Death of a Lama

One morning just after dawn I climbed the narrow stair case from the sleeping room up to the kitchen.  I grabbed a cup from from the shelf, took the kettle off the flames and filled my mug with tea sweetened with fresh milk.  The Sherpa family was unusually quiet. Dawa, the head of the household, was standing near the fire dressed in clean, fresh trousers and a collared shirt. I was told that a High Lama from the Taksindu monastery had passed away during the night.

The men, cousin Basong and uncle Dawa, were going to the monastery right away so we needed to gather the gifts. We all went down to the storage level of the house, dragged out several baskets of corn and stripped them of husk and hair.  We made two piles of corn on the cob,  one good enough to offer to the Lama's spirit as he makes his ascension, the other pile for the cows. We also gathered together a basket of pealed white beans and several white scarves. 

The hand made, bamboo basket for the Lama's corn was conical shaped with the narrow end toward the ground. A rope went through the lip in two places then up Basong's back, over his shoulders, and around his forehead. He carried the load from his head in the traditional Sherpa way. 

The basket, filled to the brim with corn that had yet to be dried out in the courtyard, must have weighed upwards of 50 pounds! Dawa, being an elder, carried a smaller load of white beans, other gifts as well as warm coats in a backpack that was given to him by one of the Sherpa family's several Trekking Guides, in case the weather changed on their way to the village of Taksindu. The weather did change! It began to pore by the afternoon but the two men did not return until dinner. 

The Taksindu Monistery is ninety minutes walk from the village of Cchulemu, on top of a hill, in a Himalayan jungle in the Solukumbu District of Nepal.  It sits low, only 6000 feet, in comparison to most Sherpa villages.  The Taksindu Monastery serves at least seven villages. It has a school for novices and all instructors are Buddhist monks. Outside the one-story, novice dormitory and classrooms is a beautiful grassy field that slopes down toward the valley, opening up to the sky and vast mountain views. The young novices study six days a week.  There is a volleyball court marked out in the grass for their breaks and for the day of rest. Some are as young as 5 years old! They act just like any other kids wanting to play games with their friends. 

Up the path from the dormitories is the grand temple. In the first room there are two rows of low tables facing each other with brightly colored pillows as seats behind. Colorful, silk "parasols" hang from ceiling to floor. The walls are painted with kind-faced deities such as the smiley Green Tara. The eight sacred symbols are cheerfully pained on the wall at the far end and above them, high up in a glass balcony, sits a gold leaf replica of the temples' patron Rinpoche surrounded by pink and purple flowers. 

Under the gold statue is a door leading to a second room. This room is small and dark. At the opposite side is a throne covered with gold and saffron velvet. In it sits a framed photo of the Rimpoche. On either side of the throne the sutras, prayers and writings by the Buddha, which are bound in wooden casings, covered with yellow silk and neatly stacked on small shelves that go up the entire wall. The remaining walls are painted with dark and harsh deities such as Vadra Kalia, the destroyer of all obstacles on the path to Nirvana. He is not a friendly face! Bloody fangs and welding a large dagger, this guy means business! 

Dawa and Basong returned after dark that night, soaking wet. The rain, thunder and lightning were furious! They asked if I would like to return to the monastery with them the next morning to witness the ceremonies leading up to the funeral pyre. 

Early the next morning we made the trek up the mountain, raining still! The path, paved with stones from over a thousand years of habitation in this area, was slick and water ran fast under our feet. 

The monastery was a buzz with mourners. The women kept their hands busy by pouring hot milk tea into bowls for monks and villagers alike, to warm our cold wet bodies from the inside. The men sat in small groups sharing stories. Then, suddenly, the older monks entered the grand temple to begin prayers to assist the Lama's spirit in its journey. They chanted in low, reverberating tones while cymbals crashed and horns bellowed. The Lama's body lay still in a wooden box on the floor, near the front of the room. He was dressed in his saffron robes and a red shall but his feet were bare. 

Prayer chanting lasted for an hour as we on-lookers peered through windows and doors at the monks. Then the Lama, in his box covered in gold brochette fabrics, was lifted by men from the villages and slowly carried outside the temple, down the stairs where the women were waiting in the courtyard to offer the Lama hot tea, a piece of bread, incense and flowers for his journey. Without word, all the villagers lined up and began to follow the Lama in his box, up a path marked by burning bundles of juniper branches. It smelled lovely.

We continued to the top of a hill over looking the monastery. The rain had not let up for nearly two days. I would later learn that the rain was coming from a late Indian typhoon that hit the Annapurna Mountains resulting in massive snows, avalanches and the death of over 20 trekkers.  

