From a Trickle to a Torrent: Education, Migration, and Social Change in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal - Softcover

Childs, Geoff; Choedup, Namgyal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520299523 ISBN 13: 9780520299528

Publisher: University of California Press, 2018

Synopsis

What happens to a community when the majority of young people leave their homes to pursue an education? From a Trickle to a Torrent documents the demographic and social consequences of educational migration from Nubri, a Tibetan enclave in the highlands of Nepal. The authors explore parents’ motivations for sending their children to distant schools and monasteries, social connections that shape migration pathways, young people’s estrangement from village life, and dilemmas that arise when educated individuals are unable or unwilling to return and reside in their native villages. Drawing on numerous decades of research, this study documents a transitional period when the future of a Himalayan society teeters on the brink of irreversible change.

About this title

About the Author

Geoff Childs is Professor of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. His previous works include Tibetan Diary: From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal.
 
Namgyal Choedup completed a PhD in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. He conducts research on migration and identity politics in the Tibetan diaspora. 

From the Back Cover

"Unlike much of the literature on migration and social change, this work pays careful, nuanced attention to how such education-driven outmigration transforms the experiences of those who stay home as well as those who leave, those who return, and those who strive to imagine futures that posit so-called marginal homelands and well-known cosmopolitan places as fundamentally interconnected."--Sienna Craig, author of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine
"In lucid and vivid prose, Geoff Childs and Namgyal Choedup tell a poignant story of educational outmigration from rural Himalayan Nepal. Deftly mixing methods and levels of analysis, and drawing on over two decades of longitudinal research, From a Trickle to a Torrent demonstrates the power of a truly anthropological demography to explain the hidden causes and costs of human movement."--Michael Lempert, author of Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

From the Inside Flap

"Unlike much of the literature on migration and social change, this work pays careful, nuanced attention to how such education-driven outmigration transforms the experiences of those who stay home as well as those who leave, those who return, and those who strive to imagine futures that posit so-called marginal homelands and well-known cosmopolitan places as fundamentally interconnected.&;&;Sienna Craig, author of Healing Elements: Efficacy and the Social Ecologies of Tibetan Medicine

"In lucid and vivid prose, Geoff Childs and Namgyal Choedup tell a poignant story of educational outmigration from rural Himalayan Nepal. Deftly mixing methods and levels of analysis, and drawing on over two decades of longitudinal research, From a Trickle to a Torrent demonstrates the power of a truly anthropological demography to explain the hidden causes and costs of human movement."&;Michael Lempert, author of Discipline and Debate: The Language of Violence in a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From a Trickle to a Torrent

Education, Migration, and Social Change in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal

By Geoff Childs, Namgyal Choedup

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2019 The Regents of the University of California
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-29952-8

Contents

List of Illustrations, 
List of Tables, 
Acknowledgments, 
1. Predicaments, Presumptions, and Procedures, 
2. Moving In before Moving Out, 
3. Embedding the Household in the Village, 
4. Whither the Young People?, 
5. Becoming Monks, 
6. Becoming Nuns, 
7. Becoming Students, 
8. The Household Succession Quandary, 
9. The Transformative Potential of Educational Migration, 
10. Nubri Futures?, 
Appendix: The Population of Nubri, 
Notes, 
Glossary of Tibetan Terms, 
References, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Predicaments, Presumptions, and Procedures

AN EMPTY NEST

Tsering Lhamo labored up the steep incline leading to her village. A taut sling pressing against her forehead bore the weight of a sack filled with grain she had just roasted and ground into flour at a water mill down by the river. Her slow, methodical steps contrasted with strenuous breathing and rivulets of sweat running down her cheeks. The hint of a smile crossed Tsering Lhamo's face when she encountered us on the trail. We helped steady her load as she slipped the sling over her head, lowered the sack onto a rock, and exhaled loudly in relief. Friction marks across her forehead bore witness to the arduous labor that embodies her daily subsistence. As we would learn, such a mark epitomizes the contrast parents foresee between their lives and the potential lives their children can achieve through education, a disparity captured by the oft-recited expression "Better a pen in hand than a rope across the forehead."

