Living for the Other...

It felt a little like summer break from middle school years of yore. When I ended my morning class, it was all I could do to not dance back to the apartment. Six straight days of teaching finally over and a break at hand. Sun warm on my face, breeze slight blowing crispy yellow leaves across the uneven pavement, nothing to do but check the mail.

Which, predictably, I did.

Only to find a wrinkled, nearly soft, slip of paper declaring my mother's package had arrived. I glanced at my watch... less than an hour before the post office closed for the week long holiday.

In unthinking haste, I grabbed my wallet and my keys, raced across campus, banged on the door of the bus pulling away from our school gate... then sat, stomach churning as the bus proceeded in the slowest possible fashion to downtown... leaped off at the nearest stop, wiggled through rivers of pilgrims, played frogger through noisy traffic, rounded the corner, jumped over the steps, and breathlessly handed my package slip to the girl at the counter. Who also glanced at her watch... but I had made it.

So box in hand I causally flagged down the bus rounding the corner. Packed. I sighed and squeezed up near the front and wished that the small shy Tibetan girl would just move her bag a few inches so that I could sit on the stained mat covering the low front of the bus. I muttered something about too many people in English and she politely said, sorry, and moved her bag. Are you a tourist, a student, or a teacher? she asked. I'm a teacher, and you? I'm a student. Where? At the blind school. Shocked, I ducked my head to glance under her too low cap and realized that the reason she hadn't moved her bag when I got on was because she didn't know that I'd gotten on. She couldn't see hardly anything at all.

And so the wandering found me on a crowded, butter smelling bus and I met Droma.

As the bus chugged-gasped along we shared phone numbers and agreed to have tea at the earliest opportunity.

Later that day a phone call invited me to a banquet and canceled my afternoon class to my inescapable joy. In celebration, I dragged a blanket and a glass of iced tea outside to accompany me as I read a book in the sun and wished that the rest of my days could be spent just like that.

But it wasn't to be. There were banquets to attend.

Arrival was predictably far too early and I spent about half an hour milling around a hotel parking lot trying not to look as out of place as I felt. Come to find out there was a reason for feeling such as there were only nine other foreigners invited to the annual Lhasa city foreign workers banquet this year. I sighed, another long hour of random foods and too much toasting as my ears bleed from the terribly loud speakers. Everyone in China is at least partially deaf.

Eventually, I sat at my assigned seat at my table numbered seven, conveniently located squarely behind a pole so as to block anyone's knowledge that I had actually showed up. I chatted with one foreigner to my right about the odd array of foods, made a game of getting the man sitting diagonal to me to smile, discretely counted the number of pictures the man directly across from me took of himself posing holding a wine glass (17), stood up and sat down about a dozen times, dished out soupy radishes for my table mates, and tried to avoid getting wine spilled on me.

To my left sat our translator, a slim Tibetan woman with a patient face, who was quite obviously bored.

And so the wandering found me in a gaudily decorated banquet hall with too much wasted food where I was forced to be and I met my second Droma of the day.

I know you won't be surprised when I tell you that within a few exchanges we had shared phone numbers and agreed to meet for tea at the earliest opportunity.

They don't care.

And it's not just the book that they don't care about, or the lesson, or the topic, or the grammar point I'm writing on the board because of the hundredth mistake they've made with it... They don't even care about themselves. I thought at precisely 11:56 this morning.

They are the dirtiest group of students I've ever had, clothes unwashed and soiled hair, they sleep and fidget their way through class, smoke and scream their way through the break, and can't be bothered to so much as glance at their books much less take notes from the board by the second half of class. The only question they have for me is in regards to whether they have my permission to leave early. Yes, just go, if everyone leaves early then I can to.

The moment I knew I was defeated was when I chose to look at my watch rather than their constantly vacant visages and debated if I could legitimately end the class twenty-five minutes early. The truth was it had already ended.

I walked in seeping with joyful residue from an awesome yesterday, a pumpkin scone success story for breakfast, and a good prior class, and left feeling like someone had scraped my insides out with a rusty spoon and then beat me with it until my head throbbed.

My headache lingered the rest of the afternoon, through a lunch with students who I loved so much and was so grateful for their contrast to the other class that it could have been heaven, though a mountain of copies to be made at the copy shop down the street where they never charge me full price, lingered through my petition for grace when I saw that one of the beggar children I consider my own bawling on the street corner one shoe off. But by the time those things had passed my head-heart ache was threatening to become a real problem.

A real problem met head on when the very class who had successfully stolen my joy was lined up near the school gate, shouting my name and begging me to accompany them to some dance competition. It would have been too easy for me to refuse. So, of course, and as proof of my slightly psychotic tendencies, I didn't.

