This morning I was on my way to meet Jiska, my dutch friend from the Vipassana course, for a nice breakfast with the best carrot and lemon cake in this part of Asia. Yesterday evening I had gotten a message from her, asking if I wanted to help chaperon some Tibetan kids in the Tibetan Olympics. Wow, that sounds like fun! I imagined us to trying to keep together a herd of little energized 10 year olds running off in different directions. The kids turned out to be 20-27 year old Tibetan students, gathered from all over India to this Olympics.
We got in time for the press conference and were handed our over sized staff T-shirts (I don't really go well with L, and thats the smallest they had!). Lobsang, the man in charge, explained to the big media machine, that this was a symbolic Olympic with no antagonism towards the Chinese counterpart. There were some difficulties though to get as many participants as they wished for, primarily because of the criteria and shyness. So the total number of enthusiastic athletes were 9 women and 13 men. (The web page: www.tibetanolympics.com)
We met one of the organizers, Katherine, and she gave us the plan of the day and our first mission to gather them all and help the Israeli volunteer doctor to take their blood pressure. Ok, we managed to get them all in line and organized the doc examined all but five. Here a problem arose. 1 girl and 7 of the male athletes had too high blood pressure. This is quite a high percentage! The doc, Ari, explained that high blood pressure was a very common problem with Tibetans in India and Nepal. Because they normally live at a very high altitude, their diet consists of very fatty and salty food. They need the calories up there. But unfortunately they continue the same diet coming down to lower altitudes and that causes serious health problems amongst the exile Tibetans. Hard to convince them though to give up their precious salty butter tea and deep fried yummies!
Next was lunch and shortly after that, off to the swimming pool for training! The swimming coach, a very nice, older, white Rastafarian woman from NZ, was there to help teaching them swimming. And that was needed. The kids had not much experience with deep water and for some it was the first time swimming! Only a handful could swim enough to be unsupervised, the rest needed coaching and basic swimming lessons. I know how to teach someone to dive, but I'm a bit clueless how to teach someone how to swim for the first time. While Jiska was helping doc with his check ups, I was taking care of the men and teaching some how to kick (holding on to the side) and the ones who knew a bit, how to stroke. I had forgotten my swimmers and I wasn't going to go the Indian way, in my underwear! It was enough seeing men stropping about in their tangas! So I was coaching on the sidelines with big gestures and pretend swimming on land. The whole time at the pool was funny. Lot's of splashing water, arms and legs swinging wildly about and lot's of laughter. Finally, a light hailstorm put an end to most pool activities. The doc rechecked a few high PB:s and we got the number down to 5 high blood pressured athletes.
On the way home I got asked to help out chaperon the athletes during the whole Olympics. I was on my way to leave to Mandi the next day, but that had to change. This was going to be too much fun to miss out on! So now I'm living, eating and doing some training with the athletes. I'm also nursing small wounds, organizing and making sure they keep the times. This is quite some work, specially when you don't speak Tibetan!
We got in time for the press conference and were handed our over sized staff T-shirts (I don't really go well with L, and thats the smallest they had!). Lobsang, the man in charge, explained to the big media machine, that this was a symbolic Olympic with no antagonism towards the Chinese counterpart. There were some difficulties though to get as many participants as they wished for, primarily because of the criteria and shyness. So the total number of enthusiastic athletes were 9 women and 13 men. (The web page: www.tibetanolympics.com)
We met one of the organizers, Katherine, and she gave us the plan of the day and our first mission to gather them all and help the Israeli volunteer doctor to take their blood pressure. Ok, we managed to get them all in line and organized the doc examined all but five. Here a problem arose. 1 girl and 7 of the male athletes had too high blood pressure. This is quite a high percentage! The doc, Ari, explained that high blood pressure was a very common problem with Tibetans in India and Nepal. Because they normally live at a very high altitude, their diet consists of very fatty and salty food. They need the calories up there. But unfortunately they continue the same diet coming down to lower altitudes and that causes serious health problems amongst the exile Tibetans. Hard to convince them though to give up their precious salty butter tea and deep fried yummies!
Next was lunch and shortly after that, off to the swimming pool for training! The swimming coach, a very nice, older, white Rastafarian woman from NZ, was there to help teaching them swimming. And that was needed. The kids had not much experience with deep water and for some it was the first time swimming! Only a handful could swim enough to be unsupervised, the rest needed coaching and basic swimming lessons. I know how to teach someone to dive, but I'm a bit clueless how to teach someone how to swim for the first time. While Jiska was helping doc with his check ups, I was taking care of the men and teaching some how to kick (holding on to the side) and the ones who knew a bit, how to stroke. I had forgotten my swimmers and I wasn't going to go the Indian way, in my underwear! It was enough seeing men stropping about in their tangas! So I was coaching on the sidelines with big gestures and pretend swimming on land. The whole time at the pool was funny. Lot's of splashing water, arms and legs swinging wildly about and lot's of laughter. Finally, a light hailstorm put an end to most pool activities. The doc rechecked a few high PB:s and we got the number down to 5 high blood pressured athletes.
On the way home I got asked to help out chaperon the athletes during the whole Olympics. I was on my way to leave to Mandi the next day, but that had to change. This was going to be too much fun to miss out on! So now I'm living, eating and doing some training with the athletes. I'm also nursing small wounds, organizing and making sure they keep the times. This is quite some work, specially when you don't speak Tibetan!
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