in the mountains taking care of the animals we would make cheese and butter and other things from milk. Summer was so busy. The animals would also have their babies, so we had small animals to care for. They were lots of work, and often got sick and might die, or wild animals would try to eat them.

We woke up in the morning at three o'clock every day during the summer. We had to get up so early because there was so much work to do. We milked the animals four times a day. The baby yaks went to the mountain with their mothers for the night, but early in the morning we brought them home close to our shelter so we could milk the mothers. We also had to gather yak dung to dry so we could sell it later for fuel for the wintertime. I would gather ten or twelve baskets of dung each day. We would save a little bit for our own home, but the rest was to sell. We tried to mostly gather the small pieces because they would dry more quickly. Then around five o'clock we would return to the shelter to have breakfast. Around eight o'clock we would take care of last year's babies, the females. It was difficult to do this work, and it's also difficult to describe it. First we did the new babies, then last year's babies-the yaks that were now a year old. Then after that we would milk the sheep and the goats. And we always had to pay very close attention because many small animals got sick and died. If we kept the babies and parents together that helped. Then we had to take care of the dogs and the horses, too. And if there was any time away from the animals, we had to be busy gathering and drying dung. We had to clean up after the animals very carefully, and carry the pieces of dung to another place for drying.

Then we would come back, and do another milking, and make buttermilk and cheese and curds and other things from the milk. It's really hard to tell you about it, there was so much work. After that, we would come back and have a second breakfast. We had the first breakfast so early, so we needed a second breakfast after so much work. During the summer we would eat four or five times a day.

After the second breakfast, we would work on making cloth from the coats of the sheep and the yaks. All the cloth is made by hand. We made clothes from it, and also tents. Every year we needed to make a new tent, because every year the tent gets torn or broken. So one or two people would stay with the animals all through the day, and others would work on different things, including making cloth and things for necklaces and jewelry. Then we also had to worry about getting firewood. We had no gas and no electricity, so any fire or heat had to come from nature, from firewood or dung. There was so much to do. So I spent the summer doing work like this. There were also two months in the middle of the summertime when we would gather a special grass that grew there that was used as a medicine. It's very small and it's lots of work to find it and pick it. We could then sell it later. The men would take it around to sell it, because the Tibetan women never traveled, only the men. So we stayed on the mountain up until sunset, and would be finished by seven in the evening. There were no days off, no Sundays and no holidays. But it was good, I liked it. Work is no problem, be fear was a problem. I liked the work, no problem.

In the autumn, things would change. Families had to separate, with part of the family staying in the mountains as nomads, and the other family members returning to the home and the farm. I usually came back to the farm to work. I would have to carry a lot of things with me when I returned from the mountains, and then again I had lots of work to do by hand. Picking, packing, drying, and lots of carrying from here to there, all the time, carrying things on my back. After the wheat and barley was picked, I used a simple tool to separate the part the we kept, and then had to hang it on a line we made for drying.

In the winter, these things were mostly finished. But of course, we still had to look after the animals in the wintertime. So mostly we lived as a single family at that time, but sometimes some people would still stay separately with animals to take care of them. The distance from the farm and our house to where the animals stayed during the winter was about the same as from the top of the mountain we're on now down there to the bottom. It was lots of climbing, up or down. And in the winter, it was cold, freezing all the time. Of course, it's very cold in Tibet. But still we had lots of outdoor work. We were less busy with the farming, of course, and less busy with the animals too. But we had other jobs to do. The main job was to dry the dung thoroughly so it could be used for fire, the dung we had gathered during the summer and autumn. Then when it was dry enough we took it in baskets, and it was a long trip. In one day I would make ten or twelve trips with big baskets of dung on my back. The work never stopped. The baskets were so heavy that during the winter I would have a wound on the back of my shoulder all the time, a would shaped like a line where the rope attached to the basket would cut painfully into my skin. By the middle of the winter my skin would be calloused there and it wouldn't bleed anymore. Once it was dried, we would take the dung to the closest villages to sell. Every season we had a new job to do.

For me it was so hard, because I needed to help my mother, and I needed to help my father, and I needed to help at my grandparents' house too. My grandparents family had too much work to do too, so I had to go there and help too. And it was the same at my mother's house, and also at my father's family's house, so I went and helped at all three places. But working was no problem, I like work. Whatever I do, I always do the best I possibly can. But the problem was getting hit and yelled at all the time. And a big problem was that sometimes there were festivals in the nearby towns, but I didn't get a chance to go. They never allowed me to go to the festivals. Young people love to go see these things, you know, and I would beg my uncle or my mother, but I never had a chance. That was really bad. Work was no problem. Sometimes there were festivals and special pujas at the gompas (monasteries) too, but they didn't give me the chance to go. That's why I was sad.

