Project Manager: Metok Lhamtse (Jasmine)
This project is to to build four concrete bridges over Tar River that will provide a safe and convenient way for Tar Lam Villagers, and villagers from other 8 villages and two monasteries’ monks to cross Tar River, and at the same time to prevent the locals from walking in barefoot in the cold water, reduce women’s labor burden and school-aged children’s labors.
Funds needed: $31,319(214,678rmb)
Metok Lhatse (Jasmine) is from Jiegu Town, Yushu County, Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. She has completed a Bachelor’s Degree from the English Training Program in the Nationalities Department, Qinghai Normal University in December 2007. She is currently working for Tibet Heritage Fund.
Project location
Tar Lam Village is located in northwest Jiegu Town, the capital of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. Tar Lam Village is one of the eight villages in Tar Mda township. It is around 80 kilometers away from Jiegu Town. Tar Lam Village is located in northwest Jiegu Town, Yushu Tibetan Prefecture, which is located about 896 km southwest of Xining city, the provincial city of Qinghai. All the residents in this village are Tibetans.
Population
In Tar Lam Village, there are 70 households who have residential certificates.Until 2004 they paid taxes and grass fees and anything that they had to follow as village residents. Around 40 households have moved to Jiegu Town since 1985. There are 30 households remaining in Tar Lam Village and many of them are just recently established new families. Within these 30 households, there are 105 females, and 108 males. There are 79 children in this village. There are a total of 292 people in this village today.
Education and official government positions
There is no formal state sponsored school in Tar Lam Village. For years the village leader Mr. Tashi Tsering volunteered to teach the local children. He kept on his work for six years without getting any payment. He taught Tibetan and Mathematics. Whenever the village children had some time, their parents sent them to this informal school because the parents wished to let their children learn at least how to read Buddhist text prayers. After six years, Mr, Tashi Tsering was elected to become the village leader, since that school was closed. This was a great loss for the villagers especially for the girl students. For the boys, they could go to Tar Lam Monastery for monastery education. However, it is not customary for girls to study in the monastery.
There is a state sponsored boarding school in Dronda Township. However it is about 20 kilometers away from Tar Lam village. Due to the long distance, the students have to stay in the school until the weekend. The villagers think this gives them some difficulties to send their children to school. First, the parents need their children’s help for herding and other house works. Second, some of the children are too young to take care of themselves. The parents especially worry about their trip back and forth. For many years, the villagers applied to the Education Bureau for a formal school in this village. However, nothing has happened in the village so far.
In this village, there are only 4 men who have completed formal education and are currently doing government jobs. However, these young people were already married and they moved to Jiegu Town. There are 57 children (25 girls and 32 boys) attending the primary school which is located in Zenda Township. It is about 20 kilometers away from Tar lam village. Around 10 students (6 boys and 4 girls) are studying in Yushu No.1 middle school. It is located in Yushu County and it is a state sponsored boarding school which is about 85 kilometers away from Tarlam village. Nevertheless, those young children have few opportunities to go for further education due to high expenses for tuition fee and other living costs. On average, each college student spends 10,000 RMB per year for both tuition and living allowances. Right now, about 7 of the village children who had middle school education, dropped from the school and are staying at home to help with family chores.
Agriculture
Tar Lam village is a semi-pastoral. The average altitude of this village is 3,700 meters. In this village, local people can plant barley, Tibetan radish, potatoes and oil seed. However, in 2005, the government declared a new policy to protect “the source of Three Rivers”-Yellow River, Yantze River and Mekong River. The policy states that people need to grow more plants, grasses and trees to protect the environment from drought, deforestation, desertification and climate change. The farmers who own lands are encouraged to grow fewer on crops on the land in order to grow grasses and trees. Now there is only a small portion of land Mu(1mu=0.0666 hectares) for each family to use for agriculture. On average, each family had 12 Mus of land before, but now each family has 5-6 Mus of land. Therefore the land only can serve themselves and they can not save any money from farming.
