Domestic Chores & Daily Routines

26th May

There is a student roster of daily chores, and those on kitchen duty are up early to prepare breakfast.

Sangpo: a picture of concentration
as he reads before breakfast

The daily bell monitor sounds the rising bell at 6:30am on weekdays, with the breakfast bell at 7:30am.

I have taken to rising at 6, and making a coffee (instant – Nescafe, black).  There is an electric jug in the small teachers’ office outside my room, and after a bit of effort it is now mainly white.    

An unfortunate part of morning routine is the regular appearance of a band of monkeys to ransack the rubbish bins and generally leap between trees and roofs and make a heap of noise!

If I am lucky there will be running (well, dribbling) water coming through the tap in the shower room – pressure is not sufficient to actually use the shower fixture.  Since Nate’s departure, I claimed the plastic jug and bucket he’d been using and secreted it in my room – so I now actually can tip water over me rather than just splash it with my hands.  The joys of small luxuries!!  If there is no running water to the shower room, I must carry it from the kitchen.

Early morning visitors

A few mornings’ efforts with a scrubbing brush and detergent before my shower has resulted in the tiles of the shower being green and white, as intended by their manufacturer, as opposed to shades that don’t bear description.  I also attacked the removable plastic shelf unit with the same scrubbing brush and detergent and am now reasonably comfortable to put my soap there in between applying it to my body.

Also if I am lucky there will be running water to the toilet cistern, otherwise that also needs to be carried by bucket – from the “stream” outside the school gate.  The toilet cistern is temperamental in more ways than one and it is advisable to turn off the water to the cistern otherwise the floor is likely to resemble a paddling pool.  One brings one’s own toilet paper.

If it has been a really hot night, there might have been some who chose to sleep on the roof where it is marginally cooler.  While one or two have mosquito nets, which they can string from the washing line, others don’t worry.  Tseten has a mosquito net tent, and when I went up to hand my washing early one morning, he and Deki were fast asleep in a very comfy bed in that.  I wondered whether they were seeking privacy or cool or both… I joked later with Deki about the honeymoon suite, a joke that she understood perfectly.  When I later commented about how hot I had found the night, she said she would have happily come and got me to sleep with them.  Of course. 

The honeymoon suite:  cooler on the roof.  

One morning I rose to find Nate asleep on the verandah outside his room.  He had decided that moving his mattress outside was not only cooler but helped escape the mosquitoes in his room – though it was a morning of a monkey troop visit, which had him a little worried and diving under the blankets.

Others start to rise as I am drinking my pre breakfast coffee, several climb up onto the roof to meditate or do their yoga there, Sarah also often goes up there for her morning yoga.  Others find a quiet corner for reading. Sangpo sometimes sits on the ladder opposite the office door, he is currently reading Charlotte’s Web – aloud to himself. He makes a positive picture of concentration.

Thukten meditating before breakfast

The kitchen crew are supposed to clean the dining tables, but this might be a perfunctory flick with a broom, or cloth of some indeterminate cleanliness, if anything.  I did notice one student giving the tables a good rub with a cloth, and another splashing water in the general direction of the tables to assist him yesterday and did wonder if that was a result of my surreptitious cleaning of the table at which I usually sit.

The after breakfast washing up is done in the stream – each person being responsible for their own dishes and the kitchen crew cleaning up any kitchen pots used.  An old plastic fruit sack is used as a scourer and a bar of dish soap lives in a small plastic container for this purpose.  Dishes and kitchen implements are rinsed with the cleaner water from the kitchen after their wash in the stream.

After breakfast chores for students include sweeping (with the traditional brooms made of bunches of a particular grass) of most areas but this might be haphazard, with steps being swept clear on the area below after the area below has been swept!  Classrooms get a perfunctory application of the broom.  Tables are rarely cleaned, although one classroom has a bit of old t-shirt that is used as a duster for tables, if the students sitting at the table feels in need of such application.  One classroom is sometimes used as a dining room when only a few students are present, but cleaning of the table rarely happens.  I also attacked that one with a wet soapy cloth the other day!

Sarah's pre-breakfast yoga on the roof

The main office floor gets mopped – the mop being a handle with a metal clamp arrangement into which is fixed a couple of old t-shirts.  The mop is dipped in the stream and carried, dripping, to the office where it is wiped over the floor before it is returned to the stream, rinsed and left for the following day’s use.  I guess that some dirt might be removed in this process.

The student toilet gets a bucket of water thrown in its general direction and occasionally I have seen students use a toilet brush in there.  The staff toilet also gets the floor cleaned by having a bucket of water thrown over it – which results in a lovely paddling pool but the water sweeper thing in the shower room is useful for reducing the paddling needed.  The shower room gets similar treatment by the students.  Actual cleaning of the staff toilet does not seem to be on the students’ radar – at the moment there is only Sarah and me using it, so not too much problem.

