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By Root 552 0

teacher,” he said. “They want to give something.” He said that respect for the teacher is a Bhutanese tradition, and the parents do not expect to be paid for vegetables. But I don’t know how I can suddenly stop paying them now that I have started, and it is such an inconsequential amount (for me)—not even a dollar for a week of fresh tomatoes or spinach. The news of this payment has spread, though, and now kids from other classes are bringing me vegetables as well. Dozens of kids, armfuls of spinach, baskets of onions and radish and beans. I cannot possibly eat all they bring, and yet, I do not know how to refuse it. I cannot take from some and not from others, cannot pay some and not others. I regret my misplaced generosity and then wonder if it is even generosity at all, or just guilt at having so much, and a desire to be liked, to be accepted by the village, to be thought well of. I have upset something, changed expectations, brought something foreign into the picture. I have created a transaction.

I wonder what other things I have unthinkingly done, if I will do more harm than good here. I do things without thinking, I forget where I am. This is harder than living without a refrigerator and hot running water, harder than being cut off from family and friends. This is, in fact, the hardest part: the same imperfect self immersed in a completely new and incompletely understood setting, the same desires and longings clouding judgment, the same old heedless mind, leaping from impulse to action.

No mindfulness, I think. Every Buddhist treatise I read stresses the importance of bringing the mind to focus on itself, developing the awareness necessary for right thought and speech and action. Mindfulness is both a means and an end, the way to enlightenment and the product of it. It has allowed me several times to pull myself out of a quagmire of homesickness and futile longing for material comforts, and bring myself back to the moment or task at hand, but I wish I had a stronger, less random sense of it. Perhaps I expected that I would automatically become wiser in a Buddhist culture, maybe through osmosis. But mindfulness will only come through effort. Meditation is one way to acquire it, but I am also beginning to wonder if all the Buddhist rituals I have witnessed so far—the turning of prayer wheels, recitation of mantras, circumambulation of prayer walls—are practiced in order to develop mental discipline.

I think about this through morning assembly, watching my kids’ heads bent in prayer. I love them, each and every one of them. They have already taught me far more than I can ever teach them. Jane was right: they make everything worthwhile. I bow my head and pray that I do not do more harm than good. I pray to remember where I am.

I push open the classroom door and they leap up. “Good morning, class II C,” I say. They are class II C, and I am Miss: Miss Jamie, also Miss Jigme, sometimes Miss Jammy, nurse and babysitter, cheerleader and referee, general assistant and, occasionally, teacher.

“Good morn-ing, miss! ” they shout back, beaming. And we begin.

Most days are still a travesty of pedagogy. Today, I hand back spelling tests and Sonam Tshering promptly stuffs his in his mouth and swallows it. For a moment, I am too surprised to speak. Karma Dorji says, “That boy is very hungry,” and everyone laughs, but I am not amused. Frowning, I fold my arms and say crossly, “Class II! Listen to me!” They sit up straight, serious, expectant. “Class II,” I say sternly, “do not eat your spelling tests.” And then I burst into laughter. My announcements and queries are growing more absurd daily. Tshewang Tshering, you cannot write your test with a cat in your gho. Sangay, put away those chilies. Well, eat them if you’re going to eat them, but don’t play with them during math. Class II C, who is bleeding all over the floor? Class II C, who is gassing? Class II C, why is there a bottle of pee in our room?

Moments of work and understanding and order arise briefly out of the uproar. In between accidents, emergencies, spontaneous expressions