Price of Knowledge

Day by day, 11 year old Sherab Dorji walks three hours to school. In the early morning he meets the other children of his village at a chorten, a Buddhist shrine. From there, they walk to school together singing. The road leads across a mountain and through the woods. The parents are constantly afraid of their children meeting up with wild animals along the path. When Sherab walks the last part by himself in the evening, he prays aloud to fight his fear. They walk so much, his father says, that their socks tear within a week. Sherab's family depends on subsistence farming. The mother and sister especially work very hard. They stay out at night protecting their crops against wild boars. Thus Yonten Gi Kawa depicts life in rural Bhutan.