Us and Them

The servant class has become a source of great contemplation for me. At the house we are staying in, Chanbari House, I am the most consistent adult resident, which puts me sort of in charge of the household help.  There are two young women working here -- they say they are cousins though they look nothing alike -- and they speak broken English. Budhamaya came from the kitchen of a guest house owned by the Head of the Board at Taktse.  I was told that his love of toast is the reason we have 3 slices every morning with breakfast!

We watch them and they watch us.  The cousin laughs behind my back at the way I say, "Haht Wahter."  We hypothesize that Budhamaya has a crush on the driver, Mr. Bempa, and watch for signs to confirm or contradict our hypothesis.  I feel disdain coming from them, it is hard not to feel judged by
by them while we manifest our private selves in their full view. To complicate things, we project an overwhelming desire to thank Budhamaya, to not put her out, to ease the blow of the fact that she is our servant.

Miss Pema, who works at the school and helps manage the comings and goings of visitors to the house, has an expectation for Budhamaya and her cousin that I need to adopt.  She sees that they are responsible for the welfare of the guests in the house.  It is their job to make our stay comfortable and it is their job to help us with anything we ask of them. If Budhamaya wanted to, she could learn a lot and turn the job into something significant, it is hard to tell if she would like that.

For now, there is wariness about the whole affair on both sides. I am curious to see how it will all turn out.

Thank you! And more Random Photos

Trash can or lunch box...? Depends on who you ask!

Before I write anything else, I want to thank all of you who have written comments on this blog. I don't know if you receive my replies, but it is a wonderful way for me to know that the entries resonate and that people are actually reading the blog.  Thank you especially for your words of encouragement and support!

It has been a while since I have had the time on the internet to post photos and take care of the blog.  The modem at the house was killed by lightning, but today the technician is supposed to come and install the new modem.  Fingers crossed that it will work!

These photos are some images captured over the past couple of weeks. The last one was taken by Corrina and includes her words. I hope you enjoy....

Corrina in her new uniform

The entrance to Corrina's classroom

This is the librarian and her cat -- the
cat keeps an eye on the books!

No, this is not photoshopped

Grace in motion -- "no photos please..."

Three weeks down, but who's counting?

       We have made it to our second weekend and basically the end of our third week in Sikkim. We are each to different stages of settling; both settling into a routine and a way of life as well as coming to understand that we will have to settle for a life here that is more primitive than the one we had in America.
     Corrina is the one struggling the most right now.  Her stomach has been bothering her a bit and she wishes she had her own house and her own bedroom to feel unwell in.  She has a couple of potential friends at school but that is slow going for her. And she only likes a few of her classes.  She isn't used to the strict nature of teachers here and doesn't like be spoken to harshly even if that is the way the teachers speak to all students.  She likes some of the food, she has been reading voraciously and she sometimes likes going to town. She and Glenn videochat as often as they can and that seems to help with her malaise. The state of hygienic affairs here is sometimes more than she can bear.  She had a good day yesterday and we have planned a low-key weekend with a day of shopping in the market today and a lazy day at home tomorrow -- I am hoping these two days will lift her spirits a bit.
     I am holding up well. There is plenty of work to do at school and I feel I have already helped in a couple of big areas. I have convinced Pintso and the leadership team that they should have a Dean of Students; they love the idea and have already indicated two teachers who could take on the roles of Upper School and Lower School Deans. People seem happy to have my help and input and I have the best office in the school -- it is a desk in the center of the library, right next to the librarian.  At home, I find it difficult at times to keep the peace. When one of the girls isn't feeling well they often take it out on the other. I suppose I should be thankful that they never seem to both be miserable at the same time. Still, we are a unit with very little time away from each other.  School is the only time we are separated and then just barely.  Our second bedroom is very damp, I cleaned out all the mold but until monsoon season is over I think it will be basically unusable.   After the monsoon goes, I am hoping we can set up a bit of a sitting room in there. That will give us a chance to spend some time separately while we are at home.  No matter the challenges, I am glad to be here, feel at peace and am enjoying exploring a new place.
     I think Grace may be doing the best of us all. She has made close friends with the three girls in her class. In fact they were over for dinner last night and Grace is planning to play basketball with them next weekend. She likes what little work she has to do and she has jumped into class conversations and activities. She hates the insects that crawl everywhere, but she has come to have a sense of humor about how much the spiders scare her. She enjoys the food and has a growing tolerance for walking around town.  She still bugs Corrina to no end, it is hard that we are always in each others company, but I am really impressed by how she has taken to being here in Gangtok.
     Being in the clouds has its disadvantages -- last night we were in the middle of a lightning storm and a couple of bolts were awfully close to the house.  The last one knocked out power for about 20 minuted and seems to have killed the modem at the house.  I can only imagine how long it will take to get that fixed!  So Grace and I are at an internet cafe having some vegetable pakoras and taking advantage of the internet.  Now this blog can be posted!

