The Boys' Sick Room - My Humble Abode

I’m perched high on the ridge of a Himalayan foothill, a rise thousands of feet from the valley floor. The area is densely vegetated and steep. There are monkeys and wild boar in the jungle. It seems like it would be humid and hot but for now, spring just beginning, the hillside receives cool breezes and pleasing temperatures.

Jampeling Higher Secondary School, where I teach and live, serves half boarders, half day-scholars. I’m occupying a kind of quarantine ward next to the boy’s dorm warden. My home is a large room, the size of an average American two-car garage. The décor is similar too: all concrete, cold and plain. It has a sink, another small, closet-like room where I’m meant to bathe, and another room of the same size with a squat toilet. Named for its original purpose, my home is affectionately called the Boys' Sick Room.

Like many who hear about my accommodation, when I arrived, I asked, “What happens if a boy gets sick while I’m living in here?”

“Boys don’t get sick, sir.”

“Never?”

“Never, sir. All year, maybe one boy feels a little ill. He does not need the Sick Room though. Now the girls, they get sick! So many girls get sick. We need the Girl’s Sick Room very much.”

I’m not going to feign open acceptance of this concrete barracks. Though I was forewarned that I’d be in a remote area with little services, I was duped by the powers-that-be, those who arranged my teaching position and accommodation, that the Boy’s Sick Room wasn’t that bad.

“You have a modern toilet, a sink, and a geezer,” a woman explained. “It’s rare to have a geezer in your accommodation.”

“A geezer?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“Oh, of course. You’ll have hot water all the time.”

Befuddled, I considered what I was missing: Geezer. Geezer?

Ah.

Geyser. Water heater.

The geezer, a tank perched high in a room that must be a shower room but resembles more a solitary confinement cell, produced a wonderful outpour of scalding hot water, for nearly seven seconds. Then there was a deep gurgling noise, a choking, a death gasp, and the stream came to a halt. The cold water however, came in a frigid deluge, copious enough to make a polar beer hypothermic. And there I was, naked as a jaybird, hoping for a hot shower.

But I came prepared. As part of the teacher orientation in Thimphu, I was told that I needed an immersion boiler (the term was about as familiar to me as a hot water geezer.) I purchased the thing, but was reassured by Karma—the name of the man dropping us off at our sites, not the concept of eternal comeuppance—that I would not need the immersion boiler as per the glories of the geezer. Good thing I didn’t believe in Karma.

After shivering a bit, drying off, and dressing, I confronted the immersion boiler, a metal coil connected to a wire that is meant to be plugged into the wall. The whole contraption is then supposed to be dumped into a bucket of water in order to heat it up. My understanding of electricity is basic to say the least. Still, I’ll wager that electrifying a metal coil and throwing it into a bucket of water isn’t the safest of methods to produce bathwater.

When in Rome.

I tended to the immersion boiler carefully as, in the very same conversation that the powers-that-be told us to purchase one, they also included, “Do NOT test the heat of the water by putting your finger in when it’s still plugged in. There have been several deaths from electric shock when people do this.” Then, to allay our fears, they added, “But don’t worry. None of those deaths were foreign teachers.”

Luckily, the immersion boiler only produced the faintest of sounds like a turn-of-the-century electric chair. When steam started to rise from the bucket, I disconnected Sparky from the wall, tested the water (tepid), did not die, and proceeded to strip down (again) and give myself a bucket bath.

Here’s where any romanticizing of living in “The Happiest Country in the World” goes on hiatus. I believe Americans, even those most critical of said citizens, like I am, consider hot showers a basic human right. Perhaps such a small percentage of Americans venture abroad solely based on the fact that they cannot be assured that heavenly promise of limitless hot water at the start or end of a long day. The courage it takes to climb El Capitan or navigate a country where you do not know the language is minor compared to what is needed to stand naked in a concrete room and dump quarts of tepid water on you in the name of personal hygiene. I’d not bathe at all for the year if it was socially acceptable. But alas, I am an anomaly enough around here already and do not need to add an aura of stench to announce my arrival. So I dump the water on top of me and scream and dump and scream, and summon up enough courage to stop in the frigid air and lather up. Then I repeat with the minor pours until there is a theory of cleanliness about me. The light film of soap that is always left serves as an effective deodorant.

The first time I went about this process to its completion, I realized that an ambidextrous approach is best; if you only use your right hand for the pouring, that same hand and arm never gets rinsed and you are left with an arm covered in soap and no more hot water with which to get the soap off. I also learned later on, when I let the immersion boiler really heat the water in the bucket, that scalding water poured over one’s head in small amounts is also not enjoyable. I’ve since found a comfortable median, but it does not change the fact that when I am not pouring I must stand in the cold air, soaked to the bone, my only relief a quart at a time of warm water.

