Monday, October 29, 2012

The leaves are shivering...




He ran up that hill
hooting from his child heart
eyes changed like red leaves

This poem is dedicated to one of my Class V boys who has struggled with school all year. Recently, I got to walk with him up a mountain called Palipokto. His complete joy about being on this walk inspired the haiku. I wish all teenage boys could get the chance to drop their guard and be so innocent and joyful.

The end of October has always been my favorite time of year, and it holds true in Rukubji. I thought for a moment that the trees would never change color, and though most are evergreen, they are now set off by yellows, browns, and reds, which lends depth to the landscape. Noticeably, the few larch trees that would be overlooked as normal needle trees have taken a golden orange hue and have begun to shower the earth with their dried needles. The air wears a frosty perfume, carried on brusque wind that makes the leaves shiver. The scenery of my daily walk makes me want to kneel in awe of all the beauty and at the same time quicken my pace for the chill. The bukari fires began during the late September evenings and now must be started on both ends of the day. My fingers have taken to becoming immobile and ghostly at school as I try to wield the chalk in the drafty classrooms. Despite the slight discomforts of being unheated all day, I enjoy cold weather immensely, which no one can quite believe here.

I am dealing with the cold much better than the beginning of the year. I now have a cozy wool full-length kira to wrap around me during the school day and find no shame in wearing three shirts and two pairs of leggings under it. I’ve also had additions from home, like extra wool tops and a pair of wool clogs that I wear at school. More important, I am far better at starting my bukari fire. It takes hardly any time now to get it burning (without the kerosene that many people use), which is far more enjoyable than the struggles I had in the winter. The lack of struggle may also be due to the ease I’ve felt with life here in the past few months.

Besides enjoying the fall atmosphere and burning fire, I have had a few small adventures during this month. To backtrack into September for a moment, we received a new teacher at our school. Our new, very young Miss came in mid-September along with a Non-Formal Education (NFE) teacher and an early childhood education teacher. The other two teachers work in the village NFE center next to the temple, and Miss Tshering Yangchen works at our school. It is a relief to know that each class has a teacher in it all day, making teaching far less stressful. We all had some schedule shifts, and as a result I got handed Class I for a “reading period” after lunch. I admit I was perplexed and not enthusiastic about the prospect at first, but after a tough first day with them, I changed my attitude. I went back the second day, determined that fun would be the top priority. I brought in all the books with few words on each page, taught “One, two, buckle my shoe”, and we all had a fabulous time. It just took setting a little routine and being committed to enjoying my time with them. Not many people tell them they’re smart, and they are, so I make sure they know this all the time. The cool thing is, these kids can read! I am so proud of them. They come up to me screaming “Miss! Miss! THE!” pointing to the word ‘the’ on the page. The other day, I had Class V students who were free come in and “buddy read” with them, which was a total joy for all of us. The Class V kids really took on the teacher role as they read slowly with the little ones. We have also learned “Duck, Duck, Grey Duck” which we play as a reward game, though I’ve changed the words to “Cow, Cow, Yak”.

Speaking of yaks… I got to visit the yak camp near Pelela. In the fall, the yaks come down the mountain to enjoy the cold weather that has befallen the lower altitudes. Several of my students’ parents are yak herders and they invited me to visit the baby yaks on Saturday. We hiked up the shortcut to Tsengaypokto (the steep climb up to the 2 shops  and Gangamaya’s house at the top of the hill/mountain behind Rukubji). At the top, we jumped in the back of a pickup truck with the rest of the students heading to Longtey for the weekend (about 8km to the west of Rukubji, the village just before the 3,000 + metre pass called Pelela). My guides were Class IV Phurba, his brother Class VI Dawa Tashi, Class VI Sonam Dorji, and Class V Kumbu Dem. We unloaded at Longtey, had tea and puffed rice at Phurba and Dawa’s house, offered by their grandmother.