The pyre that was constructed two days earlier was drenched! Several men ran back down the hill and returned several minutes later with old beer bottles filled with kerosene to aid the fire making process. Women brought thermoses filled with hot tea for the shivering mourners and attempted to keep the Lama dry by positioning umbrellas over his head. 

When it came time to light the pyre two village men climbed on top of the ten foot pile of logs and branches, pulling the Lama up with them over the branches. His robes rolled up around his neck and the exposed flesh on his back and arms was ripped, torn and punctured from the violent tugging over the sharp sticks. The wounds were rashy and red but did not bleed. Once the Lama was placed in a sleeping position on top of the branches, his robes were unceremoniously yanked over his head and tossed back into the box from whence he arrived. Branches were laid across the top of his body and the fire was lit with kerosene soaked torches. 

On the slow slog back down the wet, slippery mountain I asked Basong why no one cried as the Lama's body became engulfed in the flames. "He was a monk with no family.  No one was close to him and so there is no one to cry for his passing." 

What the heck is Halloween!

Its difficult to explain! Im not asking what do we DO on Halloween, that part is a no brainer, but WHY are we celebrating it? Hum?

I think most Americans not only know what to do on holidays such as Christmas, New Year, and birthdays but we also know WHY we are celebrating them (the birth of Christ, the turning of the Roman calendar, making it through another 365 days). 

But why Halloween? Many of my comrades might claim "Acknowledging the harvest". What? The harvest of pumpkins and Indian corn? Or the harvest of cider and candy bars? 

Others might pull from our friend south of the boarder and claim All Saints Day. But Halloween has nothing to do with feeding our dead ancestors and everything to do with frightening our friends and neighbors! Ha! 

If I had to explain this holiday and its traditions to someone of western culture who is familiar with the use of the English language I could get through it pretty well I think, by going into detail about the history of certain customs particular to the USA, such as dressing up as the dead come back to life. But I am not explaining Halloween to an English speaking westerner!  I'm trying to explain it to the Sherpa people of the tiny hillside village of Cchulemu in northern Nepal where there are no televisions, no newspapers, and we are two days walk to the nearest road. 

So I try to walk the villagers through a typical Halloween celebration with the aid of a white board and colorful markers.  I can tell that they are just humoring me. Many of the children, even the older ones look very concerned and frightened at the thought of ghosts so I change focus to all the free candy!  We make masks of cats, witches and pumpkins and I pass out toys and treats.  After class we all walk home together in the dark just like every night.  But tonight the cow's gentle moo does not sound sweet like it does mid day.  In the middle of the night, when the bovine is disturbed by leaches or frightened by a scurrying rat, that same beast eerily takes on the moan of the walking dead! Trust me, its creepy on Halloween!

Flights to Lukla, Nepal

All aboard! The planes flying into the village of Lukla, the popular starting point for the fourteen day trek to Mt Everests' base camp, are in great numbers today! They typically begin their flight pattern around 9a. It took me 29 hours to reach Cchulemu! The first 21 hours in a jeep, stuffed full of Sherpa travelers, on a dirt road torn and scared from the recent monsoons. Then an eight hour hike through the thick jungle and I am still a two days walk from the airstrip!  The trekkers above my head left Kathmandu about a half hour ago.

High trekking season has begun in earnest! Today the first plane disrupted tea, before eight in the morning. As I sit in the sun, above the courtyard I see the planes, in secession, only a few minutes apart. They come from behind me, zoom right over the village, over the river canyon and pop up just in time to make it over the hill above the next hill. There is a brief break in the movement north, then the train begins in the other direction, taking weary trekkers back to city life in Kathmandu.

A fast moving, red helicopter joins their ranks. Up high on the mountain someone is injured or sick. Unfortunately, I see the red heli's everyday!  

I am leaving Cchulemu for Lukla myself in a few days, to trek to Everest base camp. I tell myself it just a trek, it's only two weeks and there is a hospital at 15,000 feet in the village of Tongbuche.  

But the reality is that the Khumbu, the collective mountains and villages just below Mt Everest, is very remote, extremely rugged, and no one can fully control how their body will respond to the high altitude. You can physically train, eat healthy, approach slowly, get enough sleep and yet still be uneventfully forced back down the mountain by nausea and intense headaches. Maybe your karma isn't clean?  Is it because your merit is low? Did you get the proper blessing from the Lama before you headed out? Om mani padme hum!  