The “modern” toilet in the Boy’s Sick Room is a squat toilet whose only novelty that can be considered modern is its flush. Gone are the days where one need to fill a bucket with water and wash one’s fecal matter down the porcelain maw. The modern concept of a flush serves that purpose. Unless of course, the flush doesn’t work and only trickles the faintest of streams around an island of filth, as is the case in the Boy’s Sick Room. Then the pouring of water from a bucket comes in handy.

A day in to my stay in the Boys' Sick Room, the water stopped working all together. I think I maxed out the capability of the plumbing, what with expecting to both bathe and have water to drink. The Boy’s Sick Room has never had to entertain such a prima donna. I addressed the lack of water with the point-person that I am supposed to address such issues with. As if sensing the dilemma he came and kindly asked, “Is everything working fine, sir?”

To which I responded, “Actually, sir, the water has stopped working.”

“Yes, sir. And the geezer, sir?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really work either.”

“Really, sir? I think that maybe it does, sir.”

We walked into solitary, and I showed him the lack of water, hot or otherwise.

“But everything else works, sir?”

I thought critically of what other items he might be considering, items that either work or don’t work. The stove, that I purchased, works. The tiny space heater that I purchased, did not work; it lasted about a half day, sputtering and whining and then cantankerously clunking to a stop. For all intents and purposes the Boys' Sick Bed worked, and the Boy’s Sick Tables and Chairs that they provided me with were sufficient for sitting and placing things on.

“Yes, it all works.”

“Excellent, sir. I am glad.”

Then, without another mention of the water, he walked off, pleased that I had a functioning bed and tables.

The water goes out every three weeks or so. I’m told it’s a long hike to the water source and when there is a break in the line—often from cattle herders who divert the water into troughs—someone needs to take it upon himself to hike up there and fix the break. There is no town service to do this, the teachers or the principal himself must go up there to connect the water. Since this area is developing, people are also tapping into our line and taking the water into their own homes. This doesn’t stop the water entirely from reaching the Boys' Sick Room—which is the end of the line. Rather, I get the last dregs of water, the surviving stream after numerous syphoning and stealing from the Jampeling water line. When it’s dinnertime and many people are using the water, I only get tear drops from the tap. Conversely though, when no one is using the water, usually late at night, my tap hisses, all the pressure of the entire line culminating in a piercing treble right at the back of the Sick Room.

The power goes out much more frequently than the water. Everyone has candles and flashlights on hand for such occasions. I have my trusty headlamp, though I am not seasoned enough yet to remember to keep it in the same place. When the lights suddenly go out and I am left standing in the dark, I grope blindly around the room until I encounter it again. It’s a fun little game.

Mine’s a quaint existence. I’m told that by Bhutanese standards I live in a “semi-urban” area. There are a few shops around, all selling the same staples: onions, potatoes, chilies, tomatoes, ramen noodles, lentils, eggs, processed cheese, Lays potato chips (masala flavored), betel nut, Coca-Cola. Fruit is hard to come by. So is alcohol since I live close to a dry college campus. My meals are plain and I often eat the same thing every meal of the day for days in a row. Luckily I am invited to eat with neighbors often, which breaks the routine of egg and potato. They know where to get meat, a feat that I still haven’t figured out myself.

All’s good though. When I catch a rat scurry across my floor, or a giant spider perches above me while I bathe, I remind myself that this experience is exactly what I hoped for. I wanted to get out into a remote region of the world, to live in a way that is starkly different than my American life. There is some good learning to be done when all is new, different, and uncomfortable. And I am relishing just how different it is.

As an aside, I’ve been in Jampeling for a month and a half now. It’s cold season here and in every class I teach there are at least three or four students who cough throughout the period. Some days students are absent, the day-scholars at home in their beds, cared for by their mothers. As one would expect, the boarding students are also absent at times, girls and boys. I know the girls are off in the Girls' Sick Room, being taken care of by the matron. But the boys, they have to go back into the dorm room where it smells like teenage male hormones, where their buddies are loud and obnoxious and lack real pity or desire to help their suffering friend. When I see that the boys are absent from some illness, do I feel bad that they have no quiet place to recover, no warm bed away from the dorm rooms? Hell no. The Boys' Sick Room is my home. They better get their asses back to the dorms.

Besides, boys don’t get sick anyway.