My Hands are Bleeding from the Straw
By Renzenji (Caitlyn)
Renzenji is from Huangnan prefecture, Qinghai Province, China. She is currently pursuing an Associated degree in English from Qinghai Normal University Nationalities Department's English Training Program.
A small frustration can easily throw you off your path, if you don't openly look at the problem and analyze it properly. Many people have big goals and try to achieve them, but many of these important goals are relinquished on the way. Inflexibility makes many people withdraw from attacking the obstacles to their goals, because they think that they can only accomplish their goals in one way, or that one small obstacle equals failure. If someone is knocked down on the path of reaching his/her goal, that discourages the person, and they became weak and it makes them accept the disturbance. And that's why many people are unwilling to try again or use different ways to achieve their dreams. It would be easy for me to relinquish my goals, because there have been many obstacles in my path. I am a young Tibetan woman, who grew up in a farming family in Jiantsa county, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai Province. All my life, I have struggled to be a well-educated woman and help poor people in Tibetan areas in many aspects. Although this goal is broad and many obstacles may appear in front me, I have never given up on my dreams. During my life, from early childhood to university, I have learned that there is always more than one way to achieve a goal; all you need to do is keep your eyes open.
I can remember clearly the first time that a goal appeared in my mind, which was to help poor people. It was when my elder brother and I were in primary school. During this time, my family was struggling to survive. Because my father was sick and there were ten children in the family, to fill all the family members' stomachs and put clothes on their backs was naturally a big problem. My father got a disease in his gall bladder and could do nothing except lie in the bed. Because my father was an only child who was orphaned at the age of 13, we didn't have many family members to help us take care of him.
Although I had 9 siblings, most of them had married or were attending school, so my second sister was the only person who could help mother until my brothers and sisters finished with school. Although my uncle helped pay for my siblings' tuition, we were still very poor. We had very little land to grow crops, and my mother and sister together could only earn 400-600RMB per year from farming. They had no other source of income.
My brothers' high school and middle school tuition cost more than 1000rmb, so my mother had to go every family like a beggar, to borrow money. My family's debt increased year by year. We worked for those families to reduce the debt during vacations but it only decreased by three to eight yuan per day.
One year, a hailstorm damaged almost all the crops and grain just as they were about to be harvested. After the harvest my family had only ten sacks of grain, which was around 50 kilograms. The next day, my mother led the five of us to the fields, where we picked up every single grain from among the shoots of straw, which were seven inches high and razor sharp. As we picked up the bits of grain, the straw stabbed our hands until they bled. After a full day of work, the five of us gathered only one and a half sacks of grain on our land. "You can go to my family's fields and gather some if you like, LhamoYangtso,” said my aunt with sympathy.
So did some other friends of mother and father's, but some people insulted us because they thought that my parents were stupid for spending so much money on their children's education. "You can gather more than what you have and is stored in your grain box, and your family will be the richest in our village. Then maybe you could pay back the money that we lent you."
This was even said by my father's cousin. Also, our aunt was jealous that we were receiving an education and felt pity for our parents, who were suffering.
With a beaming smile and a voice full of confidence and hope (which bolstered my confidence) my mother responded to my aunt's negativity, "After my kids graduate from school, we will be rich… soon, soon"
The hailstorm disaster caused many creditors to run straight to my house and asked for their money back. One evening, the house was so crowded with those men that my father couldn't sleep, so he got up and he said he would go work the next day and earn some money. But of course he couldn't even walk to the town. Mother also begged them to wait a year or a month then she would borrow some and find some income working for others in the town. That made some loaners very angry, and they nearly hit my mother's face. I felt very scared and hated them so much that I wanted to kill them. My brothers and sisters also said the same, later in the evening in bed. The next day my two brothers, who were in high school and middle school, said that they were not going to go to school. They said they hated school and it was causing the family to suffer. But that was like putting "oil on fire" for my parents; they felt very disappointed when we said such things.
There was a goal in my parent's mind, which was to send all of us to school to get educated. They had limited education and they wanted their children to be rich with knowledge. Sometimes, I didn't understand why my parents valued education so highly. Primary school was very difficult for my brother and I because our family was so poor. In school, my brother and I become everybody's laughing stock because we wore rags, and because we ate black wheat bread. We were always in the middle of a circle of other kids, and this is the only scene of primary school life in my memory. Such treatment drove brother and I to feel even poorer than we really were. It even discouraged us to continue schooling. However, my parents encouraged us to continue and stated, “If you want to take revenge and want us to be happy, then you should study hard and be the number one student in the school, and then enter a college, so that you can make us happy. That is the thing we want most in life."
This regular encouragement affected me and I realized that fighting back to the bullies was not the way to defeat them, so I did some deep thinking and proper analysis of what mother said. The goal of being the best student; to be an educated woman first appeared in my mind. "Study two hours while others study for one hour", was a saying of my eldest brother and also the key encouragement for all of us younger siblings. I did what he said by avoiding housework after class. While my brother and sister were helping my mother to gather fuel and carry water, I was doing most of my primary homework and lessons on a big smooth stone behind the wall of the village temple where people don't usually go. I became more successful and improved from number three to number one in my class that year, and the next year I was the best student in the village school.
