Beyond the Sky and the Earth (20 page)

This is the reason I have not read much of the
Kuensel.
Everyone is always expressing support and gratitude, no one ever seems to have a contradictory point of view. It seems strange, for instance, that the people of southern Bhutan would be so keen to wear the northern dress in the hot tropical plains, and that not a single person of Nepali origin expressed concern for preserving their own culture and language. Perhaps with time, an identity can be replaced, but it is hard to overwrite the names people call themselves. Either dissenting views were felt but not expressed, or expressed but not reported, but there must have been some people who were not happy with this idea.

I ask a class VIII student to explain the dress law to me. He says, “Our national dress is part of our culture.” I ask why it must be legislated then. He isn’t sure, but says that the Dzongda recently told his class the question why should not be allowed in Bhutan.

“Why ever not?” I ask, incredulous.

“Asking why is not driglam namzha,” he says. I stare, openmouthed, but in the end I say nothing. I am afraid to contradict the district administrator. Maybe it is not even true. Maybe it is a misinterpretation. Maybe I do not understand. Most definitely I do not understand.
The question why should not be allowed?
A completely different system of values is at work here, based on another history. Obedience to authority, respect for elders and preservation of the status quo form the bedrock of Bhutanese values. I tell myself to see the Dzongda’s statement objectively, as a part of a cultural context ... but I wonder if this is ever truly possible: what does “objectively” mean anyway?

M
iss, your friend is here!” Sangay Chhoden comes to the library after school to tell me. I lock up and follow Sangay down the stairs to see who has come to visit. “Well, hello Medusa,” Leon says, looking at my hair which has been made particularly unruly by the July humidity. “I’m starving. What do you have to eat? Let’s make pizza.” We set off, skirting the playing field, but the soccer game comes to a complete stop anyway so that everyone can watch us walk away. “Does this happen to you in Wamrong?” I ask Leon.

“Oh, all the time. I can’t buy tomatoes in the market without the entire town talking about it. What’s the phillingpa doing, he’s buying tomatoes, how much is he paying, where did he buy them last time, how much did he pay then. It’s part of being here, I know, but it still gets on my nerves sometimes. We have such a strong concept of privacy and it just doesn’t exist here.”

I know exactly what he means. I sometimes long for anonymity, to walk down a crowded city street unnoticed, unremarked upon, to be surrounded by strangers who couldn’t care less where I am going when I step out of my door on a Saturday morning. Everyone in the village will know by this evening that my friend has come to visit. It doesn’t really matter, but still, I wish my private life could be ... well, private.

We stop between my building and the bank and furtively cut a few stalks of “pig food.” I have noticed that many of the foreign teachers, even those that would not normally smoke it, take advantage of the wild marijuana that grows so luxuriantly everywhere. I dry the leaves in a frying pan while Leon chums together onions and Druk tomato sauce for the pizza. We stay up late drinking warm Golden Eagle beer and smoking the marijuana. Leon is certain that he will extend his contract and is already thinking of where he would like to be posted next. “Somewhere off the road,” he says. “I know it’s too early, but do you think you might extend?”

“I can’t,” I say. “There’s Robert, for one thing ...”

I am worried about my relationship with Robert. I miss him, but our letters only seem to emphasize the distance between us. They have become monologues, except for a few lines tacked on at the beginning or the end: I hope you got over your stomach trouble, I hope you did well on that last essay, be careful with the water there, your new car sounds lovely. I do not write that a car now sounds like a terrible indulgence in a city with buses, trains, trams and a subway system, or that the condominium Robert raved about sounds like an expensive prison. And I have a feeling he does not write how inexplicable he finds the stories in my letters. “It’s like we’re on two different planets,” I say.

“Well, in a way, you are,” Leon says.

I stare glumly at my bottle of beer. “I’m supposed to go home at Christmas,” I say. “Maybe he can come back with me for a visit after.” There’s that odd word again, Christmas.
Home
has a strange ring to it now, too.

Too many bottles of beer later, I sweep the rest of the “pig food” into a Ziploc bag. “Leave the mess,” I tell Leon, who is stacking up plates and pineapple rinds, and go crashing off to bed.

