by Jamie Zeppa
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”:
Five fat momos
Sitting in the shop
Round and fat with chili on the top
Along comes a boy with a ngultrum in his hand
Gives it to the shopkeeper and eats one momo up!
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.
Finally, I have to tell them to go home. I have not packed a single thing. They leave, but just before dark, Norbu and Karma Dorji return. A man died suddenly in the house next to Norbu’s, they explain, and they are afraid to sleep at home. The people are saying the man was killed by black magic. They sit at the table quietly and refuse all offers of tea, crayons and books. Occasionally, I hear one of them murmuring a mantra. It begins to rain, a sudden, completely familiar rush of sound. “See, miss,” Norbu says sleepily. “That man is died and now rain is coming.”
I go into the bedroom to pack, but I get nothing done. I sit at the window instead, thinking about doen, all the possible meanings, all the possible ghosts, from demons and the spirits of the dead to gods of rocks, trees and earth. I think about the magicians who still know the old religion, the rituals from before the arrival of Buddhism over twelve hundred years ago. They are said to be able to summon the spirits and send them off to do their bidding—bring hailstones to flatten crops, dry up rivers and wombs, suck out someone’s life force, cause madness, disease and death. I can no longer say, “I don’t believe in ghosts and black magic.” Everyone around me believes. Even the other foreigners are unsure. A Canadian teacher in Dremitse awoke to see green lights dancing at the foot of her bed, a British teacher saw a child temporarily possessed by the distraught spirit of a dead uncle, the teachers who lived in this flat before me reported voices coming from empty rooms, too close and distinct to be from outside or downstairs. I heard these stories in Thimphu, ages ago, when I could still say, “Nonsense.” If, as Buddhism teaches, separateness is an illusion, if we all partake in and help create a much vaster reality than we can know, then everything is interdependent, and anything is possible. The rain grows heavier, a thunderous roar, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and I am cold. I light every candle and lamp I have, and sit with Norbu and Karma Dorji until they fall asleep at the table.
The rain stops, and I wake Norbu and Karma and put a mattress on the floor for them. They curl up under a blanket, and I stand in the doorway, watching their small faces relax into sleep. I must squeeze my eyes tightly to stop the tears. If I feel this sad leaving Pema Gatshel after five months, I ca
nnot imagine how I will feel leaving Bhutan after two years.
Peak of Higher Learning
If there is a
paradise on the
face of the earth,
It is this, oh!
it is this, oh!
it is this.
Sliced Bread
The college truck swings off the main road through a gate, stopping outside a row of white two-story houses separated by well-tended gardens. Four young men step out of the shadows of a cypress tree. “Good evening, ma’am,” they say, bowing gracefully before heaving my hockey bags out of the truck and carting them off. I am struck by how neatly they are dressed: the folds of their ghos are perfectly straight, their white collars and cuffs are immaculate, and they are all wearing dark knee-highs and polished shoes. The vice-principal, a soft-spoken man in a plain navy-blue gho, appears with a ring of keys. “Welcome to Sherubtse College,” he says. “We’re very glad to have you here. Shall I show you to your quarters?”
I follow him over a wooden footbridge. “Here we are,” he says, stopping outside the last house. “Each house has four flats. The upstairs flats have balconies, which are quite nice, but the downstairs ones have gardens. I prefer a garden.” He opens the door to the downstairs apartment, and we file into a sitting room. I stand gawking at the peach-colored walls, the fireplace, the bookshelves, the divans with rose-colored cushions. There is another fireplace in the bedroom, a white-tiled toilet, shower room, dining room, and a kitchen with cupboards.
“I hope these quarters will be adequate,” the vice-principal says. “They’re very simple, of course, but if there’s anything you would like us to do to make them more comfortable, please let us know.”
Is he kidding? After my place in Pema Gatshel, this looks like a spread from Better Homes and Gardens.
In the sitting room, the four students who carried my luggage are examining my keyboard with interest. I smile, remembering how class II C had subsided into an awed silence the first time they saw it. Karma Dorji had pressed a key gingerly, and they had all backed up, startled at the sound. Zai, yallama! What is inside, miss?
“That’s an electronic piano,” I inform the four college students.
“Casio or Yamaha?” one asks. “What’s the voltage?”
“Uh, Yamaha.”
The vice-principal clears his throat and the students bow again. “Thank you,” I say.
“Thank you, ma‘am. Good night, ma’am,” they answer, and disappear into the growing darkness outside.
The vice-principal invites me to dinner and leaves me to unpack. I wander through the rooms again, running my hand along the fireplace mantels, turning the lights on and off. I arrange my books on the shelves, and then sit on one of the divans, overwhelmed. It is all so neat and orderly, I don’t know how I will ever adjust. Even my thoughts seem sloppy and unruly, and I struggle to impose some order on my perceptions. I’ve only been here for an hour and already I want to go back. I want my rough unpainted flat in Pema Gatshel and my barefoot, grimy students. From the open window, the smell of flowers drifts in.
At dawn the next morning, I sit on the front steps, watching the sun set fire to the clouds above a dark ridge. The staff quarters are set on an incline, over the campus which looks like a cross between a community college and a summer camp. From my steps, I can look across the valley to the temple of Dremitse on a hilltop, or north to the sharp toothy peaks along the border. The strip of garden all around my house is ablaze with crimson poppies, orange gladioli, yellow dahlias, and several varieties of roses. A flowering shrub climbs up the door frame and drops tiny pink petals on my lap. Huge crows swoop and circle overhead, and a bird I cannot see sings sweetly from the gracious arms of a cherry tree. I sip milky coffee, missing the sound of one of my kids climbing up the stairs to present me with an armful of potatoes or infected flea bites.