"Are you well, elder sister?" we asked. "I'm fine," she murmured without much conviction. Tsering Lhamo was widowed at a relatively young age. Now she lives alone in the village because years ago she sent her only daughter to a boarding school and her only son to a monastery in Kathmandu, the nation's capital that takes days to reach on precarious footpaths. Neither of her children envisions returning to the village, yet Tsering Lhamo never complains about the substantial workload she now shoulders. Her suffering is a direct result of the decision she made to create pathways for her children toward more comfortable and less physically demanding lives.

Tsering Lhamo is both an anomaly and a harbinger in her village. Her status as an elderly person who lives alone is not unprecedented. Some couples have no children; others endure the tragedy of witnessing all their children die before reaching maturity. Some men and women, born into poverty, remain single their entire lives because they lack the requisite assets or social status to marry. Tsering Lhamo's case is unusual today because she is a mother, yet neither of her children lives nearby. Most people her age live with, or near, adult sons or daughters who can be counted on for support. Given today's outmigration trend, it is reasonable to predict that more parents will end up like her.

We later met Tsering Lhamo's son, Dzamling Dorje, who is a monk living in a large, well-endowed monastery in Kathmandu. Slight of frame and sporting a wispy beard, he bears a striking resemblance to Nubri's lamas of yore whose images are carved on stones marking auspicious sites along mountain trails. In fact, some of those images are his ancestors, for he comes from a lineage of lamas that first migrated to Nubri five generations ago. Unlike his father, who resided in the village as a ngagpa (householder lama), Dzamling Dorje took a vow of celibacy and now lives in a community of monks pursuing the study of Buddhism at its highest level. It was not his choice to become a monk, for he was sent to the monastery by his mother right after his father died. Dzamling Dorje explained to us,

It was very difficult in the beginning. I came down here a few months after my father passed away and I was sad about the loss of my father. The journey from the village in those days was very difficult because the trail was very bad so it took ten to twelve days. Then there was the problem of language since I spoke only Nubri dialect. My mother returned to the village a few days after I became a monk. I had to part with my mother not long after I lost my father, and I was in a totally new place. I had a very hard time. It was very hard for about a year, so I could not focus too much on my education. But as I became used to the new environment, it became less difficult. Eventually the thought of returning home was not that strong, but I missed my mother very much.

Dzamling Dorje adjusted to his new environment and now thrives as a teacher of younger students. When we visited him, he invited us inside and offered us tea with the grace and refinement of a man who devotes his life to learning. His spartan room contained a mattress on the floor flanked by a low table supporting rosary beads, an open scripture book, and his personal tea cup covered by a silver lid to keep flies at bay. We removed our shoes and sat on the mattress as he placed a small, square carpet on the ground, where he then sat cross-legged. After exchanging small talk, we began the interview with our usual questions regarding his pathway to religion. Eventually we came to the matter of household succession and asked if he was concerned about his mother being alone in the village. Dzamling Dorje replied,

Yes, I am definitely concerned about this. On the one hand, I am a monk and have my own monastic obligations, while on the other hand I am the only son of my mother. Therefore, it is like one person having to fulfill two different responsibilities in life. It is a difficult situation. I can't stay in the village because my place is in the monastery and my responsibility is to teach the younger monks. Living in the monastery, I am reminded often about my filial duties to my mother. I try to help her in whatever way I can. It becomes especially problematic when she gets sick. For instance, one time my mother suddenly fell ill. It was a serious health situation requiring medical rescue by helicopter. She ended up staying at the hospital for one month, and only returned to the village after resting in Kathmandu for another three months. It was very difficult under such circumstances. She is alone in the village and must take care of the large landholding that my late father left behind. She complains sometimes about the difficulties she is facing. But I can't be of much help since I am a monk.

My mother sometimes asks me to visit her in the village and says it is okay if I don't want to come back for good. So, I try to visit her in the village whenever I find time. When I do visit, my mother does not mention marriage to me. But most of the elders raise this issue because, in our village tradition, the continuation of the lineage is highly stressed. Since I belong to a lama's lineage, if I don't marry, our lineage will come to an end. Although I have a sister, we only count paternal descent when it comes to the continuation of the lineage. That is why people in the village are highly concerned. I have taken a religious vow of celibacy and would very much like to continue this religious life. So, there is a clash of interest between religious and worldly life.