The Girls and their Classmates

Below is a photo of the 11th grade.  There are three (now four) lovely, feisty girls in the grade. Simrin, Tenchung and Sagun have been incredibly welcoming of Grace and Grace is very happy to go off to school with them every day. Sagun, on the right, lives in the hostel and was the girl who took us to town the second day we were in Gangtok.  Simrin is almost as tall as Grace (Grace is the tallest girl in the school) and she has been a great guide for Grace when it comes to classes and the like.  We are hoping that the three girls will come to America this winter in order to visit colleges and that they will spend some time staying with us.

From left to right: Simrin, Grace, Tenchung and Sagun

Corrina's grade is much larger than Grace's, can you spot her in the photo below? There are about 16 or 17 kids in her class.  She has made some friends in the class -- I hope to get some photos of her with her friends soon.

Our "Spacio" (the car)

My favorite part of the day by far is our ride to and from school in the jeep loving called the "Spacio."  The reasons are many-fold:

1. I am not the one driving, so I am not responsible for whether we arrive on time or late or even arrive in the right order.
2. The view out the window is fascinating.  There are all types of people walking down the road or driving in vehicles going in the other direction. There are Army trucks and "Goods Carriers" and taxis and lots of motorcycles. Anyone who notices us takes a good long look at the white people in a Sikkimese jeep, and I enjoy staring back. 
3. The clouds play with the car, sometimes engulfing us to the point where you can barely see ahead, sometimes dissipating to reveal the mountain on the other side of the steep gorge.
4. The treacherously bumpy road can be a source of great enjoyment as we are jostled out of our seats or into each other.  Seatbelts are non-existent, so we float around in the back seat.
5. The driver, Bempa, is an object of observation as we are driving.  Is he in a good mood--is he humming?  Is he impatient -- constantly pressing to pass the car ahead?  Is he in a bad mood -- sucking his teeth when he sees another driver trying to make a move detrimental to our progress? Is he a speed demon, enjoying the short stretches of smooth, clear road or is he being cautious as he carries all of the full propane tanks for the kitchen at school?
6. Grace and Corrina are for the most part silent either because there are other people in the car or because they are tired or because they are taken with the scenery out the window.
7. Thanks to #6, I can contemplate things like my next blog entry while riding in the car.

Here are photos from the backseat:

A jostled photo of the view from the backseat. That's
Bempa driving on the right side of the car.

Hanging out at Home

Photos from School

The clouds rolling in over the mountain, this is
the view from the library.

Students playing games in the courtyard during Tea Break.

Dogs are everywhere, including the school courtyard.

The school basketball court.

This is the kindergarten bus that we took in order
to go home early one day. Every child on the bus was
asleep 10 minutes after we left the school!

Crepes in Sikkim

The kitchen supplies

Friday night we had guests over to our house after dinner.  It was Sam's last night in Sikkim. Sam is a Waring Alumnus who just graduated from college and came to Taktse to help out for 2 months. He stayed in the same place as us. We decided to make crepes to celebrate his last night in Sikkim, complete with Nutella purchased at Mr. Gupta's Tea House.  The cook had picked up the crepe-making ingredients for me earlier in the day.  Here are some photos of the kitchen where we cooked.

The stove is on the left, the oven on the right.
We are hoping to try baking brownies in that oven today!

The sink, and the water filter
on the wall.

The shelves for cookware and
tableware. You can see the red
refrigerator at the edge of the photo.

The crepes were delicious; as always there was a clamor for more than we could make... Kitso and Shahgun  (students staying at school) helped make the batter and cook the crepes.  It was a wonderful evening, especially for Corrina and Grace, who got to spend some out-of-school time with new friends.