Herding
In Tar Lam Village, on average, each family has between 30 and 35 yaks, 2 horses, and 40 sheep. Local villagers earn money from selling livestock, animal skin, butter, cheese, sheep’s wool and yak/sheep meat. The basic market price for their herding products in the central town are: livestock (2000 RMB per yak, 200 RMB per sheep, 1000 RMB per cow), yak skin (230 RMB each), sheep skin (60 RMB each), yak hair (8 RMB per kilo), sheep’s wool (4 RMB per kilo), butter (30 RMB per kilo), yak/sheep meat (14 RMB per kilo), and cheese (6 RMB per kilo).However, the villagers are not able to save all these products once for selling every year. The products are one of the villagers’ major life consumption as well as any costs that have to do the villagers’ activities. As a result, when it comes to selling the products, there is so little left. Approximately, each village can hardly earn 1500 RMB per year. All of the villagers raise livestock except three households. These three households are composed of some old people and they are not able to raise livestock because they are too old to raise livestock, and also they have no relatives or children to take care of them. Their life is dependent on the villagers’ help and dedication. The village families also clearly know that these people have nobody to rely on, so the villagers take turns to provide food and other needs for these old people.
Cash income
The villagers’ lives are dependent on both agriculture and herding, but their fields have been decreased due to state policy. Farming just serves a family’s barley needs per year, so the families could not earn any extra income by farming. When the families want any other life needs from the market, first what they do is to sell their livestock or the livestock products in the central market. This exchanged money allows them to get things from the market. Beside this, the villagers dig caterpillar fungus at the end of May to June every year. However, the villagers can not dig that much due to the place where caterpillar fungus’ ( Cordyceps sinensis) short growing season of two months from May to June. The caterpillar fungus is a valuable medical herb. Furthermore, the quality of the caterpillar fungus is not so good in Tar lam village. Therefore, each family can only earn an average of 1,300 RMB annually to sustain. However, this is not a stable income for the villagers due to the climate change, market price or herbal extinction. There is some evidence that the state may ask people to stop digging caterpillar fungus due to “scientific” reasons to protect this kind of herb. Or the villagers say that there are only few caterpillar fungus that can be found every year compared to every last years. This source of income may possibly vanish in a few years.
The village is very socially economically and geographically isolated from the central place of Jiegu Town in Yushu County. It requires that the villagers need to travel to the central town back and forth for many times for purchasing food or any other needs. Since the general price for the materials is increasing every day in our society, also access to health, transportation, education and information is also very expensive; thus, the villagers also have to spend accordingly. On average each year a family needs 1700 RMB to buy flour, oil and other life necessities. Also, on average each family needs to spend between 600 RMB to 800 RMB a year to buy clothes and medicine for the numbers of the family members. These days, the society is generally improved and many technological things are introduced. In this village, most of households own tractors and motorcycles, but every family needs to spend between 400 RMB to 600 RMB for petrol and other costs for per year. Recently, petrol and diesel’s price has grown from 3.5 RMB to 5.5 RMB within the past 5 years. In total, each family spends around 3000 RMB for a year. However what they earn as I mentioned is about 2800 RMB. In fact, we can learn from the statistics that the village need is more than what the village earns per year. Under that condition, what the villagers do is work even harder and tries to live with less expense.
Tax
The people of Tar Lam village have not needed to pay taxes since 2004.
Project Goals
The immediate goal of this project is to build four concrete bridges over Tar River that will provide a safe and convenient way for Tar Lam Villagers, and villagers from other 8 villages and two monasteries’ monks to cross Tar River.
The overwhelming goal is to prevent the locals from walking in barefoot in the cold water, reduce women’s labor burden and school-aged children’s labors.
Beneficiaries
This project will benefit 213 villagers, the village livestock, 632 people from other eight villages and two monasteries that house over 100 monks. In total about 945 people will benefit from this project.