There is a large reliance on religion and superstition here in the Khumbu and it seems justifiable. Sherpa's, fit as any Ironman, who have summited Everest on a number of occasions suddenly perish from Acute High Altitude Sickness, a condition where fluids accumulate in the lungs (pulmonary edema) or head (cerebral edema).  Or someone slips and disappears forever, off the side of the mountain after breaking a world record and spending 21 hours without oxygen, at 29,000 feet. Or while innocently setting ropes for foreign clients in the middle of the night, sixteen Sherpa mountaineers get swept away by thousands of pounds of snow and ice. Its a place filled with the dangourously unexpected. 

The Sherpa people that I have met talk solemnly about the casualties they have witnessed, near misses they have encountered, and friends they have lost. They also tell me that there is some friendly competition in the mountains. "I can set the ropes faster than you! I can carry four tourists packs up to camp! I made it to Camp 2 first!" Banter and joking, rightfully have there place in times of fear and stress and Sherpa people have a great sense of humor! 

We come to hike in the mountains because we are in love with them, and just as with all kinds of love, it is the way the object of our affection makes us feel that keeps us coming back for more.  Although we can get hurt, the good times makes it all worth while.

Ah, I hear the blades of yet another heli! I look up into the clear blue skies above the Himalaya. The chopper is moving slowly. It is white! Just tourists going sight-seeing! They are making there way up to the Khumbu for their love of the mountains and the experience of a lifetime!

Its Always Tea Time in Cchulemu

As I update the calendar on my iPhone I realize that each day, and it is not everyday that I input an event for, has just one event! "Walk to Taksindu", "Teach at the government school", "Visit with the 'doctor'", etc ... Back home I had lists of things to do each day! But here one event per day is enough because preparing meals is about all one has time for when living in a remote, Himalayan village.

The Sherpa people believe that one can become ill if allowed to become hungry.  Lucky me! So we spend our days centered around food. Maybe I am part Sherpa because that is what I do back home too! 

All ingredients must be gathered, fresh, for every meal. There are no shops or stores, nothing is packaged or processed for storage. Therefore, there is no need for refrigeration in Cchulemu! 

The people of the village wake at dawn to stoke the coals in the sacred, kitchen fire. Black tea is quickly brewed and mixed with salt and milk. Get this my fellow countrymen, the milk is NOT pasteurized! It is not even refrigerated! It's left in a pot, in a cupboard overnight! 

By the time we polish off a pot or two of the salty brew its time to do some work. The cows and goats are taken out of the barn and tethered in areas throughout the terraces that are in need of a bit of weeding. The dog, who spends his nights guarding the corn fields against hungry bears, is let to relax in his shelter during the day.  The calf is brought to one of the lactating heifers for inspiration and a few cups of milk are gleaned from her. The corn, beans, or barley that we gathered the day before, are taken out of the first floor shelter and laid out in the courtyard to continue drying. 

All the houses in the village look exactly the same when you first arrive. But after several weeks you begin to notice the little things like Pemdeki's roof is darker than the others, Doma's house has a small railing attached to the window on the second floor and Dawa's house, my home, has the largest prayer flag in all the village. 

Each home is made from heavy, dark wood logged from the nearby jungle and stones quarried from above timberline.  All have three stories. The first floor is used for dry storage and to keep current food related projects, such as corn kernels spread out on mats to dry. We leave our shoes here before climbing the dark stairwell.  

The second floor is for sleeping and praying. This room is lined with wooden cots covered with mats and cheerful colored blankets. The household's Buddhist shrine is located in this room.  The shrines size and ornateness depends upon the wealth of the family. In the home I am staying in, the shrine fills an entire wall with a gorgeous, gold-leaf statue of the Buddha as the center piece.  However, last week I saw a household shrine that consisted of only a small wooden box lined with seven steel bowls filled with water. It was the only offering that that family could afford. 

The top floor is the kitchen. Cooking is done on a low sitting, open fire in the middle of the room.  There is a hole for the smoke to go, yes, but still the room is filled with smoke! The "dark wood" I mentioned earlier, is black in this room due to the fire that is never extinguished. The kitchen room has a pitched ceiling and one small window.  Although there are open shelves for keeping dishes and utensils, there are no tables or counters. Chopping and preparing food is done while squatting over ones work on the floor. 

Whoa! Its been nearly two hours. We need more tea! Solja she! - "Drink your tea!" Tea and the first meal of the day are prepared around 10a. Breakfast could be left overs, roasted potatoes or corn on the cob. 

After a meal its back out onto the terrace fields.  There are beans, wheat and corn to pick and brought up to the courtyard. This is my favorite time of the day.  The entire household and often a neighbor or two, sit on the ground in the courtyard for a couple of hours shelling beans, shucking corn, and chatting. I cant understand what they are saying but its the same everywhere around the globe isnt it... Who is doing what to whom! 