Someone knocks loudly at the door a few hours later. I lie in bed in the grey morning light, fully resolved to ignore the knocking. Go away, go away, I think, it’s too early to be bringing me vegetables or a bleeding limb. I’m not getting up, go away. The knocking grows thunderous. I march to the door in my nightshirt and yank furiously at the bolts.

“What?” I say. “What!”

The headmaster steps back, looking disconcerted. “Uh, Miss Jamie, this is the new principal of Sherubtse College,” he says, gesturing to the heavyset man beside him. He has a broad, genial face, and is wearing a richly embroidered orange-and-yellow gho. “He would like to talk to you....”

I apologize profusely for keeping them waiting, for my rudeness, for my nightshirt, for everything in general, and lead them into the sitting room, where Leon is sitting up in his sleeping bag, blinking. He leaps to his feet as I dash off to put on a kira. When I come back, the headmaster and the Sherubtse principal are sitting at the table while Leon clears away the empty beer bottles and dirty plates. He goes off to the kitchen to make tea, and the college principal explains that he has just been appointed to replace Father Larue. One of the English lecturers is leaving this month, he says, and he has heard from someone that I have a master’s degree in English. Would I be interested in the job?

“Father Larue thought that I was too young,” I say lamely.

“I know,” he says, shaking his head. “I say, if someone has the right qualifications, what does age matter? It’s like saying that someone is too short for the job. No, no, we aren’t worried about your age.”

Leon brings in the tea, and we notice at the same time the Ziploc bag in the middle of the table. He has thoughtfully cleared away the pizza remains and pineapple rinds for this impromptu job interview, but has forgotten the bag of pot. Our eyes meet and I can see that he is on the verge of an explosion. He bites his lip and looks away, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

We drink our tea while the principal tells me more about the college. A forty-minute drive south of Tashigang, surrounded by the village of Kanglung, the college is Bhutan’s highest institute of education. About five hundred students are enrolled in undergraduate degrees in arts, commerce and science. The English curriculum is set by Delhi University, there’s some poetry, some Shakespeare, a few novels. The library has thirteen thousand books. The other lecturers are mostly from Delhi, they all live on campus, the staff quarters are very nice, and he is sure I will be very happy there....

I don’t know what to say. The college sounds like a dream (thirteen thousand books!) but it is all so sudden, and it’s unclear whether or not I have a choice in this matter. The principal stands. “So, I’ll send a message to the Education Department for your movement order,” he says. “And we’ll send the hi-lux for you next week.”

When they are gone, Leon dangles the plastic bag of pot in front of me. “I can’t wait to see that movement order,” he says. “It’s going to say TRANSFERRED BACK TO TORONTO.”

“Do you think I can refuse to go, Leon?” I ask.

He says I could probably ask to stay in Pema Gatshel, but thinks I should accept the transfer. “I think you’ll get a whole different perspective on Bhutan at the college,” he says. “The students are from all over the country, and from every type of background. It’s a great opportunity. ”

When Leon leaves for Wamrong, I drag my empty hockey bags and suitcases out from under the bed and stare at them, as if this will make the idea of Kanglung more real, and help me decide what to do. I can hear kids pounding up the stairs. I am not ready to see them, but they persist, rattling the door handle and barking, “May! I! Come! In! Miss!” I get up wearily and let them in. They stop in the middle of the room and stare at the bags.

“Miss, where you is going?” Tshewang Tshering asks.

“I’ve just been transferred to Kanglung,” I say. They look at me to see if I am joking, and then they look at each other. There is a long, terrible silence and we all look at the floor. Karma Dorji wipes his runny nose on his sleeve and looks up. “Oh, miss,” he says sadly. “Please don’t go.”

“Just a minute,” I say, and go into the bathroom. I latch the door and turn on the tap full force. When the water is running noisily, I lean my hot forehead against the damp, flaking concrete, and cry.

By Monday, the news has spread. When I open the door to class II C, I am besieged by questions. Miss, you is going? Kanglung collitch going? Miss, you is transfer? When going? Is true, miss?