The following is a description of Ta River, where the bridge will be built
•- Jao Re Bridge
Jao Re Bridge is located in the east of Tar Lam village. This bridge is for the flowing river, which is formed by eight kinds of springs from eight valleys. This bridge is used as an entrance door for people who want to enter Tar Lam Village. The bridge is the only road for either men walking or vehicles or else they have to cross the river by barefoot. About eight years ago, the government sponsored a bridge made of concrete and steel. However about four years ago, the sponsored bridge was washed away by a sudden flood resulting from a heavy rain.
After that, the villagers used their own local technical skills to rebuild this bridge as we can view in this picture. This bridge is made of simple layers of stones and three pieces of concrete to cover the top of the bridge. The seasonal change influences the river’s width and depth. Sometimes, during the rainy season, the river gets huge and the water undermines the stone-built foundation to damage the entire bridge. Most of the time, big vehicles cannot go through the bridge due to the narrow space and poor quality, so the only way is to try to cross through the river next to the bridge, (see the picture above). Unfortunately, there is no road over the river and some vehicles stick in the river until people come to help pull it out.
Nevertheless, the bridge is so delicate that the villagers have to repair it every year by using the same simple materials.
•- Samba Getok bridge - Tibetan means the bended bridge
Samba Getok Bridge is situated in the west of Tar Lam Village.
It is made of simple local mud and some pieces of wood and stones. Seven different springs make up the source of this river. It is used by approximately 4000 people and hundreds of villages’ animals: 8 Natural Villages, 2 Monasteries: Garu Monastery, Sangzhou Monastery and nomads from Tarlam Natural Village. Outsiders also came to use this bridge for going on pilgrimage to a Buddhist holy stupa- TsoNgang Stupa. In the ancient times, people took this road to go to Lhasa, the holy city of Tibet. As the villagers explain, the road along this valley is shorter than the other road that takes around the mountains.
However, nowadays the bridge, which we can view in this picture, has poor quality and narrow space for the vehicles. Many times per year, villagers have to spend time on fixing the damaged parts that made by heavy loaded vehicles and passengers. During winter, the water gets frozen near the bridge and when the sun is strong during the day time, the ice melts and damages the sides of bridges and even sometimes flow to the villager’s houses. This is caused by the fact that the bridge is too narrow to prevent the destruction.
Muddy road: Two drainage ditches direct water under the bridge. The villagers are going to put plastic bags with soil or small stones inside and put them two sides of springs and make one channel (direction) in order to build a bridge on it. These reinforcements will prevent the drainage ditches from overflowing.
This road is attached to Samba Getok Bridge that I described early. It has the same function as the Samba Getok Bridge. The whole road in this valley is an unpaved dirt road that people have used for centuries. However, this part of the road that we can see in this picture is the most muddy and inconvenient part. The spring from the right valley flows on this road and cuts the channel and creates mud. Vehicles often become submerged in the mud. Passengers look for stones to step on in order to avoid getting wet. In the winter, ice covers this part of the road and none of the vehicles can get through unless people use dirt to cover the ice. In the deep valley, there is also a road but it has similar problems as the above one.
Another Muddy road: to build a bridge with two channels. These two channels help to collect all coming down water in one direction and send down through the bridge channel. Since all water flows down below the bridge, the top of the bridge is dry and convenient for people to walk or drive vehicles.
Problem
Health problems
Since this village is a semi-pastoral, many things need to be carried or transported from the village place to the nomadic place or other way around. Most of the time, women and children collect yak dung or carry life necessities to their pasture lands while men usually take care of other things such as fixing tools for farming and traveling long distances for construction work. On average, women and sometimes children travel 30-60 minutes on foot for taking care of life necessities or collecting yak dung. They have to cross the bridges and sometimes walk barefoot over the river at least several times a week. The water is very cold especially in autumn time. If this project can be completed, these women and children do not need to cross the cold water in bare feet because they will have bridges to cross over. Sometimes, they might be able to get a ride for a short distance since the bridges will be built and the road condition is generally improved, so accessibility of transportation will increase.