Dzamling Dorje's reluctance to take on the leadership of his household, the customary duty of an eldest son, has left his mother to preside over an empty nest. Tsering Lhamo does not press the matter; like other parents in Nubri she is inured to the hardships of life in an alpine environment and is determined that her children not face a similar fate. Taking advantage of new opportunities to attain religious and secular education, parents nowadays send most of their children out of the valley. By making sacrifices to ensure better futures for their offspring, they increase the precariousness of their own lives, drastically reducing the household labor force and unleashing the prospect of fending for themselves in old age. Meanwhile, young migrants are confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, educational migration is a conduit for upward mobility. On the other hand, moving away at a young age can sever the roots of a cultural identity that is embedded within Nubri's distinctive landscape and society.

The outmigration of youths for educational purposes started as a trickle in the 1980s, slowly gained momentum in the 1990s, and has since evolved into a full-scale torrent. This study documents a complex and evolving situation involving transnational flows of philanthropic capital, demographic disparities, and household-based migration decisions that have highly uncertain outcomes. It builds upon previous research by one of the coauthors (GC) at a time, the mid-1990s, when the migration phenomenon was just showing signs of gaining traction. A product of that research, Tibetan Diary, centered on the life course of individuals who spent the majority of their existence in Nubri; hence the subtitle From Birth to Death and Beyond in a Himalayan Valley of Nepal. Since then, migration for education has become a normative step in the life course and a defining feature of Nubri society. Borrowing Knight and Traphagan's terminology (2003:13), the village has transformed from a lifecourse space where individuals are born, mature, and die, to a lifephase space where they spend only a portion of their lives.

Our purpose is not to lament a disappearing way of life or engage in a commentary on how indigenous cultures suffer under the relentless encroachment of capitalism, neoliberalism, or other manifestations of the world system. Rather, we aim to explore — through the eyes of Nubri residents themselves — the relationship between a changing landscape of educational possibilities, the emergence of a family management strategy that relies on outmigration, and the social and cultural ramifications of educational migration. The questions we seek to answer are the following: What motivates parents to send most of their children to faraway institutions for education? How do parents adapt their family management strategies in response to the new opportunities? How do social networks facilitate the movement of children from the village to specific destinations? In what ways do migration and education influence marital norms and the process of household succession? How does the quest for social and economic mobility simultaneously connect and detach young people from the social fabric of their natal villages? What are the social, cultural, economic, and demographic consequences of a migration pattern that depletes a valley of its younger generation? In brief, what is happening, why is it happening, and what is at stake?

Although this book centers on the process of rural to urban migration, our perspective is firmly rooted in the village. We acknowledge that a turn toward problem-oriented research has led anthropologists away from village-based studies, yet agree with Herzfeld that "the role of the village has never been fully displaced from the discipline," and that "the village itself was also never the conceptual as well as geographic isolate that so many anthropologists, too burdened to read back into the older literature, now imagine it to have been" (2015:338). As Sara Shneiderman argues, the village remains an important point of orientation even for those who move away. Therefore, it is more productive to view the village as "a flexible set of social relations ... rather than as a fixed point on a map" (2015b:319). Throughout this book we demonstrate how the village continues to shape the lives of educational migrants despite dwindling prospects that they will return as full-time residents.

THE ENDURING YET EPHEMERAL VILLAGE

Nubri, a Buddhist enclave populated by roughly thirty-five hundred individuals in the upper stretch of the Buri Gandakhi River in Gorkha District, Nepal, is composed of villages ranging in elevation from 6,900 to 12,500 feet. The lower section of the valley, called Kutang, is inhabited by descendants of people who migrated from neighboring areas and formed a unique society that bears many accoutrements of Tibetan culture such as the clothing style, written language, and form of Buddhism. What sets residents of Kutang apart is their distinct dialect, called kukay, or "language of Kutang," which some playfully suggest means "stolen language" because of lexical borrowings from several neighboring vernaculars.

