Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [62]
Inside, under a whirring fan, we gorge on french fries and chicken and chocolate and wait for the sun to drop. It is a little cooler without the unrelenting sun beating down on our heads but still very humid, and my lungs feel full of slush. We walk to the Indo-Bhutan border, which is half a brick wall painted with slogans: ULFA! ANTI-ULFA BE CAREFUL! BODOLAND! I know from the Indian newspapers the school receives that ULFA is the United Liberation Front of Assam, fighting for separation from India, and that the Bodos are a tribal people who want a separate state carved out of Assam. On the other side of the wall, the roads and shops and teastalls continue, but the buildings look more run-down, and there are piles of bricks and sand and garbage in the streets. We walk back along the main road past shops selling everything. Jeans, umbrellas, pineapples, refrigerators, cassette players, canned vegetables, spices, hand cream, flashlights, car parts, bolts of cloth in hundreds of patterns and colors. I buy a new and hopefully chicken-proof flashlight (50 ngultrum, about $4), and we decide to get new kiras with matching blouses and jackets. Lorna studies the shelves of cloth for about thirty seconds before choosing a stripy green print, but I spend ages comparing swatches of cloth, much to her annoyance.
“What do you think of this?” I ask, holding up a plain dark-grey fabric.
“Yeah, it’s nice.”
“Or this one? I like the checks better than the plain.”
“After a month of washing it in Surf, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference.” This is true: the washing powder we use sucks the color out of our clothes and gnaws little holes in everything.
“Oh, here’s a nice one. What do you think of this maroon?”
“It’s FINE. Come on, Cinderella, you’ll be late for the ball.”
I buy the maroon. Back in our room at the Shambhala, we sit under
the fan and talk about our kids. Lorna tells me how she tried to describe a vacuum cleaner and washing machine to them. “God knows what they’ve constructed in their minds,” she says. “Just imagine how it must sound to them: a big pipe that sucks up dirt and a box that washes your clothes.”
I tell Lorna about class II C’s dismal science exam answers. “I’m really feeling my lack of teacher training,” I say. “I don’t know if I’m doing much more than babysitting.”
We talk about beating. Lorna says that she is a strict teacher and hopes to show that you can be strict without hitting. “But shouldn’t we try to do something about it?” I ask.
Lorna shrugs. “It’s not our place to do anything,” she says. “And anyway, what would we do?”
The electricity suddenly fails, and we lie on the beds in the damp heat, listening to the crickets and one hysterical dog. I am almost asleep when Lorna’s voice comes out of the darkness. “I just remembered something. You can’t wear that new kira.”
“Why not?”
“Only monks and nuns can wear that color.”
I had completely forgotten. “Well, I can always make curtains out of it.”
“Or become a nun,” Lorna snickers.
In the morning, we decide to flee the heat and go to Bidung. The owner of a white hi-lux parked outside the hotel, a tall, boyish-looking Australian man, agrees to give us a ride to Tashigang. His name is Will, and he is a consultant, he tells us, making Seventy-Five Thousand American Dollars a Year, Plus Living Allowance and All Travel Expenses, and he cannot understand why we have come here for anything less. “You teachers make what, a hundred and fifty dollars a month?” he snorts.
“It’s enough to live on,” I say.
“It’s what all the other teachers live on here,” Lorna adds.
Will just shakes his head. “One hundred and fifty dollars a month. You couldn’t get me to do it, no way.”
“No one asked you to do it,” Lorna mutters.
Will talks all the way to Tashigang. This place, these people, can’t get a damn thing done, no