I hopped on the bus and by the time we had arrived at the intended location my bag had become a deposit for at least a dozen cell phones and mp3 players weighing so much I had to carry it as one would a package. We walked into the auditorium, up the stairs, over to some bleachers where immediately the class dispersed and I was left sitting with about six of the thirty-two students I had come with. The terrible dancing, pounding repetitive song clips, and microphone crackling Chinese was doing nothing for my headache, nor was the sight of students from this class sneaking out slowly one by one. I asked the student next to me if she liked dancing. No, she replied, I like sleeping and drinking beer.

Finally, it ended, the remaining students materialized out of no where, cell phones were given back to their owners and we crammed onto a bus headed back to our school. I felt sick but was still hopeful for some positive result. On the bus, their singing overpowered the blaring radio and we sputtered through the school gate as they were screaming the English alphabet song to an acute combination of my confusion and amusement.

Back at the apartment with heavy metal door safely shut tight behind me, I sank and my headache intensified dramatically upon the realization that I was no farther along at understanding or reaching out to this class than I had been before a techo song about cowgirls got stuck in my head.

What do they care about?

When the minivan, which had been accidentally dropping packages out of the back door most of the way there, finally stopped we stepped out into the haze of tire and street dust and stared up at the huge, freshly painted gate declaring the birthplace of the famous Tibetan king: Songtsen Gampo. We knew we had reached our final destination.

But really we hadn't. Instead we walked through the gate and into the small deserted town and spoke with the only two gentlemen for miles. Oh you want to see his birthplace... you're going to need a car. My student suggested we take out a loan.

So about a dozen barley fields, an uncountable number of yaks, one short and scary tractor ride, one grandmother watching cows, one minuscule town composed of one tea house and one police station, maybe a hundred pictures, the greenest mountains and the bluest sky you've ever seen, and about six kilometers later we showed up at a building that was perhaps the only one built within the last century we'd seen all day. At last, our final destination.

The only incident marking that time of note was when one student proceeded to proudly show of his new movie star sunglasses only to have the left lens pop out and land on the street to his wild exclamation of "oh my mother!" The mountains chortled with green laughter and the stream nearby went wild with giggles and the yaks raised their heads to guffaw and I had to sit down because I was laughing too hard to stand. And how much were those glasses? chirped my other student, one yuan?

Once inside our final destination, the elaborately painted memorial hall, like a jelly bean dropped in a sandbox, we realized that maybe it wasn't our final destination after all. Just a nearly empty building with a few extremely amusing life size replicas of important events from the king's life which my students enjoyed interacting with immensely. After we had climbed to the roof and surveyed the courtyard, in which stood only some weeds and a few odd mud bricks, from every possible angle we went back out to see what else there was to do. And to find a new final destination.

Turns out there was nothing to do. Everyone in the surrounding village was hard at work harvesting barley and though they said that there were many tea houses and many cars that could take us back we never did see any of them. We decided that the top of a hill would become our final destination and we climbed up up up past tiny purple flowers, flocks of chickens, and matted prayer flags to have a rest. The breeze was light but didn't conceal the sure signs of sunburn to come, and the crisp white clouds moved across the shocking blue sky like a circus train of wild contorting animals and disappeared over the green mountain peaks. I was content for this to be my final destination.

But it wasn't long before "oh my bola" my students were hungry and so we set off in search of a tea house final destination. Back through the fields, over the streams, past the stacks of harvested barley to the only tea house there was anywhere in the valley. Lunch, simple and predictable, sunflower seeds covered the floor, my students quizzed me with English pronunciation questions and we grew to realize that this could no more be our final destination than the memorial hall was. We needed to get back to the main road and my student again suggested we take out a loan. To which my other student wondered who would give a loan to someone who could only afford one yuan sunglasses.

Bellies full and sky still bright we set off again for our final destination... which of course would only be temporary since what we really wanted was a bus back to Lhasa. The grandmother tending cows remained exactly where we had left her that morning and since she was the only person we had seen that afternoon we decided to enlist her to take our photo. Crippled hands numbly clutched my camera and she looked right at us and grinned toothlessly as she proceeded to take about a dozen pictures of the ground near her feet. The one picture she managed to get of us reveals a scene where laugher cannot be controlled and after which we had to have a rest just to catch our breath. Maybe such a state of fierce hilarity should have been our final destination.