My goal to help poor people grew from a desire to help my family, especially my sick father. When I was in grade one of middle school. Father was so stubborn and would not go to the hospital. This caused my mama and us to be very angry, but he always held fast and refused us, even when he started having problems with his gall bladder. He always said, ''I am OK, I'll take medicine and then I'll be fine. Doctors know nothing, they just want to take money from us. So they always tell you that your illness is serious and that you should stay in the hospital even though you only have a cold. That is what they do. They sell their operations sometimes. I know how serious my illness is; this body is mine."
Every time I went home at the weekends I could see his small skeletal body lying in bed with a piece of bread and his black tin cup near his head, and in the stove on the fire, the urn which was for boiling his herbs. When I would look into his eyes, I could see that there was no hope of recovery, and it was useless for him to be alive.
The desire to help him recover began to boil in my heart. After my father's illness became worse, I wanted with all of my heart to study medicine and to be a doctor to treat him since we didn't have enough money to take him to the hospital. I thought I would try my best to treat the poor patients like father and the patients who were dying and who were abandoned by other doctors because of their poverty. I knew that if my father recovered, life would be easier. So I talked to my head teacher about my dream and he said he would help me he though that there was any chance to attend a medical school.
Days passed, and finally I had a chance to take the exam for attending Lhasa Tibetan Medical University where I could learn medicine. I passed the exam. This was good news for every member of my family; the joy made the whole house laugh and I thought I could become a doctor and cure my father. But the joy didn't last long.
The selection paper I received after two days said that every student should bring more than 5000rmb when coming to the school. Mother went to every household to borrow some money, but the small amount of money didn't even reach two thousand. After a week my school leader said, ‘‘you are a good student, but I was sure that you didn't have that much money. Also Lhasa is faraway and you are only a girl, I think you would face many difficulties there. And you couldn't come home for five years. You'd miss your home and your family members will miss you and worry about you, so I decided to send our mayor's son to that school instead of you."
The anger heated all parts of my body and the fire in my eyes just wanted burn that school leader and the mayor who took away my glorious future, but I could do nothing to them. Ten minutes later, my head was empty and the only thing I wanted to do was to quit school, pack up and leave my dirty village.
After two weeks at home, my cousin came to my home and we had a conversation. In speaking to him, I realized that actually he took the college exam four years in a row and still didn't pass it . He said would not waste his youth in the field and he would like to view the world. He believed that one day he would succeed and he said, "Defeat is the mother of victory".
"You lost the game,'' said mother that evening.
I thought that whole night, and in the morning, before sunrise, I stood up and again walked on the path to the school. I realized that I had overcoming a big obstacle and that this frustration nearly threw me off of my path to achieving my goals. But I felt happy that I was brave and walking again on the path towards my goal. After I failed at my attempts to be a doctor, I thought of another way to reach my goal. That was to study hard and get educated. I realized that I didn't need to become a doctor in order to help poor people; with a high school education I could find another way to help my family and people like us.
I attended high school, and did well. Fortunately, a great chance for education came to me. After two years in my high school, one summer bright morning, three Tibetan men and a big long bearded foreigner came to our school and introduced the "English Tibetan Program (ETP)” at Qinghai Teacher's University and said they were going to select two students from this school. Myself and two other students were chosen to sit the exam for this school, in which everything is paid for by two foundations. Also, in this program, students get to study English with foreign teachers. I was one of the two chosen in twenty students.
One year later, my English had progressed incredibly thanks to numerous foreign teachers. In this program, money wasn't a problem and as my brothers and sister were graduating one by one, my family's income increased and we were able to send father to the provincial hospital to be cured.
I didn't give up on my goal to help poor people. In college, I used the skills that I had gained in school to write a proposals to bring solar cookers to my village. I also did a second hand clothing project, bringing clothes to the poorest members of our village. During one winter vacation, I went to teach in Ming He County, in Jie Fang, an impoverished and remote Tibetan village. Students in that area are living in extremely bad conditions, just as I did when I was in primary school. There was no heater in the classrooms and the snowy, freezing weather and cold wind would come in through the broken windows. I had twenty-three students and most of them were from poor families. Red cheeks, messy hair and rag clothes reminded me of my brother and myself during our time in the primary school. I was happy that I could help these poor children. I worked hard with them and they learned a lot very quickly in twenty days, despite the poor classroom conditions. I realized during this trip that with the help of my education, I was realizing my goal. I hope that the villagers and students who I have worked with can learn what I have about determination; that nothing can stop you from reaching your goal if you keep your eyes open.
Thinking carefully, trying again, and trying different methods are the best ways to achieve a goal, and to avoid being thrown off your path. I have met many obstacles in my life, but I didn't let them discourage me. I learned from my family's poverty and my peers' abuse. I almost gave up when my chance to become a doctor was taken away, but because I thought carefully and kept trying, it didn't stop me. One Tibetan saying is: "struggle moves a mountain" which means that if you keep trying, you can overcome any obstacle. When I think and look at my life's obstacles again, actually I see that they are not that terrible and dark; there is always something good and light beyond them. All one needs to do to see the light is to be more optimistic, and keep her eyes open.
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