Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [19]
I wake when my sweater slips to the floor and I bang my head on the window. We have stopped outside a collection of windowless bamboo huts. Dorji disappears inside. “He’s asking for diesel,” Rita tells me. Oh yes, of course, I think sourly. They’ll obviously have some in there. Rita is clapping. “He got some!” Everyone is clapping, and Dorji grins as he holds up a jerry can. I clap too, especially loudly.
We stop at a shack made of planks, woven bamboo mats, tin sheets and plastic. FOODINGS AND LODGINGS the sign says. We climb out, stretch and yawn. Inside, from blackened pots on a mud stove, a women serves plates of steaming rice and tiny bowls of bones in broth. “Aren’t you going to eat?” the others ask. I shake my head and sip bottled water. They exchange glances. I know what they are thinking. They are thinking I won’t make it. I won’t last two months, let alone two years. Later, when I have gone home, they will tell stories about me. Remember that girl from Sault Ste. Marie, what was her name, she’d never been anywhere in her life? She was afraid of everything, remember? Is that the one who only ate crackers? What was she thinking when she decided to come?
We spend the second night in Mongar at the Hospital Guest House, which belongs to the Norwegian Leprosy Mission. It is a treacherous walk down from the narrow bazaar in the dark, after a dinner of instant Maggi noodles in the Karma Hotel with syrupy tea for dessert and a shot of Dragon Rum “brewed and bottled,” the label claims, “by the Army Welfare Project, Samdrup Jongkhar.” Not a very glamorous name for a brewery, but the rum is quite good. The crowing of roosters wakes me from a warm and happy dream in which I am walking from the university library to meet Robert for coffee and croissants. My breakfast in Mongar is water and crackers. We say goodbye to Rita, who will now begin her six-hour walk to her school, and get back into the hi-lux for the three-hour drive to Tashigang.
Sasha is the first to be dropped off, at a village between Mongar and Tashigang. We help her unload her luggage, two suitcases, one large, one small, her tin box and hot-water flask. A young man appears, introduces himself as the headmaster, and leads us to his house, where we sit stiffly on hard benches. A small boy brings a wooden bowl of rice crisps and three cups of tepid tea. “Do you think the water was boiled properly for this?” I whisper to Sasha. She downs her tea in one long swallow in answer. Then we are taken to her quarters, a two-room cottage, its rough mud walls streaked with fresh whitewash. Inside there is a wooden bed frame, a desk, a chair. We stand at the doorway, peering in. Even Sasha looks unsettled. It is so starkly empty and far from home. A rooster crows outside, and I have to fight hard not to weep, overwhelmed at the thought of leaving Sasha here by herself, in this shack that is to be her home. I can’t imagine how she will survive, how any of us will. “What a great view,” Lorna says from the window, and my voice returns, false and bright and strained. “We’ll all visit each other,” I say. “We’ll only be a few hours apart when you think about it.” When I think about it, I realize I have a whole new meaning for “the middle of nowhere.”
We get back into the hi-lux and I turn to wave goodbye, but Sasha has gone inside and the door is firmly closed.
Subtropical, warm even now in early March, Tashigang is wedged into the crook of a mountain. Bougainvillea erupts over doorways and races along the top of stone walls, and tall, elegant eucalyptus sway over the stream that runs down from the mountain and through the middle of town. Tashigang reminds me of a medieval town, pictures from a high-school history book, the narrow crooked streets and three-storied, Tudor-style buildings