Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [50]
Tashigang has grown somehow in two months, I think, as we pull into the center of town between a bus that is disgorging an endless stream of stiff-limbed, dazed passengers and a truck loaded with crates. It seemed so small and medieval when we drove through in March. I took no account then of the tarmacked roads, the electricity wires, the number of buildings—bank, hospital, telephone exchange, barber, tailor, post office, hydropower cell, wireless station, school, police headquarters, petrol station, bars, bars-cum-hotels. I didn’t notice the hand-drawn AIDS poster on a shop wall. I didn’t notice you could buy shoes in Tashigang. And shoe polish, playing cards, colored markers, curtain rings and hair dye. I didn’t notice you could buy so many things you didn’t actually need.
Two Westerners are sitting on a bench outside the Puen Soom, and although it has been months since I met them in Thimphu, I recognize them instantly. Leon, posted in Wamrong, and Tony from Khaling, are in the second year of their contracts. They are both tall and blond and very thin, but in their faded cotton clothes and rubber flip-flops, with colorful jholas at their feet, they do not seem out of place. They are reading and sipping glasses of murky liquid. Mud puppies, they inform me, sweet tea with a shot of Dragon Rum. Tomorrow they are going to visit Catherine, the Canadian teacher in Rangthangwoong, and they invite me to come along. I hesitate. I don’t want to miss my ride back to Pema Gatshel with Trevor tomorrow, but when will I get another chance to go to what-was-it-called again? I decide to go.
Leon and Tony are staying with Kevin, another Canadian teacher posted in Tashigang. “Is there room for me, or should I stay in a hotel?” I ask.
“Which hotel would that be?” Leon asks, gesturing grandly at the bazaar. “Bedbug Inn? The Flea Seasons?”
“This is eastern Bhutan,” Tony says. “Where there’s a floor, there’s room.”
On the way up to Kevin’s house, we stop at a bakery to buy soft, flat rounds of Tibetan bread. On one wall are somber black-and-white photographs of the four kings of Bhutan and a religious calendar from last year, the Year of the Earth Dragon. On the wall opposite is a poster of a scarlet-lipped, dagger-nailed Joan Collins. No one seems to mind the incongruity.
Kevin lives in a concrete block of a house furnished with the usual wooden benches and stiff chairs. We sit in the kitchen, drinking beer, peeling vegetables for dinner and sharing reports on the lateral road, the mail situation, and the state of everyone’s health—who got what from where and what they did about it. I laugh until my throat hurts. A leech up the nose wouldn’t have seemed so funny three months ago.
Outside, shadows collect under the eucalyptus trees and the air is filled with birdsong and the whistling of pressure cookers as neighbors prepare their evening meals. Inside, I find the electric lights harsh and strangely wasteful. I am used to having a circle of warm light only where I need it; I feel out of sync with the growing twilight outside and keep checking my watch. Leon and Tony have brought sleeping bags; I borrow a blanket from Kevin and lay some cushions down on the floor. It is nine o’clock and Tashigang is still awake: Bhutanese folk music drifts up from the bazaar, a vehicle honks impatiently, trucks lumber up the road, a woman yells repeatedly for Sonam to come home. Eventually, the sounds begin to fade away, Sonam finally comes home and even the thriving metropolis of Tashigang goes to sleep.
The bus to Rangthangwoong turns out to be a truck. We squeeze ourselves into the open back and wait for the driver. People keep climbing in, and soon I must balance awkwardly on one foot until my other foot finds a tentative resting place on a sack of rice. The engine grunts and wheezes to life