I tell them yes, it is true. I am transferred, I am going. In maybe a week. I will go to teach at Kanglung College, but I will write to them, I say. I will miss them but I will come back to visit them. And a new teacher will come for class II C. And now we will have spelling dictation because if we do not, I will cry again.

In the staff room, I am congratulated and felicitated. I am so lucky, they tell me. I will have electricity, better quarters, bus service to Tashigang. Kanglung is a much better place; I will be working alongside tiptop lecturers, I will be teaching the cream of the crop. Mr. Iyya tells me I will be at the zenith of my glory. Yes, who wants to teach class II in such a remote and backward place? they ask each other. My throat hurts and I cannot speak.

At lunch time, I sit on the front steps of the school, watching some of my kids playing soccer. I think about that library, reference books open on a long polished table in front of me, I think about preparing lecture notes instead of spelling tests, teaching
Macbeth
instead of
Herbert the Mouse.

I think about my kids, my dear, sweet, smiling, smelly, runny-nosed, barefoot kids. The school is already suffering from a terrible teacher shortage, and it will take weeks and weeks for a replacement to arrive. My kids will fall behind. But since their first-term exam results, I’ve been wondering what good I am doing them anyway. I love them, but I don’t seem to be teaching them anything. Surely they would be better off with a trained primary-school teacher, someone who could explain the concept of division without using the word “divide.”

On the other hand, my replacement could turn out to be another Mr. Iyya. I cannot bear the thought of someone beating them. And perhaps it would be foolish to move now anyway, after I have finally become used to Pema Gatshel, the Lotus of Happiness. I have acclimatized, and it was no small feat. No, I should speak to the headmaster and tell him I don’t want to go, ask him if I can stay.

A wireless message arrives for me after lunch, from the field director in Thimphu.
Received notice of your transfer,
he writes.
Will process if you want to go. However will support you if you decide to stay in P/G.

There, I can stay if I want to.

But I want to go. I am pulled away by the idea of new stories, a different view out over other valleys and ridges, another way of understanding Bhutan. A new posting. I send a message back to say that I will go to Kanglung, and ask if a new WUSC teacher can be sent to Pema Gatshel to replace me.

The kids come to visit in the evening. They stay for dinner, five of them, and afterward sing songs in Dzongkha and Sharchhop and Nepali. Karma Dorji translates for me: a mother cries for her child, the teachings of Buddha bring light, oh Lhamo I told you not to go, the song of the river tells the coming of spring. The session ends with their favorite English songs, “Chili Eating,” sung to the tune of “Clementine,” and the “Momo Song”:

It is too late for them to go home after, so they spend the night, sleeping on mats and quilts on the floor, covered with blankets and kiras and towels. The next night there are eight, the next, sixteen. After dinner, they act out skits for me in costumes made of kiras, a badminton racquet, sunglasses, plastic bags and my woolen tights. They do homework and flip through magazines and draw pictures for my new house. They write me goodbye letters and leave them in elaborately decorated envelopes on my bed.

They tell me ghost stories while we cook dinner, all of us crammed into the tiny kitchen chopping onions and chilies in the wildly flickering candlelight, and then they are too scared to leave the kitchen and must go to the bathroom in groups of three and four. They wash the dishes, argue over the walkman and fall asleep on the floor.

I check their homework and admire their pictures, settle disputes and explain magazine pictures as best I can. “
Doen
,” I say of an ad featuring Freddie Krueger of
Nightmare on Elm Street.
“A ghost. But not a real one.” I go to the market for extra rice and eggs and butter and salt (I have finally been paid and now have a cartoon sack of money containing four months’ salary—twelve thousand ngultrum—all in fives and tens). I peel massive quantities of tubers for meals, but make no dent in the pile I have accumulated. I never did resolve the money-for-vegetables dilemma with the students, and when I leave for Kanglung, I will take with me a twenty-five kg jute bag of carrots, radishes and potatoes. I fall into a dead sleep around midnight. I know I have to leave at the end of the week, but for now, I am here with my kids, and I am happy.