Just above the hospital is Bhutan's nursing school, the Royal Institute of Health Sciences. Young people come to the RIHS either out of the equivalent of 10th or 12th grades, and go through a 2 or 3 year program to be trained as nurses, hospital techs, emergency medical workers, etc. Four RIHS students who are being trained as ortho techs work with Don and he gives them twice weekly lecture/instruction period prior to rounds in addition to training them on the job in clinic. Although the rest of the public school system just had mid-term exams and is resuming school next week, this is the month that new RIHS students arrive for the start of their program, and we have been invited to attend a talent show put on by the current students to welcome the incoming class.
This proves to be a fascinating glimpse into southeast Asian youth culture even beyond the borders of Bhutan. We arrive after the start of the program, and there are seats left for us on the front row, next to the American HVO physical therapist and her son. The stage of a large pink lecture hall has been decorated with colorful clothing, banners (the big one says Wel-Come Nite), cellophane-wrapped fluorescent lights, and blinking strings of Christmas-type lights. Two students have the responsibility to yank the two large black curtains closed and open between acts, and there is a decent set-up of microphones, speakers, and sound system for the different acts, with one male and one female MC to announce the show.
The first number is called "Dzongkha dance," and proves to be a group number with 6 women in beautiful traditional kira and bright silk blouses performing a type of Bhutanese folk dance called dzong dancing. It is quick-moving, with flowing arms, expressive, with a little shuffling kick-step on every beat, danced to a Bhutanese pop song. Their hands are mesmerizing to watch. The next one is a male solo, a student who sings a crooning song in Dzongkha to the accompaniment of an electric keyboard. He is wearing a gho with bright white cuffs, black knee socks and black dress shoes that are the style here for young people, with extra-long squared-off toes. We hear several solos like this during the evening, some with the keyboardist and some with an acoustic guitar accompaniment. I am interested to see what the next performance is, a "Nepali dance." It turns out to be a well-choreographed dance performance to a Nepali pop tune by a young man in black jeans and Western dress shirt. A "Hindi dance" has no saris in evidence, but two young girls in stylish jeans and T-shirts (no midriff in evidence, of course) taking a Hindi pop song and choreographing a Bollywood-style music video dance - distinguished from Bhutanese dancing by much more shoulder-shaking and some pointing at the audience.
Although the program is mostly Dzongkha dances (groups of women, or men, or in the big finale, 6 of each) and songs, there are enough of these well-received "Nepali" and "Hindi" numbers to suggest that television, films, the internet, and CD sales have blurred some of the cultural borders among young people. The MCs comment on how music is a universal language. After the show, we talk with other guests until someone points out that the remainder of the audience is waiting patiently in thieir seats for us to leave first. The knowledge of etiquette is assumed here and we learn often by trial and error.
The next day is an important day in the Buddhist calendar, the anniversary of the Buddha's first sermon, and one of the ortho techs named Sonam Jamtsho invites us into the RIHS campus to see the prayers being said, to view the inside of the small compound temple, and to eat lunch in the dining hall. While we sit and talk in the dining hall before lunch, 28 students with their ceremonial scarves around their necks sit in two long lines facing each other, on mats, and sing Buddha's sermon (in Dzongkha) with a bell to keep the beat, a tub of incense in the center sending up curving gray ribbons into the air. We see many of the students who performed in the show, and we have an opportunity to learn from Sonam more about the students and where they come from. Surprisingly, everyone I speak to is from eastern Bhutan (the less "civilized" and more rural side, but also the side with easier access to northern India). Western Bhutanese, Sonam explains, aim for higher education programs that will lead to "office jobs," while for eastern Bhutanese farm kids, the RIHS is a significant step up and a great honor. Although they have been taught Dzongkha (i.e. the dialect of western Bhutan) in school, along with English, they have all grown up speaking the eastern dialect called Sharchop, which is linguistically very different from Dzongka, and many of them also know Nepali and Hindi too. Buddhism and youth culture (especially pop music) are the common denominators among the RIHS students.
Lunch is served from a long marble counter onto which are set the huge aluminum pots of today's food. Sonam tells us that the fare is usually red rice, with some kind of accompaniment: Mondays and Thursdays egg, Wednesdays and Fridays meat, and Tuesdays and Saturdays emadatsi (chilis in a cheese sauce). But since today is a special day there is a broader selection: red rice, emadatsi, scrambled egg with chilis, hardboiled eggs rolled in spices, yellow dal soup with potatoes in it, and big baskets of papadam (the crispy Indian "pepper" tortilla that often comes as appetizer in Indian restaurants). No one, including ourselves, uses any silverware. We are asked to go through the line first, and then the rest of the 170 students line up with their own bowls and cups, get their food and go outside to eat it. Outside the door there are four sinks for students to wash up their plates so they can take them back to their dormitory rooms clean. Sonam tells us that one young man each month has responsibility to be "mess captain," and when his month is finished, he nominates a person he thinks will do a better job than himself. That self-deferential and dignified manner is so typical of the Bhutanese, regardless of where they come from, and is something I so enjoy about the people we meet.