Sweeping up

The kitchen floor gets a fair bit of water on it as food is prepared and dishes are rinsed after the meal – often directly onto the floor, and this, along with food scraps landing on the floor, is swept out with the same type of brooms as are used for most other things.  Kitchen benches are supposed to be wiped, and the food preparation bench seems to receive that attention but I would not like to say what happens with the bench on which the two gas burners sit.

The kitchen crew is not in lessons for period 3 & 4 – they are preparing lunch, which is served at 1pm.  The after lunch clean up is as per the morning one, but without the general sweeping.   After lunch some washing of clothes may take place – in buckets of soapy water beside the stream, or with a scrubbing brush on the narrow concrete edge of the stream – or in the case of larger items, with a scrubbing brush on the road.  Rinsing is done in the stream, and clothes hung to dry on the roof of one of the buildings, so one’s t-shirts and undies flutter alongside the prayer flags.

We wash the dishes in the stream,  the
vehicle drivers wash their vehicles in the stream

As the weather is currently ridiculously hot on most days, students are spring cleaning their bedding before the monsoons set in.  I as fascinated to see a students take a wet cloth and wipe the big gates one day – but it was so he could put his freshly washed quilt over the gates without the quilt getting too dirty.

One of the joys of washing dishes and clothes in the stream on these outrageously hot days is standing in the stream to do so.  (Sitting would be even better, but…)

After lunch is rest time – and this is precisely what many of the students do.  It is often unbearably hot – bringing the saying “mad dogs and Englishmen…” to mind.  Then there is “self study”  The students also get “self study” periods in the morning – at the moment with only 2 teachers, we have increased our teaching from 3 to 4 lessons a day, but still cannot cover all 12 periods in the morning.  There is another self study period scheduled in the evening.

Food preparation in the kitchen

During the afternoon rest time, sometimes the boys will go to Norbulinka to the swimming pool.  It is also a good time for students to walk down to the area near the river bed where there is a piped cleaner water supply which they use for showering. 

The afternoon is mostly free for teachers, but we do of course have lessons to prepare and student work to correct.  I quite like to sit with individual students to correct their work – I think this teaches them more.  As I spend a lot of my time at the desk in the teachers’ room (the alternative is at the desk in my room or on my bed) students will bring their work as late as I am in the office as well as at weekends.  They will bring not only the work I set, but work they do for practice or communications that they wish to send.  They will also wander in before breakfast if they have something they want to check – the meaning or correct use of a word, something from what they are reading .. all sorts.  Living in the school does make us available almost 24/7.  I have heard students come into the office after I have retired for the night, just to leave work on the desk for me.  This is OK for 3 months, but I would not have wanted to do it in Bhutan for the full school year!

Washing vegetables in the "stream"

The one duty we have in the afternoon is BBC world news at 6pm – watch and interpret for the students.  We are getting heartily sick of Donald Trump.  Not all students attend the news (I don’t blame them – the sound is both too loud and awful and I often have trouble hearing properly) and basket ball just outside is a popular pastime for the boys.

Weeknight dinner is at 7pm.  The bell for end of self study goes at 9:30pm and they are officially supposed to have lights out at 10:30pm.  This means little – some often watch movies until much later.  The other day Lungrig and Tsultrim told me they went to a small waterfall for a shower around 10:30pm but were rather scared by the noises, both close and far – they mimicked the sound, clearly an animal sound, perhaps one of the cats – there are 5 big cats and 8 medium sized cats found on the Indian sub continent along with a number of smaller cats.  I found a news report that suggested a huge tiger had been shot in this general area last year.

Preparing a special dinner - all hands on deck

Meals are much more haphazard at weekends, with brunch of flatbread happening around 10:30am for those who are there, and maybe dinner, or maybe not.  If there are students around, they will usually offer to cook me something, or cook extra of what they are making for me.  Sometimes I prefer to prepare something for myself.

I was most amused one weekend, as Sarah and I were cooking vegetables for ourselves, school captain Sangpo came in to see if we needed help – but he has decided that I know what I am doing with cooking, that I am a good cook.  Anyway, he stayed to sort out the vegetable supply, which he did by dint of emptying all containers of vegetables onto the floor.  I made mention of the perfunctory floor cleaning process earlier – best not think too much about the hygienic implications of his actions!  Fortunately most of what he was sorting on the floor would be peeled.

At the weekend I wash my sheets, pillowcases and towel – in the bucket and the stream, of course.  I work on the principal that to wash them regularly might reduce the inclination of any small animals to take up residence.  I also sweep and wash my bedroom floor and that of the teachers’ office – a little less perfunctorily than the way in which the students wash the main office floor – I actually incorporate a bucket and soapy water with the use of the mop.  I also get my mattresses out to air in the scorching sunshine – both mattresses (a thin, lumpy flock one and a thin ancient foam one) have a distinctly musty odour, as do the blankets supplied in my room (but not much used, it is too hot).  Weekly airing of these is gradually improving them and is something I won’t be able to do once the monsoon sets in.  Removal of the nylon cover on the foam mattress has improved it's comfort.  I won't go into the effects of introducing the nylon cover to soapy water...