Beyond The Sky And The Earth: A Journey Into Bhutan (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
This book is a gem. When Jamie Zeppa tires of her doctoral studies and ponders whether the world might offer something more, she spots an announcement for a teaching opportunity near Tibet. The book Zeppa creates about her experience in Bhutan represents travel writing at its best. In theory, travel provides knowledge. In reality, many people leave dumb and come home just as dumb. Zeppa’s journey transforms her, and she gains wisdom in its truest sense, a combination of knowledge and humility.Time may be the largest barrier to comprehending another culture. Zeppa, who describes her three years in Bhutan in the book, Beyond the Sky and Earth: A Journey into Bhutan, comments on the need for time to even start assimilating a culture. Zeppa remarks that, in contrast to rapid traveling and arriving, “Entering [a culture:] takes longer. You cross over slowly, in bits and pieces” and—after a great deal of time—“You are just beginning to know where you are” (emphasis added, 101). Further, voluntary travel—to use James Clifford’s distinction—whether done by members of a “shopping-mall society” or not, may be marked by scanning as its initial perceptual mode.Before Jamie Zeppa travels to Bhutan to teach in a remote village, she first receives a thorough orientation on Bhutanese history, culture, customs, and language. Even when armed with quite a bit more knowledge than most travelers would possess, initially Zeppa really cannot “see” or interpret Bhutan. Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, seems small, cluttered, and old to Zeppa, and she scoffs when she is told “Thimphu will look like New York to you when you come back after a year in the east” (15). Zeppa grows impatient at a bank where people push and shove rather than forming lines, while the bank clerk, chatting idly with a guard, blithely ignores them all. Silently, Zeppa fumes, “Do these people have all the time in the world or what? (23). The food and water terrify her, and when traveling to her village, Zeppa thinks the landscape looks blank: “The country seems almost empty to me” (30). Finally, she loses her bearings entirely: “Somewhere south is Pema Getshel. Somewhere west is Thimphu. And beyond Thimphu—but no, I am too tired to retrace the journey mentally. I want to just click my heels three times and be home” (38).Prejudiced by her own cultural baggage, initially Zeppa sees Thimphu as unimpressive, disorganized, and inefficient. The surrounding landscape seems vacant and desolate. After spending five months in Bhutan, Zeppa re-sees her surroundings vibrantly: “The rains have turned Pema Gatshel a thousand shades of green: lime, olive, pea, apple, grass, pine, moss, malachite, emerald. The trees are full of singing insects, flowers, birds, hard green oranges, children” and then remarks: “It’s hard to believe now that I once thought this a landscape of lack” (137). Zeppa could only see the landscape after she learned what to see. Provocatively, Zeppa’s culture shock occurs both arriving and “returning.” When Zeppa travels back home to visit, after having spent two years in Bhutan, she finds Toronto enervating. She views her surroundings as “glossy and polished and unreal,” and is “overwhelmed by the number of things” (262). Television is “incomprehensible,” the “images fly out of the screen too fast.…Ten minutes of television exhausts” her for hours, she’s “shaken by the traffic, the rush, the speed at which people walk,” and she finds the “number of stores…overwhelming” (263). Zeppa’s reactions demonstrate that her inability to “interpret” her home now parallel her earlier inability to make sense of Bhutan. Significantly, Zeppa’s confusion, her sense of being too slow in the midst of so much “rush and blur,” emphasizes the steady scrim of images typifying industrialized culture (267). In short, Zeppa has lost (at least temporarily) the ability to “scan”—the mode of perception that may be necessary to decipher the contemporary “society of spectacle.”From a negative standpoint, scanning may mark our present perceptual mode and suggests a type of seeing characterized by superficiality. In a more positive light and in the terms of travel, scanning may be inevitable. When Jamie Zeppa arrives in Bhutan, she can do no more than skim its surface and her vision, her ability to interpret her landscape is similarly compromised when she arrives in Toronto, after being away for two years. Zeppa’s and any other traveler’s ability to remember the journey may fare no better. Just as the initial perception of travel is partial at best, the journey’s recollection, i.e., the “stuff” of travel literature, becomes distorted by the degree our cultural lens blinds us to the journey initially, the amount of time we can spend within a culture, our imperfect memory of the journey itself, and the changes that will occur once our memories have been exposed to the shaping forces of narrative.Jamie Zeppa, similarly, understands that she will always remain an outsider in Bhutan but wishes—nonetheless—to present her fragments as honestly and completely as possible. Though Zeppa often finds Bhutan a kind of Shangri-la, she presents its political complexity unflinchingly, and never pretends to understand or agree with it. Zeppa recognizes that sight itself does not bring knowledge. What she learns most of all is that “[t:]ravel should make us more humble, not more proud. We are all tourists, I think. Whether we stay for two weeks or two years, we are still outsiders, passing through” (204-5). At best, Zeppa might feel she reaches an enlightened confusion, and perhaps this is the most that any traveler can attain.adapated from a prior publication
'Thank you very much' in Dzongkha the Bhutanese dialect is 'name same kadin chhe' which means 'thanks beyond the sky and the earth'. In the late 1980's Jamie Zeppa had just graduated after a masters in English Literature in Canada and decides to sign up with WUSC and go to Bhutan to teach English.In the 1960's a Canadian Jesuit named Father Mackey founded some secular education initiatives in Bhutan. The lessons were taught through the medium of English, so they needed to recruit foreign teachers. WUSC.World University Service of Canada provided successful applicants with two year contracts, free accommodation and a local salary. Jamie challenges her own education and asks what she really knows. She feels trapped. "I wanted to throw myself into an experience that was too big for me and learn in a way that cost me something". Jamie's grandfather who's education was cut short by the depression argues with Jamie about finishing her P.H.D. "He wouldn't understand if I told him that my future seemed to be closing in, getting smaller