Books in Bhutan

An college friend of mine kept a running list on her blog of books she had read while in the peace corps. This inspired me, and I decided to do something similar- I now have a running list of books in my agenda. But as I really wanted to share my thoughts on some of these books, and none of my new Bhutanese friends have read them, I thought I would turn to my blog, and write about them here.

I have been in Bhutan for 12 weeks, and have been trying to read a book a week. Somehow I have come out to 12 books…even though I know some weeks I have read 2 or 3 and some weeks I have read nothing at all.

So here they are, my first 12 books in Bhutan, with a short review following the titles (some are no longer in my possession and I didn’t write down author names).

1. A Baby in a Backpack to Bhutan- this book is a memoir about an Australian woman who leaves her job in publishing, marries a man who works for a Rimpoche and ends up living in Bhutan with her baby for three months while he works on the film “Travelers and Magicians”. It’s a lovely book, and is an interesting and charming story of a family who leads a traveling lifestyle. It’s a very rosy book, and although it tells a lot about Bhutan, it is very obviously (at least to me, who has lived here 3 months) focusing on the positive aspects of the culture. In any case, it is a lovely read and I recommend it to those who are interested in knowing more about Bhutan. I also recommend watching the movie “Travelers and Magicians” as it is a fascinating film.

2. The Wedding- This is the sequel to “The Notebook”. Enough said.

3. Three Cups of Tea- (I am assuming most people know what this book is about). I enjoyed it, as I am learning first hand about teaching in schools that are full of students who know the value of education (when you are the first generation to receive education, you value it more. I imagine it’s like being the first person in your family to go to college, except on a bigger scale). However, what I have read about the controversy surrounding this book has tinged the positive effects.

4. Water for Elephants- I read this based off a recommendation given to me by my dear friend Russell (if you read my blog I love you!) over a year ago. It’s a pretty good book, and a very entertaining story. I have not seen the movie, so don’t know how it compares.

5. Lonely Planet: Bhutan- This book is a traveler’s guide, and was mainly useful when I had that long weekend in Thimphu with nothing to do but go to restaurants. But after reading it a few months into being here, it took on an even more interesting (and sometimes comedic) level. To get a similar effect, try to read a lonely planet book about your home country. It’s pretty funny.

6. Emma- I am addicted to my kindle, and one of the great things about ereaders is due to copyright laws you can get any book written before 1920(?) or some year around that, for free online. So, I have started to read the classics.

7. Great Expectations- See the explanation for 6

8. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer- This book is really adorable (so many high schools in the US make you read Huck Finn, but this one is much more enjoyable I think. Easier to read in any case). It reminded me of all the boys in my class VI, who are very naughty but very clever and are hard to scold because they make me laugh so much.

9. A Thousand Splendid Suns- A good read, but terribly depressing. I now will probably never read The Kite Runner, as I really don’t like books that are that depressing, no matter how good they are.

10. Under The Holy Lake- This is another memoir of someone’s experience in Bhutan; a Canadian teacher in the late 80s who was in eastern Bhutan for two years. I really enjoyed it, it was well written and I thought gave a very thorough, honest, and positive all at once portrayal of what life here for a foreign teacher 20 years ago must have been like (and its strong similarities to what life is like here today). Again, this is one I recommend to people who want to learn more about Bhutan, and especially what it is like to be a volunteer teacher in this country.

11. Friday Night Lights- I bought this book on amazon after watching the first season of the TV show that is based off it. The book is so, so, so much better. It’s a memoir/sociological observation of life in a small Texas town in the late 80s where football is the center of everyone’s lives. The observations of how the sport completely dominates everything from the school to the town is really disturbing, and how this lifestyle manages to irreparably damage the high school football players it idolizes is ironic and awful.

