The world comes screaming into the mountain

This is the end of my first week in Mcleod Ganj (work week), and it has been an incredible a learning experience, surviving the language barrier, the cultural differences in teaching methods, walking 45 minutes down the side of a mountain with my laptop and working on Saturdays has obviously shaken me around a bit.

My week is broken up as follows:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday 9-12.30 working with the Tibetan Department of Human Rights. Their website (www.tchrd.org) is currently being translated into Tibetan font called Bod-yig. The importance of such a translation was lost on me until I realised that each community is only as strong as the language they use to describe it. For any community, the integrity, the ability to pass on tradition, is directly proportionate to their ability to retain culture, via language, stories, paintings, songs etc.

In web terms, most developers know that we can pre-set a language definition into a page for browsers to render/opt up. For the Tibetans, this language has been Chinese, as there has been no universal font used in web development created specifically for the Tibetan language. The conversion of English language sites into Tibetan is a great step in retaining original versions of work. Later, this will prove to be fundamental in the translation of archived materials, ensuring that ''nothing gets lost on the way".

However, from a technical point of view, there are limitations. We have old, unstable computers, unreliable electrical sources, and web developers who still need to learn a lot more. It would be easy to step in and just " do the job", but who would that help? In order for the web to facilitate the Tibetan cause, Tibetans must be able to test, develop and maintain their own applications. Having tourists or teachers creating whizz-bang sites that no-one can update pretty much defeats the purpose.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons I work for TCRC, the Tibetan Computer Resource Centre. Their current 'thing' is wanting to move the entire of www.tibet.net into a CMS. The one they are currently looking at is Joomla, a PHP MYSQL open source application. Funnily enough I feel like I have been teleported into another version of hell, the only difference being that here I cant work on project plans, or technical specifications. Here, we are still learning that a CMS is not easier, or faster, it's different, and long term provides incredible benefits for content re-use.
Here the culture is meek and calm, and not investigative. The simple act of "trying out an application" is not something that is encouraged. This week really has been about getting the brilliantly talented group to just 'break stuff'.

To explain, the teaching method here for primary and secondary school includes mimicry, deep respect (and often fear) of the 'teacher', and repetition. The curriculum doesn't have space for questions, self learning, inquisitiveness. When you don't repeat something properly, you are smacked with a cane.

This is carried over into adulthood, and so the people I am working with are slowly, very slowly learning that there are no sticks, no mistakes, nothing that can be broken that can't be fixed.

Tuesday and Thursday, I teach basic html to Tibetan women. The move for women to create their own representations, their own sites, is a fast moving one. In fact, generally speaking, I would say that McLeod Ganj is ready to burst at the seams. The Tibetan Administration in Exile is beginning to realise the power that websites can have.

You only have to think of Google, and China, to realise that....

The rest of my week is working with displaced refugees from India and Tibet, cooking in a restaurant down the mountain and teaching some monks English. Frankly, I'm more flat out than I have ever been.

I'm also learning more than I thought possible. I've started taking a basic PHP class, so I can help out with the new CMS and I'm mostly UNLEARNING everything, in order to be a help.

Next week I will drop in on the Dharamslala Wireless crew, which might be of interest to you- more so than this incessant rambling.

Take care and anyone wanting to find out more, email me at clairesspencer@gmail.com