Of course it wasn't. So we skipped and sang and laughed in the breeze until we reached the deceptively large front gate which we had first mistaken for our final destination. A snack of some apples as we waited on the stoney streetside in the "oh my bola it's hot" sun for a bus, car, truck, donkey, anything heading back to Lhasa revealed our true weariness. By the time the large long distance bus pulled up with only two seats available we were happy to squeeze three into them and call the bus our final destination.

Back in Lhasa, a bright valley surrounded by sheets of rain, we ate a dinner of greasy noodles and one student insisted on a summary of our trip. This is the second trip of my life, he started, Ms. Kelly you were also there for the first. I think it is very happy. But next time we should do some more research.

Why?

We didn't know anything about our final destination. It could have been disappointing.

Which is when it dawned on me: yes, indeed it does pay to know something of our final destination.

Visions of a kingdom with only Glory as its light danced in my dreams that night... perhaps it did for those students too.

The streets were blanketed in oozing mud slid down from the mountain during the last night's rainstorm of surprising ferocity. Shop keepers were digging out their front steps, mud hunks were flying from careless shovels, and the already tremulous buses sputter slid through it all. I occupied the front seat of one, thankful I hadn't attempted a bike ride this morning.

Slippery steps up to my student's sister's single room tidier than I had ever seen it. I was greeted by a steaming cup of sweet milk tea and a bashful student blinking behind thick glasses. She spent the next hour describing at curious, though exciting, length about each of her teachers and her recent classroom experiences of note. I finally remembered the plastic bag brought through the mud containing some very precious Books which her sister had asked for but I had been unable to give at the time. Her words of gratitude for the small bag were echoed by own gratitude to the One whose timing is always right.


A heavily cologne scented jeep and a very interesting Chinese colleague and I arrived at a hotel restaurant with scant parking just in time for a birthday party of a Chinese girl who I've only met once but who insisted I join them. Uncomfortably formal chairs occupied by total strangers dotted an overly large table that was already filling up with the typical odd combination of Chinese dishes that adorn random events like jewels in a crown. Most difficult to swallow: a delightful dish of popcorn and deep fried cicadas. Happy Birthday.

The man immediately to my right, shocked into a dull stupor at the assertion that I don't drink alcohol, decided instead to regale me with his flashy new cell phone. One of the applications: a digital copy of the Book in Chinese. He admitted to reading it occasionally, though his expression upon hearing that I read it every day foreshadowed a more investigative future approach and made even the crispy cicadas and awkward birthday singing go down smoothly.


Later, as I sat on a cushion in a dark room and drank bitter tea across from a table cut out of a tree, my stomach gurgled but I begged my interesting colleague to tell me a story anyway. He spoke of always being different, of always feeling that there was something inside of him that wasn't the same even when he was small. He talked of light meeting light and how some people are like radios and if you are on the same station music comes out. I swished the tea in my mouth and silently asked my Father to become the right station for this man.


Tired of being the object of intense scrutiny of the man scratching his nose less than a foot from me, I insisted we just buy the books and leave the small charmingly disorganized shop. We ended up in a nondescript tea house that we always end up in where another friend proceeded to tell a story of his latest mishap with such vigor that sweet milk tea ended up all over his pants, my shoes, and the floor. His hometown dialect being so far removed from the Lhasa vernacular resulted in the amusing situation in which I chatted with the tea house owner about how messy the boy was while he struggled to understand. He gave me a pen, and promised another tea, and we left with the road wide for future opportunities of conversations of more eternal value.

The sky was black to the east as storm clouds tickled the mountains and I perched on a slightly warped bus seat. I stared through the grubby window as the mucky street still thick with mud rolled by. The nomad baby squealed in the seat beside me and the bus driver turned up the static riddled tune wishfully advising: a better day when night belongs to dawn, you gotta be strong... a better day will come. I glanced up. There, so faint I squinted and squirmed to see it better, there nearly concealed by a patch of cloud, there, surely there... a rainbow. The first I've ever seen in Lhasa.


Like one who finds deep fried cicadas in their popcorn bowl. :)

I didn't recognize her because she came up the stairs too quickly and too quickly began to beat and get beaten by another girl. Screams were heard and hair fell to the floor in clumps. When the blood began to run I felt myself get dizzy. We couldn't leave because we were trapped in our same corner. The fighting escalated, blood spattered the walls and pooled on the floor, two men bounded up the narrow stairs to join the fray.
I didn't recognize her because her face was covered in pouring blood and she was dodging tables being thrown and getting kicked in the stomach. The sound of body meeting body and bones crunching and slaps and stools hitting faces made my stomach swim and my eyes drip with tears. We stood shaking in our same corner, food long forgotten, the narrow stairs too far away.
I didn't recognize her until other people arrived and made a get away path for us to the stairs and she turned her bloody, deep red face and stained clothing to me and said, "Oh Ms. Kelly, don't be afraid."

