At Home in Rukubji

Best intentions set

and now I’m the one in need

kindness flows two ways

It has been one week since my arrival in Rukubji, the village where I will live and teach for the next 10 months. The village is in the Wangdue Dzongkhag (or District), but it is about as far from the seat of Wangdue (which is a town called Wangdue) as you can get- it is almost in the next district. The village is situated up in the hills leading to mountains and a river cuts through it. The river provides the village electricity through a mini-hydroelectric plant. The school I teach at, Rukubji Primary School, is up on a hill (windy!) and only a 3 minute walk from my house. Most villagers have a few cows and the main crop, the fields of which lie just above the village, is potatoes.

I am renting the lower half of a large village house, built in the traditional style. It is owned by Angey Tandin (or Grandma Tandin). Angey could be my Lebanese grandma- she even talks with her same cadence! Like my own grandma, she works hard, all the time- cutting wood, gardening, fixing things, making food. And like my grandma, she prays every morning and evening, the only difference is that her string of prayer beads has 108 beads while my grandma’s has 54. While they might be praying to different enlightened beings, but I think the intent is the same. She also doesn’t speak English, like my grandma, so I am trying to learn Dzongkha as fast as I can to communicate with her better. The language she speaks is different from Dzongkha though, it is called Henki (the language of the village).

Though I came to be of use, to teach, this first week proved that I was the one in need of help. I came without knowing how to do things the way they are done here, in need of guidance. I also came feeling under the weather, and so Angey was the one who helped me, cooked for me, and let me rest. I could not have easily gotten my feet on the ground without her telling me where to get wood, food, water. How to wash my clothes efficiently, how to get my bukari (woodstove) up and running. I feel so blessed to have landed in her capable hands and I hope that during my 10 months here I can give back to her as much and more.

So I am settling into the rhythm of life here. Adjusting to getting my water from the tap outside, to warming my bones with wood heat, to washing laundry by hand, to not having a variety of food, to putting on my kira in time to get to school, to the cold nights, to the silence. Things are simpler here, but also have a complexity that evades me still. There are systems to doing and getting things, and I am learning them.

School starts officially today, the students will arrive (at least most of them). It is not like the start of the year for students in the USA, the first week will be spent preparing a cultural program to celebrate His Majesty the 5^th King’s Birth Anniversary, National Education Day, and Losar (the New Year). This will give me time to plan out my year and dig into the curriculum. I will be teaching 4^th and 5^th English (and maybe 6^th) and will also be the Literary In Charge, which means I will be planning an English related activity once a month. I am excited to begin, to meet my students, and to contribute everything I can to the students and the school. (More about school in the next posting, stay tuned!)