Page 62 - CONTENTS

62
now, thanks to Lyangsong’s efforts, taught in government schools
where there is a Lepcha majority or substantial population.
It was to keep alive this language, and the songs, dances and music
which go with it, that Lyangsong and his redoubtable committees (one
central and one in each village) established the first Lepcha Night
Schools. These schools were built to provide a place where Lepcha
children could go in the morning and in the afternoon/evening to
learn their language and practice songs, dances and music or perhaps
put in some archery practice (outdoors!). They were hugely
instrumental in retrieving the Lepcha identity from a long, slow, slide
into oblivion, provide a focus for Lepcha populations in often mixed
Lepcha/Rai/Tamang villages and are often small and, well,
rudimentary.
It is also here in the schools that our volunteers teach English,
effectively allowing Lepcha children to become more confident in
English in their primary and secondary schools, and through English,
more confident in other subjects too. And if you are surprised by the
idea of a British teenager teaching by candlelight at 6.30 am, you will
get the idea of the sort of magic that the Lepcha people weave!
Younghusband, on parting from his Gurkha escort at the end of a
particularly arduous expedition in The Wonders of the Himalaya
comments on their ‘true gracefulness’ at times. ‘A peculiar sense of
kinship strikes deep into us from experiences like this. On the surface
of every day life there may be much in which we differ. But
somewhere fundamental is a common tie between us and something
tender which makes us every one akin’.
I suspect that many of us can identify with that, and it certainly sums
up what most volunteers with the Lepchas have felt. And I think little
of it would happen without Lyangsong, his dedication, his energy, his
powers of persuasion and his ability to influence friends in high places.
He travels incessantly, India wide, and around the Lepcha villages by
road and on foot. His committee of senior Lepchas is equally
impressive. There was, not all that long ago, a book published entitled
My Vanishing Tribe about the decline of the Lepcha culture.
Lyangsong and his people have changed all that. And is an