12. 11/22/63- I LOVED this book. The funny thing is I probably wouldn’t have felt this way about it had I not been here. Don’t get me wrong; its good in any setting, but certain themes really resonated with me. The main character is an English teacher, and he goes back in time to try and stop the Kennedy assassination. However, he has to stay in the past for years preparing for this, and along the way falls in love and creates this great life for himself as a teacher in a small Texas suburb of Dallas. Throughout the novel the main character goes through this internal debate of whether he wants to stay in the past or not- and how he comes around to feeling at home and really living a full and happy life there, even though he knows he could never really belong, and its not really his home. Plus, other characters have these debates with him about whether he is meant to be a teacher or not, which is a conversation I think every teacher (teaching abroad or not) has with themselves at one point or another. Anyhow, amazing book in my opinion, I recommend it.

The Chili Conundrum

I am encountering problems with the Bhutanese diet. But not the problems you would expect.

Let me preface this by explaining the basic Bhutanese diet to those who aren’t aware of it. Its rice and curries for all meals (the word in Dzongkha for rice is the same as the one for food…this causes whole new problems when the students didn’t see me with a 25 kg bag of rice and passed the word onto their friends, creating the fascinating and frightening rumor that the new English miss doesn’t eat food, and is starving herself here)

And as for the curries…they are primarily chili based. No, not with a lot of chili powder, but chopped up whole chilis (that aren’t deseeded). My friend Zam regularly puts 5-6 chilis in a curry, which is average. Remember, this is for each curry in a day…breakfast, lunch and dinner. The classic Bhutanese dish is called ema datsi, which is a curry of just chilis and cheese. (They also eat a lot of cheese with everything)

This is a small food market outside of a shop in Thimphu. The green things in the basket next to the tomatoes are not beans, but chilis

A common Bhutanese snack is called ezee, and is pretty much like salsa, but again, includes the added ingredient of chilis and seeds. It’s actually pretty good, but you definitely have to aim for the tomato and onion bits until you are used to the chilis.

These are momos, (served daily to the staff of my school at mid-morning break...one of the many perks here) smothered in ezee

Now a little bit about me; as my family and friends will attest, I have never been one to really enjoy spicy food. Don’t get me wrong, I am somewhat of an adventurous eater, and am willing to try anything, but have always gravitated to the minimal spice level of things on the menu. For example, my favorite food is sushi. I am an avid sushi eater…have been since about the start of college. My abilities for sushi eating are amazing and somewhat disturbing; I have been challenged and beaten one of my friends at sushi eating competition twice (completely kicked his ass) and to give you some frame of reference, he is a 6ft 3 inches full grown man. I admit I’m pretty obsessed and will have it at least 2x a week at home. But it was only in the past year that I ever started to add wasabi.

When I found out I was coming to Bhutan, I started to force myself to eat food that was spicier, to try and prepare myself for my diet here. And yes, I took this as a great excuse to go out for sushi and thai food as much as possible (ordering green curry at maximum spice level and adding whole blobs of wasabi to soy sauce with enthusiasm). And as fun as all of my preparations were, I knew deep down that nothing could really prepare me for the Bhutanese cuisine, and I was right.

For the first few weeks, food proved to be the greatest of challenges. I looked at each meal as an obstacle to be overcome- and developed some defensive ways of eating (grabbing more potatoes then chili pieces when eating kewa datsi, and trying to swallow chili pieces whole so I wouldn’t bite into them and spread the hot flavor through my mouth, to give 2 examples). Plus, there was the problem of when you finish anything, the Bhutanese (ever concerned with being good hosts) will harass you to eat more and more. Although I learned and used the polite mannerisms of refusal, it didn’t seem to work as well for me as a chillip as it did for the other Bhutanese I ate with.

Yes, I treated my life like an episode of Man vs. Food, and in many cases it was. But then something strange started to happen when I was a few weeks into my experience here…I started to enjoy the chilies in the dishes. I found myself avoiding them less. By 6 weeks I had started to buy chilies and was experimenting with adding it to my own curries- first 2 chilies a curry and then more and more until I was up to the Bhutanese average of 5-6 chilies per curry (although I deseed mine. I like to try to participate in the cultural norms as much as possible, but we all have our limits)

And then, the strangest and most frightening thing of all happened- I became addicted to the chilies, and found myself unable to make a curry without them. My diet now consists of rice and chili curry for all meals, which leads to the consumption of between 15 and 20 chilis daily. Its terrifying when you think about it, and I am beginning to experience symptoms of what the Bhutanese refer to as “chili overdose” which is when you eat too many and your hands and face start to tingle.