Oh my gosh! We haven't had tea in more than two hours! Best rush inside and stoke the coals. Maybe this afternoon we will have sugar with our milk tea instead of salt? Besong throws together rice flour and water and makes everyone a few rounds of Tipton (Tibetan) bread to dip into the sweet tea. 

In the afternoon, as the cool air begins to settle in on us from the high peaks above, the food projects are put away into the storage areas on the first floor.  Vegetables for the evening meal are gathered from the small terrace just outside the courtyard.  

Sherpa people are vegetarians but not in the western "Ooo-gross-I-cant-eat-that-it-touched-a-spoon-with-chicken-broth-on-it", sort of way.  They don't kill animals and hence it makes it very difficult to prepare chicken kiev for dinner. However, the Rai people just down the hill are of a lower caste and can kill animals, which they do, for a fee of course, for the occasional Sherpa festival and feast.

Meals are always tasty here as the Sherpa people use lots of fresh, curry-style spices in the veggie stews.  In the kitchen I watch, asked questions and take copious notes on how to prepare these fabulous dishes! And they cook it all over a fire with one pot! I really hope I can replicate some these dishes at home. If you can, meet me for a Sherpa feast when I get home! 

Conversations in Nepal

I have been sitting on a bench in Besong's house for two hours having said only about three words.  They are speaking a mixture of Sherpa and Nepali, neither of which I understand at all! The four men speak at least a little English, but the women in the room do not speak a word.  Nursong, Besong's three year old little boy, is playing a game with a ball and so that gives me some distraction. But over all I am bored and daydreaming about what my friends back home are doing right now.

Ive been in Nepal for two weeks.  This is not my first time abroad and not the first time I've sat in a room full of people I can not communicate with.  However, I just finished three months volunteering at summer camp for Rocky Mountain Village and have a new perspective. There, I made friends who have difficulty communicating due to a physical disability, others due to an intellectual disability and some due to the proximity of the conversation being held (i.e.; a person using a wheelchair trying to converse with a group of people standing up). My thought are of them as well. 

Dan is a friend who has physical difficulty with speech. His disability has not affected his ability to hear, listen, or comprehend. Before I was introduced to Dan, my friend the Welshman warned me not to dismiss him during a conversation or give a patronizing nod and smile if I did not actually understand what he was saying. "Ask questions, have him repeat himself as many time as you need, have him spell the word if you can not figure it out. But don't blow him off"  That is what is happening to me here in the remote Himalayan village where I am volunteering to teach English for one month.  I am being blown off! Sure it is difficult to communicate with someone who speaks differently; language, word use, accent, sign, talking through technology, or physical impediment. Don't get me wrong, I do not blame people in the village for blushing and turning away from me. They don't know how to deal with my complete ignorance of the Sherpa tongue. And so it is for Dan back home. 

I took the Welshman's advice and got to know Dan over the days that he hung out at camp and I am very grateful that I did. Dan has offered me insightful advice, showed me new way of being a friend, and has helped me become more patient and open minded when it comes to communication.  I am betting that having met Dan over the summer is going to help me over the next few weeks as I try to make my way and fit into this community of thirty-four households, tucked away in the Nepali countryside. 

Grammar! Who Needs It!

Everyone here in Cchulemu seems to be related in one way or another. Tsering introduces everyone as bother, uncle, auntie... We can not walk the mountain terraces for even a few minutes without being stopped to answer questions about where we are going, who we have seen and what is the tourist (me) doing here?

Yesterday I taught the beginners class at the non-government school, Bridges Between. Yongde, the 40-something year old aunt, real aunt of Tsering was in attendance. I have lived in her home, sharing a room, for three days and only said "thank you" and "good morning" to her. She didn't respond and seemed not to understand English so I stopped trying. But this morning I returned from doing a supply inventory at the school to find Yongdi, sitting in the courtyard shelling white beans. "Can I help?" I asked hopefully. "Yes." She whispered and motioned for me to sit on the step beside the heaping pile of legume pods.  I was so happy to have a friend and also to have some chores to do!  Coming to Nepal has done more for my goal to "be still", than 100 yoga class could do back home! 

We shelled beans together in silence for a long time before Yongdi asked in a soft, shaky, voice, "Do you have a mother?" Yeah! Conversation! "Yes. She lives in America." I replied. "Do you have a father?" She added. "Yes, also in America" I responded. desperate that our friendly banter would not end I added quickly, without thinking, "Do you have a mother and father?" "No." She said sadly. One of Yongdi's brothers had told me that both their parents had not long ago, passed away. I was afraid that I might have squelched our blooming friendship before it even began but she continued, "Are you married?"