I nearly fainted. My student.

Tashi

Her short dusty hair painfully snarled around colored rubber bands and her chin barely high enough to reach the wobbly teahouse table top, she stretched one tiny dirt encrusted hand up to us. Her dark eyes shifted around the room as she mumbled her broken requests for money and her slim lip quivered under the oncoming flood of snot. Her vacant face was nearly obscured by the shred of tissue passed to her as she tilted her head upward and blew into it. A sodden tissue removed and a grubby face reappeared. She swayed, almost sat, pulled herself up to the edge of the table before trotting wearily back out the door. Her stained pink jacket disappeared into the blinding Lhasa daylight and left a stained pink shadow where she had stood.

Gamachuni

The oblong pale pink bundle was completely covered when it landed in my lap. A thin paisley printed scarf lifted revealed the newest Tibetan baby I had ever beheld. Face round and pale like a bowl of butter tea and features so tiny they might have not been there at all. Only face and blanket... perhaps only face. Pink mouth open and gasping for breath in this place of scant air with little help from a nose so small it may have only been painted on. Eyes only slits barely able to open squinting dark eyes rolling around. No sound save for breathing. No dimples save the two seen by a doting father alone.

Juktsa

Tousled dark hair peeping over the rim of a huge metallic garbage container. His name called out created a scramble amid scraps of food, bits of paper, and flies. His torn plastic backpack hung nearly empty and his sweaty stained fist clutched the entire days earnings of small notes as he lept over the sticky smelly rim. His laughter betrayed his embarrassment as he rubbed his free hand on his formerly red and white sweater vest only barely concealing the thinness of his small frame. His stomach forced him to sheepishly ask for bread and his dark flashing eyes could not seem to make contact with those of the bread giver who politely looked away as she hands the warm bag to him. His ages unwashed face grinned widely in appreciation and he scampered off in a cloud of filth to eat.

Cipando

A pale yellow green speck of dirt seen at a distance on a gray street. Her face literally lit up in recognition of the pale stranger and she dashed through small puddles of dank street water to receive an equally pleased greeting. Her stiff short hair makes her gender a guessing game for the untrained eye, but her smile of sudden comfort and safety as my hand blackens from rubbing her back bathed the senses in young sweet femininity. Her small sun and filth darkened hand is only big enough to clasp one of my fingers and together we walked over to the fried bread stall nearby. She stood close and leaned backwards against my leg, her round head only arriving at knee level, and watched the bread fried just for her. She stared in unrestrained disbelief as if by looking away it might disappear. The warm sack of bread hugged to her body and she refused to say good bye.

And I had my thousand text messages.

They were all a slight variation of a familiar theme: Happy Teacher's Day teacher.
The winner of the most surprisingly redneck award going to: teacher: what are you doing now? we are drinking beer in a tent.

But after several years of teacher's days, along with a variety of random other Asian holidays, there are enough tales to make even Scheherazade green with envy. Well, who needs years? After even one....

Tales of students who come to your home on an evening only to thank you profusely an in an uncannily non-linear way for changing their hearts. After I know you my everything becomes change. I am not the same anymore. Even my mother says this.

Tales of classes spent explaining America in the 1960's to a group of Chinese and Tibetan kids who struggle with words like 'shadow'. It was a difficult and complicated time, similar to here now.

Tales of tea house owners who laugh too loudly and slap you on the shoulder and are pleased as punch that they can communicate with foreigners. What? Welcome welcome welcome you back.

Tales of school banquets where the real festivity lies in watching your colleagues reel from too much alcohol in too short of a time and your school leader spill wine all over himself only to not notice. Kelly I'm so drunk.

Tales of drunk officials not even joking about marriage proposals for his one son and I, insistent despite my obvious discomfort. Don't you want to be a part of my family?

Tales of young Chinese volunteer teachers all alone and experiencing the same suffering of being different in a different place. I will try to make the best of it, but I miss my friends and family.

The Shah would never sleep again....

The little Tibetan boy with impish features and two adorable dimples squealed as he tipped over the wobbly table and pulled the towel off the otherwise bare wooden bench. His hair brushed neatly to the side only served as an ironic touch to his otherwise carefree demeanor. He chattered and could not stand still and giggled as he played a violent hide and go seek and breathlessly chirped "nga sheagimeh, nga sheagimeh" when threatened by impatient others in the tea house.

Nga sheagimeh.