So I am making a conscious effort to reduce the chilies in my diet, although it is much harder then it sounds as I have become so accustomed to it. I suppose there is such a thing as getting too immersed in a culture- and in diet at least, I have had a case of “overadaptation”.

I don’t like to think of what will happen when I return home to a chili-free environment. I have already started to have nightmares of going to whole foods in search of ezee.

Cleaning Campaign

March 24th

This week was a busy one at school. We had rimdo, and then international water day, and international TB day. This was concluded by a cleaning campaign on Saturday afternoon. The 4 different houses were assigned to clean different areas around the school. I was assigned to help Singye house (Lion house) clean Damji village. I was particularly pleased that I was assigned to monitor this group, as Singye house has some of my most entertaining students in it, and I really wanted a chance to walk around Damji village, a place that I had only been to once before (it is only a km. away from the school and I pass it all the time on walks to shops but rarely go into it)The group did a good job, and collected a lot of litter.

Posters that different clubs made for international water day

Students at the presentation for cleaning campaign...a few people talked about the importance of cleaning campaign before the work began

Singye house holding up the banners that Mme. Yeshi made this week before heading out to clean Damji village

Students cleaning up Damji village

Damji village, one of the most picturesque villages in Bhutan (in my humble opinion)

School Rimdo

March 20th, 21st

For the past few days we have been having a rimdo (a religious event) for our school. Because this was such a large event, and there is so much to say about it, I will divide into parts.

Part 1: Expelling the Demons (a.k.a. How Miss Pema’s hair got burnt and why my kitchen table is covered in dirt)

After a day of preparation for the event, the Lama and monks arrived. This was a very important Lama and I was told he was the religious equivalent to the Dasho Dzongda of Gasa. The even began in the assembly hall with a lot of religious chanting. All of the students and staff were present. After a time of chanting, the mask dancers came. These are people who dress in costume with no shoes and have masks over their faces. They have the power to expel demons, and so are essential to the Rimdo, which is supposed to purify the school and get rid of all the badness for the new school year.

So the masked dancers began to dance. I have forgotten to mention that they are carrying flaming torches. They ran around the assembly hall with their fire, expelling demons. This was mildly terrifying to some of the students (while some absolutely loved it). More pressing was the fact that they wave the fire sticks around quite a bit, and people are in danger of burning their clothes/hair. I was able to shield my hair and face, but my neighbor Pema was not so lucky, and they burned a bit of her hair off.

After expelling the demons from the hall, they continued to the rest of the campus, paying particular attention to the hostels. We were told to open our doors so that they could go into our quarters and purify. The masked dancers would run through the room with the fire, followed by the lama who would throw stones and wood powder in the room (which we are not supposed to clean up for three days…so my room is very dirty at the moment). After the lama and the dancers left, Zam and I went through our rooms to check the results. Poor Pema’s bed was covered in the wood powder, but Zam’s room was spotless. As for me, my bed only got a little of it, but they dumped a ton on my table and bukari. After our inspection, we returned to the hall for the end of the ceremony, and a delicious dinner.

The masked dancers preparing to visit the different rooms

Part 2: Rimdo Day

The incense pit that was built for rimdo day and was kept burning all day

We got to sleep in the next day, and then went to the lower class block to see how the Rimdo was going. One classroom had been turned into an altar room for the Lama and the monks to perform the day’s ceremonies, and for people to offer things. Another classroom had been turned into a religious classroom of sorts, where monks sat and chanted all day. And a third room (Zam’s computer lab) had been turned into a makeshift kitchen, so that the teachers could be making tea and food for the lama and monks all day. Because they had to be chanting for most of the day, their throats got understandably tired, so they were provided with tea and juice throughout the day, along with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