I can't really say anything about the situation in Tibet with the Chinese. I don't know much about it, because I didn't go to school. I never went to school. I can't speak any Chinese. I never left town. I never saw a factory, and I never saw electricity or anything that used electricity. I saw Chinese people very few times, only when I went to the closest town. Then I saw a couple of soldiers, and some Chinese people who weren't soldiers. Most of the soldiers I saw were Tibetans who were in the Chinese army, wearing the clothes of the Chinese army.

We didn't have much chance to go to the monastery for pujas. My father's father died so early that I don't know much about him. My father's mother was old and sick and couldn't get out of her chair. My mother's parents weren't well either, especially her mother. She was so ill all of the time. My mother's father was religious, but he was very rude, and I don't think he went to the gompa very much. Sometimes monks came to where we lived and did pujas in the homes of the nomads.

So my problem was that I was depending on people who didn't really look after me. The divorce made it worse. So I was sad. Now if I see a movie where parents divorce or read a story where the parents divorce, I feel really sad because of the suffering I went through. I don't know much about other things, but I know about this, and I feel sad for other people. My parents' marriage was arranged, it wasn't a love marriage, and they fought a lot. My mother had her first baby at the age of nineteen.

Divorce is different in Tibet than America or India. People just decide that it doesn't work, and it's finished. There's not really any paperwork, and no lawyers or anything like that. My father had a big family, and my mother couldn't do what she wanted. She wasn't happy there. My father was angry. If I got angry, I didn't know who to be angry at. I think maybe both were right and both were wrong, something like that. But I do know my mother's life was very difficult, and it was too hard for her to be with my father's family there. My father wasn't a bad man, but he just didn't look after me. I don't know, I'm not really angry at him, but I don't have too much love for him because he didn't care for me. Sometimes my thinking is that he was very honest with me. He didn't lie, he didn't cheat, he didn't make promises that he didn't keep. But I'm Pema Dar Tso, and I couldn't be anybody else. That's who I am.

Then I grew up and they wanted to give me to another family. All my relatives introduced me to different people. They said I had to get married, that everybody has to get married. Most people marry very young, between the ages of seventeen and nineteen.

I wore traditional clothes, and I only had one set of clothing. Girls always had to wear a long dress. I did have one set to wear at night, but only one long chuba to wear during the day. It had very long sleeves. So even if it was raining, I had to go to look after the animals. We didn't have umbrellas. It wouldn't have helped anyway because the winds are too strong there. So I was often wet. Even when there was no rain the bottom of my clothes would be wet because of dew in the tall grass. There was dew every day.

I never slept in a bed in Tibet. I always slept on the floor, and the tents were not waterproof, so if it rained at night I would be sleeping on the wet ground, and I was often cold. So even though I was young, I had lots of pains in my bones, especially in the spring and the winter. Often the skin on my legs would turn black and be broken up. My clothes were always wet. I didn't have really nice shoes, because I walked so much in the mountains. If I did get a new pair of shoes, they would break so quickly because of all the walking. When the shoes were broken, I didn't know who to ask for new shoes. If I asked my mother, she would tell me she didn't have the money for new shoes. If I asked my uncle, he would tell me not to ask him something like that. So I didn't buy new shoes very often, and always had trouble with them.

At that time I thought the whole world was Chinese. I didn't know anything about any other country. I had never heard of the Western countries, not anything about any of them at all. I saw Western people two times in my village before I left. One came to the small city closest to us. I saw one boy or girl, I really didn't know which. He or she was tall with curly hair and green eyes and a big nose. I was so scared! I was really scared. I had a friend who was a neighbor who always told me some story about this family that came that had red hair and blue eyes and big noses. I thought she was making this story up, or maybe she had seen some strange animal or something, I just didn't know what to believe. So when I saw a Westerner the first time, I didn't think he was a human being, I thought he was a devil or something. Then I remembered what my friend had told me, so now I believed her, you know. I didn't tell anybody else about her story, she said that it was no good to tell anybody about these things. So I was thinking about where we were going, where there are big rocks and big mountains and big caves, and thought maybe we should go to a cave in the highest mountains where they wouldn't be able to find me. I really didn't know anything about the rest of the world.

Then one day I was walking in a farmer's village in the autumn. There was a road where a few trucks would come by now and then. So one day a few cars came down the road, and many different people got out with red hair, and white hair, and curly hair. I was so afraid that I screamed. I couldn't tell which people were men and which were women. I thought that maybe some of them were skeletons and was so scared. I was also worried that they might throw bombs at us, and chase us. My friend had told me that these strange people did things like this. It was so crazy. So before I came to Lhasa, I had only seen Westerners twice. In Lhasa, there are quite a few Westerners. By then I knew more and wasn't so scared of them. And of course, there are quite a few in India, and I know many Westerners now and have Western friends.

