Sylvia's Journal

I visited Axel last night until the hospital appeared to close down for the night. For dinner I went down to the lobby where there is a Subway shop and purchased my very first (ever) Subway sandwich from a helpful shopwallah who explained patiently to me there was a system to putting together a Subway sandwich, going from step one to step four. I order chicken ham expecting both chicken and ham but ham but chicken ham was one thing unrelated to pork.

I took a tuktuk back to the hotel, the little motorized rickshaws that have a turning radius of about one foot. He drove through back alleys and over what seemed sidewalks, past tents where religious celebrations took place that made him laugh, or happy or both. He spoke no English but we managed to get back to the hotel in no time for a couple of dollars.

In the morning I was back at the hospital carrying two coffee lattes up to the patient. The allergy diagnosis has been discarded and now it is simply a bronchial infection that is being treated with frequent doses of antibiotics and a periodic nebulization that is done by an old and noisy machine. The doctors still say ‘a couple of days’ before they think it will clear up.

At naptime, after lunch, I walked over to the shopping center up the street. To get to this glitzy side of India I have to walk past bins overflowing with garbage and a bunch of kids looking for scraps of stuff that is either edible or salable. The stench is horrendous. On the medium strip cows move around lazily, nibbling on the occasional weed that other cows had left untouched.

Next to Axel’s hospital is an Ayurvedic hospital, complete with an emergency department which makes me wonder how Ayurvedic medicine would treat an emergency. Outside the hospital wall are life size pictures of patients receiving copious doses of oil in a variety of ways, making me even more curious. How would they treat a bronchial infection?

I wandered around the very fancy and medium fancy back to back malls looking for a place to eat and stumbled onto a sushi place. I figured I better have sushi now before the oceans are contaminated forever with Japan’s nuclear fallout and sushi restaurants will become extinct.

We are getting phone calls from our daughters. They have lifted Axel’s spirits. Although he is sick, he is well enough to be bored by the hospital routines and the food (exactly the same so far for lunch and for dinner). I brought him my leftover pizza and a tiramisu to liven up his dining experience. Only a nice glass of red wine was missing.

[another delayed post from Sikkim] We had a rather quick exit from our lovely Gangtok hotel, faster than we had planned because our plane left two hours earlier than we thought. We had to skip our last leisurely breakfast among the orchids.

Instead we received a boxed meal. And then, the car we had thought was fixed, was not. Our guide hastily arranged another car, not quite as comfy, with a railing to hold on to as if we were going for a roller coaster ride. It could have been – 100 km down the Himalayas to West Bengal’s plains where the airport is and, once again a drop in altitude of about 6000 feet.

We did the ride in a little less than 4 hours. Luck had been on our side; the old car held up well, there were no accidents on the road and it was Sunday so the traffic was light. We were told that once in a while there are drunken elephants holding up traffic where the road intersects a nature reserve down in the plains. Our guide told us stories about having to wait for hours to let the elephants rampage at a safe distance. They come out of the forest and go into the village where the local millet brew is fermenting. They like it a lot and then get drunk. The villagers must have gotten wiser and the brew is less accessible now.

We flew back in a very full Spice Jet to Delhi where a different set of clothes was needed: 33 degrees (Celsius) during the day and in the mid twenties in the evening. We met up with our two reporter friends we had met on our way out in Kabul airport. They had made reservations in a lovely Italian restaurant where real wine was served rather than the Indian substitute that didn’t quite make it to our standards for good wine.

The next morning instead of setting out for some sightseeing, Humayoon’s tomb among other things because we didn’t get to it last time, we decided to make a quick stop at a medical facility to have someone examine Axel’s lungs because he continued to have breathing problems. And then things took a different turn. Axel spent the entire day in the emergency room, first for the check out and then, once the doctor decided he needed to be admitted, waiting the rest of the day for a room.

I spent most of the day by his side, experiencing a day in an Indian emergency room. After noontime things started to pick up, one emergency after another rolled in, with tons of relatives, sometimes wailing, sometimes somber, sometimes resigned. One of Axel’s neighbors, someone’s elderly mother, after heroic efforts by at a large cast of medical characters to save her, was eventually wheeled out with a sheet over her face. It was not a peaceful death although I don’t think she was aware of the many tubes and wires that were used to bring life back to her. I am glad it wasn’t my mom.

