Halle wakes up in the night with extreme gastric distress - vomiting, diarrhea - necessitating a change of sheets, clothing, and a midnight shower. The clothes and sheets must be washed in buckets. How does Ratna do this every day? I wonder as I scrub, soak, and suds things in the bathtub in the middle of the night. I am a bucket-laundry novice and she re-does it for me with patience later in the morning while Don and I are nursing Halle with Sprite, a Thai orange-colored sugar drink called Beeber, and strong American antibiotics - all of which work by the late morning. She stayed home from school today, but will go back tomorrow. By late afternoon she is running around outside as if last night never happened. Likely culprit: I'm guessing the cream filling in an unrefrigerated cream puff from the bakery which she ate yesterday. Or peeing in the bushes at school with no handwashing.
Ratna is in and out being helpful while Halle lies on the couch and watches Animal Planet channel - Ratna works in our home from about 10 until the early afternoon Monday through Saturday. She is employed by the hospital to look after the HVO house. She washes the dishes, the clothes, the floors, shakes the carpets and the tablecloth, hangs the laundry on the line, frets over the job that the sickle-wielding hospital grounds men are doing cutting the grass. She is from southern Bhutan so her accent is a little different - she is married, and divorced, with one son aged 11. She divorced her husband years ago because he took a third wife (she was number 2). Today I asked her how old she was, and was startled to hear that she was only 29. I confess she looks older. She told me that her parents, aunts, uncles, were all dead by 53 and there is no one in her family older than her generation.
While were were sitting, watching Halle drink Beeber and thankfully keep it down, she asks me if I have a dishwashing machine at my home. She asks me what it looks like, and to explain how it works. I give a rough discussion of how my dishwasher works, and she just sighs, and says she has heard of them, but never seen one in this country.
From Forrest's math book: ostensibly a lesson on fractional numbers, but actually quite revealing about daily life in Bhutan, too:
--Thukten covered 2/5 of his journey by road, 3/10 by mule, and the rest on foot. How much of his journey did he cover on foot?
--Rinzin lives 3 and 4/7 km away from the school while Gyeltshen lives 4 and 3/10 km away from the school. Who lives farther from the school and by how much?
--Nima had 6 and 3/4 litres of petrol in his scooter tank in the morning. In the evening he had only 1 2/5 litres of petrol in the tank. How much petrol was used by Nima during the day?