I did hear something about India before I came, that was one place I knew something about. It's quite famous in Tibet. I didn't really know anything about how India really is, but I heard a lot about it. When I was young, I heard many songs about India. I heard that India was like heaven. When I was very young, I also heard about the Dalai Lama, and I thought he was actually a Buddha, and not a human being who walks and eats and teaches. I thought he was a huge Buddha who sat all the time like a Buddha statue does, something like that. But later I learned that the Dalai Lama was a real person, and I learned that India was a real place, that it was possible to go to India, and it was possible to meet the Dalai Lama and to actually speak to him.

Then I also started hearing more about Lhasa, that it was really a great place. So I wanted to go to Lhasa, but I didn't know what I was doing. I also kept hearing more and more about how great a place India was. I knew it was a different place than China, but not that it was a different country. I didn't really understand what it meant to be a different country. So I heard that India was a great place, that everything was free there and it was very peaceful. My friend told me that butter and tsampa were free, even that butter grew on trees! I'm very silly, I'm a little like my father, and a little simple in my thinking, so I believed it. As I grew up, I heard more and more stories about India and Lhasa and about the Dalai Lama, and that I could go to India and actually meet the Dalai Lama. So the more I heard about it, the more I began to think that I wanted to go there. I thought that if I could go to India I could save my life and end all this suffering. I didn't know why I had so much suffering, but I did.

I didn't like the Chinese people I met. Because I was a nomad, I saw very few Chinese people. I only saw them when I went to town, where every shop was a Chinese shop and every restaurant was a Chinese restaurant, but I never ate at a restaurant in Tibet, in my village. Once or maybe twice a year I would go to town to the shops, and I would see the Chinese people there. We didn't understand them. I only spoke Tibetan and didn't speak any Chinese. I was able to conduct simple business by pointing and using fingers, so that was okay. It was easy to see that they didn't like me. They made a face at me and used gestures to make it clear that they thought I was something dirty or bad. Maybe that's why I didn't like them. Even small Tibetan children would just start crying if they saw Chinese people. I don't know why. I don't know about politics, I don't know about history, because I never went to school and nobody in my family ever explained anything to me about these things. I grew up in the mountains and was so busy with all my own sufferings, how could I know about these things?

So I was young, and I was thinking about how many children I would have if I got married. There's no birth control there, and mothers usually have so many children. Who will help me, and how much more suffering will I have to go through? But I knew my relatives would have to give me away in marriage, it always happens.

So one day my relatives introduced me to one guy who lived in the same village as me. There was some relationship between our relatives, but it wasn't close. So they all said I should really marry him, but I really didn't like him. Then some other relatives wanted to give me to another family, a big family. They had many family members, but I didn't want to go into a big family because I wanted to be left free. The bigger the family, the less freedom I would have. I didn't want to just be taking care of so many people. So then I thought I would go to Lhasa and to India. I just knew I couldn't stay there, I had to go.

I was very sad. I had one auntie who stayed in another town, and one day she came to my village and I told her of my plan to leave, that I really didn't want to marry, and I cried. So she told me to come with her to her town, and I left my village. It was one day's walk to stay with a different auntie, and then another day's walk to this auntie's town. I stayed there and worked for her for a few years. But it was just about the same. I had to work so hard there too. She was a businesswoman, and they had many guests. I woke up very early every morning to work. At least I had dry clothes and didn't have to work in the rain.

I washed her family's clothes every day, and she had three children too. Many days I washed clothes for 15 or 20 guests. Clothes, socks, and shoes to clean too, as well as cooking. I was the only person who cooked. It took a few hours every morning after breakfast to do the laundry.

So one day a woman told me that even though I was still young, I had the hands of an old woman. This woman was also a businesswoman. She sold wood for building homes. So I started working for her. My work was mostly loading and unloading trucks. So I did this, as well as cooking. Once again, I did almost everything in the house -cleaning, dishes, cooking. Work never stopped, but I was happy that I was out my village. I actually thought it was heaven. But I still didn't have any days off, never, and I never had a chance to go to a festival, although at this place the closest monastery was too far away to go there anyway. She and her husband also had two children I needed to help with. Sometimes they were both away and I had to take care of the children. Sometimes the children would yell at me and complain about the food I made. At least I wasn't working outside.

Finally my auntie introduced me to one man, but I didn't like him. Many guests came to her, and they really loved me. They said that my tea was good, and my food was really good, and that I worked really well. Some of them would tell me that I should really go to India, that I would have a better life there.

So one day I left my auntie's home. I met a man who told me a very interesting story. He told me I should come with him, and that I would have a better life. He said that he had a restaurant and I could work there, and that I could learn to be master chef, and he would pay me very well, and that it was in a very nice town in Amdo where he lived. He said he would be responsible for me, because I told him I didn't know anything about his place, and I didn't know anybody there. So I made him promise, and he promised that he would be responsible for me, and that from that day on he said he would be like my "brother". So I was very interested, and I really did believe him, and I really did want to go with him. But I didn't talk to anybody about it. If I told any of them, they would have stopped me.