Their grandmother is one of the oldest people in Longtey, but like most older people in Bhutan, she never stops working. Dawa told me a story about how his grandmother, in her younger years, won a prize for being able to shoot an arrow and hit the target in one try. She was dressed in a wooly patterned kira with another around her waist and brilliant “koma” (like brooches that are used to hook the top ends of the kira over the shoulders) fixing the top of the kira together. She and I made conversation out of my limited Dzongkha, me telling her I was Dawa and Phurba’s teacher, she sharing about the cold weather and her aches, while refilling my cup of tea excessively. Though our conversation was limited by words, her eyes and smile made me feel welcome, as if she were my own grandmother. After recently listening to a podcast on aging in America that discussed the lack of visibility of older generations in public life, I realize how Bhutan is the opposite. In Bhutan, elderly people are out and about everywhere. In fact, one incredibly old grandmother makes the 8km round trip from Bimilo each day to pick up her Class PP grandchildren. My landlords, Ap Kuenzang and Am Tandin, who are quite advanced in years, are always in their fields or working on projects. For me, this is how aging should be. Young people need to be in contact with older people. We all need a reminder of the beauty and difficulty of aging, because hopefully it’s where we are headed as we continue on in our lives.

After the tea, Kumbu came and collected us and we continued our adventure to the yaks. We took a “short cut” into the woods that led us past one of the rocks where Guru Rimpche meditated. Dawa advised us to take a rhododendron branch and place it on the rock, making a wish as we did so. We walked a worn footpath through the rough grey dwarf bamboo and autumnal brush that reached our shoulders. Even 8km from Rukubji, the vegetation changed to that common of higher altitudes, speckled with rhododendron and sparse trees. Soon, we saw the blue peaks of tarp tents poking above the spiky bamboo. We also spotted the horns of yaks. Yaks are like buffalo wearing long coats. In fact, there’s a folktale about how the yak came to be. Apparently, the yak and the buffalo were brothers. One day the yak had to go up the mountain to find food. He told his brother he’d return. He put on a long thick coat and went up the mountain. There, he found food, but never returned. This would explain the long coat of hair, which people cut and weave into cloth. Sure enough, there were “buchu” (baby) yaks too! They kicked up their back legs and fluffy tails as they bounded through the brush. Kumbu led us to her mother’s tent where she would stay for the weekend. I am amazed that people stay in these tents during the coldest weather. They are a simple tarp tented over poles. There is a fire pit in the back end of the tent, pots for cooking, blankets for sleeping, and not much else. From the top of the tent, strings of yak cheese, called chugo, hang to dry out, a tooth-chipping treat that everyone loves. After being gifted with many strings of chugo, Dawa, Sonam, and I continued on to Pelela to visit the chorten there, leaving Phurba and Kumbu with the yaks for the night. We circled the chorten 3 times and then galloped back towards Longtey, catching a much-appreciated ride half way there from a man on his way to Trongsa. He scolded us as we got in the car, telling us we shouldn’t be walking in the dusk- he thought I was one of the boys until he took a second look! I admit, running around with kids isn’t something most people do. It is sort of a compliment that I was taken for a child.

The next week brought two events: Dasain, a Hindu festival, and the Sephu Community School Variety Show.

