Tibet Post #3 - Life on the Plateau

Monday, June 20

I may have spoken too soon about the butter in the tea. Perhaps my family was trying to ease me into this particular unpleasant experience by avoiding it in the first week, but now it's with an air of providing me a great treat that I'll often be presented with a steaming bowl full to the brim with large lumps of butter melting away at the surface. It is not very tasty.

Otherwise, though, things have only been getting better around here as I've become accustomed to my new environment. The days are passing peacefully as I continue to help with the rebuilding around the neighbourhood. A few new updates to share:

1. A lot of the Chinese workers left. People were speculating that they had too much trouble working on the high altitude / low oxygen plateau or else maybe had some problems with the locals. On the surface there's a tolerant harmony established between the Han Chinese and the Tibetans, but tensions occasionally rise up from underneath I guess. In any case, nobody seems to know the specifics of the sudden departure, but it seems to me to be quite a blow to the already slow-moving recovery process. I feel for all the people who now have even longer to wait for a house to move into, but the people themselves appear to have no limits to their patience on this matter (and many others). Most here are in no rush for anything at all, even as they mop lakes of rainwater from the middle of their tents, from which they can see clear across one side of the town to the other with no buildings around to block the view.

2. My host sister left for a few days to pick up a new Chilean volunteer from the nearest airport (a 3 day task at minimum), so I was left without an English-speaking translator. This, I very much enjoyed, as my host mother and I had to get very creative with hand gestures, and I picked up a great deal more Tibetan words out of necessity.

3. The school has been on holiday since I arrived. This isn't typical holiday time in the rest of the country, but in this particular area some valuable type of caterpillar can be found and harvested right in these few weeks, so the schools are closed to allow the children to help their families with the hunt. It's hard to get a complete description of what exactly the caterpillars are used for, but I've been told it's like medicine to give strength. People will put them in their drinks to stay healthy. I'm not sure in what form they're added (crushed? powdered? chopped? whole??), but there must be a lot of faith in them as they're very expensive.

So, even though my project here was originally intended to be teaching, I've been perfectly content to be working on earthquake recovery efforts instead and found myself not at all disappointed to hear that the school, instead of opening back up today, won't resume classes until the 24th (perhaps there are yet more caterpillars to be uncovered out there). I've been teaching English for a couple hours most evenings (between tea and dinner) to the neighbour's kids anyway, and the 1:2 ratio is pretty enjoyable.

Thus, all goes well here as I continue to enjoy the views from the elevated outdoor "toilet" (despite the traverse through a yard full of massive dogs and yaks looking to attack to reach it), am happy to be reacquainted with hot water for showers (even if they're done by bucket in the kitchen...still feels like an upgrade), and have progressed from eating with my hand to a pair of chopsticks. Feels like I've jumped at least 100 years forward in terms of the development of comforts in human history just within the past two weeks. Even my bed has an actual mattress on it!