My co-workers preparing sweet rice for the lama and monks

Some more co-workers enjoying a comedic moment as they waited for lunch

Throughout the day, people went into the altar room to offer clothes, food and money, and to sit and hear the lama and monks, and receive blessings. The teachers all received a nice blessing towards the end of the event (and now we are all wearing our blessing cords for good fortune for the next year). Other then that, I ate a lot of good food, played a little basketball, took a lot of pictures, and had a very enjoyable day. One very interesting thing that happened was one of the girls was possessed by a demon. She claimed to have seen the demon coming after her after the dancers expelled them from the hostel, and had been in hysterics all night, having hallucinations and dreams. Her friends took her to the lama to be blessed and hopefully cured. I haven’t heard any more about it, so I think it worked. It was one of the more unusual things I have observed here; I have seen several girls with fainting fits, but never anything like this.

The altar

After our blessing, we served dinner to the lama and the monks, and then received dinner ourselves. It was again, delicious. The teaching staff spent an enjoyable evening just drinking and eating and chatting, which was very nice. I think everyone had thoroughly enjoyed the Rimdo holiday, and was sufficiently tired as it had involved quite a bit of work for most of the staff. All in all, I thought it was a great 2 days.

My Greatest Challenge

People (both Bhutanese and friends from the west) often ask me about what is challenging about living in Bhutan. Most Bhutanese people assume my answer will be that it is too remote here and too cold (yes my BCF friends, I don’t know about you but I wear long underwear under my kira everyday), there are no western things around me, and that I must be homesick. My friends from the west assume the answer will be about the foreign foods, difference of language, lack of hot water, taking bucket baths, and not being able to depend on the electricity or water supply. I do not mind the remote environment, I am in no way bothered by cold weather (thanks Antarctica!), and although I miss my friends and family, I am not homesick. Coming here was the right decision for me. The challenges that first come to mind are the kinds that my western friends say- the physical ones. But after being at my placement for over a month, those are negligible if nonexistent now. I am used to the day-to-day life here.

So when asked today about the challenges, I got to thinking about deeper ones. Ones that aren’t easily overcome by time, or are simply physical. And I have come to the conclusion that the biggest challenge for me here is my own independence.

I am a very independent person. It is a simple fact about me, and it’s been that way as long as I can remember. I think I was born with it, like I was born blond. And like the blond, its noticeable. My independence has served me well over the years. I have never been afraid to take the plunge of a new adventure that will take me far away from anything familiar. It is what got me to a college ½ the country away. It is what got me to the bottom of the world in the Antarctic. And for all intensive purposes, it is what got me to Bhutan.

But now that I am here, my independent self has hit a bit of a wall. For the first time, I am having to depend on other people for really simple things, and its difficult! Someone helps me get dressed in the morning, whether its helping me fold my kira (BCF crew- I am trying one of the kiras with ties these days…its warmer, but much harder to get on!) or just fixing the collar of my taego and wonchu. People translate everything that is said for me (even the stuff said in English, which is hilarious and adorable), speak for me at meetings, help me light my bukari and supply firewood, and feed me any meal that I happen to be around for. It is all unbelievably kind and I feel so welcome and part of the Bjishong school family. All of this care is why I am not homesick.

But my independent soul is dying a little. I want to do these things myself- well, actually, I want to be able to do these things myself. I want to know how! I am in awe of these life skills that everyone here has, and feel like I missed out on some important life lessons.

But I am not expected to do things on my own, and after awhile, I figured out something important; No one is. Other people don’t need help tying kiras and lighting bukaris, but everyone helps each other constantly (such as fixing each others hair, getting tea for one another, and making food), and because I am part of their community now, they do the same for me. Because they come from this environment of interdependence its natural for them, but I find myself trying to do things on my own, or more often, feeling guilty that I am not being independent enough. In the beginning I felt bad I was leaning on others as much as I was, thinking it was special treatment I was receiving because I was a new teacher, and a western one. And a part of it was. But now that I have been here a little while and have participated in helping others in my own way, I have realized that I have stumbled onto a significant piece of culture- interdependence. And as I am trying to learn Dzongkha and how to eat the most blistering of ema datsi, I am trying to learn this.

This lesson is my greatest challenge here to date. But as with most difficult lessons, I believe it will also be one of the most rewarding.