I saw him for two months, because he had come to my auntie's place from Amdo to work for two months. There's something that grows in the ground there called yatza gombu. He came to harvest this plant there, and I was also working there doing the same thing, so we met on the mountain, and he had lots of time to talk to me. He was very nice and very gentle, and was ready to do anything for me. He looked okay, and acted okay, and was simple and gentle, so I trusted him.

Finally, I knew the day to go was coming, and he was asking me to come with him, so I decided to do it, and I left with him. From my place to his village was a few days by truck, three or four days. We rode in the back of a truck. It was dirty and crowded, and the road was very bad and very bumpy. We didn't really stop to rest at night, we just kept going.

First we arrived in a big city and stayed there for one night. I was very nervous for some reason, and then he moved really close to me, and said we would just spend one night. There were lots of people, and many different rooms, and we needed to share a room. He said we should share the bed. I said that I didn't want to, but he said that we had to, but I said that no, I would sleep on the floor. So he finally let me do that.

In the morning, we went to catch the bus. He said it would take one day to get this his village. Then we went ahead, and the bus stopped in a small town, and he told me that the bus couldn't go on to his own village so we needed to get off there, and then walk half a day. So it was quite long, and we walked and walked.

Eventually we went to a house with a family that was speaking Chinese, and sometimes speaking the Amdo Tibetan dialect, but they spoke Chinese well. They were all Amdo people themselves. Anyway, I couldn't understand what they were saying. We went into the house, and into a room that was very dirty, very simple, and looked poor. I couldn't see any animals, and it was quite warm-not hot, but warm. There was an old grandmother there, and a small daughter. So they gave me some food-some bread and some potatoes. I was scared, and I couldn't eat even though I was hungry. I was quite nervous, and was wondering what was happening.

So I asked him if we shouldn't move, and I asked him where his home was. I told him I was nervous and didn't want to stay there, and we should go on. He said okay, but that we would just spend one night there. He didn't tell me it was his home.

So we spent the night there in one of the three rooms. At about nine or ten o'clock he said that the girl would sleep in one room and the grandmother in another, so I should go with him into his room. I told him no, that I wanted to sleep with the grandmother, but he told me I couldn't. I said no again, but he said I must sleep with him. Again I answered no, and then he pushed me and pulled me into the room. But I pulled away, and then he pushed me really hard. I screamed. I was very scared, and shaking and crying. Not regular crying, but gulping air, and very surprised. Then I called out to the grandmother, "Please, I want to sleep next to you, I don't want to sleep with him." The grandmother said something to him in Amdo, but he didn't listen. He didn't care. Right in front of the grandmother and the girl he pushed me. She said something to him, but didn't listen or care. So then the grandmother became very quiet. I think she was scared of him.

Then finally he hit me, and he pulled my hair and pushed my face while he was kicking me. Then I really cried, a lot. Then I started to shout, but he put his hands over my mouth so I couldn't shout, so that nobody would be able to hear me. The whole night he tried to get me, but I resisted. I pushed back and refused the whole night. In the morning I felt so bad, and I reminded him of what he had told me and promised before, that he had a restaurant, and a good home in a nice town. So I told him I didn't want to live there, and he must take me where he had promised. And if he wouldn't, then I wanted to go back to my place. But he answered no, and said that we needed to stay there for a few days.

So I stayed in that room for four days. I wanted to see the outside, but he wouldn't let me leave the room. When he left, he would lock me inside the room. I tried to get out, but I couldn't. Then every night he beat me and tried to get me to sleep with him. It was so difficult. But I refused. It was the same every night. The grandmother and the young girl knew I was locked inside, but he had told them something so they were afraid. He really was rough with me, and I was very scared. Then I thought he might have a disease or something, too. But he said he would never let me go.

There was one guy I knew from when we were working together who lived in Amdo, too. I said I wanted to meet him, and that I didn't want to work in his restaurant. By now, I knew that I didn't have any idea where I was. It had been a three or four-day journey, and I was completely lost. He still wouldn't say where his own village was, though I thought I was probably right there in it. There were lots of villages in this area, so many of them, and I just didn't have any idea where I was. I couldn't speak the Amdo dialect much at all, and most people in that area spoke Chinese anyway. There were also many Chinese Muslim people living in this area.

Finally, he gave up. I think he realized that I never would give in to him. So he took me to the home of this one man I knew from before. I told him about all these things, and asked him if he could please help me. He said that maybe he could, but he was scared of this man too. He had a wife and children, a very nice family-sister and brothers and parents, too. He had been coming to my village for many years, and visited his sister, who lived there. Plus, he did want to help me. He told me that this man who was keeping me as a captive did live here, and the house I had been in was this man's home, and that he didn't have a nice place or a restaurant in another town.