Maybe it was the dusty boxes in hand, or the lights left on, or the piles of work left to do, but when the door to my apartment slammed shut behind me immediately my heart sank. My keys were on the other side of that locked door. So was my cell phone. So were all of my afternoon plans.

Nga sheagimeh.

It was pouring down rain when I, wearing only house slippers, ran ashamedly down the filthy concrete steps to pound on my friend's apartment door. After a quick phone call to the person who had the spare keys, who also happened to be in another city until later that evening, I found out that my friend was a friend indeed. We cracked walnuts in the door frame, ate grapes, looked at pictures of her daughter, ate dinner together, waited, and bemoaned my fate until the man with the keys arrived... five hours later.

Nga sheagimeh.

And so I don't know what the next day holds, I can't be sure of its happenings, it could bring elation, it could bring despair, it could bring another potential disaster turned opportunity. Nevertheless, I join in chorus with the rascally Tibetan boy and sing: Nga sheagimeh.

I am not afraid.

On the fifth day of my third year in Lhasa my eyes beheld the work of the Holy, and I nearly didn't believe them.

The same tea house I've been to a hundred times, the same worn rickety wooden benches, the same dented thermoses of sticky sweet tea, the same plate of gristly meat and soft potatoes, the same mutant stains on the same bowed ceiling, the same leaky cup of spice sharing room with the same splintery chopsticks on the same peeling wooden table, the same nonchalant waitress serving the same crazy grandfather, and my dear wide-eyed friend wiping her lips.

Lips which astounded me with advice such as 'Your buddha Yesu will give you what you need, never worry.'

And then continued to astound me by retelling the good news to me, bit by bit, recollected from a movie she had watched with tears streaming down her face this past summer. It was good news, made better somehow by the fact that she was the one telling me. She doesn't believe in His uniqueness... yet. But Him, well she loves Him.

In another familiar teahouse later that same day I coughed and my eyes burned through the cigarette smoke of the rowdy boys at the next table, even the peach wielding monkey on a nearby poster cringed. When the boys crowded out and the haze lifted I was left peering over soupy bowls of noodles into the deep brown eyes and long black braid of a student who I have come to love deeply and the image of her thin frame prostrating before an idol still belongs to my nightmares. In the middle of a conversation about magazine articles she had read that summer I chanced to bring up a little book I had read, which compared her master and mine. In eagerness, she asked to borrow it and, in a flow of emotion I barely had time to process, she outlined the birth and development of her desire to learn more about the One I serve. I want to study about Him, Ms. Kelly. Of course.

A cigarette smoke filled hole transformed into a sanctuary. A nightmare transformed into a miracle.

And on this fifth day of my third year in Lhasa I retired to my indefinitely packed suitcases in my temporary housing in my altogether stressful and discouraging situation and rested in amazement at the work of the Holy my eyes had seen and quite nearly didn't believe.

A wooden bench which boasted only the meager comfort of a think colorfully covered pad of foam nestled in the back corner of a tea house became the site of miracles when three filthy beggar children marched through the door. They know me. They know that I have written their names down, bought them countless bottles of milk, tickled them, held them, and always have time for them. They call me the 'hello hello' one.

Therefore, the bench wasn't surprised when the three little dirty ones wrestled to share it with me. My student, occupying the opposite bench, wasn't either. The oldest boy with grubby hands and stiffened hair told story after story, emptying his heart then his pockets to show and tell us all he had in a rush that belied the thought that he may never get such a captive audience again. My student translated where my Tibetan failed. The second girl sat placidly in my lap, obviously too exhausted to make a peep and nearly nodding off as I rubbed the back of her stained yellow sweater. The smalled girl giggled and pushed between our legs under the table and the bench sighed with expectancy.

The bench wasn't surprised but I was when the oldest boy admitted he was hungry and my student jumped up and went with him outside to buy some bread for the three of them. My student who had no money to speak of and barely enough to feed himself with. When he returned with the bread it was alarming and heart breaking to watch the two little girls so hungry that I had to peel the paper wrapping off of the bread so that they wouldn't eat that as well. Within three minutes all of the bread was gone.

When the children skip dragged themselves out of the door a little while later I heard the bench moan in their absence and I looked at my student and told him about a name.

A name of One who always let the children come to him. A name of One who not only gave bread but was bread. A name that evokes power and love and sacrifice. My student, both shocked and shy that I would compare his actions to such a name, glanced at me bashfully and whispered 'I know' in such a way that made me confident of how much more he desired to know.

A bench left unsurprised and dirty. A student left to commune with a name. A name left to resound throughout the land. A teacher left to praise. Praise praise praise.