Swiss Review 2/2020

19 Swiss Review / April 2020 / No.2 community. This group counts 150 people fromLAS, 100 fromSHMS and 51 fromLKAS, of which half are teach- ers. According to the director of the Japanese school, John Southworth, some of these teachers have been in Leysin for over 20 years, with an av- erage presence of 11 years. Some speak fluent French, whilst others speak only English. “This is a bit regretta- ble,” he admits. This anglophone, who arrived in Leysin in 1994 and who speaks French and Japanese, jokes that he is “married to Kumon”. On the other hand, his colleague, financial director Riki Okura, has two children who do not attend private school. This encourages contact with the local population. But life here remains very different from his time in the USA, where he was invited to a party on a weekly basis. “The locals here lead private lives centred on family,” he comments. Patients and their posterity Another slice of the sociological sand- wich in Leysin is made up of patients, their visitors and their offspring. Er- ica André, who arrived in Leysin from South Africa in 2001, is nowmarried to Leysin-born Marc-Henri, himself the child of parents from different countries. His father arrived in the re- gion to receive treatment for tuber- culosis. “The presence of foreigners and intercultural couples helped my population. Everything is organised for themby their schools, and outings in the village are somewhat limited. Alcohol is forbidden for students of the American and Japanese schools. The village is home to two bakeries and three supermarkets, but no nightclubs. SHMS has one, but it is re- served for its 500 students only. The school’s managers-in-the-making lodge high up in the imposing Mont Blanc Palace, a former ClubMed, with south-facing balconies originally in- tended for tuberculosis sufferers. “We offer 600 beds for our students; it is the presence of other schools and the opening up of Leysin to the world that has made such a grand operation possible in such a small municipality,” notes Florent Rondez, CEO of the Swiss Education Group, which re- cently acquired the Palace. The gap between base and summit Christoph Ott is aware of the divide that exists between the upper region of the village, at Le Feydey, where the hotel-sanatoriums were built at the close of the 19th century, and the lower region, then home to 300 peo- ple. This was before the arrival of the Vevey – Le Feydey train connection, in 1900. Today, the resort boasts four train stations and there are plans to develop the rail network even further. “Our school is committed to building bridges to eliminate the divide,” states the director of the LAS, which spreads its activities across 16 build- ings. A member of the municipal council, married to a Pole, andwith a doctorate in economics, he has sug- gested to his students that they pro- vide English lessons to the 60 or so in- dividuals lodged in Leysin’s centre for asylum seekers, for example. The young people from the international schools also help out during festivals organised at the ski resort. The staff working at the private schools constitute a further separate John Southworth, Kumon, loves the safety of village life. Christoph Ott, LAS, appreciates the village’s proximity to nature. Virgilio Santos, SHMS, sends his children to school in the village. 57.7%: the national record for foreign residents In 2017, 57.7% of the 4,032 inhabitants of Leysin were ‘foreign’, whilst the average percentage of foreign inhabitants elsewhere in Switzerland was only 25.1%, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office. This was a national record. This rate dropped to 55% at the end of 2018. That year, the commune counted 100 different nationalities, including 446 Chinese, 282 French, 215 Portuguese, 162 Japanese and 135 Americans.