Then he took me to his own parents' family-he stayed with his wife's family. I told the whole story of what this man had done in front of everybody-including the man who had done it, he was there too. Nobody really wanted to listen, but I told it anyway. They told me that they didn't know what to do, and that they couldn't really help me. This man who was treating me so terribly said that I was his responsibility, and that nobody else could do anything for me. Finally, he wanted me to return to his village with him again. He didn't understand anybody or anything, and I finally decided he was really crazy. He knew I didn't want him, I didn't like him, and I didn't want to stay there, but still he wanted me to go back. He just didn't understand.

So I just found out where a village was where I knew one guy, and went there. It wasn't too far. The crazy man came there to find me, but I was hiding, and he couldn't find me. He stayed for a few days looking, but he finally gave up and left. It was autumn, the big season for farmers in that part of Amdo, so I worked for the parents of the other man I knew and stayed there for awhile. Actually, I worked in two villages there in Amdo for a few months, because his family also had relatives that needed help.

All these village people in Amdo loved me. They thought I was such a good and hard worker, that I was such a strong nomad girl. They wanted me to stay there and meet other people, and they trusted me. There were many boys there that they wanted to introduce me to. But I kept saying no, and they finally decided I was a really stupid and stubborn girl.

So I asked to return to my own place. But I had no money at all, and nobody would pay for me. They were nice, and always gave me food, but no money for returning. In my village, if a girl had a problem like this, I'm sure somebody would give her enough money to get home somehow. But they didn't. I think maybe that money is so important there in Amdo, I don't know.

Finally, the father of this one guy I knew suggested that I should just go from village to village and beg the money so that I could return, or if not for money then maybe I should beg for rice or wheat or something that I could sell. So I tried. I'm very shy, and I never begged before, even if I had always been poor. I couldn't do it, so one girl who was my friend said she would come with me and help me. I couldn't say anything, so we went together and my friend would speak, but I just couldn't do it. I was really bad, and felt so bad begging. I tried a few times, and a few men did give me some food-some rice, and some Chinese yams. I didn't say a word, I couldn't, so my friend would tell the people about me.

Finally, I left this village and I went to another village. There it was more like really being in Tibet. Many people were chanting "Om mani padme hum" and there were many villages with real Tibetan people. It felt really different, and I was really happy. They gave me nice food, and I told them my story and what had happened, and that I wanted to go back.

Some people in this village were going to a big city where there was a monastery. I wanted to go there, and thought since there was a monastery there, there would be some good people there, and somebody might help me. Even people from my own village sometimes traveled to this monastery, and I thought maybe I would see somebody I knew. So these people took me to the home of some other people who were going to this city, and I stayed there one night, and asked if I could go along with them. This one man really did seem to be a very nice man. In the morning, he said that I should go with him to the city, that there wasn't any way for me to go back to my village.

He said there was a bus going to the monastery, and that I could go with him. I didn't know if I could believe him, and finally, even though he seemed to be nice, I decided that I should not go with him. I thought maybe the bus was going some other place, maybe to his own village, and I could not check for myself because of language problems. I had saved some money up after working for several months, about three or four hundred Chinese yuan, but I had given this money to this man for safekeeping. So suddenly he got on the bus and it left, and he left with my money.

So there I was in this city called Chinghe, and I had no idea where I was or what to do. I saw some Tibetan people wearing traditional Tibetan clothing and I tried to talk to them. But they had a different dialect and didn't understand me. But later I met some friendly Tibetans who did understand me, and they said I could stay in a room they had. It didn't have a bed, but I could sleep on the floor, and they said I should come in the afternoon and spend the night there, and that I wouldn't have to pay anything. I had told them that I didn't have any money.

So I slept there. I was very quiet and very nervous, because I was scared somebody was going to come and do something wrong to me. Actually, nobody came there. I woke up in the morning feeling better, and told these people about the monastery that I wanted to go to. They told me they also wanted to go there and that I should go with them, so I did.

It wasn't too far from Chingde to this monastery. I don't remember exactly, but I think it was about three hours, and it only cost a few Chinese yuan to go there by bus. They paid the fare for me. When we got there, I recognized the monastery from pictures I had seen. I was very happy. There were many monks there, many Tibetan people doing kora. Then I met two Tibetans girls there who were nomads like me. I could tell by the chubas they were wearing. I was very happy to meet them and talk to them. I told them I was alone, and asked if I could come with them, and they said it was okay. They told me that they didn't really have a home, but that they stayed in the home of a monk, and that they would have to ask him if it was okay for me to stay too.

We went there and talked to the monk. He was familiar with my home village. He asked me how I had come to the monastery, so I told him the story. He was a nice monk, and he said that I could stay there downstairs with the other girls, and that I shouldn't worry. So we were on the first floor, and the monk and different guests he had stayed up on the second floor. So I was there for more than two months.

