Beyond the Sky and the Earth : A Journey into Bhutan

Jamie Zeppa is at loose ends. Almost impulsively, she decides to move to Bhutan and teach.

She almost as quickly regrets her decision. No convenience foods here. Minimal toilet facilities. Great poverty. Friends are all far, far away.

Zeppa wants to go home to Canada.

But she doesn't. And, as time goes on, she gradually comes to regard Bhutan as her home. Its simplicities delight her. The kindnesses of Bhutan's people overwhelm her. And she loves her new life.

A very satisfying moving-and-starting-over tale.

I think I set myself up for disappointment with this one. I had seen a review of it about 4 years ago, and put it on a list of books to track down. It took 4 years for me to locate a copy at a price I was happy with, and so had really been looking forward to it, despite not having read anything further about it.

I have just finished reading it, and it was a good book, but I guess I had elevated my expectations with the long wait. It is likely to effect the rating I give it.

I have always had an interest in Bhutan - a country that I think has got it right. As a Himalayan Kingdom, it is already fairly inaccessible, and wedged between India and China, (or more accurately Sikkim and Tibet - already in somewhat fractious company), Bhutan has or a long time excluded tourists except those who pay a high daily fee (something like USD250). This has the obvious effect of minimising the impact of tourism, and as the country is among the least developed in the world, this to me is a positive thing for their culture and their environment.

But I digress. This book, while basically being a description of the change in thinking (eg growing up) of the 24 year old author during her three years of teaching English there, examines in some more detail some of the culture and people of Bhutan. The particular thing happening at the time the author was The Situation which was the governing north who imposing requirements for all the people of Bhutan to wear traditional dress - despite many of the south Bhutanese being ethnic Nepali. The southern Bhutanese (who to be clear had been in Bhutan for around 100 years at that time) were significantly under-represented in any form of senior governmental roles or decision making. The reasoning was to strengthen and maintain the culture of Bhutan. This caused some protesting and sporadic violence.

Other themes covered by the book included Buddhism, and the Buddhist way of life; gender inequality - the role of women in Bhutanese society; reincarnation and how this changes the outlook of the school children in their goals for life.

As well as these much more interesting aspects, the book largely concentrates on the authors experiences. This is things such as hating her first month or so; her change in understanding the value of material possessions; her interaction with the other teachers (many of whom were from India, and had taken the positions in Bhutan only as a last resort having no jobs at home - which puts them in a much different situation than Canadians in an ‘experience of a lifetime' situation); falling out of love with her fiancée, and in love with a local. There is a lot included about her family and friends not really understanding the change in her outlook and her love for this essentially third world lifestyle.

For me there was a lot of the author being naive, being only young (24 - which to me is not young enough to be this naive - by 24Y old I had left my parents home for 6 years alerady and lived overseas for 3 of them) and some pretty straight forward growing up themes. The author also finds it hard to acknowledge her eventual love for Bhutan and the Bhutanese way of life (after hating it at the start she loves it after a month or two) in a short term visitor situation is much different from living this way for her whole life. There are a couple of the other teachers she is friends with who point this out to her on the way through the story. Similarly, because so many of the people are poor, they have little in the way of possessions - the author considers this a conscious choice rather than a situation of having no option, unable to see that if they had a disposable income, their outlook would be different.

There is no doubt the author is being straight up and writing what she thought at the time, so it is honest in its nativity. For me it was just a bit simplistic.

As I said at the start, it is my own fault that this book didn't reach the heights I expected, but as such it is really a 3 star book. Very interesting for some background to Bhutan, less so for me the outlook of a 24 year old who had never left Canada before, being chucked into a remote and isolated environment.