and narrower and more rigidly fixed with each essay I completed". She is posted to a school in the remote village of Pema Gatshel. She feels harassed at first, her small dwelling is flooded, she can't use the pressure cooker, she lives on biscuits terrified of the local food but little smiling faces appear and show 'Miss Jaymee' the way. She lets the spirit of the place and the Arra (Rice based alcohol) flow.There are some immediate cultural differences. The people believe in karmic retribution. If you become ill it is surely because you have committed some crime or another. Shakespeare's Macbeth takes on a new meaning in a land where omens and superstition are common place. Her cultural misunderstandings lead to some problems. She pays for vegetables given to her by her pupils and then an army of kids arrive at her door, she is very circumspect when it comes to these misunderstandings "the same imperfect self immersed in a completely new and incompletely understood setting, the same desires and longings clouding judgment, the same old heedless mind, leaping from impulse to action". She holds a mirror up to the naivety of western thought on idyllic landscapes, "You can love this landscape because your life does not depend on it".Bhutan was a Buddhist monarchical system, the Nepalese settlers felt they were second class citizens. There were calls for a democracy in 1960's and 1970's. In 1975 the 334 year rule of the Sillimese Buddhist kings came to and end. In 1958 citizenship awarded to those who lived in Bhutan for more than 10 years and owned land. Jamie witnesses the tension between these co-habiters which boils to the surface because of national dress codes and language rules being enforced. The Southern want their human rights to be respected the Northern want their culture and traditions to survive. Jamie feels caught in the middle. Jamie doesn't mention it but today Bhutan seems to have moved forward considerably, in 1999 the ban on television and the internet was lifted. In 2005 a new constitution was put in place. In 2007 and 2008 there were parliamentary elections.She certainly captures the atmosphere of this time in Bhutan. My favourite part of the book concerned her time teaching in Pema Gatshel. 'Today, I hand back spelling tests and Sonam Tshering promptly stuffs his in his mouth and swallows it. For a moment, I am too surprised to speak. Karma Dorji says, "That boy is very hungry", and everyone laughs..... My announcements and queries are growing more absurd daily. ... Tshewang Tshering, you cannot write your test with a cat in your gho. ... Class II C, who is gassing? Class II C, why is there a bottle of pee in our room?"Speaking now in 2006 our author is more the wiser. I wonder how much of the insight in the book was from her younger self or her perspective from an older point of view. There was a nice description of the Tashigang tsechu series of masked dances representing Buddhist stories preformed at temples. There are lovely descriptions of the landscape and lots of humour. It's wonderful to witness her transformation from bungling culturally inept foreigner to savvy ex-pat. Some readers have noted some moral objections to her behaviour but I can't help but think that given the circumstances I wouldn't be able to condemn her so harshly.I found this travel memoir absorbing and a well written piece of journalism.
What do You think about Beyond The Sky And The Earth: A Journey Into Bhutan (2000)?
This was the first book that our book club read, and it remains a favorite. I've given it as a gift to many of my (favorite) students as they embark on their teaching careers, for the author asks the reader to contemplate not just what it means to be a good teacher, but what it means to be a good person. How are we fulfilled? How do we reach others and allow them to reach us? It is a truly remarkable book about a woman's journey to know herself and a land that remains both mysterious and mystical.
—Jeri
Even though this book was based on one woman's experience of living in Bhutan at the end of the 1980-90s it is a thorough and honest insight which is still relevant to toady.I read it in my 11th month of living here in Bhutan before I am due to leave, and I wish I read it withing the first few.Jamie gives an honest account of her experiences. She is dignified in the way she writes about her deployment, employment and life both professionally and personally. Even if you're not in Bhutan, it is an eye opener to the life of an expat in the land of the Thunder Dragon.
—Kaptain Kniccas
I get weekly emails about jobs for librarians in other places, both in this country and abroad. Recently, a job opening was listed in Bhutan. I remembered that Bhutan is the country with a Gross National Happiness Index (I kid you not), and into my imagination came an image of working in a library in the Himalayas. Hmmm...When I searched for books about Bhutan, this one popped up. The author had put her life in Canada (which included a fiance and plans for getting a PhD) on hold to take a two-year teaching assignment in Bhutan back in the 1980s, when she was in her early twenties. The original position would have been as a lecturer in the university there, but at the last minute she was told they considered her too young for the position, and she was sent to a remote village to teach second-graders. Her primitive housing had no electricity and was sometimes shared with rats. The teaching methods were questionable to her, as children were beaten for just about anything, including asking questions. The lifestyle was communal, with her students and other villagers popping into her home at any time to bring her vegetables or just to see what she was doing. At first she was crushingly homesick. Little by little though, as she kept telling herself that "anyone can live anywhere", she grew to love the people and the place. She was eventually transferred to the university position for which she had first applied. It was in a bigger town with nicer accommodations and the students were the best in the country, with many near her age. This is a beautifully written book. Perhaps because the author has a masters degree in English, she is so able to perfectly capture the feel of the place, and of her own perceptions of it, with her well-chosen words. It is not only a memoir of travel, but an introspective comparison of cultural values and a philosophical look at aspects of Buddhism, which she embraced. There is a beautiful love story too in the last quarter or so of the book. I just couldn't put this down. I may never get to Bhutan in this life, but I have experienced a little bit of it in the pages of this book.The title, by the way, comes from a Bhutanese saying: Name same kadin chhe. (Beyond the sky and the earth, thank you.)
—Caren
