ripping red petals
they sing, high as birds, skipping—
do, re, mi, it’s spring.
This haiku is what it is like to walk to Chazam with the self-proclaimed “silly women”, my gaggle of 11-12 year old students. It all started with an invitation to join them in their daily trek home (3km), since they found out I love a good walk. From there, a cooking class was planned, and now I walk with them several times a week and we’ve had 2 cooking classes. The regular group is (minus second names) Nalay, sisters Tshering and Kinley Z (who is 9), and their cousin Kinley B. On a recent walk, I taught them “Doe a deer, a female deer…” etc. from The Sound of Music (prompted by a reading about animals and explaining what a “doe” was in Class 5). What resulted was straight from the film: me leading a trail of children along a mountain road while we sang on the tops of our lungs. Now we sing it every time. They are begging for more songs too. Good thing I was a camp counselor for a few summers and have a repertoire of crazy songs to entertain them. Once we reach Chazam, I am always invited into Tshering and Kinley’s parent’s hotel/restaurant/shop and offered tea, and dinner. I always accept the tea, but since it still gets dark before 6:30, I usually decline the meal (though sometimes I risk the dark and accept a glorious Bhutanese meal that I didn’t have to prepare). I leave the hotel for home feeling full in many ways.
This past Saturday, while getting laundry washed before school, students showed up on my doorstep bearing the fixings for our 2nd cooking class. After the Khuru inter-house championship, where my house won, a group of 7 convened at my house to cook up a storm (Khuru is darts, but long range. I can’t believe anyone ever hits the center target, but it happens!). Our project of the day were: pudding (my contribution—American food is hard to make here. There’s no oven and many ingredients are not found.), sag datse, keptan, and ezay (the girls’ contribution of Bhutanese dishes). The tiny kitchen was packed and I learned even more than how to make these dishes. Pemba offered to take my compost to her cows, advising me to keep my eggshells and chili cuttings in a separate container because cows don’t like them. They showed me how to cut a plastic bottle and use it to grow one of my sprouting onions into green onions. And of course, learning to make the Bhutanese food. Keptan is like ‘roti’, it is just flour (maida), baking powder, salt, and water, kneaded and rolled flat (we used a bamboo rod since I lack a rolling pin) and cooked in a pan without oil (or on your bukari if you’ve got a fire going). Sag datse is mustard greens cooked with cheese, onions, and the ubiquitous chilies. Finally, ezay is chilies and onions, chopped with different additions. Ours featured fried egg, but usually it has cheese in it, and sometimes cilantro. The chilies and onions were cooked in our version, but they are not always cooked in other versions. Everything turned out amazing, except the pudding, which didn’t set since we couldn’t cool it enough (we drank it out of cups—the girls loved it anyway). We ate our creations on my floor while they had me DJ music and show them pictures on my computer.
After our fantastic lunch, I got a bag ready to spend the night in Chazam. The day before, the girls had invited me to stay at the hotel overnight and walk to the temple with them in the morning on Sunday. I was excited by the prospect of a long hike to the temple as well as spending time with the “silly women”. I am sure they were quite excited to have me stay overnight as well, like a slumber party. The evening was filled with walking down to Nika Chu bridge, a soccer game, me reading aloud, and scrumptious dinner prepared by one of their brothers (the cook at the hotel). After dinner, the girls showed me my room. I fell exhausted into the soft warm bed (a real bed! I sleep on a camping mat with a sleeping bag) and was sound asleep before 9:30. I woke to soft sunlight and birdsong, and meditated. Kinely B knocked on my door soon after and offered me a cup of tea and an April fool’s joke (“Miss! What’s that on your head?!”). I went upstairs to meet the rest of the girls, who played more April fool’s jokes on me and their family, and we feasted on momos and ema datse (steamed giant dumplings and chilies and cheese). After, they loaded their bags with offerings for the temple and we set off. We picked up Nalay at her aunt’s house on the way up the mountain. From there, Leki (another friend of the girls’) said she knew the way. Trekking straight uphill, we walked into prayer flags and rhododendrons in bloom. After about an hour of hiking, we were deep in the forest/jungle with no sign of a path. The girls did not lose hope, rather cheerily repeated lines from speeches and readings from school: “Miss, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!” (what amazing attitudes!). As we crawled under hanging branches and through thorns, I began to get worried by the lack of trail, the amount of ticks descending on us, and our eventual lack of water on the first warm, sunny day here. We decided to begin walking downhill, towards home, since they couldn’t find the trail. On our descent, we came across two women gathering fodder for their cows. Kinley and Tshering knew one of the women, who led us to the well-rutted trail that leads up to the temple and down to Chazam and the river. We were all relieved and decided, since we’d been gone nearly 3 hours, that we’d go home and attempt the hike another day. We sat on the trail and the girls ate and drank the offering cakes and soda. We hid the butter and incense in the bushes for the next time (they didn’t want to go home and tell their parents they hadn’t made it). The girls concluded that this walk was our “April fool’s walk to the temple”.
We all went down the mountain, passing the spot where we’d made a wrong turn (all of us exclaiming how silly they were for not noticing the blatant uphill path to the side). Once down, we headed to Tshering’s house where her family was having the yearly Puja (or blessing ceremony) at the farmhouse. We had tea and zow (puffed rice), then lunch. I spoke my little bits of Dzonghka with their great uncle/grandfather who, rather than scold the girls when they asked me to go swimming, told us of a place where the river is a little deeper and better for dipping in (by the Chorten, in case you are wondering). After popping in the house and getting blessed by the group of young monks reciting prayers, we raced to the river and jumped in. The cold water soothed my sunburned, jungle-scratched, tick-bitten skin. The river is not ideal for swimming (it is quite shallow with lots of huge boulders and fast-moving), but grandfather’s spot afforded us a little depth and space to float for a few seconds at a time.
Sufficiently chilled, we dried in the sun, dressed, and walked across the river and down the road to the hotel. I collected my things and thanked the girls and their family for a fantastic weekend and began my walk back to Rukubji. Inhaling the smell and sight of the flowering trees, feeling the sun’s warmth on me and the weariness in my legs and feet, my heart and face smiling, I felt childlike joy and gratitude wash over me. What fun it is to play! (this only confirms that I am not actually 26, but 12 years old….)
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