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.