Across the river from Kutang lies Trok (elev. 7,500 ft.), the first Tibetan-speaking village in Nubri and a major focus of this book. Trok is situated on a gently sloping tableland that is parceled into verdant fields of barley, maize, and potatoes. Houses are clustered into distinct neighborhoods surrounded by small groves of apple trees. Above Trok rises a cliff split by zigzagging ravines that look like they were cleaved by hand. In fact, Trok's residents believe that a previous settlement had been buried under debris that a demoness scratched down from this rock face.

Moving up valley from Trok, one ascends through a narrow gorge and enters an environment where species of pine, birch, and rhododendron populate the lush forests. High summits dominate the landscape, most of which tower to 20,000 feet and above. At Rö, a large village in the shadow of Gang Pungyen (Mount Manaslu), the valley widens into a flat plain and takes a sharp turn to the north. Samdo, the highest village in the valley, lies just above tree line. Beyond Samdo the high passes cross into Tibet to the north and Manang District to the west.

To an outsider, a cursory glimpse of village life in Nubri can spawn visions of a bucolic past. Tourists on the lookout for "unspoiled" destinations are increasingly setting their sights on Nubri. In line with utopian conceptions of Tibetan Buddhist societies (Lopez 1998; Dodin and Räther 2001; Brauen 2013), trekking agencies depict Nubri as a place that has somehow eluded all vestiges of external intrusions. For example one agency proclaims, "Hidden behind Manaslu are some of the unexplored and unknown Tibetan villages that have seen little change since medieval times," while another promises, "This fascinating trek [through Nubri] explores areas and the way of life unchanged for decades and maybe, even centuries." These and other advertisements lure visitors with the prospect that a trek through the valley offers vicarious glimpses of "primitive villages" filled with "primitive inhabitants" who maintain "primitive Tibetan influenced culture and tradition." Visiting Nubri is an opportunity to venture back in time to a place where "all traces of modern civilization fade" in "villages where the harmonious agricultural life has remained unchanged for hundreds of years."

Granted, tourism agencies disseminate romantic images of destinations as a means to pry money from potential clients. Such imaginative descriptions play upon people's desire to witness the unpretentious lifestyle of a bygone era. What the depictions mask, however, is the adaptable nature of a society that has been in continuous flux for generations. One hundred sixty years ago the people of Nubri came to terms with a border realignment that shifted their political allegiance from Tibet, headed by a Buddhist cleric, to the Kingdom of Nepal, ruled by members of a Hindu warrior caste. Since then they have adjusted to several major political shake-ups, all the while coping with their subordinate status as Buddhist highlanders in a predominantly Hindu nation. For more than a century their subsistence has been highly dependent on farming potatoes and maize, two New World crops which entailed major adaptations in agriculture techniques, not to mention cultural perceptions of what constitutes a proper diet. The residents of Nubri saw their position as middlemen in the lucrative trans-Himalayan trade network erode with China's assertion of power over Tibet in the 1950s, but then found equally profitable markets for their abundant timber in the 1980s and medicinal herbs at the turn of this century. Their religious affiliations have vacillated between, and combined elements of, several major Buddhist sects. Their religious institutions based on temples headed by married lamas are conceding power and influence to newly consecrated celibate monasteries. In the meantime, Nubri's residents are now centered in the cross-hairs of evangelical Christian missionaries' sights as they target Nepal's highlanders for conversion (Coburn 2017).

Social, economic, and cultural practices in Nubri have never been stagnant, a point that is obvious to the valley's residents who are versed in the Buddhist philosophy that every material object and immaterial phenomenon is characterized by impermanence (mitagpa nyid); the only inevitability is change itself. Today's driver of social transformation is a quest for education — both secular and religious — that motivates parents to send their children outside of the valley. Unlike other drivers of social change such as political makeovers or the adoption of new crops, educational migration has resulted in the geographic dispersion of Nubri's population, simultaneously opening new opportunities while reshaping village life, family management strategies, and intergenerational relations.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520299523
• ISBN 13: 9780520299528
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246