During the rainy season, the river gets huge and submerges the bridges. The villagers, especially women herders, wear plastic shoes to go across the water to do herding animals. Many villagers, especially elder women and men complain that one of the reasons that they get arthritis and joint pains are crossing the rivers with barefoot in the cold water or walking with plastic shoes to do herding. One of the common diseases in this village that men and women have is joint pains and arthritis.
Dangerous frozen Ground
During the wintertime from November to March, the ground around the river outlet freezes into thick, slippery ice. The villagers, especially women, young children and older villagers, who carry yak dung, or other stuff to cross the icy river must face a dangerous task. Many times, they have slipped and fallen on the ice or fallen into the river’s freezing water. Here are few examples that occurred while people were passing the river and muddy road:
Three years ago, a village man named Genbsong’s right leg was broken while he was riding a motorbike to cross the ice covered river to his pasture land.
Two years ago, a village woman, Zhaxi Bazhan’s back two bones and two fingers of her left hand were broken while she was crossing on the ice to herd goats and sheep to the mountains.
Time consuming
Each year, the bridges need to be repaired at least two times. First, due to the heavy rain and flood, the flimsy wooden bridge gets destroyed. Second, heavy and big vehicles attempt to cross the narrow bridges. If they fail, the bridges get damaged. These large trucks then try to cross through the river but often get stuck in the water until the villagers come to help. On average, in 2006 each villager spent at least ten days repairing the bridges and helping out stuck vehicles.
Communication problems
Tar River does not have reliable and high quality bridges, this affects the overall road condition which prevents easy transportation between villages. They need to travel either very earlier or skip the festivals. So most of the villagers have no time to participate in ceremonies and at same time they lose the chances to meet other people. This reduces chances for socialization between the villagers.
Inconveniences caused by the poor conditions of the bridges and the muddy road
The villagers sometimes cannot cross Tar river due to the poor condition of bridges, especially after any of the bridges have been flushed away.
For the west direction of the village, as I mentioned about the muddy road, it links to the villagers’ nomadic homes and other villagers. The road lies close to Tar river and it has nothing to do with it but it is damaged by the springs which come down from the sides of the valleys. As a result, the soil on the road got wet. Passengers come and cover some soil in order to allow vehicles to pass. Eventually, the whole spot accumulates with water and forms a thick mud which is no longer easily covered again by the villagers. During winter, it is covered with ice and the passengers can no longer ride motorcycles. Even though they walk through it, there is a high possibility of slipping.
Benefits
•l Alleviate the problem of people, especially women, children and elders, walking in the cold water with bare feet or plastic shoes. This will prevent cold-related illnesses such as arthritis and joint pains.
•l Provide safe and easy ways for women and children to collect fuel or carrying other things over the river.
•l Reduce the villagers’ labors to repair the bridges every year. Villagers will have more time for leisure activities, such as doing family chores, reading text scripture and engaging in community activities.
•l Increase communication and contact between and within villages. It will also provide safe and easy access to worshippers who wish to participate in Talong Monastery ceremonies and festivals.
•l Improve the local people’s conditions, particularly women and patients, by making it easier for them to buy supplies or to go to town hospitals.
The steps of the project
•l Hold a meeting with village leaders and villagers to discuss the project plans (This step was completed in October, 2007).
•l Get project approved by the villagers and village leader. (This step was completed in October 2007).
•l Hold a meeting with local village leaders- Zhaxi Cairen and Yixi Nongwa and choose two village-nominated women to organize this project. Their names are Angwen Yongzhen and Xira Bamao.
•l Hold a meeting with local village leaders- Zhaxi Cairen and Yixi Nongwa and choose two women to organize this project. Their names are Angwen Yongzhen and Xira Bamao. (Already done)
•l Collect necessary information for the project.(This step was completed in December, 2007)
•l Hire an experienced Tibetan engineer (Wujin). We have already interviewed and met with an experienced Tibetan engineer from Yushu County, and will hire him once funding is received. (Already done)
•l The villagers begin to collect stone and break stone it into gravel.
•l Write project proposal ( completed)
•l Funds are received.
