Tere is more in you than you think

PART 3 – THERE IS MORE IN YOU THAN YOU THINK

– About the boy from West Sahara who sleeps in snow caves on the Sogn Mountain, and the one who lost his arms and eyesight in a landmine accident but who seven years later, completed the 20 Km long Ridderrennet ski race. And a little bit about the grownup mentors who provide assistance. H ari Bahadur was on his way to work as a child laborer at a hotel in Nepal when his bus hit a road bomb. He found himself close to the center of an explosion, fre, splinters, injured and dead bodies. At the same time as Hari lay in hospital fghting for his life, Jonatan Ullholm began at school in Stockholm and could already read and write-in three languages. Tree years later they are best friends and roommates.

In 2004 Joseph Kaifala started up SAFUGe, an activity that has been recreated evry year since, for projects in the student’s home countries. The sky›s the limit for Zito, Arnold and many other UWC students, from 2014.

Deliberate Diversity Hari was seven, one of twelve siblings, and was sent from home to work. Every day the seven-year-old travels a long bus ride to clean at a hotel. With everyone in the family making an effort, they manage to survive.

Then on that fateful day, he is suddenly flung into the midst of an explosion. Hari suffers deep burns and sees agony all around him. 53 people died in the accident, 71 survived. Hari knows he is one of the lucky ones to be alive. After the accident he was treated for several months at the hospital. He hears of other survivors who have been forced to beg on the street and one who committed suicide. Hari is too wounded to go back to work but eventually gets permission to return to his school desk. But then another heavy blow hits him. His mother dies. This forces him to quit school and help his father.

Børge Brende, the man who gave the idea to start up Survivors of Conflict, on a later visit to the College in 2017. Daily life in the room from 2015.

At the same time Jonatan is growing up in Stockholm. His mother is from Bohemia. His father is a Swede who traveled around Europe looking for the world’s best dessert when he ran into his wife. There is an inside joke in the family that Jonatan is the result of a quest for the world’s best dessert. An authentic child of the dessert generation: those who are born into the well-off society from the seventies and onwards. His mother had experienced what being a refugee is like and is now strongly committed to the refugees’ plight. She opens their doors for them. Here they talk of global problems, about growing nationalism and about the refugee crisis. They speak Hungarian, Swedish and English. As a teenager Jonatan begins on an academic path with an international perspective.

When Hari is a teenager, he comes across a publication that a relative by chance has brought to a family gathering. Hari goes to the internet- café where he finds out more about the UWC organization. He prints out an application form and fills it in. The chances of getting a place are slim. The Nepalese national committee will choose a single candidate from a population of over 31 million. But Hari has survived a car bomb. So maybe this makes him especially brave. He applies for the competition along with fifteen hundred others. By chance, someone has been looking out for candidates for the Survivors of Conflict program. The program, unique to the RCN, aims at providing education to young persons who have been injured because of war or conflict. After a long entrance process Hari is admitted as a UWC RCN student as a participant in this program. He now embarks on his life’s journey with all the practical planning and change it entails.

The visa application is long-winded. On arrival in Norway, he finds all the other students already in place. He cannot afford to lag behind, due to poor English and an insufficient educational background. Hari is admitted into the so-called ‘foundation year’, with a bespoke program for him to prepare for the IB diploma program the next year. Will this help him get ready for full immersion in his study program?

Under the school’s fag – In the beginning, I could only do the most basic things and was often crying in the bathroom. It was so demanding. I was close to giving up, Hari recalls.

What better place to learn than the fjord? Asbjørn Lauridsen is always ready.

Now he is eighteen years old and speaks both openly and appreciatively about the seven-year-old traumatized boy and about him who only two years ago said: “being on the other side of the world far away from his parents, in a cold, wet and dark country. Around him, everyone spoke English, which he hardly understood a word of. To Hari it felt impossible. But there is most likely a profound truth in UWC founder Kurt Hahn’s statement: “there is more in you than you think.”

Today Hari and Jonatan are in Oslo as representatives of the current students. They will participate at a charity dinner, give a talk about the everyday life they share, as equal students, roommates, and best mates. Two and a half years earlier, the differences between them were immense. In the blank space under the heading ‘language skills’ on Jonatan’s application form, he wrote that he speaks and writes Swedish, English and Hungarian fluently. The resourceful Swedish adolescent had no idea how much he would learn about his fellow human beings when he was accepted into UWC.

When Jonatan arrived on campus, Hari came to pick him up.” Hari lifted me up and hugged me, without having ever met me. I liked that”, recalls Jonatan.

Two years earlier that kind of physical contact had been unthinkable for Hari.

– I tried ‘Namaste’14 but people said, ‘Hi Hari’ and gave me a hug. In my culture we do not show our bodies to each other. Roommates do that all the time. It was uncomfortable at first. Now we are more like brothers.

– Moving to Flekke was a culture shock for me too. The biggest surprise was the private life. You have your own corner but that is about it. It was amazing how well it went.