Wednesday we were granted a day off for Dasain. I had agreed (in March) to spend the holiday with Gangamaya and her family. The holiday is based on the victory of Ram over Ravana, as recounted in the Ramayana. It is celebrated by Nepalese people in Bhutan and Nepal, and lasts 15 days. In the morning, I walked up to their house in Tsengaypokto and was warmly greeted by my student Vim, his older brother Tara who had made the trip home from boarding school, SB, their father, and Gangamaya, the generous matriarch. They led me to their altar room where SB and Gangamaya pressed a mixture of yogurt and uncooked rice onto my forehead, which is called ‘tika’. They sprinkled me with rice and gave me some folded money. People do this for their family each Dasain. Gangamaya and SB have certainly become that for me during my months here and it was a pure honor to be able to celebrate this familial holiday with them. We then ate a feast of rice from Tsirang (the BEST rice I have ever tasted), chickpea curry, yogurt, ghee, pumpkin curry, chili curry, and homemade mango pickle. The day continued with visitors filtering in and out, Gangamaya feeding everyone and making sure we were all stuffed to the top with tea at all times. Gangamaya is an incredibly openhanded hostess. Everyone is welcome into her home, whether they are upstanding or not. I will not go into the details of the issues that some of my students families face, but there are deep and hard things happening. No matter what the situation, Gangamaya lets people in, even when they abuse her generosity and trust. I deeply respect her for this, because most of us would just say, “No, you hurt me and others before and I don’t want to offer you any compassion.”  She’s an example of what so many religions preach, but people rarely embody in practice. As dusk approached, I bowed in gratitude to my hosts, saying “donebad”, and began a chilly, indigo walk home along the road, full of food and love. I was reminded that autumn is a time in many cultures for celebrations exalting connection and gratitude. It is truly the spirit of the harvest to share in this way. These celebrations, which happen as the light retreats, exemplify human hope—that we make light out of darkness, bring celebration into a time when things around us are dying.

The next day, I walked down to Chazam after school to catch a ride with the hotel staff to the Sephu Variety Show. Sephu is a school about 4 km away from Chazam, down an unpaved farm road. It is a primary school, like Rukubji, and the students are drawn from the villages in the surrounding mountains and valleys to the north and east of Chazam. At the school, we were ushered into a bamboo-woven multipurpose hall, devoid of chairs and benches except along the walls. People filtered in and sat directly on the earthen floor. Since we were “honored guests”, we got plastic chairs along the wall near the front. The actual “guest of honor”, the Gup (like the mayor of the Geog- the assemblage of villages called Sephu) invited me and my friend Yangzom to sit next to him. He’s an amiable man and the father of two of my students. We had a good time talking in a mix of Dzongkha and English as we waited for the school staff to rewire their mic system. The Gup recently returned from a government tour in Thailand and told us about his adventure there, recounting the amazement at seeing roads that went over other roads, the ocean, and so many people. After an hour, the mic system was running and the show began. There were 32 items on the list, and not a single one was cut, despite the delayed start. Traditional dances and songs, nursery rhymes performed by the younger classes, modern dances, a skit about AIDS prevention that involved cardboard boxes decorated with inflated condoms … By the time it was over, at 11:30pm, our backsides were frozen into our chairs from sitting in the unheated space for so long. Even so, we had to stand up and perform a last traditional dance and song with the staff, the Gup, and other village officials. The Gup drove us back to Chazam and I spent the night at the hotel since there was no way to get back to Rukubji at that hour. I am grateful that our culture show was far shorter! Yet the Sephu students had something that was lacking in our show. The kids actually sang the songs. It was more student-driven in many ways, and that made it more interesting for me. I talked about this fact with my students and they agreed, so I hope they take more initiative next year with their show.

This week, Halloween is Wednesday.  In celebration, students will be bringing pumpkins, ‘kokor’, to carve after school. They are excited to celebrate and learn about this holiday, and I’m excited to share the fun. We can’t go trick or treating, but they were really intrigued by the idea of getting candy from strangers. Noorin gave me the fabulous idea of doing a candy hunt- like an Easter egg hunt. It will be nice to have some fun, since the exams are now on the horizon and soon all available free-time will be spent in preparation for this. Winter timing will also begin, as the cold forces us to spend the least amount of time possible in the unheated schoolrooms.

So, imagine me in this last month in the village, snuggled up in wool, sitting next to my bukari fire or out walking in the patchwork of color that fall has brought.