•l Hold a meeting with the villagers to discuss the start date of project.
•l Meet the Tibetan an engineer (Wujin) and experienced construction workers (Danba and Angqiupei) to arrange when and how the villagers will prepare the sand, soil and stone, and build four bridges
•l Purchase cement, steel rods, steel pipes and other materials from Yushu County and choose the four responsible villagers (two women and two men)( already chosen). Start to work on the construction.
•l Oversee the participation of the village until the project is completed.
•l Interview the village leader, monks and the villagers to evaluate the success of the project.
•l Take pictures of each bridge after completion.
•l Send final report to donor.
Detailed Budgets for four bridges
|
Item |
Quantity |
Unit |
Donor |
Local Contri |
Shem in rmb |
Total |
|
Steel rods |
30kg |
70/kg |
8,400 |
0 |
0 |
8,400 |
|
Steel pipes |
60kg |
150/kg |
36,000 |
0 |
0 |
36,000 |
|
nail |
5kg |
20/kg |
400 |
0 |
0 |
400 |
|
Iron wire |
15kg |
16/kg |
960 |
0 |
0 |
960 |
|
Combined |
0.2t |
5000/t |
4,000 |
0 |
0 |
4,000 |
|
Cement |
50sacks |
40sack |
8,000 |
0 |
0 |
8,000 |
|
Cement |
50sacks |
35sack |
7,000 |
0 |
0 |
7,000 |
|
Timber |
1 |
2000/ |
8,000 |
0 |
0 |
8,000 |
|
Sticks |
40/sticks |
40/sticks |
6,400 |
0 |
0 |
6,400 |
|
Concrete |
|
|
5,200 |
0 |
0 |
5,200 |
|
electricity fee Bulldozer fee, |
|
|
6,318 |
0 |
0 |
6,318 |
|
Transport |
|
|
20,000 |
0 |
20,000 |
20,000 |
|
Skilled labors’ |
16 |
100/per |
96,000 |
0 |
0 |
96,000 |
|
Welding fee |
|
|
2,000 |
0 |
0 |
2,000 |
|
Sand |
50 |
30/truck |
6,000 |
0 |
0 |
6,000 |
|
stone |
100 |
100/truck |
0 |
40,000 |
0 |
40,000 |
|
Soil |
100 |
50 /truck |
0 |
20,000 |
0 |
20,000 |
|
Unskilled |
100 |
40/per |
0 |
120,000 |
0 |
120,000 |
|
Concrete |
80 |
40/per |
0 |
48,000 |
0 |
48,000 |
|
Bridge |
80 |
40/per |
0 |
64000 |
0 |
64,000 |
|
Food |
|
|
0 |
8,000 |
0 |
8,000 |
|
management |
|
|
|
|
500 |
|
|
Management expenses |
0 |
0 |
0 |
469 |
0 |
469 |
|
Total |
|
|
214,678 |
300,000 |
500 |
515,178 |
Notes:
Knife blade is a kind of tool, which uses for inserting mud or cement between the stones so that the stones will hold together tightly and the wall will be stronger.
Plastic bags（塑料袋）are used for holding up soil or small stones. They are used for blocking water or preventing water flow from one channel to other channel so that water can flow properly through the bridge channel.
Electricity fee is basically covering expenses that will be used for welding steel rods and steel pipes. Beside this, it pays for electricity fee for extracting water from one channel when the villagers build the bridges’ foundation work.
Water aspirator is for extracting water when the villagers build the bridges’ base and the water aspirator can use four bridges by turns. If the villagers do not extract water first, then the water may come up later and the bridge will have to be built on the water, so the project won’t be successful and sustainable in the future.
