Demi Tour of the World

2007 ? Men from the West you’re late. We, in Nepal, are the year 2064, plus at least 3 hours 3/4 earlier to get the so needed rays of the sun on this december.

I did put my diary on side. A nice little booknote handmade in India given as a present by Stepahnie, Nawel and Marie, volunteers at the Festivart 2007. By the way  thanks to all the volunteers, thanks for their smiles and the warmth.

22 november I went towards my Hindu-french diary again moved I was by a tempestuous day.
On the morning, 7h30 a.m. I was at school. I came in the diner room feeling as if an unidentified object was missing on a familiar shelf, as if an unplanned event in was occruing in the middle of routine : Mrs Bijaya was sitting on the last table, supervizing the borders’ breakfast.  The thing is Mrs Bijaya never arrived that early, not even Miss Tsultrim who’s living in situ is downstairs that early. So I thought about a kind of swapped shift as I walked to Mrs B.. Once sat beside her, she first smiled at me as usual in the typical asian way, then said “Miss Tsultrim is at the Hopital” “Really ?” “Yes, she’s got a very painful stomach-ache, it started in the middle of the night”. “And the border had to carry her” did she added with a grin outlining Miss T. overweight. It happened that our headmaster, in hungriness open a fridge but not the can from which she ate fish. Later she admitted not knowing when this can has been opened. That’ll teach her ! In consequence she’ll have to stay one day and night in observation at the BnB (the name of the hospital, in reference to the two mains doctors initials and will fast for the week.

The incident put the teachers team in a sensitive mood. The routine was changed. Mrs. B. took Miss T’s role as welcomer of the whole students in lines in front of her, and started to make them pray (though not to Miss T’s salvation and everybody went to work, ut slower than usual.
Caught by the draughts in the school: a cold, which also gave me a persistent headache and a troubled stomach but the lunchtime came quick. As usual Dal Bat, Bat for Rice and Dal for a spicy lentils soup/sauce. Children ask for more chilly as it was sweets! Yummy !

An hour and a half later Sumitra, the cook, gonged her gong, time to go back on the benches. But while children went upstairs, Miss Bijaya’s face suddenly turned pale, shouted something that nor Pema (the Science teacher) nor I had understood, running to the first floor. So we followed, and again i tried to imagine what was happening. Some children have formed a thick circle, I thought of some dogs or rats intruders but two teachers emerged from the wall of students carrying a boy downstairs. his eyes lost, his neck and legs without strength but his two armed hardenned like wood, like a troll caught by sunlight.
They carried him in tne teachers room. Nobody knew what to do. From laying they made him sat, holding him, and he vomitted with not enough impulse to save him from the gravity consequences. They said Tashi, the unlucky boy was pushed. It was while Tashi’s arms started to relaxed progressively that Mrs. B. explained me it wasn’t the boy’s first time, that nobody pushed him and that he
’s got difficulty with the right side of his body. He can walk alone but slowly, his right arm’s weak but his right hand’s weaker. The first time such an incident happened, the parents arrived furious at a boy who supposedly push their son, in fact he had tried to help him. In consequence, Mrs. B. and the other teacher prefered to wait for the family unreachable by phone. I asked if it would be possible to call an ambulance, I was made understant it was a silly  thought, even a clinic is not far from the school.
The child, very calm, was now able to sit down on his own, and stretched his right arm, obviously used to the situation.
After 15 minutes waiting for some relatives an aunt arrived, being sorried for her nephew’s faith, and said the mother was her way… she arrived 10 minutes later. She wouldn’t admit her son experience this kind of incident home but at the same time she took holy medecine from her bag, herbs blessed by a Rinpoche, to give to Tashi plus several holy necklaces. I thought of epilepsy and my eyes grabbed the mother’s hair just shampooed, their very end still wet and dropping on the floor, that would explain her being late…
The small family went towards the monastery, the boy on his auntie’s back, and may be later towards a hospital. Not sure at all, the family’s very poor, and in Nepal there’s no national health insurance.

At the end of such a day’s school, Mrs Bijaya had to open her wounded heart to me and she told me the story of her adoptive daughter. She was full of tears but to proud to let them flow. I felt the stream of tears too. She also told me her own life, the words chasing her smile which came back fiercefully after each attack. Natural asian smile.
This reminded me about an american woman at the reading room who’s story moved me too. She’d been a cook, a non and many other things. With her 40 years experience of Nepal she told me Nepali people are no happy as thgey used to be… by the time I wondered if she compared the Nepali people’s mood to her own, so unhappy she seemed, vanquished by fatalism, where as she first arrived in Nepal in her happy hopeful youth.