I went to the monastery every day, and over time I did 100,000 prostrations. In Tibetan, this is called hundun bhilti. The monks noticed that I was a little bit different than most of the people they saw, and asked me where I was from. They worked for these temples. Every day, after they ate lunch, they gave me leftovers, and the same for breakfast. They had good food at this monastery. These girls went to work someplace, and in the evening they came back and we made dinner together.

After a few months, the monk said he was going to Lhasa, and he could take me there. He also said he could take me back to my village if I wanted. And it was true-finally, we went to Lhasa. He paid for my journey from the monastery to Lhasa, and he took me there with him. He had one friend in Lhasa with a restaurant, and he said I should stay and work at the restaurant, and that he would be staying at another place. I was so happy that I was working there. I stayed there and ate there, but I didn't get any pay. But still, I was so happy. I felt so free.

I worked there for a few months, and then the restaurant was sold to somebody else. Then the monk who had brought me told me he was going back to his monastery, but that he would be back to Lhasa, maybe in a few months, and that he would probably see me again. He asked the previous owners of the restaurant to help take some responsibility for me, and they did. They found me work with one family taking care of a baby. They were originally from Amdo. Actually, all these different people I was working with were from Amdo.

These people I was working with had one small baby. I cooked, did laundry, and other housework. They also had a small restaurant downstairs, but they had enough workers there and didn't me there. I had a little free time when I was done with the housework, and they told me that maybe I should sell bread. I told them I wasn't used to selling things and wasn't good at it. When I try to sell something, I don't push very hard. I act as if I don't care whether they buy or not.

So I was happier than before, but I still wanted to go to India very much. I had no idea how I could go there. As I told you before, I heard it was a very great country, and very peaceful, like heaven. Everybody said I could meet the Dalai Lama, and everything was free. It sounded very interesting, and I really wanted to go there.

Finally I met one man (again!). He said I was a very nice girl, and he himself looked so nice. He said he was a very religious person, and he believed in God so much. He also said that he loved people. He was from Kham, actually, and quite interesting. I was very pleased to meet him, because it had been so long since anybody was really nice and warm to me. He was quite old, so I found it easier to believe him.

He told me he had been to India many times. So I was so surprised and so happy. He told me he stayed at the border between India and China, and that he had very good friends in the army there. He told me that if I wanted to go to India that it would be no problem, and that he could help me. He said it would be easy. His good friend had a very high position in the army there at the border. So I listened to what he said, and I liked him. We became very good friends. I still didn't know how it would be possible to make this journey. I didn't have any passport. He showed me some secret place on the map.

I went on the bus from Lhasa to Shigatse, but at Shigatse they checked me. I was scared, and it was okay, but at Shigatse they told me I could not go to the border. So I was going to have to go a different way. So my friend sometimes stayed at the border. He didn't actually live there, but he had some friends at the border that he sometimes stayed with. He was with me part of the way, but then we had to go separate ways, because he had all the papers to go to the border and cross into India, but I didn't.

Finally I arrived at this town on the border. It wasn't a town where you could cross over the border, but it was along the border, just a small town. I was called Nyarung, there on the border between Tibet and Nepal. He had a small room in this house. It was quite scary, though. It took me many days to get to this border town.

When I arrived there, he didn't say anything more about India. He wanted me to stay there with him. So he didn't go back to Lhasa, and he wasn't going to India. I couldn't go back to Lhasa, and I couldn't cross the border without his help, so I was stuck. I had passed a few police stations on the way there, and I couldn't go backwards. So I stayed there, because I really did love him. I stayed with him, and cooked for him and did his laundry. Because I took good care of him, I was sure he would one day help me to go to India. I was waiting, waiting, but still he didn't say anything. Two months went by, and he didn't talk about India. So my feelings weren't right. I didn't want to hurt his feelings because I really loved him, but finally I said that I really did want to go to India. I really wanted to meet the Dalai Lama, and I really wanted to go to school. I told him that I knew he loved me, and that I loved him, and that I would come back to visit him, and that I would have a chance to stay with him. I also told him that if he really liked me and he really loved me and wanted to be with me that if he waited for a few years, I would come back.

But he said he wanted me to stay there. He made a small shop there, and I worked in his shop. I stayed there in the shop for a few months, and stayed in this place for a total of six months. But he still wouldn't let me go. Otherwise, he treated me so nicely, and really look after me so well.

Then one day I met a nomad girl, also from Kham, who wanted to go to India. She had lots of problems, just like me, so we talked about going to India together. So I told my friend that I was going. He still argued against it, but I wouldn't give in, and finally he just stopped talking to me. Then he really changed, and became very different. I begged him please to let me go, and promised I would come back. So finally he said okay, and that he would visit me in India at least once a year, and maybe more often, because he did have a passport. So he was okay, and mostly accepted it, but he was very different now. He didn't hit me or yell at me, but he was different. He had changed.