Timeframe
The expected time for this project is 2 months from April to May. This is the best time to complete the project because during these months the temperature is over 6 degrees and it is not cold. Hence, construction workers don’t have too much works. It is hard to build the bridges in June, because villagers need to dig caterpillar fungus. After the villagers dig caterpillar fungus, the river will become bigger, so it is hard to do construction work and there is more work to do for the villagers. However, the mid September to mid November is also another good time for us to implement this project. This is because the water will slowly shrink in the end of August due to the influence of cold climate change. In the month of September, the villagers just finish up on harvesting. And also at that time, the water gets smaller as it gradually turns to winter period. However, the water or the ground soil will not get completely frozen until the end of November and the villagers have time for this project.
Time table: from the time that the proposal is approved, this project will take approximately 65 days.
1 day: Hold meeting villagers and discuss all the things that are needed for project.
8 days: Transport stones and soil from near the village.
6 days: Purchase sand, cement, steel rods and steel pipes in Yushu prefecture.
5 days: Purchase all the other materials in Yushu prefecture.
2 days: The co-managers Yeshi Nongwa, Tashi Tsering hire the skilled workers in Yushu prefecture.
42 days: Build the four bridges.
1 day: Hold a meeting with villagers and project committee again and we will check out the project.
During the implementation, the project manager’s father (Danba) and Xira Bamo(a woman) will volunteer to supervise and be in charge of the work.
Beneficiaries
These bridge projects will benefit 292 villagers, the village livestock, 632 people from eight other natural villages and over 100 monks from two monasteries. So in total, about 945 people will benefit from this project. This is because other villagers and monks will use these bridges.
Sustainability
The main manager of this project is Metok Lhamtse(Jasmine) and the co-managers are Yeshi Nongwa, Tashi Tsering and Yeshi Nongwa, who is the Tongda Village committee secretary. He is 65 years old and he is a very responsible leader. Yeshi Nongwa will direct the collection of the local contributions, and supervise and direct project implementation and construction.
Tashi Tsering is the leader of Tar Lam Village. He is 60 years old this year. He served as a village teacher for 6 years and also he is a very responsible leader of Tar Lam village.. He did many construction projects in his life and he has a lot of experience. So the villagers chose him to manage these bridges. He told the project manager that he will be willing to take responsibility for construction workers‘ accountability and he will supervise all construction work.
The villagers are assured of the high quality of their project materials and the two leaders are responsible and they promised to the project manager that they will be responsible for taking care of the bridges after the project is implemented.
Based on the villagers’ understanding of the previous bridges, the government sponsored bridge lacks a deep and strong foundation. It is narrow and very thin cement covered the stones on the surface, as a result, strong floods easily flow over the bridge and destroy the whole bridge.
This project is going to build four bridges: two for Tar River and two for muddy roads where the springs wash away the road. These four bridges will be built with strong and deep foundation with the combination of local stones, concrete and cement. A V-shaped barrier will be built on both sides of the muddy road, blocking the water so it will not flow everywhere. The wall will be reinforced so it will be strong enough to push back strong currents or sudden floods.
Government Support
Metok Lhamtse(Jasmine) met with one of the township leaders, Caiwen Duoding, on December 26th , 2007. He said that the project would be very helpful and that if it is funded, then he will help find other experienced Tibetan construction workers from the county town to work with Mr. Wujin for constructing the bridges. He also said that if this project needs any other support he will be happy to do so.
Past Experience
Metok Lhamtse(Jasmine) is 22 years old. She has completed one small scale development project in her home town: a solar panel project supported by the British Embassy. During the summer of 2005, she was field director and translator of Save Mother and Babies Project in Genzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. During the summer vacation of 2006, She was the medical interpreter for Non-profit Volunteer Organization of Reconstructive Plastic of Italy Organization in Yushu Prefecture Hospital. In December of 2007, she graduated from Qinghai Normal University.
Map of the Project Site
The diagram of the construction location
There are three crossing points on the creek. The upper crossings are just tracks through the water course and are not bridges. This is often impassable even after very little rain. There is also another road that runs parallel to the creek for some way. This area of the road becomes waterlogged and then impassable for travellers.The two lower crossings are suspension bridges. These are narrow, not strong enough for vehicular traffic, and usually repaired by locals. This means that the repairs themselves are often hasty and easily undone.