Saturday, October 6, 2012

Butter and lamps


plunging, up and down,
the forgotten ache milk takes
to give its butter

This is a haiku for churning butter. This past week I got to do so twice at my student Sonam Choden’s house. I had asked her to teach me to make “datse” (cheese) in the traditional way, and she happily agreed. Before you make the cheese, first you have to make butter, I found. I walked into the main part of Rukubji village, past our 3 chortens and tangly evergreen oaks to see Sonam and another student, Pemba Lham, waving to me from the front step of the house. Sonam’s house opens immediately into a traditional Bhutanese kitchen with a wood-fired stove that you feed wood into from a small hole in the base. The kitchen is basically built around the stove. It has a few holes on the top where you place pots to heat, or cover if you’re not using them. I love this kind of stove, even though I know it takes a lot of work to keep it going and can take longer to cook things. There’s no rush like there is in the US though, which became even more clear as we began the process of making cheese.

We began by churning the milk in a hand churn that is composed of stacked circular wooden boxes with a wooden plunger (trying to explain the set up makes me miss my lost camera). The milk sits in the churn for 3 days, after which you begin to churn it. The churn was set up in the living room in front of the TV and we set to work plunging up and down, watching coverage of the Thimphu Tsechu (festival) that had taken place last week. Churning is hard work! Despite the chill, we stripped down to our t-shirts, sweating. After a half hour, Sonam’s mother added hot water to the churn to help the butter float to the top. Then, when it was almost ready (after an hour!), she added cold water, which would help the butter condense and separate more fully. Then she unplugged a hole from the side of the churn, releasing the “dow” or buttermilk. Once the churn was half emptied, she took the top off and we saw what our work had produced: golden chunks of floating butter. The butter was scooped into a wooden box and rounded using some cold water (a small bit was reserved for me to take home). We poured the “dow” into a giant pot on the stove (only half the amount fit at a time) and Sonam set to work very gently dragging a paddle around the edge of the pot to get the curd to separate from the whey and clump together. As we sat there, we chatted in English and Dzongkha with her mother and their friendly cat nuzzled his way into purring sleep on my legs. 

Autsho, from Reidi's school

Reidi, Martin, and Me

Twins
The cheese began to show up in the pot and Sonam’s mother ladled out most of the whey (called “dachu”) into another pot before straining out the curd. The curd went into a bowl and she began squeezing it into generous balls, which she sells for nu. 20 a piece. She laughed about how some people make really small balls, but she thinks that’s not fair, so she makes hers nice and big (I’m proud to say I understood all this in Dzongkha). I’m buying from her from now on!  This process was repeated a second time with the remaining “dow”. The reserved “dachu” is given to calves for food or boiled for people to drink (as I’ve said, it’s my favorite drink). Once all the cheese was balled, Sonam’s mother washed up some greens and made a fabulous cheese and greens curry called “hentsi datse” served with rice and a glass of buttermilk. I had arrived at the house at 6pm, and we were eating dinner close to 9pm- another proof that time isn’t any concern. Things take as long as they will. Politely declining the invitation to sleep over, I walked home in the dark with my cellphone flashlight, which I’ve never done by myself, feeling a great sense of ease, connection, and happiness from the evening.

Now, a trip through September…

September tousled me as much as the growing fall winds have been. After Joe left, I dealt with a knock out case of strep throat. An innocuous fever yielded to an infection that left me bed-ridden for 4 days. Antibiotics and vitamin C from our Sephu Basic Health Unit did their work and I was back to school in the next week.

Shortly after, I had planned a trip for the holidays of Blessed Rainy Day and Wangdue Tsechu (festival for our district) to see my friend Reidi up in Lheuntse, which is a two-day trip to the northeast. As I waited for the bus to drop by Chazam on the Thursday before the holiday, unexpected events changed everything. Martha, a Canadian colleague teaching in the east, had become seriously ill and was getting worse. I found myself swept urgently to Mongar with the director of our BCF program and her driver, collecting Martin in Bumthang along the way. My fellow teacher passed away in the Mongar hospital as we were on our way. We reached the town in the middle of the night, driving straight to the vigil. I attended the cremation the next day, along with 9 other BCF teachers. It was a shocking and sad time for all of us, but we felt blessed to be there to say goodbye.

