Wandering thoughts

Saturday 2 May was a peculiar day for the school. Since the School New Year a kid had broken his arm and others needed the emergency kit.

What do to do in such cases? We call the monks for them to bless the site. We program offerings and prayers for the whole day.

The monks came the previous day to set the altar on which sits sculptures made of butter and tsampa. They represent different Buddhist symbols as well as yak heads. The altar is organized in a way to look beautiful, that’s one of the recommendations from Padmasambhava.

In the kitchen, it is very busy. A dozen of monks need to be fed for three meals, the lunch, the three o’clock brunch and the diner at 5. All teachers had also to come for lunch and to help for this puja day.

Those last days my couch has been asked for by couchsurfing members. The same day as the puja a Brazilian couple arrived from China where they visited Beijing, Xian and Chengdu. As soon as they arrived they went to discover the surroundings. They’re on a 11 months around the world travel. In China, they told me, there is other information than the one filtered and censored by the government and the blogs are unavailable. Aline asked me how, being alone, I do to stay in such a crazy city. She’d never seen such a place before. But from my own experience, the Corsican cows, the squeezed human mass of London’s tube, the Romanian atmosphere, in their own way prepared me to adapt to Kathmandu. We could also add the Thai and Hindu restaurant of Great Britain which trained my mouth to accept the dragon – samurais spicy fight. Chilis are everywhere here from breakfast to diner, from the soup up to the sweets…

Last week I hosted two Greek girls. Two teachers, one from Ithaca et the other one working for a French NGO, Solidarite, in Khartoum. The latter found the amount of dust in valley sufficiently small to be ignored compared to her adopted city on the border of the desert. This girl looks lost in her own world, landed on a moon from another galaxy. In a popular Tibetan restaurant we were served by a young kid and so I make them noticed. “To young to work, isn’t she?” But Anna had her point of view where it is good for a ten years old to work! It was 7 pm, the girl served and cleaned the pans while her relative had her bottom stick to her stool, her hands busy at nothing.

Still same Saturday as the puja, I had to meet Chokyal, a Tibetan teacher who desires to settle in France or Germany. Three years in the Education of Nepal are enough for him. He made me visit his school, HIMS, a private Indian one which is very expensive. That’s what everybody says, including Chokyal, nonetheless it provides scholarship for Tibetan orphans. Usually schools help their management with foreign funds buit, when we arrived in front of the swimming pool and I asked with which money they build it, Chokyal answered the school fees where sufficient. Black point, the use of this swimming pool is strictly restricted to HIMS’s students. Of course! Why should we share! It was same selfish speech at Srongtsen School where they have a nice football pitch with grass and secured.

Two days later I had a talk with Aava, the 21 years old niece of Miss B., who helps with accountancy, the topic she studies.

To stay in front of her is a delicious torture. It is with soft innocence that she tells me I am too skinny while she shows her pride of her fleshy tanned cheeks as well as her waist at the same time as she pinches my own cheeks and says I’m cute… Torture…

Her big dark eyes swallow me, her tiny lips charms with their twinkle. Her body language up to the tips of her fingers inspires dances from the Indian subcontinent. Today, I’m sure of this detail. She talks about her friend’s wedding which happened the previous week-end. Her sari, her make up, her smile, her good temper attracted the looks towards her young beauty. She talks about it as it was her first bal. She danced up to the end of the last tune and never she had been back home so late before: 8:30

_ 8:30 am? did I ask

She didn’t understand immediately the question

_ Yes, never I went home so late, ever

_ 8:30 am?

_ 8.30 pm! Papa is very strict !

And so, some phatasms could become reality...