COVID, the sequel
by Sabrina Liu, 2021
One Tibetan Kid
by Sabrina Liu, 2019
Last year, on the day I handed out donations and gifts to the children at the Tade Temple Hope Primary School, I fought back my severe altitude sickness. I vaguely remember bits and pieces of excited kids squirming in their seats, eating the snacks we brought and coloring the books with the crayons we sent. Through all the haziness caused by my nausea, there was one sight I saw that clearly stuck with me: a little girl clinging on to her older sister.
At that time, the little girl could be no more than the ripe age of four. Looking back in the photo album, I remembered that she wore a thin, blue coat that did not protect her from the cold. The girl was very shy, and instead of hanging out with her classmates of her age, she kept holding on to her older sister. Compared to her classmates, this little girl was much shorter, and she did not seem to interact with them that much; she chose to follow her sister around. The sister was in the older class, which consisted of students anywhere from eight to sixteen. When my brother and I started to pass out the goods, the little girl still stuck with her sister. I am still not sure why the memory of this little girl was lodged deeply in my mind. After all, I did not even know her name. Maybe it was because I pitied her loneliness, or maybe it was because her determination to be with her older sister felt very sweet; whatever the reason, the memory did not leave my brain.
This year, my altitude sickness was a bit better, and I felt a rush of energy to distribute the gifts. When I walked into the Tade Temple Hope Primary School again, I did not expect to see the same little girl again. Yet, at the entrance of the older students’ tiny classroom, there she was, crying. Behind her, her sister and an older girl sat behind a desk covered in books at the back row of the classroom. I could not tell any difference in the little girl except for the pink parka a few sizes too large that engulfed her. She did not sem to grow at all; she looked exactly the same as I remembered her to be from last year. On the other hand, her sister was a different case; the latter grew a lot and seemed much more mature as I watched her raise her hand, stand up, and answer the teacher. The little girl cried and sniffled, the tears making clean paths on her face. Although the reason as to why she cried was unclear, the sight in front of me was enough to make a wave of sadness wash over me.
Once again, the girl was not in her classroom that consisted of the youngest children. This class and the class for the older students were simply separated by a wooden door. This time around, the younger girl’s class were learning the pronunciation of letters in Mandarin, the standard language in China. The teacher pointed at letters written on a black board, and the little kids responded by shouting out the correct pronunciation. Yet, the little girl just stood outside her classroom and watched her older sister with teary eyes.
Not long after, my brother and I started to hand out the books, candies, foods, art supplies, backpacks, clothing, computers, and other gifts we brought for the schoolchildren. I started off by passing out the goods to the youngest children’s class, and by the time I was halfway done with all the snacks, the teacher finally coaxed the little girl to go inside her classroom and receive the gifts. She was still crying and silent, and instead of saying, “thank you,” like her classmates, she just stared up at me with her big, teary eyes.
I never got to learn her name, but the sight of her emotional state is still stuck with me. This little girl drastically stood out to me from her excited, screaming, and hyper classmates. They were all more or less the same age, but her sadness and serenity really gave me the determination to further help these children.
These kids are still kids, and many of them do act the way people expect them to be: not giving a care in the world. However, in the depths of these stereotypes, there will always be one child who understands what is going on. The little girl I saw might have not fully comprehended how hard her life is, but her sadness and desperation to be with her sister increased my desire of the Helping Tibet organization and charity to really benefit these children’s lives and opportunities for the better.