That night I stayed in Rangjung, where the teaching duo, Vicky and Ian, are posted. They have a lovely spot in a multi-family apartment house on the fringe of a rice paddy. It was comforting to be surrounded by friends and the beauty of their valley. Their town has quaint traditional style shops and a bright temple surveying from the top of a hill surrounded by winged chortens. The East offers spectacular scenery that is surprisingly in contrast to that of the West. The mountains are steeper, the valleys narrower. There’s tropical vegetation. Rice and maize populate the fields in place of potatoes and wheat. People speak Sharchop. Bhutan is not homogeneous and linguistic diversity accompanies climatic and floral diversity throughout Bhutan.  In my village, the people speak Lhenkey. In Bumthang, there’s Bumthap and Kengpa to name a few. With my now Dzongkha trained ear, I can hear these changes as I travel.

A breakfast of Martin’s famous pancakes in the morning to the soundtrack of Miles Davis, perusing Vicky and Ian’s striking photographs of their summer trek in Sakteng (farthest eastern corner of Bhutan), a tour of Vicky’s picturesque school, and then almost as soon as we’d come, we were hugging and saying goodbye. Martin, Reidi, and I had decided to take a convenient free ride back to Mongar courtesy of Vicky’s school bus driver as he was going to the town to spend the holiday with his family. 3 hours later, passing through Trashigang’s main town overlooked by the dzong, traveling up the winding road, we came into a holiday quieted Mongar. The shops were vacant, but luckily a little restaurant was open so we stopped in for lunch before our trip up to Autsho (‘ow-tso’). In town we crossed paths with Martin’s colleague Yeshey from Bumthang and were invited to his home to celebrate his son’s birthday and Blessed Rainy Day. We walked into his home and were greeted jovially by the other guests and his wife. His son entertained us with his childish antics, which included donning a batman costume. He and his wife generously treated us to drinks, food, and jokes. We left with faces stretched from laughter and piled into Reidi’s friend’s cab for the hour ride up to her school.

That night at Reidi’s, Martin made us potato pancakes and we sat on the floor talking until bedtime. In the morning, we made Martin an early breakfast and hurried out to the “bus stop” in front of a shop to wait for the Thimphu bus to arrive. After more than an hour, the Mongar bus showed up, but not the bus we were hoping for. After some detective work, we learned that the Thimphu-bound bus would not be coming as it was scheduled to every Sunday: the driver was “taking rest” because of the previous day’s festivities. Martin, true to his spirit, just hefted up his pack, gave Reidi and me a hug, and began to walk the road out of Autsho. Hitchhiking is common and quite easy, as I’ve explained, but we still watched him with awe for his adventurousness. A car came by as we were walking back to Reidi’s and we asked them to pick up Martin and drop him at the Gongola turn-off, which is the intersection of the north-bound Lhuentse road with the lateral east-west road that would deliver him west to Bumthang. 

After a nice and lazy morning in the house, we walked to the classroom building next door for dance practice with Reidi’s students. Her school’s annual concert show was approaching, as was mine, so she was working on teaching a dance to a popular American song by LMFAO. The dance was fantastic and I was thoroughly impressed. I had chosen a far easier route than choreographing and had taught my students the Electric Slide. We took a walk down to the river afterwards to take in the gorgeous drama of the rushing water and Autsho’s high pink cliffs.  At dusk, we cooked up a fine meal of pasta and got ready for the next day at school. In the morning, we donned matching purple kira and yellow tego (thanks Vicky!), fueling the intention that the students would ask if we were sisters. As we walked to school, students bowed, greeted us, and stared. The assembly proved just how much larger Reidi’s school is compared to mine. And how much bigger the students are since they go up to higher classes. After the requisite prayer, student speeches, announcements, lecture by the principal, and national anthem, we were released from the beating sun to first period. As planned, Reidi did her routine journal time with her class (which I found to be a great idea and wished I had adopted from the beginning with my classes), and then I introduced myself and launched into my lesson on haiku poetry. I used my book (a gift for Reidi) as an example and then had the students compose their own haiku about their favorite place. Her students enthusiastically took to the task. We repeated the lesson with her next classes, enjoying teaching together. After lunch, we got to teach yoga for physical education since the teacher was absent, which was quite hilarious for us and the kids. I took time to rest for the last bit of the day, since I had begun to feel ill. We took an evening stroll in the other direction down the river, under the tall trees that line the rocky pink ravine. We had a goodbye dinner at Reidi’s friend’s home, and then settled in for an early night since a taxi would be arriving by 5:30 am to ferry me to the intersection with the lateral road so I could catch the Mongar-Thimphu bus by 7:30 am.