I found a guide to take us across the border. I didn't know it, but he was a very bad guide. He brought us further down the border to one very small village with Nepalese people, and put us in one very small, very bad room. I think it was for cows, not for people. There were no windows, no electricity, nothing inside. We lived there for two weeks. Each day we had one glass of milk and just a little food. We couldn't wash our only clothes, and we couldn't even use the toilet. We had to stay quiet all the time so nobody would know we were hiding there. We couldn't even cough, or people might here us and the police might catch us. We couldn't go pee, so everyday it was very painful. There was a small bottle to use, but it was so difficult to use, and it would fill up. He was a very bad guide.

My friend didn't get back into contact with us. We went through the mountains, but he went on the road, and he didn't meet us. And the guide didn't really even guide us. We had paid him. I gave him the money I made during the months I worked in Lhasa, as well as some other things I owned, and he kept them all. But my didn't meet us and bring things he promised to bring, and he didn't contact the guide to make sure he did a good job of helping us.

So finally we were in Nepal, and it was so much better. But I was very weak and sick. I had gotten sick during that two weeks at the border living in such bad conditions. When I called my friend and told him we had such a difficult time, and that he hadn't done the things he promised to help us, he said he was sorry, and said he would come visit in Nepal at the refugee centre. But then he told me that I shouldn't go to India, that it's not a good place, and that I should go back. But I told him I was going to India and I was going to school, and asked him to please stop saying things like that.

So then I went to Dharamsala. He said he would come visit me there before I started school, but he didn't. I missed him so much. I had to do these things, but he didn't come to see me. I stayed sick, and when I started school, I continued to have problems with my health. Originally, we had plans that I would go to school and he would visit me a few times a year in Dharamsala. He did eventually visit me and ask how I was, and I answered that I was very happy to be in His Holiness' school. I never thought I would be a student in this life. I told him it was hard, but I was happy. He said he didn't think so, that I was so weak, and that I was so different. He said my body looked so weak, and that I should go back with him. He said I didn't need to study, and the food was bad there, and that I looked really old.

But I told him no, that I was sorry, and that after I finished school I would visit him. I did want to stay with him after I finished school, and do some work with him, because I thought I loved him. Later I made a visit to Bodh Gaya, made a pilgrimage there. He asked me to come and meet him there. I said I would, but I really didn't have any money, so he said he would pay for me and meet me there. So I went, and he came, and we met. Once again he told me I shouldn't stay in India, and then, he didn't pay like he said he would. So my friend who had come with me, a Tibetan girl, loaned me one thousand Indian rupees so that I could get home and return to my school. I was very happy she did, but it was such a long time before I could give her back that money, five or six months. I promised her that I would give it back, but she said not to worry, that she didn't really need it.

But he didn't visit me again... never. I haven't seen him since. I was in school for two years, and he never visited again and he never helped me again with anything. So I tried to forget him, I was very upset, and there wasn't anything I could do for him. But the pain was very deep, he broke my heart.

So I went to school, but I was sick too much. Food lost its flavor, and everything I ate tasted like stones. I had trouble sleeping at night, and I didn't like to talk to anybody. I didn't want to laugh or play, and I just wanted to be alone. At school, I lived in one big room with twenty-four girls, who talked about everything, but I didn't want to hear any of these things. Then I really started to worry about my studies, and it seemed like everything difficult was coming together at the same time. Of course, I wasn't used to school, I had never been to school before, and the school had more than thirty rules. I wasn't used to these rules. The headmaster and all the people who kept attendance used a whistle, but I had never heard such a thing before. I was having an especially difficult time of sleeping.

My roommate told me something wasn't right, and my classmates also told me I wasn't right. They said something had changed, and something was wrong, and they could see it in my face. Finally, one guy told me that I was studying very hard, too hard. I spent so much time in front of a book. The boys and girls have different schools, so it wasn't quite regular when this guy called me to come and see him. I didn't go at first, because I was worried. But he insisted, so I went. He asked me if I knew him, and I said no, but he said he knew me. He said he'd been watching me for a long time, and that I studied so much, it was really too much. He said he's gone to Chinese schools in Tibet before, and he had experience with studying and knew how to study without exhausting himself. He said what I was doing was wrong, and that sometimes I needed to talk to other people, to play, and relax my mind. He told me he was only saying this for me, he wasn't trying to harm me or control me or anything like that. He told me that study wasn't important, but not as important as my health, and that I could not study forever, and I certainly wouldn't be able to study if I died. He said he had lots of experience with going to school, and it was very important to relax some.