And so we are prolonging our stay in Delhi, changing our return trip to Kabul to Friday. The doctor suspects a lung infection and an allergic reaction to Kabul’s dust (the latter did not surprise us) and prepared us for at least a 2 day hospital stay. Humayoon’s tomb will have to wait again.

Here’s a picture of Axel’s hospital dinner.

After breakfast we walked down the hill to the small village where our host teaches in the rural Grade 1-4 government school. We walked for about 45 minutes downhill, a drop of about 2000 ft. It was a sensation our bodies could not remember, rather painful after walking just a short distance. Once down we realized we would never be able to get back up. Most of the road was asphalted but the last few hundred feet down were not. If the rain started early even our car would not have been able to take us up. Luckily our hostess had noticed this and summoned our driver down to pick us up a few hours later.

Our hostess walks the 2000 feet up and down every day, half an hour each way, six days a week. She does this on slip-on sandals and takes the very steep shortcuts between the hairpins. We concluded that with the home grown organic food and the daily walks she and others like her must live very long and healthy lives. From our high perch in Sikkim most of the rest of the world suddenly looks very rotten.

We found the 64 school kids standing in four neat rows in front of the school building, each row headed by their class captain facing them. We were received, once again, with the now familiar cream-colored scarves and a bright ‘good morning’ coming from 64 high voices. The assembly routine was repeated for our benefit as we had just missed it when we struggled in on our last legs.

There was the national anthem, followed by the pledge of allegiance (to the Indian motherland and righteous living), something in a language we did not understand and then everyone was dismissed to their respective classroom.

The headmaster, a native from a village elsewhere in Western District, who came from a family of teachers, received us in a simple office that was decorated with pictures of Ghandi, Nehru and other fathers of the nation that has so little in common with Sikkim.

After that we were given the run of the school spending quality time with each of the classes. This was a little awkward because the level of English rudimentary but the students stood up politely each time we asked a question and then stared at the ground or giggled at each other.

As soon as we pointed at something on the wall, the English alphabet, the Nepali alphabet, the numbers or a chart with letters and words, the children broke out in spontaneous, collective and rhythmic recitation of whatever we pointed at. They knew how to do that very well.

With grade 2 we sang ‘I am a little teapot,’ ‘Twinkle, Twinkle,’ and other old English favorites. Then they sang a song their teacher had surely learned in her missionary school about God who had created ‘birds, trees, fished and me and you.’ Each time they sang the work God they pointed up at the sky. They then repeated the song in Nepali still pointing at the One Up There.

In class four they spoke English a little better but they were still too shy to say much of anything that would have helped to have a conversation. And so I showed them pictures from two schools in Afghanistan. We wondered later what these kids would be telling their parents later today. Some, the teacher told us, had never even been to the town of Peling perched above their village on top of the hill from which we had descended.

When I asked the fourth graders what they wanted to become they replied with the only two professions, other than farmer, they know of: doctor or teacher. I asked if anyone wanted to be a pilot but they stared at me blankly. They didn’t know what a pilot was. There are no planes flying overhead here, where would they go? The closest airport is in another state and about 6 hours drive from here, or, a more familiar way of counting distance, at least a two-day walk. Then I realized one feature about this place – there are very few sounds of the modern world that have penetrated this far – only the car and the motorcycle and the occasional TV.

A soft knock on the door signaled our morning tea, at about 6 AM. I received special dietary treatment Sikkim style: lemon tea for breakfast, rice porridge with curd and a banana. Axel had breakfast downstairs, a three course breakfast with porridge, followed by a fresh egg and then two potato pancakes from the potatoes dug up yesterday that don’t taste like any other potato he’s ever had.

Our hosts are speaking perfect English with us. The wife, who is a teacher of English and Environmental Studies in addition to the usual grade school curriculum, learned her English in a missionary school. The missionaries were quite active here. On our drive from Darjeeling we had noticed several catholic schools, some churches and a few Jesus-loves-you bumper stickers.