Later, I put on a kira and walk across campus to the main academic buildings. “Good morning, ma‘am,” students say, bowing politely as I pass. I wonder why I have gone from “miss” to “ma’am,” and notice again how neatly everyone here is dressed. I am conscious of my bare feet in rubber flip-flops and my wild hair. My kira is faded, and I am wearing it too short, hoisted up over my ankles (for walking through mud, of course, but there is no mud here, only smooth rolling lawns and neat paved pathways). I may have to buy a new kira, and I will definitely have to find my shoes. I haven’t worn them since March, when the first rains rolled into Pema Gatshel.
I study the framed pictures of English poets on the walls of the vice-principal’s office as he explains the history and functioning of the college. He is extremely precise and formal, but his smile is warm and his whole face lights up when he talks about teaching. Over dinner last night, he spoke primarily of the students, and the difficulties and unexpected insights he had gained teaching another culture’s literature in Bhutan. “But, of course, there are universal stories,” he said. “How else would we ever be able to connect?”
Sherubtse, which means “peak of higher learning,” started out as a public school, the vice-principal says, and is now affiliated with the University of New Delhi, which fixes the curriculum, sets and marks the final exams, and issues the degrees. Most of the lecturers are from Delhi, although the number of Bhutanese lecturers is slowly growing. Canadians have been involved at Sherubtse since Father Mackey founded it in the late ’60s, the vice-principal explains. Mr. Rob, the WUSC lecturer who I am replacing, taught here for five years. The students are divided into two groups: the pre-university students (called, most unpoetically, PU) who are completing classes XI and XII, and the college students who are majoring in arts, commerce or science. “You’ll be teaching all levels,” the vice-principal says as a typist enters with my timetable. “Do you have any questions at all?”
What I really want to know is how old the students are, and are they all as sophisticated as the ones I met last night, and is it too late to change my mind.
“I couldn’t help noticing the phone on your desk,” I say instead. “Is the college connected by phone to—?”
“To Tashigang and Samdrup Jongkhar,” he says. “Do you want to make a call?”
“No, no.” I smile down my disappointment. For a brief moment, I had imagined calling Robert.
I walk up the road into the village of Kanglung, which seems no bigger than Pema Gatshel, but much more prosperous. Past a row of large shops with verandahs, at a deep bend in the road marked by a dozen white prayer flags, I sit and look out over the land below. Pema Gatshel, two thousand feet lower, was wild boisterous green, overgrown, un-contained. Here, the forests are less dense, growing in small groves, and the fields are larger and flatter. Wide footpaths wind around rice paddies, past chortens and clusters of prayer flags, to solid farmhouses. I watch the sun sink into a bed of cloud, staining it pink, and wonder what class II C is doing right now.
Back at home, I rummage through my luggage in search of my shoes in between myriad visitors. The man from upstairs, Mr. Chatterji, economics lecturer, comes to say hello and welcome. Next is Miss Dorling, who teaches history, an exceedingly thin lady of indeterminate age and nationality, in a long pink skirt and jacket, leading two white yapping Apsoo dogs on a leash, welcome, welcome, she says, if there’s anything I need.... Mr. and Mrs. Matthew from southern India are next. Mrs. Matthew has warm, smiling eyes, but Mr. Matthew reminds me of a loud, disagreeable uncle. He gives me a short history of the college’s past principals, all Jesuits. “Now that Father Larue is gone, there is no one to say mass,” he tells me grimly. “You are Catholic, yes?”
“No,” I say firmly. I have learned my lesson from Mrs. Joy. “I’m not Christian at all.” Two students arrive, bearing a stack of books for my courses: Macbeth, Pygmalion, collections of poems and essays, a syllabus. Two more lecturers come to fill me in on the advantages and disadvantages of college life: the store, which stocks dry goods, vegetables and sometimes meat, the electrician who runs the generator and changes lightbulbs
if he’s not drunk, the dhobi who washes clothes for the staff, the infirmary. And did I know that the college has its own VCR? And a grand piano? And a bakery? Yes, bread is available from the bakery on Wednesdays and Saturdays but I should be knowing this, since the bread slicer was just purchased with funding from WUSC. Bread slicer! Wait till the others hear this, I think. Lorna doesn’t have a classroom to teach in, and I can get sliced bread.
When I finally return to my luggage, it is dark outside. Pressure cookers sound in the flats around mine, students’ voices float up, doors bang, vintage John Lennon competes with Duran Duran in the hostels. By this time in Pema Gatshel, an exquisite silence would have settled over the valley and I would have been reading in bed by candlelight, not looking for a pair of proper shoes. I find the nun’s kira I bought in Samdrup Jongkhar, which I cut into curtains and staple over the wooden curtain rod in the sitting room. I set my blue teacup on the mantel. I find the pictures drawn by class II C, smiling suns, golden dogs, dancing girls, a bounteous blue moon, and tape them up all over the house. And finally, I find my shoes, wrapped in plastic at the bottom of a cardboard box. They are completely covered with the thickest green fungus I have ever seen.
Oh Dear
The college has everything that was promised: a library with racks of newspapers and stacks of books, an auditorium with a red-curtained stage and a public address system. The science labs have microscopes, Bunsen burners, test tubes, snakes and mice pickled in formaldehyde. There is a photocopier, and a computer room for the new computer-science course. The buildings themselves seem remarkably well-kept after the corroded cement corridors of Pema Gatshel Junior High School. There are blacktopped basketball courts, volleyball and badminton courts, a soccer field with bleachers. I walk around and around the campus, trying to adjust to the sudden and staggering luxury of it.