The taxi never came, so we walked down to the shops to find it. After some coordinating, my bag was loaded into a taxi and I said goodbye to Reidi before hurtling down the rough road. We made it to the intersection by 7am and by 7:30, the rumbling of a bus was heard coming toward the market stand where I waited along with other hopeful passengers. Feeling quite ill by now, as I had not recovered from the previous day’s bout of sickness, I boarded the bus and hoped that I wouldn’t need to call any emergency stops. It was a long and eventful ride, which I would have appreciated more had I not been doubled over by illness. A landslide of rock blocked our way only a ½ hour into the ride, but was miraculously cleared by road workers within 20 minutes. We stopped every 30 minutes or so to pick up vegetables and crushed corn and farmers from the roadside. People were packed into any available crevice of the bus. Weighted by cargo, we climbed the steep mountains, through the eastern jungle, past plummeting waterfalls that washed over the road, with the pace of a weary tortoise. At the edge of Mongar dzongkhag, the landscape changed to one of higher altitude, less dense and tropical and more agricultural, reminding me of Rukubji’s environs. Around 4pm, a road sign read “Jakar 10km”. I tried to keep my patience as we slowly wound into Jakar town and pulled into the overnight parking spot. I leaped off the bus, bolting to purge myself of hours worth of unrelieved sickness. 

I phoned Martin, picked up some honey from a shop, and unexpectedly ran into Simon, an Australian BCF teacher posted to Wamrong in Trashigang, who was touring with his visiting parents. Simon had the driver he and his parent’s had hired take us to Martin’s where we were welcomed with warm hugs. Martin took care of me like a father, making me hot ginger water, letting me lie down on a well-made bed to rest. We spent a quiet night, Martin correcting papers, me sipping hot water, watching Barack Obama address the UN. In the morning, Martin got up with me to walk to breakfast with Simon and his parents and drop me off at the bus. Still feeling weak and ill, I said goodbye to Martin, feeling an abruptness in the departure, wishing I could stay with him in Bumthang for a few days. I made it home within 4 hours, relieved to be in my little village home, and collapsed onto my bed with the weight of the weeklong journey. Shortly after, Dave phoned and dropped by with his mother on their way to Trongsa. We chatted over tea (which was shamefully inadequate- I can’t believe I served Brits such awful tea), then toured around the village and school. The kids asked if they were my parents!

As soon as I got to school the next day, the heaviness of the previous week melted from me with the smiles of and greetings of my students. I felt a pang in my heart as I realized I have a few months left with these sweet children. That weekend, we put on our concert show. It was a fabulous event that brought out the entire community. People don’t go out after dark in Rukubji. There’s nothing to do and no lights, so everyone is always in by dusk until the dawn. Seeing the community out at the school was an event in itself and made the night lively. The show ran two nights, and on the second night we performed the Electric Slide, which was a hit. Also a hit was the unexpected dance the principal announced I’d be doing with Chimi (our caretaker) and Lopen Namgayla. Without hesitation, I got out there and hammed it up with my co-workers. Even the principal joined in. The crowed went wild. The villagers still talk to me about it. Watching my students dance, I felt an overwhelming love for them. I remembered meeting them in February, not knowing who they were. Now, when I looked at them on the stage, I could tell you their names, their stories, the things that make them unique and special. I also felt how important it is to maintain their culture. Being Lebanese-American, I know how important language, song, and dance have been to me in keeping connected to my Lebanese side. I prayed that the children would continue to appreciate and value their distinctive culture. They’re the ones who will keep it alive into the future.

