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ONE OF THE GOALS on the list sent to me before my arrival, to inspire staff and volunteers alike to be interested in reporting news, seemed simple enough. Given the impending democratic elections, it also made sense; the intent of this station was to give the youth of Bhutan the tools to examine and monitor their government-to-be. So far, that had translated into a five-minute “newscast” each evening, which amounted to nothing more than the rewriting of items from the newspapers and the Bhutan Broadcasting Service. With Sir Tenzin wrangling everyone he could find into the conference room, I conducted my first—and last—formal workshop at Kuzoo.

“WHAT IS NEWS?” I scrawled on the giant whiteboard I’d asked Sir Tenzin to buy for the workroom. It was there to encourage people to share their ideas. (To date, I seemed to be the only person using it.) Twenty participants were dutifully in attendance. Perhaps fearful there might be a quiz later, they wrote down every word I uttered about the Five Ws and H that were the foundation of journalism.

“Who. What. When. Where. Why. And How,” I explained. “These are the elements of every story. Your job is to ask the questions and find out the answers.”

No one said a word, and even when assigned the task of telling a story, the only person who seemed to understand, or be interested in, the exercise was Sir Pema, Kuzoo’s second in command.

He was a shy man with a round face and glasses; his bookish demeanor, not his looks, made him seem older than thirty-five. Sir Pema had come from a remote village in the far east of Bhutan, and had been chosen to attend a Jesuit school in India where the best and brightest of Bhutan got sent for their educations. He had gone on to earn a master’s degree in education in Canada. His curiosity had been aided and abetted by new technologies that fueled his quest for news and information. He’d wax poetic about James Bond, the X-Men, or Johnny Depp and seemed shocked when I couldn’t converse about the latest Hollywood blockbusters. First thing every morning at the office, as soon as he could get online, he read the New York Times; at home at night he was glued to CNN with near-religious fervor. (The fact that I’d worked at both places upped my street cred with him.) He’d quote Maureen Dowd and “King Larry” as if he’d been hanging around at a bar with them the night before.

“Who? Stray dogs. What? How many of them there are. When? Right now. Where? Thimphu. Why? No family planning. How? That’s the problem,” he said. Sir Pema appeared to possess the keen powers of cultural observation necessary to succeed in the news business, powers that were otherwise lacking among the Kuzoo staff. Daily life was something they took for granted; the ongoing battle with strays wasn’t really an issue to them. It was just the way things were. This had to do a bit with the Buddhist belief that things simply are the way they are, and a lot to do with the unwavering Bhutanese devotion to authority. Reverence for that seemed embedded in them genetically, just like the adoration of spicy hot food.

It was also, I was learning, considered rude to ask too many questions. Other than Sir Pema, my pupils appeared utterly disinterested in the idea of taking out a microphone and questioning the world around them. It was clear they were present only because they were told to be. My news session wrapped up with a thud. I decided that during the rest of my days here, I’d resort to subtler teaching methods than the classroom.

The next afternoon, the utility of the radio station for something other than the transmission of pop music became very clear to all. Sir Tenzin walked into the station with a thick document tucked under his arm.

“Class Ten results,” he announced, and he dropped the document in front of the female Pema with a hot-off-the-presses flourish. “Announce on the air that they’re here.” The day the scores were released was one of the most important of the year, even if it did fall square in the middle of