His Majesty's Birthday

About a week after school started, it was His Majesty’s Birthday, on February 21^st. This is a national holiday, and really quite a big deal here in Bhutan. Everyone celebrates, and schools throw celebrations of their own. This year was particularly special because the main celebration for the entire Gasa district was not going to be at the Dzong (the center of government) like it always had been, but instead here at Bjishong school. The celebrations take a lot of practice in the first place (its what the kids spend their whole first week of school doing) but needless to say, we had to prepare even more than usual since we were the hosts for the whole district (or so I inferred).

This was a dance performance by some of our younger students. And it was the cutest thing I have seen since baby seals in Antarctica. I have a video of it as well...if I am ever blessed with high speed internet I will post it.

The start of the celebration with the students marching

Having never celebrated His Majesty’s Birthday before, I really didn’t know what to expect, and I had nothing to compare it to, but I think it was spectacular. There was a presentation of dances, both cultural and traditional, and some with modern twists. Layap people came down for the celebration, so we got to see some of their traditional dances as well.

Some of the Layap people performing their traditional dance

As strange as it is to see people just preparing for this event for a week straight instead of having classes, I really liked the result. I think it is fortunate that His Majesty’s Birthday falls so early on in the school year, because it is a great way to start it, with an event that everyone is so enthusiastic about. Coincidentally, the 22^nd and 23^rd of February were Losar, which is Bhutanese New Year, so we had those days off- I got to go down to Punakha and see Noorin, and it was a lovely relaxing break before the start of the academic year.

My New Home

I thought I would take a minute to write about my posting, at Bjishong Middle Secondary School. I am placed up in the Gasa District by a small village called Damji- two hours south of the Dzong and two hours north of the Punakha District. My school is primarily a boarding school, and has about 400 students total, from PP (aka kindergarten) to class 10- all of whom board!. It is one of only 4 schools in the district, and as far as I know is the only school that goes past grade 6 so at class 7 lots of students come down from towns higher in the district like Laya and Lunana.

I am staying in a large room attached to the matron’s quarters. It was formerly used as a sick room for students and is quite spacious, with a small toilet room and shower room as well (with an actual shower! Cold water, but still, its there) I have turned one corner into my bedroom and another into my kitchen, but by far my favorite place in the whole room is the bukari, which is my wood-burning stove. I have a nice fire every night (thanks to my wonderful Bhutanese friends and neighbors who have taught me how to make a fire) and spend much time sitting next to it doing everything in close proximity to the stove- eating, reading, and lesson planning. I also boil water and sometimes cook on it, which is great because this way I am saving on gas for my kerosene stove, and again it gives me another reason to sit by it. It smells all cozy and wonderful with the burning wood, and makes lovely crackling noises when the wood is burning. All in all, the bukari is my favorite thing about my living quarters- and as you can see, I am mildly obsessed with it :)

My living space. Note the bukari with kettle on it :)

That being said, I really don’t spend too much time at home. This whole week we have been preparing for school- doling out responsibilities, picking classes to teach and the like…then the students arrived and now we are all preparing for His Majesty’s Birthday on the 21^st of February. It is a very big event everywhere in Bhutan, and this year instead of going up to the Dzong, the rest of the district is going to come here! So, it seems to have an added layer of excitement and responsibility. I myself am quite looking forward to it.

Students preparing for the birthday celebrations of His Majesty the King

When not preparing for school and big celebrations, I have been lucky enough to be making some wonderful friends. Everyone here is so very kind and I have had such a nice settling-in process with the help of the fellow teachers and staff here. My first night a neighbor and fellow teacher, after making myself and the 4 people who came with to drop me off a delicious lunch, asked me to sleep over at her apartment because the matron hadn’t arrived yet and she didn’t want me to be lonely on the other side of campus all by myself- and on my first full day she took me to see the shops and to another friend’s place for tea. This is just one example of how welcoming the people have been. It all has just continued to keep my spirits up and allowed me to become even more excited about this upcoming school year- now there are less unknowns about where I am going, and what my life will be like here, which has just freed up space in my mind for more possibilities and excitements ahead.

My view :)