Indian Independence Day

Last Wednesday was Indian Independence Day.  The school was closed, so we met a few students and the Head of the School, Pintso, at a restaurant that overlooked the stadium. All morning and afternoon there were performances and soccer games to entertain the crowd.  All in all I would say it was a pretty subdued holiday, but we had a nice lunch at "The Square."

Looking down on the stadium where the Independence Day
 activities took place.

Everyone had a little beer to help celebrate!

We couldn't resist a photo op of Corrina
with the Sikkimese "Hit" beer bottle!

A Siren in a Sea

     Today Miss Pema, the administratvie assistant at school who has been helping us get settled, told me that she had asked a couple of people at the school how old they thought Grace was.  Miss Pema had asked them because when I told her Grace was 15 (we were pulling together various pieces information for our resident permit application) she was shocked. Can you guess the consensus?  21 or 22 years old!  In Gangtok, Grace sticks out like a siren in a sea of the masses. She is tall, the tallest girl at the school, she is blond(ish) and she is beautiful.  When we go to town people stare at her in disbelief.  After the first day of it, she insisted she was never going out in public again, but we must do what we must do.  Over these short two weeks she has gotten more comfortable with the attention and sometimes gives a long, hard stare back at them.  I can't say that our experience is helping us understand what it is like to be part of a minority population because I believe most often minorities are treated poorly, as less-than's. We are having the opposite experience, being exalted -- everyone wants to make us happy -- and that is also disconcerting. What did we do to deserve any special treatment?
     Every once in a while we see other white people in town.  The funny thing is, we stare at them as much and as long as the Sikkimese do!

The Order of Things

We in America are slaves to time.  The almightly appointment calendar dictates who, what, where and when.  It is a virtue to be on time, to finish a project when we said we would,  and we spend money to learn from the best how to more efficiently use our precious time.

In Sikkim, I believe people are slaves to the order in which things should be done. The fact that this might effect being on time is irrelevant, inconsequential, and, it seems, not taken into consideration. For instance, today (Indian Independence Day) we had a date to meet some students staying in the school hostel at a restaurant in town in order to watch the holiday festivities at the local stadium. The restaurant we were meeting at looks down on the stadium (photos to come). Unbeknownst to us, there was a pick-up basketball game up at the school that was supposed to happen before the hostel students came down to meet us at the restaurant. That was the order of things and that is how it played out.  The fact that the basketball game made the students 2 hours late from the designated meeting time was of no consequence.  As another example, if, after we have been picked up to be taken to school, a call comes in to the driver to pick up some items along the way, the order of things dictates that the items be picked up on the way to school even if it makes us late for the start of the day. When we went to get the girls measured for uniforms yesterday we spoke with a lovely man who minutes later was yelling at someone in the street.  The order of things dictated that the man in the street should come before us (not sure why....), so we waited 10 minutes in the close air of the small shop while he left the shop to find the man on the street. To be fair, that guy ended up being the man with the measuring tape (a uniform store with only one measuring tape? Curious....) and in the order of things he needed to come to the shop before we could place our order with the owner.

The one notable exception to this rule that I have found so far is the actual driving itself.  When there is a slow vehicle in front of us, regardless of the treacherous nature of the maneuver, the driver will try to pass the slow car or truck as if we were in a great hurry to get to our destination.  At that moment in time, getting ahead (usually just to drive slowly behind a car right in front of the previous car) and getting where we are going quickly are the pressing priorities.

I can't imagine that we will ever assimilate to the point where we value the order of things more than the time commitments we make, but we have settled into the notion that we are not in control of time here in Sikkim and that we might as well have things to do while we wait for our rightful place in the order of things.

Acclimatizing....?

After a complete week of being here, I can see some ways we are beginning to adjust to our surroundings:

1. The kids are ready to eat something other than rice and dahl for dinner. These items are the main staples of any lunch or dinner for us and constitute the bulk of the calories we currently eat.
   
   
2. We get up and go to school with little fuss. That means that for one, we are finally adjusted to the time change and two, school is something ok to go to.
   
   
3. Grace and Corrina let me leave them at home alone for 2 hours (the cook was at the house...) while I went to town to get some food supplies.
   
   
4. When we walk around the market, people still stare at us all the time, but we are bothered by it less and less. Sometimes we just stare back.
   
   
5. The girls are getting, and want to do, homework. Grace read Antigone and memorized a few lines; Corrina read the first few chapters in a book about a family who move to Birmingham, Alabama from Michigan in the late 50's! She reading THAT in Sikkim!
   
