Introducing: Lha

Ninotchka is away on a five-day meditation retreat, and so I've got our new new home to myself. We've moved once more, for what I anticipate is the final time. The place we had found had its merits, but the management left something to be desired; with winter encroaching and nothing even resembling a tenancy board in sight, we opted for more secure environs. And these we found via the director of the organization Ninotchka and I are both working for, currently. Lha Social Work is one of the major NGO's here in McLeod Ganj, whose mission (perhaps obviously) is the social well being of Tibetan refugees. Nawang, the director, set us up with a room in their volunteer accomodations. The price is just slightly more than we'd hoped to pay, but there are a number of advantages (not the least of which is a meager wi-fi connection), and, unlike the guest houses that litter the town, the residents of our building are primarily here for longer periods, which gives us a chance to build a little more substantial relationships with people.

But of course our living arrangements are of minimal interest beside the work we've both undertaken. Ninotchka, like so many International Development students before her, grew jaded by the implicitly capitalist framework of development initiatives and thus, by the end, despaired of her degree. Yet, ironically, she's undertaken a gig which makes quite excellent use of the skills she acquired, despite her exhausted enthusiasm for International Assimilat—err, Development. I, meanwhile, was profoundly moved and inspired by my grooming in social-anthropological perspective, and have largely been inwardly critical of what has clearly become an unsavory addiction to computers. Yet, I am nonetheless playing at computers once more, and my thirty-grand investment has precious little to do with it. This time, at least, my digital dallying has a benefit beyond the wanton sustainance of an insatiable appetite for puzzle solving.

Explanations of Ninotchka's work I'll leave to her to recount on her own blog. Mine, at least, has two components; web design for the organization itself, which is (for reasons I'll spare you an extensive elaboration of) a deliciously exciting enterprise and one which is, for the moment, summarily out of my league. And that fact alone generates most of my enthusiasm, because now I've got both a legitimate reason and a real-world time frame in which to teach myself how to come through on the promises I've made. I'm confident that there are enough recent undergraduates reading this to appreciate the bitter-sweet ecstasy of just how much one can really achieve under the impetus of gut-rending anxiety. Meanwhile, my other contribution to Lha is by quite a huge margin the more gratifying of the two: Photoshop class!

To be clear, I am by no means even marginally qualified to teach a Photoshop class by the standards of, say, a professional media design company situated in Western commercial spheres. In the context of a mountain-top town full of refugees, however, I am quite simply all they've currently got (and indeed, I'm pretty confident this is the first time Lha has ever offered a class on Photoshop, however  elementary). So, having dispensed with the question of qualification, what remains is to impart in ten hours all that I am able of the knowledge I've gained from a ten year-long quest to believably place the heads of various mammals onto the bodies of various reptiles. This is, of course, quite impossible—but therein lies the delicious agony. How does one responsibly choose for others which parts of the whole must be done without?

Today marks my third day of class, and after this week I will teach the class to another set of students three more times, whereupon there'll be a break until next year. Now, let me state: I've been blessed with the quality of the teachers I've had in my life—there really isn't any other way to explain it. I mean, it not only defies chance, but in fact strings chance up by its laurels and jeers at it, to consider just how many truly caring, considerate, and talented teachers I've  been in sat in front of, since the age of five onward. I've had a few teachers who were apathetic, impatient or debilitatingly embittered, so it isn't just that I exaggerate the merits of those who've taught me. Teaching truly is it's own skill, and, having happened into the tutelage of an unreasonable number of people possessed of it, I've spent quite a lot of time contemplating pedagogical questions. A tangent: one of my oldest and closest friends happens to be one of the most innately talented people I've ever met; the guy can just create, and when he does, small marvels tend to be the consequence. I've harried him for years about passing along the trick, a request which has been generally met with his insistence that he has no idea how he does it and thus that he is unable to properly explain it. Now, to be fair, over the course of our relationship he's done a pretty grand job of it nonetheless, but then again I am, in fact, a very good student (that is, when I want to be....) and have tried very hard to learn from him. The point of my digression is just to demonstrate that it's just not enough to be great at a thing to teach it. Understanding what it is you know, what steps are required to know it, which tangential or supporting bits of information are necessary to support a deep understanding of this thing you know, and then being capable of expressing it all in digestable increments is a wholly other talent. And I admit—this is something that I think I can do quite well, or at least, potentially would be able to do quite well with a little more practice in patience and organization. In general, my exposure to such truly excellent mentors/educators/teachers accounts for a very significant part of the person I am today; I really, honestly do feel a responsibility to carry that torch, so to speak. So, with a very great enthusiasm I have undertaken the rather tiny responsibility of teaching the basics of Photoshop.

Tibetan people are quite shy and introspective; on the whole, loquacity is not a well-regarded character trait, nor is impatience or hastiness. So, those of you who know me well can appreciate that some restraint on my behalf is required to be an approachable guide (a euphemism, I know). The first day went wonderfully well; my lesson plan imparted all that it was intended to in almost perfect use of my allotted time. Yesterday, however, was something of a disaster—I just talk too damn much—and my 'thirty-minute' lecture ended with a confused group of students trying frantically to add color, with techniques they had witnessed but never used, to a large grayscale robot in the remaining twenty-minutes of class. But on the whole everyone is proving really grateful, if a little too deferent for my comfort (I am altogether squeamish about being addressed as 'sir'). But, for my first venture into education, I've drawn a pretty great lot of students; they are all incredibly intelligent, respcetful and studious. Also, I can't help but admire how willingly and reflexively they help each other, especially with understanding what the hell the white guy in the front is gibbering about. More than a few anglophones have advised me that my speech treads dangerously close to incomprehensible at times. Thus, to a group of Tibetans for whom speaking English is generally a fledgling practice, I clearly sometimes represent an unsurmountable deluge of unfamiliar vocabulary, bludgeoned enunciation and relentless pace. In short, good will really can overcome all varieties of cultural discrepancy, but not without trial.

Anyway, its wonderful to have responsibility again—to feel enmeshed in a social frame—and it's a relief to fel properly settled and thus eligible for routine. I'll see if I can't get a photo or two of the class, and maybe I'll  even get round to posting some of the shots I've gathered of McLeod... probably...