With our guide our hosts speak Nepali. This appears to be the lingua franca (not Hindi), even across the border in Darjeeling and upper West Bengal. Our hosts are also speaking Bhutia, and Lepcha and then there are another 9 languages, Tibetan and others I have never heard of.

The weather is cloudy again but in the morning we glimpsed a few of the white capped tops of the real high mountains through openings in the cloud cover. The sun was out while we walked down and for the first time since we arrived I was warm. Brightly colored finch-like birds darted left and right, chasing each other, cows lowed, donkeys brayed, and somewhere in the valley someone was nailing planks together. It was utterly peaceful in a way that only a forgotten corner of the world can be.

We did manage to cross the border into Sikkim after a two hour drive straight down from 7500 ft to 1000 ft. I calculated that we dropped about 50ft every 1 minute during our descent to the border, not the main one but a smaller, out-of-the-way crossing at the end of a shortcut from Darjeeling. When we arrived, just minutes before the strike was called, the sleepy border patrol officer asked, “Why are you so early?” He did not know about the strike.

Instantly the feel of the place changed. This is no longer India. The fact that it officially is is a historical accident, something that should not have happened. Everything is different here. I like it more than any other place I have been. I can’t tell exactly why.

Sikkim felt more organized, the government more present than we had observed in the northern part of West Bengal where the government seat is thousands of miles away. Within two hours of our arrival in Sikkim we saw two mobile clinics, road improvement projects everywhere, large billboards reminding people to keep the environment clean, be good citizens so the government can be good government. We saw school children everywhere on their way to school through the dripping mountain clouds and forests. The Afghan government could learn something from this obvious commitment of the state government to make life better for ordinary people.

We arrived at the small B&B that is owned and run by a young man who, in the early eighties, studied for three years at the Waring school in Beverly where our kids went to school about a decade later. The Waring connection has now come into full view: we will drive to Eastern Sikkim the day after tomorrow to the Taktse International School which is run by Sita’s classmate at Waring, a sort of Waring East. His father, a Sikkim native, had been the cultural tutor of the American woman who became Sikkim’s queen, in the sixties. One thing led to another which landed the father at Brown University where he met his American wife. It is a story about education and passion that cannot be done justice in one blog paragraph but it will have to do.

And so here we find ourselves talking about education as if that is the mainstay of our life in Afghanistan. Sometimes I think it may actually turn out to be. Sikkim is changing its education philosophy and it is noticeable in this remote spot in the world – teachers are being retrained to evaluate the whole student, scholastically, socially, civically, physically, continuously rather than to give a final exam that leads to a pass or a fail.

Once again we are in the clouds. We have been told at several occasions that the third highest peak in the world is within view if only the clouds would go away. We have been given a spacious and simple room with cedar planks on the ground and windows on three sides, plus a balcony that should one day reveal the snow white peaks. We still have some hope to catch a glimpse but this requires a lot of luck.

Our host and hostess served us breakfast and then we retired for a nap. In the middle of the day a knock on the door provided a superb meal, again, nothing Indian about it, accompanied by ginger tea.

Something I ate yesterday disagreed with me. I was given a local remedy, a piece of the stem of a garden plant cut away, peeled, washed and cut in pieces. “Chew it,” our guide and host commanded, “then swallow.” It tasted very much like the West African cola nut, bitter and astringent. We’ll see if it does the trick.

Axel went for a walk around the neighborhood of the village where we are lodged. Out of the blue our host asked Axel how old he was and if anything hard happened three years ago. Apparently it is expected that every first of the next string of twelve years ‘something hard’ happens. A plane accident counts.

We are still in the clouds but high black mountains are visible. We were corrected, these are not mountains but hills. I told our hosts that the tallest spot in Holland is called the Vaalserberg (Mountain of Vaals) which is 323 meters above sea level. Here a 9000 footer doesn’t qualify for the word mountain.

We visited a monastery with indescribable art and artifacts that would many many a western museum envious. We realize how little we known about Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism.