   
6. We now know to anticipate that foods which sound and look like American food rarely taste like American food. The doughnuts, which looked so promising (!), were stale, greasy and not sweet.Yikes!
   
   
7. We are getting car sick less and less from the bumpy half hour ride to school.
   
   
8. We enjoy riding in the range rover-type vehicle with 12 people altogether. (Some are young students, so they take up less room....)
   
   
9. The screams coming from Grace regarding spiders in the bathroom (or anywhere else for that matter) have reduced to simple grunts and a request for their removal.
   
   
10. The girls drink a lot of tea.

Objects of Importance

There are some items that have quickly come to have great significance to us.  I think they give you a good sense of our daily life.

Transitional Object #1

 Grace eats oatmeal in the afternoon when lunch was less than satisfactory or was missed. It's a taste of home that she never bothered with when she was there, but she perks right up after a bowl of this comfort food...

Transitional Object #2

The kitten has been someone to come home to, a normalizing force that helps us feel like our life here can be a bit like the life we had in Beverly.

Transitional Objects #3-7

The stuffed animals have made sleep easier as we adjust to the nighttime noises -- packs of dogs barking all night, jackals crying (it sounds like a baby screaming), rain pelting on the tin roofing nearby.

Corrina wraps herself in the blanket she brought from home (a down blanket that will be especially useful in the coming winter months) each night before she collapses into bed.

Required Diversion & Photo averse girls

I have never played so many hands of cards as we have since we arrived here.  We laugh a lot when we play-- Crazy 8's (which has turned into Cracy Ace's), Rummy, Gin Rummy and Grace and I just started playing cribbage. We usually play before dinner as we get grounded back at home.

Nothing ever happens on time here.  While waiting for the driver to pick us up (we usually wait over a half-hour beyond the designated time) and take us to the school, we also play cards to fend off the boredom of delays.  

Our scarce commodity

What can I say? Toilet tissue has entered the planning process for any trip outside the house.  Even within the house it can be hard to find....

Anticipation!

Before our arrival, Pintso bought a washer and dryer for the house. The washer arrived this week, but I imagine it will take another few weeks to find someone to hook it up.

Right now, we send our laundry out to be stone washed by the launderer.  You never know when you will get your clothes back because it takes forever for the clothes to dry during the monsoon season. We didn't bring a ton of clothes in order to fit other things into our suitcases, so this machine could prove to be a real boon!

Photos of Taktse School

This is the entrance to Taktse School. The top floor
is the hostel area. The rotunda holds the library.

This is the view from the library. You can see the fog rolling in!

The school is full of butterflies right now, thousands of them and at least 100 different types. They are stunning examples of biodiversity at work. Here are just 3 examples. We will post more!

 

Moments of Acquaintance

Thursday Night, August 9

  The past two days have been filled with moments of acquaintance.  Yesterday two students from Taktse school picked us up at the house and took us to the downtown area of Gangtok.  One was a girl in the 11th grade, the other a boy in the ninth grade.  It was raining steadily as we went to town, the kind of rain where it does't feel like it is coming down hard, but all of a sudden you realize you are soaking wet.  We walked down more steps than I could have ever imagined to get to the downtown area, and then shared the road with all of the cars heading up the mountain.

When we arrived downtown, everyone there took a long look at us as we walked by.  It is clear we are anomalies!  As we walked through the promenade our guides pointed out shops and restaurants owned by the families of Taktse students, and we ate at one such restaurant "Taste of Tibet"  We had momos (steamed dumplings), spring rolls that were different than the american style and delicious, as well as vegetable pakoras.

Then they took us to a small shop with souvenirs and to the tea shop, which Rhana (the boy) affectionately called the "junk food" shop.  We picked up a variety of cookies and a bar of soap for ourselves and then took a taxi back to the house.  I can't imagine how we would have ever made it back up the hill by walking!

When we got back to the house we had a lovely time talking with Rhana an Shahgun about Taktse and about sports.  We played a round of Hearts, taught them Rummy and laughed a bit until they had to go home.  

Earlier today we got acquainted with the school.  Around lunch time we took a taxi to the school --  a half hour drive and a 1,000 ft. climb to 6500 ft.  Everyone at the school was very friendly to us, very eager to meet the White Americans.  We met the school dog, the cows grazed through the driveway, and in the courtyard the middle school students were rehearsing for a production of Julius Caesar that they will be performing tomorrow afternoon.

