• Thanks ...

Team Reports
• Clarence Deyoung
• Laura Harper
• Milton van der Veen

Spiti Valley Videos

• The Distribution
• The Dalai Lama visits Kaza
• Old Beds, New Beds
• Untrucking Mattresses
• Streets & Roads of India

A Special Distribution

Milton van der Veen — Owen Sound, ON

From Spiti Valley Photo Album

Sleeping Children donors are used to giving a $35 donation for a bedkit which usually contains a pillow, mattress, and bedsheets. But for this distribution we had decided to help out a school in the Himalayas and provide a bed along with regular bedkit items.

When our friends heard from us that we were going on this distribution, many asked how they could contribute a bedkit for Spiti Valley. We had to tell them it wasn't possible. First of all, this was not a regular distribution — it was a one-time special distribution to help us celebrate 2009, the Year of the Millionth Bedkit. It commemorated a trip that SCAW founder Murray Dryden made to the Himalayas in 1981. Murray delivered a thousand beds (approximately 10 tons) to four remote villages. We distributed beds to 380 children in Northern India. Secondly, the unit cost of supplying a complete bed and bedding for a child at Munsel Ling School was more than the cost of a regular $35 bedkit. And third, in order to fund this special distribution, Sleeping Children used money from a bequest from the estate of Mary Verna Simmons which, along with money given by donors from the Trans-Himalayan Aid Society [TRAS] a non-profit international development organization based in Vancouver, paid for the entire cost of the beds and bedding.

Murray's trip required twenty-six porters who carried the beds up into the mountains two weeks before Murray and his group arrived.

He said, "It was an adventure I will not soon forget."

From Murray's report of his trip:

• We had three porters, a guide, and a cook and we stopped for five minutes every thirty minutes. The cook was anxious to ply me with tea.

  After sailing along for four hours, word came to halt for light refreshments. I was to know later that this was the notice of a formidable "enemy" lying ahead. At 16:30 we were given the order to "attack." It was up, up, up on narrow and slippery trails, and it was getting darker. Earlier, our trip routing had been changed from a 3-hour to a 6-hour objective. I sensed that the game was to kill me off early. My confidence was indeed gradually being shot down — I was even thinking of the possibility of an air lift! The thought of nine more days of this torture almost made me sick.

At least we didn't have to walk.

Snow shuts off road traffic to Spiti Valley each November. The beds for the Munsel-Ling School were delivered by truck early in June — just after the roads through the Rohtang Pass re-opened for the summer.

When we arrived, there was a lot of excitement as the Dalai Lama was visiting the area and the students all went to Kaza to welcome him. The next three days, most of the children also went with their parents to his teachings at the Sakya Monastery. While the children were away, we took the opportunity to remove the old beds and bedding. Then the dorm rooms were cleaned and the new beds and mattresses were installed.

From Spiti Valley Photo Album

We took our photos the last two days we were there.

Lama Tashi is planning to reuse the iron from the old beds to make tables and bookshelves for the school. Nothing is wasted. Luckily we had help from the other volunteers at the school, as Clarence mentioned.

As on all Sleeping Children distributions we had to be flexible and ready for anything. Murray also had to do that during the last of his distributions in the Himalayas in 1981. Here's what Murray wrote:

• On this particular morning, January 24th, I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag at 05:15 and, on exiting, I tripped over one of the tent stakes, causing me to pitch head-first over a ten-foot parapet stone wall in the total dark! My glasses flew off, also my watch, and I picked myself up out of a field of rape in flower, a field that was also littered with large stones. One shoe and the flashlight had left me as I plunged, but my spectacles and watch were OK and I could not believe that I had only a barked knee and arm.

  The group had slept through it all.

  As there was no way I could find my way to the upper level, I had to call the guides. They too could not believe that I was not injured. And to think it happened seventeen trekking hours from any kind of road where help might be found.

The following morning Murray and his team distributed 100 bedkits before it began to rain. They had to deliver the remaining 150 inside to complete their 1000 bedkit distribution.

At the Munsel-Ling School, all the beds were in place by Monday night.

When Murray first started distributing bedkits he would photograph the children asleep in beds so we thought it fitting to do the same on this distribution in memory of his trip to the Himalayas in 1981.

Around ten that evening we went to see the results of our distribution. The sounds of quiet breathing were all we heard and the photos show what we saw.

From Spiti Valley Photo Album

Children sleeping peacefully, just the way Murray would have wanted it.