Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [34]
Dari, after the assembly, the headmaster informs me that I have been assigned to morning clinic, and will have to attend the first-aid course at the hospital starting on Monday. I have also been assigned to the library, he says, and gives me the key. I have already been to the library, a poorly lit room with a few very tattered picture books, abridged editions of The Red Badge of Courage and Heidi, and a great many Canadian readers published in the mid-1970s. How these came to be here, no one seems to know.
I like the headmaster and his wife, who has just given birth to twins. At first, I think he is very young to be a headmaster, but I change my mind when I see him with the students. He is sternly and completely in control. It is not so much his character as the Bhutanese way of being in authority, I think, remembering the officials we met in Thimphu, the Dzongda in Tashigang. Whatever it is, it elicits a fearful, unquestioning obedience from the students. With the staff, he is more relaxed, but I sense an undercurrent of tension between him and the Indian staff. The Indian teachers freely admit they are here because they could not find jobs in India, and they almost seem to resent the fact that they have to take orders from the Bhutanese. Last week, in the staff room, Mr. Sharma commented loudly on the uselessness of attending morning assembly if it’s going to be in a language he doesn’t understand. “Half the staff doesn’t understand Dzongkha,” he said.
“Well, half the staff does,” the headmaster replied levelly. “Dzongkha is our national language. Mrs. Joy tried to give me a whispered account of “the problem with these people,” meaning the Bhutanese, but I pulled away. I do not want to be a part of whatever factionalism is developing here.
Outside the door of my classroom, I pause briefly, listening to the clatter and chatter inside. It stops abruptly as I swing open the door. This is my favorite part of the day. “Good morning, Class Two C,” I say. The entire class leaps up and sings out, “Good morn-ing, miss!” Twenty-three faces are smiling at me. Sometimes they shout it with so much conviction that I laugh.
I have a syllabus now, and the students have textbooks and thick notebooks, and pencils which they sharpen with razor blades. I haven’t mastered this skill yet, and have to ask one of the kids to sharpen my pencils for me. Sharpening miss’s pencil has become a somewhat prestigious task, but they were puzzled the first time, watching me almost slice off my fingers, and there was much whispered consultation in Sharchhop. “Where did they find this one?” I imagined them saying. “She can’t even sharpen a pencil.”
I teach English, math and science in the mornings, and in the afternoon, the Dzongkha lopen comes in to teach the national language. From the other classrooms I can hear the drone of students spelling or reading and reciting in unison: “h-o-u-s-e, house, c-a-r-r-y, carry, g-o-i-n-g, going.” In the other classrooms, the teacher says something and the students say it back, over and over and over. I cannot think what good this rote learning is doing anyone. I ask the students to read out loud individually and they look at me as if I have lost my mind.
Often, attendance is the only thing we manage to accomplish in class II C. There are a thousand interruptions. A woman knocks at the window and holds up a cloth bag. The entire class rushes over. “Class Two C,” I say, “sit down. There’s no need for all of you to be at that window.” Actually, there’s no need for any of them to be at that window. “Who is it?” I ask.
“It is Sangay Jamtsho’s mother,” they answer.
“What does she want?”
“Sangay Jamtsho forgot his jhola.”
“Sangay Jamtsho, go and get your jhola,” I say. The entire class rolls toward the door, like ball bearings, but I am there first. “I said