There is a beautiful library at the school with many, many books, including a stack of old Marvel comic books.  Each grade has its own classroom and the halls connecting them are open-air halls overlooking the courtyard.  We have a lot to get used to, but I think we are going to like it there.

In general, the amount of difference we need to assimilate is overwhelming.  I don't see it as culture shock, but as foreign-ness overload.  There is so much to learn and react to (or not react to, like the sign encouraging families not to engage in feoticide….) that we can't possibly manage every moment with aplomb. Still, we seem to come out of the hards moment with a resolve to figure it out, a desire to make it work.  Corrina and Grace have been amazing at that.  There have been some really tough moments where they felt they couldn't move forward, but each time they have found a way to do just that.

Photos of the house

This is our "other bedroom." Originally the girls were
going to sleep here and I was to have a room of my
own. But we are cozy sleeping in one room together and
using the other bedroom as our changing room.

This is the view out of the window in our
bedroom.  It looks out onto the terrace
where the firepit is.

There is a door in our bedroom that opens to
the back of the house.  Here is Doja
(it means "lightening"due to the Harry Potter
like mark on her face) sitting in the
doorway on the first sunny day since
we arrived.

This is where we eat our meals and hang out with
the others who are staying at the house.
We play a lot of cards here too. It is on the floor above our
bedrooms.

Here is Grace on the bed, the bright light is
a new feature for us.

This is the view out the door of our room.
The vegetation is bamboo.

Getting out of our old familiar

     We have arrived in Sikkim safe and sound, a little frayed at the edges from a very long and challenging trip.  We spent both Saturday and Sunday night in the air, first flying from Boston to London and then from London to Delhi.  On the first flight we slept a decent amount, on the second trip not so much!  When we arrived in Delhi at 6AM to discover that our flight had been cancelled and we had been rebooked to another airline, our life in India truly began: within the same hour we were fleeced through an excess baggage fee and we didn't have to lift a single finger to carry a bag because every bag was carried for us.
     The portion of the trip we thought would be easiest and most straightforward was the car ride up to Gangtok in Sikkim.  It started out well enough in an air conditioned minivan with space for all of the luggage with a chance to see the way of life in the towns of West Bengal, but as we got into the mountains the going was difficult to the point where we were stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours because there had been a landslide ahead of us and they had to remove the dirt before traffic could flow again.  There was no alternative route to take, my Inrix Traffic App would have been useless, there is only one way from there to here in northern India.  So we had to wait for the road to be cleared.
     Our hosts, Pintso, students from the school and the staff at his house had a lovely dinner waiting for us when we arrived and a fire going in the fire pit.  Pintso had brought some of the boarding students down from the hostel to join us for dinner so we got to meet some of the students who Corrina will be in class with.
     Today we spent the day reading, unpacking (actually I am the only one who truly began to unpack!), watching a movie on the computer, playing with the cat, sleeping, playing cards.  We had hoped to go visit the school, but the car that would take us was in the shop.  Tomorrow some girls from Grace's class are going to come meet us and show us around the town.
     Goodnight for now!
     Chris

First Photos

Where we ate our first dinner in Sikkim,
with Pintso and some students.

Grace with the not-so-stray kitten
at the house. 

Chris and Grace on the terrace.

They Made It!

Hey everyone.  I just got off the phone with Christine, Grace and Corrina.  They have arrived safely in Gangtok!  They had a few adventures along the way -- Christine will give you an update on that later.  From Grace I hear that it is cloudy and rainy, so not much of a view at this time.  Corrina informs me that there is a kitten at the house!

Netherworld

We are currently at Heathrow, awaiting our connecting flight. The week leading up to the trip was full of time with Glenn, preparations for the new tenants in the house, too many goodbyes and deep, intense emotions.  As we made our way to Logan Airport there were moments where I seriously doubted my ability to get myself and the girls on the plane to London.  Tears all around when we said goodbye to Glenn, the final acknowledgement of the enormity of what we are about to undertake.  And now we are in that strange netherworld of airport travel, neither here nor there, time suspended, emotions tucked away to allow us to face the intricacies of getting around. I hope we can all sleep some on the plane tonight....