Since then, I don't really like to study too much. I still have problems balancing my heart and my mind and my body, but I'm learning. I still have problems with my health, but I'm learning. The school program I was in was for five years, but I left, I knew I wouldn't last that long. But it would make different kinds of problems for me to leave school. So I left after two years, even though I knew that I couldn't return once I left, and that my situation would be very uncertain if I left. But I was just too sick, and had nightmares all the time and couldn't sleep.

So one of my classmates who was a monitor at the school suggested that I go to McLeod Gange and look for a job. He said he knew a monk there who needed somebody to work for him, and that I could probably work for him, and that I would be happy there, and that he could introduce me to this monk. I said okay, because I didn't know anybody here. So he gave me his cell phone number, and I finished up with school. I went to the refugee center in McLeod and stayed there a few days, and I called the monk, but his line was always busy, busy all the time and I couldn't get through. But this guy who was helping me had told the monk about me, and was looking for me too. He came to the refugee center, and described me to the people there, and they said that yes, I was staying there. So they told me later that a monk was looking for me, and I told them I had been looking for him. They showed me his place, nearby one Kashmiri shop. A monk was standing there, and I asked him if he knew this particular monk, and he said yes, that was him, and asked me if I was Pema. I said yes, so he asked me to please come. He asked me all about myself-when I came to India, how it was in school, did I have I have any relatives there, did I have friends there, how old I was, and many things. So I answered everything, and he said that yes, he would like me to start working for him immediately, but we had a problem: I didn't have any friends to stay with, and that he didn't have any place for me to stay where he lived. He had only one room, but he did want to hire me. He knew some guys that might have room, but it wouldn't be possible for me to stay with guys.

He had a teacher, an Australian lady who was teaching him English most evenings between eight and nine o'clock. So she came to teach that evening at eight, and he asked her if I could stay with her for a while, and that I knew some English. She said okay. She was the first Western person that I really met and talked to. She was a big woman, and I was shy and nervous. She was staying at a nunnery, and she had two single beds, one on each side of the room. The monk had told me that Western people were different, and they didn't like some things that maybe didn't matter to Tibetans, so I was worried. I was very quiet and shy and nervous and uncomfortable. I didn't say anything. I stayed that way the whole night. I was afraid to even move.

In the morning I woke up at six o'clock and went to the monk's place and did all the work he told me to do. Then she came in the evening to teach the monk, and she told him there was no problem, so I went again to stay the second night with her. Still I didn't say anything and went straight to bed. I didn't look at her, I didn't even look at her face, and stayed so quiet. On the third day she said that I could stay with her until she left, and that she would be there for a few weeks. So I was very happy. So by nine o'clock she had finished her lesson with the monk, and I had finished my work. We had dinner there at the monk's and went back to her place. Then I was back at the monk's again at six o'clock, doing cleaning and laundry and shopping for things.

Then finally she said she would be leaving soon, and that she wanted to find some place for me to stay because she was worried about me. She finally told the monk that I wouldn't talk with her, and the monk kind of yelled at me and told me I was very silly, and what was wrong with me? I had studied for two years and must have learned some English, so he said I should tell her something. He said it wouldn't matter if I made some mistakes, she would be happy if I would talk to her.

One night when we went back to her place to go to sleep, she asked me if I knew about a certain place. I told her I did, and we talked about it, and the next day she told the monk she was very happy, that we had a good conversation and that I spoke very good English. She was so happy, because I hadn't talked to her for so long.

She was getting ready to leave. She had one man who was a friend who she told about me. She asked him if he could find a job for me because she didn't know very many people there, and he said that yes, he could. Soon we went there, and he asked some questions, like why I came to India and when I came to India, and what kind of work did I know how to do. They found me a job with a Tibetan family, and I worked, ate and slept there. Then this girl said she wanted very much to learn English, and could I please give her a lesson every day for an hour. That was no problem, so I did that. The food was nice, and it was a good place to work, so I stayed there quite a long time.

They also gave me time to go to class. I had one teacher who was a Canadian. He was a nice guy, and very funny. I didn't talk to him, but he seemed very nice. Then one day he approached me and asked me if I wanted to go to a party. He was so funny, he was like a monkey, nice and always laughing, but I didn't want to talk to him. I still had a problem with being shy. He had a friend, a woman from Canada, who knew some Tibetan. She asked me something in Tibetan, so we started sometimes speaking in Tibetan together. She was nice. She is a Buddhist, and very interested in Buddhism and the Tibetan language, so we had lots of conversations. So then I stayed with her, and left my job. She paid for me, so I went to went to class and my life was good. After she left, I stayed with two German girls who were her friends. I stayed with them for a few months.

My life is like that. It's better, it's getting better. Last year I stopped taking my medicine. I had been using too much medicine since I had been at the border in Nepal. Most of it was Western medicine, and some of it was Tibetan medicine. But it was too much. Now I am meeting nice people and I am free and happy, and I feel that my life is only going to get better.

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