– We probably have the best rooms at school, adds Hari. – We have different circles of friends, but we get along well. If we disagree and there has been a row, we write each other messages on bits of paper and put a cookie or a chocolate beside it. If we are nervous about something, we talk about it. We might lie down beside each other. It is not homosexuality, simply respect. It feels good letting things out instead of hiding everything inside. When things get tough, I tell Jonatan about it.

– We have a lot to give each other. We might have

14 “NAMASTE” is Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language. It means “I bow before the divine in you”. But as a daily greeting one puts both palms together over the heart and bows for the other.

1. Bob Okello together with Arne Osland and basketballer Marco Elsafadi during the annual meetings at the Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 2014.

2. SOC participants in 2016: Mohammed, Edwin, Melvin, Yerson and Yeison.

3. Alumnus Saya Maye Cole on a visit together with Vibeke L’Orca Mortensen in 2014.

feelings for a special girl from a different culture, and then there is always somebody to ask for advice. Why did the girl react in that way? Did I say something wrong? It is about culture and religion, and we learn more about the background. I believe we have reached the right age for this.

After having completed his Foundation Year, Hari chose to study biology, English B, chemistry, mathematics, and Nepalese (self-taught). On his activity program there is the Thursday dance in the local villages. And now he is one of the organizers of the folkdance activities. He goes skiing and kayaking with the group that is preparing for the Ridderrennet race. The leadership team has chosen him to be representing the College at the Future Talks’ Arctic Expedition. This is a prestigious expedition to Svalbard where Hari got the chance to work with hundreds of youths and professionals from different sectors. They were all hand- picked according to one criterion: they might change the world.

Diversity in Daily life for all “Deliberate diversity” is a term used to coin something distinct in RCN’s pedagogical profile. The term refers to the mutual benefits that students from different backgrounds enjoy when sharing experiences together. This is how the UWC-movement uses education as a unifying force for peace. Therefore, the school puts diversity at the center for all parts of the daily school routines, in the residences, in classrooms and extra academic activities. I, who am writing this, shared a room for a two-year period in Flekke with girls from Bosnia, Canada, Denmark, Ghana, Iceland, Netherlands, Russia, and Vietnam. They were atheists, Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims and had their professional specializations in science, language, art, or history. At that time Europe was being torn apart by the war in Yugoslavia.

But there were initiatives, aspirations, consolidations, and a belief that one could make a change. I am reminded of this when looking at Hari and Jonatan. The two boys have hopes and dreams for the future. Hari wants to study information technology and economy and has received several offers from universities in the USA. Eventually, he would like to travel back to Nepal and be a part of the inner transformation there.

–In Nepal there are millions of people starving

“To the Top” -with the Norwegian Red Cross to Galdhøpiggen.

because of poor political leadership, I have been given this opportunity. My goal with this work is to create opportunities for many others. His childhood gave him no basis to believe in a future that held anything other than hard work under poor conditions. His prospects were an exhausting everyday life spent together with other children in a corrupt country with poor leadership. “One needs some good ones at the top of the government leadership,” Hari claims. The disempowerment of the poor disheartens him – If you do not have the means, you will not get a higher education. And without a higher education, you will not attain a pivotal position from which you can change your own and other people’s lives. Hari describes a Nepal with discrimination between the social classes:

– If you were from the upper class and I touched your cup-like we do here- you would refuse to drink any more from it.

So was there anything special about Hari or his circumstances that enabled him to break the vicious cycle? I imagine it was his personal attributes and consider this unusually curious boy with his trusting character. Maybe it was the many coincidences like the fact that he met somebody who gave him the UWC publication. And then let us not forget that he deserved it purely on the strength of character he displayed when taking the chance. This is a trait he shares with many other schoolmates. The boys tell me about Chat from Cambodia who uses a special bike to travel distances. Jonatan and his friends have turned Chat’s setbacks with slush and snow into a project. They designed a vehicle that gets him there in any kind of weather. Jonatan has experience with metallurgy from previous workshops. He can draw and work with tools. He sits with both pen and paper and works in the metal workshop that they have access to at the high school in Dale.

– Getting the permission to work with this sort of problem changes your perception of others. I had very specific goals before coming out here. But meeting these people transformed me. Despite their challenges they personify resilience. I had always envisioned

– If you were from the upper class and I touched your cup-like we do here- you would refuse to drink any more from it.

steering my career toward engineering. Now I imagine that I might do that in the shape of something useful like manufacturing prostheses. UWC helps you focus on your goals in life. And that is what makes having a big salary less important. We take leave. Jonatan and Hari go towards Aker Brygge to a UWC-event where they will be telling about their life together at UWC. They will return there tomorrow, to all the academic and extracurricular activities. Hari has organized transport for the next evening to the local folk dance activity and will make sure the information gets posted on social media. Jonatan gets ready for a mock exam and will finish building the vehicle for his friend. It strikes me when I leave these boys that each one in his own way, changes the world while being a student, not later.

Faculty Frolics - Mark, Arne, Alistair and Chris take their task seriously. Edwin Cornejo as camp school instructor.