Pie? Why yes, thanks. My favorite flavor is humble.

Tamara is definitely in charge of this operation. My required participation seems to be to follow her suggestions with good cheer. The library at Domkhar officially (I suppose) seems to be her project undertaken through HEALTH, Inc. and Omprakash, a non-profit organization run by 20-somethings with good intentions.

Omprakash is the group that organized the shipping of several boxes of books to the school last year. When I arrived last October, it was to find these boxes infested with silverfish. While about 80% were useable, the boxes also contained about 20% inappropriate (for a school library) material. Among the books were items such as Christmas coloring books, activity books with the pages worked already, books with copyright dates in the 1960's, broken, damaged and smudgy books, as well as some that put forth the worst of western values. One of the teachers at the school described the scantily clothed Princess Jasmine kissing the cartoon Prince Ali from Disney's Aladdin as "disturbing." She actually clapped her hands to her eyes!

In this culture, women cover up from neck to ankle and shoulder to wrist on a daily basis, and all have difficulty dealing wtih tourists who dress as though think they are on the beach. Married people don't hold hands or otherwise display affection in public. Unmarried people wouldn't even consider it. People who work with the NGO's here know this. There is even a brochure that you are given at the airport when you arrive on the local cultural values and appropriate attire. Nonetheless, I am met with some defensiveness about why some of the donated books are in the "junk box." We'll see how this pans out.

One of our philosophical differences is that I think that to send some of this stuff is just culturally insensitive- even if some Ladakhi kids do have access to TV, and may have seen Disney cartoons someplace. The Ladakhi people aren't naive, and I'm sure they are capable of deciding which western imports are junk and which are not. I don't harbor any fantasies about preserving some sort of Shangri-la that is cut off from the modern world, but I sure hate to be a party to the proliferation of the nastier western stuff, like rampant consumerism.

Tamara has been coming here longer than I, and her kids at Siddhartha School don't seem to have a problem with Babysitters Club, and the like. So we compromise- some books go, some stay. Good-bye, "Don't Get Mad Get Even." Good-bye, "Goosebumps." Good-bye, half-naked Disney babes.