Skip to main content

Triumphant journey from Farmland to Foreign land


It was never in his wildest dream – the coveted opportunity to fly in the plane and explore the land beyond his imagination. He possessed no pre-requisition of availing such prospects of travelling on the metal bird. All he has is seen and heard others speaks of exhilaration of such journey overseas. He vied for the journey but chances stood ever slim.  But it was piously nullified when he was nominated as one member for the CFMG study tour/visit to Nepal.
Mr. Sonam Norbu, Chairman of Zhasela Community Forest in Minjay under Lhuentse Dzongkhag has spent past 37 years of his life languishing within four horizons in his farmland. He has rarely strayed beyond the confinement of his village minus occasional visit to the dzongkhag. The acute shortage of working hand in his farm land permitted few of such travel and herded him selfishly in his own community.
This is to prove wrong when under the sponsorship of Participatory Forest Management project (PFMP), the Social Forestry Division of the Department of Forests & Park Services organized CFMG study tour/visit to Nepal. Representing the community forest he headed, he embarked on the tour/visit to Nepal from 13 – 22 March 2011 for the duration of little less than a couple of week. The visit enabled him to visit many successful CF program and gather numerous knowledge on effectively managing the chunk of Government Reserved Forests handed over to the community with ownership rights for sustainable utilization and management.
Still reeling in disbelief in the first day after his return, Sonam confided, “I never believed there are world outside our country. My journey not only exposed me to such outside world, it also enriched me with tactics of governing CF successfully”. Still thrilled by his buoyant journey on plane, he excessively thanked the sponsor and organizer for realizing undreamt dream of a humble farmer.
For the last 10 days, they were guided to different locations in Nepal introducing and familiarizing them on success stories of CF.  “Nepal is far more advanced in terms of community forests and no other destination would have been appropriate,” chipped Sonam. He added that Nepalese strength of being able to derive maximum avenues for income generation and managing forests as pro-poor resource convinced him of replicating same here in Bhutan.
Among the loads of knowledge and experiences he has imported, he is seriously contemplating embracing briquette making techniques. He divulged that it is simple method and has lots of benefits in the way that tree branches, lops & tops, off cuts and other debris from tending operations serve as raw materials. “Conventionally, such resources are wasted when they can be put into judicious use,” he concluded before taking leave to attend presentation on their trips to sponsor and organizer at Hotel Dragon roots in Thimphu. But certainly not forgetting to emphatically thank the sponsor and the organizer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love for a Days’s Trip

‘To meet, to know, to love and to depart is the law of life’ someone has said it. We rally with strangers and people we have never known before in homes, schools, institutions and other public gatherings because we are born in different places. When we meet the strangers, we make friends with some of them and sometime we fall in love with few of them especially the young guys and ladies. We remains committed and dedicated to friendship or loveship, whatever the relationship you are sharing. But for how long? You got to ask yourself. One fateful day, you find that you are departing from your friend or lover going away to find your own friend, your own lover and your own foes. Ofcourse, it hurts so much but it is a law the life has framed and you ought to obey it. And if you don’t keep in contact through all possible means, it is much easier to forget. While traveling in the bus, you share the seats with someone especially with spinsters and you introduce, talk and become friend and s
Post a Comment
Read more

A Long, long, long journey to Education

“Root of the education is bitter but the fruit is sweet” no one would know about it better than Kado. The fatigue of having to toddle to the school, fever of unending exams, the torture of having to burn the midnight oil, dozing in classes and the stern rigors are hard to endure, few even give up on the way but many endure it with utmost determination and commitment, because deep inside everyone knows it pays later. “Root of the education is bitter but the fruit is sweet” no one would know about it better than Kado Kado in the tender age of 12 is negotiating the lazily meandering footpath along the steep mountain. His school bag, full of books, pulls him back. His black naughty boy school shoe is all soiled, indication of how many times he has trudged that same footpath. He is on his way to the primary school in his village, almost 5 kilometers away. He has to make sure he is in the school before morning social work starts; else he gets penalized. Unlike the students who reside nearb
Post a Comment
Read more

Defining Tsa-Wa-Sum in One’s own Perspective

If I am asked, I would boldly answer, “The Tsa-Wa-Sum is “Gyeb, Gyelkhab and Meser”, (King, Country and People). But not everyone knows about what tsa-wa-sum is. Hence, when the superior ask them, they are left to conceive their own tsa-wa-sum. Once a meeting was convened by the Dzongdag. In a large congregation of illiterate rural people, the Dzongdag thundered, “do you know what tsa-wa-sum is?” “Can anyone from the crowd tell me?” The crowd went to pin drop silence and no one seems ready to answer. Are they scared of Dasho or no one has the slightest idea what it is? Suddenly, a Ngalop man sitting in the last bench, for whom Dasho is hardly visible, stood up. With his head bowed low, he answers, “The three tsa-wa-sum are Ngalops, Sharchops and Lhotsampas”. “This is because they are the three race in Bhutan” Dasho went into bout of annoyance but before he fired the man, another Lhotsampa (Southern Bhutanese Man) supplemented, “the three tsa-wa-sum are Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) Royal B
1 comment
Read more