The final act of the concert show? The principal announcing we’d take a day off on Monday.

That Monday (October 1st )  was my second visit to Wangdue Geomba (monastery) in Sephu. It sits 40 minutes of walking past Chazam, on a dirt road and up some shortcuts. The walk ascends among the pines and spruces of a community forest, finally placing you in a surreal scene of twisting oaks that lead to the Goemba’s entrance. The Goemba itself displays bright red, black, yellow, and blue intricate paint against the white body. Dorji Lingpa, the great Terton Pema Lingpa’s kin, built this Goemba only with the approval of a mermaid deity who lives in the river below. It is also home to my friend Phurba, a monk who takes care of the food and tutors younger monks. Incredibly generous and engaging, Phurba and I became friends instantly when we met at the hotel at Chazam, (he grew up next door to the hotel family and drops by almost as often as I do). He immediately invited me to visit the Goemba, and it took me about 5 months to finally do so. I was rewarded with a personal tour of all the temples, including one that is painted entirely black with gold outlines depicting mermaids, curlicue waves, and clouds upon which float god-like figures and magical animals. It is my favorite temple room because it is so unlike any I’ve ever seen. The gold lines against the black give the room a night sky effect that stays with you long after you’ve left. There is a restricted temple room beyond the black one, dedicated to Yeshey Gonpo, the raven who guided Zhabdrung Nawang Namgyal to Bhutan in a dream. Women aren’t allowed in that room, but Phurba let me and Nalay peek in, giving us a view of the tiny painted room.

The last time I went, Nalay accompanied me and we drank tea with Phurba and lit some lamps for Joe’s safe journey to Bhutan just before I left to retrieve him from Thimphu. This time, I walked alone, carrying palm oil in my backpack to light lamps in remembrance of Martha, who passed two weeks ago. In Bhutanese tradition, you must light lamps in honor of the deceased on the 7th, 14th, and 21st days after they passed. At the 49th day, the spirit has finally moved on. A ceremony is held on the one-year anniversary. In fact, when I arrived at the Goemba, a one-year anniversary ceremony was underway and many villagers from Chazam were seated in the stone paved courtyard as monks handed them drinks and blessed food.

Phurba invited me in and cooked me a fabulous lunch of vegetables, egg, and rice before we went to the temple rooms to light the lamps. After lighting the lamps and saying prayers, we went back to his quarters and talked over tea. Being at the monastery reminds me of a movie called “The Cup”. The young monks, though they spend most of their time in spiritual practice and prayer, are very interested in the things that ordinary young people are interested in. This was proven by the fact that a young monk sat on the steps to the house peeking in at the TV that was on in the back of the room. Phurba became a monk as a teenager. Now, at 23, he speaks of his monastic life with a normalcy that many young men would find hard to believe. At the end of my visit, he led me to a little house built specifically for the Geomba’s latest acquisition, a miniature white statue of their mermaid. As evening turns the sky dark at 6pm now, I left with two hours of light to guide me home. Phurba made me promise to visit a 3rd time before I go home, 3 being an auspicious number. I happily agreed, as this hidden Goemba has taken a spot in my heart as one of the most memorable places I’ve been.

With my toes dipped into October, I feel the rush of time sweeping me towards the end of my experience here. It is now that I feel so connected to my community and students, more at ease with my life here. I am glad for this sweetness, though it will make it harder to say goodbye. For now, I try not to think about December, and focus on making each day special for me and my students.