3/10/14 Home in my mountain nest

I am snuggled in my nest in Dharamsala. It's about a 10x12 ft cell with white concrete walls and a blue ceiling. It has an attached minimalist bathroom with on demand hot water - meaning when you demand it, they turn it on and in 30 min it's warm for 5 min - if you wait 40 min, it's warm for 7 min. So ablutions take planning. There are no amenities in this guest house - like toilet paper or heat! ZAnd certainly no shampoo..... Wifi is on demand also. Same idea!! But I love it because it's MY nest for the next 6 weeks.

This morning I woke up to a raging wind that was blowing the plastic chairs all over the big balcony outside my door. Howling and roaring. When I peeked out the curtain there were the raptors - 10 at first count - flirting with each huge wind gust in the steel grey sky. I don't have enough vocabulary to do justice to their flight, but if I did, I'd use every word. What I do know is that I'm mesmerized in the watching of intricate flight patterns. Fortunately some of them land now and then on a knob of a tree reaching above the balcony level, so I can watch them preening.

The wind was portend of greater natural wonders. Down in the valley - the Great Plains of India - there is sunlight and mist. Up here, high up the mountains, which climb even higher out behind, the sky is turning black and there are bass drum thunderings ricocheting from hillside to hillside. Then the glimmerings of lightning, then the flashes. Somewhere in the middle of this drama is the resonant sound of a long Tibetan horn, sounding, I suppose, the last day of Tibetan new year. It has a deep, big, rich reverberating sound that I'd never heard before, but I want to hear again - many times.

Then came the rush of hailstone poundings all over the metal roof and covering the floor of the huge balcony in a pile of white. Now it's rain - drenching rain under the glower of dark skies with the light from the valley shining up from underneath (about 1000 feet down).

And here I am, so happy in my nest, nursing a sore throat with hot honey tea I made with the help of my single plug and the teapot I bought yesterday. Fortunately I also bought some oranges, tomatoes, cheese, crackers and chocolate. I am all set for the whole day and won't have to go out into the sticky mud and puddles which I know are what passes for a road here now.

The thunder is a continuous flow of bass to baritone vibrations. Since I'm safe and warm under my covers, it just makes me happy to hear it - and the wet ploppy sound of the big raindrops falling in abundance. I'll think about the wet and dirty after effects later.

So tomorrow I'm supposed to start work as a volunteer with LHAsocialwork here in Dharamsala. It takes a bit of imagination to figure out what I'll be doing, so I'll enjoy the day before knowing. What I am hoping is that I can help in the office for a week or so. That way I might get some understanding of what is wanted/needed that I might be able to help with. I suspect there will be some 1:1 tutoring in the mix which will be fine. LHA is a well respected organization here. Everyone knows about it and everyone seems to have a positive spin. It has an open door policy for volunteers. If you're here and want to volunteer they will use your help in some way. We'll see what happens!

A brief summary of the people I've met here so far: a bright faced and beautiful German woman who has been teaching in 6 month stints, mostly in Asia, for the last 13 years, going home incidentally. Her main difficulty is that as a German she needs a home address for her visas, but she doesn't have one. This causes her numerous bureaucratic tangles as she doesn't fit in a slot. It seems that if you don't fit in a slot you don't exist, even if you are standing face to face with the bureaucrat. Her reality is working 6 months and then coming here to Dharamsala to rejeuvenated until her money runs out, then go work again. Her next job is in April in Vietnam.

Another is a fragile faced and wounded healer who has been traveling for 18 months in India. She came to offer her skills with Shiatsu and Reiki, but sadly is not able to sell it well enough to even volunteer the service. She will try again here. I offered her some reiki and she nearly cried and said it was the first time in years anyone had ever offered that to her. She is trying to regain a meditation practice ritual and said she needs to conserve her energy, so 10 minutes of reiki was enough and she sort of vanished.

There's an interesting young American lawyer who is passionate about immigration law. As it turns out, in order to work in one of the big firms, you have to have about 3-4 years of experience. So he found a good Tibetan refugee organization here and has been working here for about 1 year. He's expecting to stay at least 2 years longer. We had a good side conversation about whether or not the Chinese have identified him as a name to refuse visa status to, or whether he is still under the radar. Apparently it is known that the Chinese manipulate the internet here specifically to frustrate or stop interchange with families and people in Tibet.

We've been told that well over 100 people in Tibet have used self-immolation as a form of resistance. Even if they survive, they are hustled away and never heard from again. The Chinese are angry enough at this resistance that they now arrest the families for having aided and abetted. It also appears that the USA has made an immigration quota of 5000 Tibetan refugees from Nepal. However the Chinese are harassing the Nepali government (which is no longer a monarchy but is run in large part by Moaists as a puppet state on between China and India). They do not want the refugees to leave, as someone said yesterday, because they don't want the Tibetan freedom cause to gain any more international attention by having the refugees speak their minds in the western press. The feeling of geopolitical debate is quite present here.

I was just interrupted by a flock of about 20 crows bombarding and harrassing a kite which has taken refuge on a tree knob near my balcony. Their croaking and cawing is enough to drive anyone to distraction, but the kite is unmoved, except by an occasional wind gust and then his sharp edged tail flares a bit to steady him.

The rain has stopped and now it's hailing again. Pellets about the size of chick peas. But they must be very wet because after the first bounce, they are dissolving onto the balcony floor.

Let me just muse here for a moment on what will happen with the traffic here now that it's wet. A quick list: 1. No roads are fully paved, most have big potholes or lots of dirt areas. 2. No road is, at it's widest, more than 2 cars wide - edge to edge - and at most edges there is a building wall or a deep ditch. 3. All roads have at some point at least a 15% grade or more 4. There are many motorcycles, quite a few cars, some trucks and occasional buses - númerous pedestrians and several laborers carrying heavy wide loads of forage or produce on their backs. 5. All vehicles honk all the time. All vehicles move at the highest possible rate of speed 6. The town square is on a slope, has seven (7) intersecting roads and is smaller than my front yard at home.

Add rain slick and mud.......... I'm glad to be in my nest! Photos tomorrow!

 

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