We chatted for a few more minutes before her English was exhausted and charades was out of the question as white beans were on the menu for dinner that night. 

The next day at English class Yongdi was even more shy and soft spoken. But I MADE her, and all the women in class speak, speak, speak! "The men do all the talking around here, so when you speak, you need to speak loudly!" I told them. Master Nima interpreted this for me and it got a roaring response! 

When I first arrived in Nepal and really began to think about teaching English in the Khumbu Region, I panicked to think that my motives might be ethnocentric. I asked my Sherpa host, Furba if the ladies in the village even wanted to learn English or was it just my colonizing DNA rearing its ugly head? 

"They need to learn English" he assured me, "and they really want to learn but it is very difficult.  They can not spend so much time in the classroom or studying like people in Kathmandu. They have children, fields and animals to attend to." Furba explained to me that many good schools in the cities teach all subjects, save Nepali Grammar, in English. And, if one is to find work in the tourist industry (Nepal's number one source of revenue) then speaking English is compulsory. 

So I teach English to a half dozen Sherpa women, most of whom are illiterate in Nepali as well as Sherpa, their native tongue. Therefore, I have nixed grammar right off the curriculum!  And if you read my blog you will likely sigh in relief that I am NOT attempting to teach grammar in Nepal! 

Just the Way Things Are

Walking down the plane's stairwell to the tarmac the smells of the city hit me hard in the nose. Burning coal, rain evaporating off concrete, and fruit rotting in wicker baskets mingle together easily in the intense heat and humidity.

To my right the massive hills that are the gateway to the Himalaya are lush and green and dotted with tiny villages, each made up of small white-washed buildings surrounding a single temple which is topped off with a saffron color, ornamental roof. 

Thank goodness Ngima gathers me at the airport door. How would I pick out a trustworthy taxi driver among the lot strewn in front of me? Like so many street urchins from a Dickens novel, they each beg me to take a ride in their dressed up cab as we pass by. So Ngima choses our good man, and our taxi is just as cheerfully painted up as any other.  We fill the roof-top carriage with my trekking gear and climb in. I am excited to get my first glimps of Kathmandu! But hold on, we are abruptly pulled over by the police. We are still within the airport gates. I cant even see the street! But what's a few more minutes wait after 32 hours of travel from the U.S.?  

Our trusty driver sits patiently, acceptantly, like a father surrounded by his screaming children, while the officer scribbles down notes and circles our car. A few minutes later our driver accepts the ticket issued by the copper, not gladly with a nervous smile as I might have done, but begrudgingly and with a sense of defeat, knowing that this is the way things are. 

Now as we speed across town in between dead stops, Nepali people are buying colorful umbrellas at garage door shops, moving desk chairs on the backs of motorbikes and quickly navigating youngsters through bumper to bumper traffic.  Everyone with a horn is using it as if their lives depend on it, and the way they are driving, it just might! Our driver is stoic, efficient and accepting of the chaos all around us. 

On the plane from Denver to LA the woman sitting next to me was asked by the flight attendant to please put her bag completely under the seat in front of her. She turned to me and said with a touch of resentment, "What is with this false sense of security?".  However, knowing that any protest she could bring up would immediately be defeated, she did exactly as the flight attendant instructed her, just as my taxi driver took the ticket from the police officer without question. Did he resent the officer for providing a false sense of security too?

I remember telling a friend that graduate school was one of the biggest disappointments of my life.  I looked up to my professors and naively believed that they were smarter, harder working and more passionate than I. I thought that they possessed so much wisdome to impart upon me! But two years in I saw that my superiors were back-biting, insecure, and lacking in ethics.  I was disappointed in all of them and in the system that inadvertently cultivated these behavoirs. I completed my research, begrudgingly handed it to my advisor and with a sence of defeat, I walked away without my papers. 

I wonder is that what happens to individuals who grow up in a system that does not protect its people?  If the traveler next to me was resentful of seemingly unimportant regulations, and I became disillusioned after a mere twenty months at university what could happen to a person after twenty years of living within a governmental system that reneges on its promises and flaunts its corruption? Apathy? A feeling of Defeat? An acceptance of the way things are? 

I am in the birthplace of The Lord Buddha and he would say, "desire is the source of all suffering". The desire to change the way things are, causes much anxiety, true!  But if the Buddha were sitting next to me now I would ask in my entitled, first world, global view kidda way, "But is it wrong to try to make things better?"