Radio Shangri-La_ What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth - Lisa Napoli [26]
“Oh, that wouldn’t be enough for us,” she said. “We each eat four plates of rice a day. That bag over there”—she pointed to a twenty-five-pound satchel on the floor—“would last my family about a week.” For the exact same reason that people in the richest parts of the world chose to eat little starch, people in the poorest ate a lot of it: It filled you up. Only the wealthiest could indulge in a low-carb fest like the Atkins Diet, because they had the luxury of plentiful, lean meat to fill them up instead. That the Bhutanese smothered their unpolished, pink rice in a yak-cheesy, fiery-hot chili stew called emadatse, and savored it three times a day, was testament to how they’d ingeniously discovered a way to live off, indeed enjoy, a low-cost food.
“Are there any eggs here, do you think?” I asked. I kept peering under every well-stocked shelf and table, and still hadn’t found any.
“Eggs are very hard to find right now. Bird flu. No eggs coming in from India,” Ngawang said matter-of-factly. “The eggs that are around are very expensive.” The prices had shot up to the equivalent of a quarter apiece.
Oh no, I thought, as I grabbed several rolls of crepey pink toilet paper tucked beside some beer. I’d noticed with a measure of defeat that my father had been right; this bathroom essential didn’t seem to be provided in the Kuzoo restroom, or any of the places Sir Tenzin had taken me to so far. Best to carry my own.
“If we can find eggs, I’d be happy to pay for them myself,” I said, and then I immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to sound like some swaggering rich American, but I was beginning to worry a bit about the food situation.
At lunchtime again today, I’d stuck a fork into a bowl of emadatse and thought I might die—both from the spicy heat of it and the runny processed cheese of it. Perhaps I’d fall in love with Bhutan and its people, but I was fairly certain I would never become a fan of emadatse. Locally grown foods, good; local cuisine, beware. I really needed an egg.
“Nuts. What about nuts?” I asked, ticking through a mental checklist of my staple foods. Then I spotted another necessity, a couple of dusty cans of tuna fish, and grabbed them, greedily, though there wasn’t another shopper in the store. The label declared Thailand. I figured I could bring that down to Kuzoo for lunch, once Sir Tenzin tired of trotting his new American volunteer/consultant around town during the midday meal.
“Nuts are also very expensive,” said Ngawang, and then walked over to a package of cashews that looked pale and crusty, like they’d been sitting around for a couple of years. They were even pricier than they’d be back home; $1.50 for what amounted to a large handful. In a country where per capita income was $3 a day, of course no one had indulged.
“Peanut butter?” I asked hopefully, and Ngawang held up a dusty yellow plastic tub of the stuff, from India, and handed it to Kesang. That would be useful. Then she displayed a loaf of white bread whose simple wrapper announced it was from Norbu Bakery in Thimphu. “You’ll need this, too. You Westerners like bread. Nobody eats this stuff here.”
“Someone must,” I protested, “if they make it.”
Ngawang’s aunt shouted to her in Dzongkha. “My aunt says the cornflakes are in the back here. She says the Westerners always love cornflakes.”
I started to say “I’m not a big cereal person,” and in truth I wasn’t a big milk fan, either, any more than I was of white bread. But then I found myself savoring the idea of nice, mushy cornflakes. Though I hadn’t had any in years, the memory of the familiar comforted me. Having a box on the shelf would probably be a good idea.
Kesang drove us back up the hill to the Rabten Apartments and carried in our purchases. Ngawang immediately began unpacking them all, and while she was organizing the kitchen, managed to turn on the hot