We noticed the appearance of snakes, something we had not seen much so far in Hindu holy places. From native American mythology and cosmology, people whose DNA may actually somewhat match the local DNA, the snake stands for transmutation, moving from one plane to a higher one. The gigantic wooden statue, carved out of one enormous piece of wood, that we saw in the monastery is about the same thing as it depicts the ascent of man from our lowly earthly existence to ever better reincarnations. We are indeed in a different part of the world.

We spent all day in the clouds. This should not be so surprising given that we are at 7000 feet or thereabouts. While still in Kabul we would every night see the BBC weather map of the subcontinent and noted that this part of it was usually in the clouds. And so it was today. We learned, in the Ghum railway museum, from no less a person than Mark Twain, who was here some time ago, that weeks can go by like this.

We got up at 4 AM to make the trek up Tiger Hill to see, as promised by our travel agent and most guide books, the most spectacular sunrise on earth. With a lot of luck we would see all the highest peaks of the Himalayas in cotton candy colors.

The trek was by motorcar. Before we left I had this image of us standing on a tall outcrop all by ourselves. As it turned out we made our way up Tiger Hill with about 200 other cars (each with at least 5 people), all jostling to get to the top first and take up the choice spots on the lookout place. That place was also not quite as I had expected, with several large and ugly cell phone antenna structures and an ugly three story building where one could, for 300 rupees, buy entrance to a heated third floor for more comfortable viewing. So instead of the rosy peaks we watched Indians being tourists in their own country while the clouds passed right through our midst leaving us cold and clammy.

When it was clear that the sun wouldn’t be able to pierce the thick cloud cover the predictable mayhem ensued. All 200 cars tried to leave at the same time, some facing uphill, others down, on what was basically a one lane partially paved track (‘jeepable’ it is called here) up the mountain.

Rather than wait inside the car until the traffic jam dissolved (I couldn’t imagine how it ever could without divine intervention, but it did rather quickly), we decided to walk down and let our driver fend for himself – walking freely like that is such a treat for us and the moist cloud cover felt wonderful on our dried out skin.

On our way back to the hotel, for breakfast, we visited a spectacular monastery and got some basic education about Buddhism from our Buddhist guide, turned several prayer wheels sending wishes for peace in Afghanistan into the clouds.

After a hearty English breakfast we took the famous ‘Toy train’ of the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway up to the town of Ghum, chugging along at 9 km/hour, if that. Halfway up the mountain we had to fill up on water to continue to generate steam. A large black cloud of coal smoke accompanied our ride and drifted into open windows along the line and enveloped newly washed clothes dangling on clotheslines; people turned their heads and smiled at us while hiding their mouths and noses behind scarves, sarees and facemasks.

Then it was lunch time. We have an hotel arrangement that includes all meals so we seem to be sitting down to eat a lot. In between our guide takes us places. After lunch it was the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute which is tucked away in a corner of the Darjeeling zoo. In the west we learned that Sir Hillary was the first to make it to the top of Mt. Everest but here it is the Sherpa, Tenzsing Norgay, whose name comes always first. We visited his memorial tomb and his glass encases gloves, boots, socks, crampons, coats, glasses and whatnot.

On the way back through the zoo we passed an enormous Bengal tiger, safely tucked away behind a moat and thick metal wire while someone’s radio played Evita’s melancholy song.

Back at the hotel a real English tea, complete with watercress sandwiches and scones with jam and cream, awaited us in one of the sitting rooms that was heated by a cozy coal fire. A young woman in an authentic English maid costume, as if we had stepped right onto an Agatha Christie movie set, served us tea. Cross-stitching my sampler felt exactly the right thing to do.

Promptly at 6 the tea service was discontinued and the bar opened for GTs, accompanied by snacks until it was time for dinner, beef Wellington with bread pudding and custard for dessert.

Once again we have to get up early, even earlier than yesterday because there are problems at the West Bengal-Sikkim border. Our guide told us that if we don’t get there by 6 AM we will not be able to pass until after 6 PM; so much for sleeping in and not having to love by a rigid schedule. Unhappiness with the statusquo is following us all the way from Afghanistan. Still we feel miles away from the stress of our adopted home, happy even in the clouds.