STREET OF EMACIATED COWS

I start my morning journey to the hospital on a busy Battambang street, walking sometimes on sidewalks and sometimes on dirt, passing 2 hotels catering to Europeans, a corner "petrol station", i.e. non-sanctioned gasoline sold in glass liter coke bottles, a moto taxi stand, a hostel for male students and at the corner of the Street of Emaciated Cows 4 outdoor eateries serving rice and various stews. The Street of Emaciated Cows is not only a short cut; it offers me a varied glimpse of non-urban Cambodia in the middle of the city.

Where streets have no names you can name your own.
This name is not an official street name. I don't think many streets in Battambang are named as such. Addresses are given by commune, district, town. But like most barangs I am used to giving directions by street names. Not everyone sees the defining aspect of this street as the emaciated cows. It could just as easily be called the 'Street Where Dogs Rule. Three to four dogs live at every house, creating an unavoidable presence. They are typical Cambodian dogs in that they live in their own world, oblivious to the people, cars, and motos. They act as if sure they are the sole owners of the street. Or it could be called the 'Street Where People Fish in the Sewer'. I find this activity most bizarre and in its singularity think it should be honored with a name. But I've been calling this street in honor of its emaciated cows since I first walked down it three years ago. Most of the time we simply call it the short cut.

The street starts out paved, but the last 50 meters is red dirt. A fresh dumping of dirt was laid a couple of weeks ago, haphazardly graded and has now become a series of dry ruts. In the rainy season it will be an impassable quagmire.

The Cows

Only one house has cows--white, lop-eared, wattled and pathetic. They stand in short sparse grass or at a rubber manger, deliberately chewing as if savoring every mouthful. They are simply bone and wattles, seemingly contented in the same way the starving are listlessly immobile in their starvation. Had Cambodia a humane society, the family keeping the cows would be fined for cruelty and the poor animals impounded. But I like the cows--passive, earthy beasts without the mocking ghetto style of the dog packs.

Most houses have a flock of scrawny, mangy, half-feathered chickens that peck around the road and on the verges. One family has a giant pig that sometimes roams the street and roots in the garbage. Most of the time in wallows in its own yard, a hefty reminder of a future feast.

Fishing in the Sewer
One house on the street is an exquisite and decoratively tiled affair with a manicured garden, a small pool and little noticeable activity. Most of the houses are traditional, stilted wood houses where the open understory serves as the living quarters furnitured with tables, chairs, cupboards and hammocks. Fruit trees, shade trees, a shrine, and a fence make them seem almost to be in the country, not the middle of the city. At the dirt end of the street are 3 ramshackle abodes perched over the black sewer where people fish. This black, garbage-strewn water smells and looks most disgusting. Yet, I have often seen people with long-handled nets scooping through these most inauspicious waters for their dinner.
Every weekday morning teenaged school girls emerge from their hostel near the corner in uniforms of long-sleeved white shirts and long navy sarongs. They ride upright on their high-handle-bar bikes, sometimes with a friend sitting side-saddle behind. Through the opened windows their rooms look uncomfortably hot, bare of decoration, the beds separated by racks of hanging.

The Businesses
Two recently built hotels and a restaurant give commerce to the paved section of the road. A few wooden kiosks selling similar snacks, drinks and sundries but only a few meters apart vie for the street's commerce, somehow attract people to sit and talk and purchase their goods. How they make money I don't know. A recently built wooden platform with half meter high coconut logs serving as stools and a table give young men a place to play chess under the scant shade of a flowering cassia tree in the afternoons.
The old man
I recognize the dogs of the street more readily than the people, except one old man whom I have passed on every walk during my three missions with Emergency in Battambang. He has a long wispy beard from a mole on his cheek. He wears the same baggy black shorts, a red and black jacket and a red baseball cap and walks with an unsteady, slow, wide-based gait of drunkenness. Sometimes in the afternoon he drinks beer through a straw at one of neighborhood kiosks, or sits in his yard, staring. When I pass, I greet him and he gives me the queerest look, as if seeing a barang on the Street of Emaciated Cows is a most unusual event.

A CAMBODIAN WEDDING

Similarities in weddings

Weddings in cultures that place a high value on lavish nuptial displays are instructive anthropological experiences. Even when the cultures may be vastly different, the celebrations can take on similar characteristics: the brides gussied-up like a display manikins, the food plentiful, the music overly loud and the dancing, well, it too, looks uncannily the same. I'm not talking about church basement receptions that offer a miniscule slice of dry cake and a dixie cup of cloying fruit punch.

Other than histories of recent civil war, the legacy of hideous refugee camps, and a present vying for the highest rungs of internationally defined corruption, Afghanistan and Cambodia are different not by degrees, but to their very cores. Despite this, weddings in both counties seem cut from the same cloth!

The brides in both countries are coiffed and made up with glitter, added bits of hair and elongated eye lashes, and liberal layers of color lacquered to a shiny finish. The three or four outfits she wears during the party are ruffled, laced, sequined, and flounced, accompanied with matching shoes, hair ornaments, bracelets, belts, necklaces and tiaras.

The food is traditional. The menu in Afghanistan is pillao, mutton, chicken, and fruit downed with tea; the dinner in Cambodia is a series of Khmer meat dishes, soup, rice and canned drinks. The dancing is the same, exactly the same--traditional rhythmical promenading with arms raised and hands circling to the music. The ubiquitous presence of beer in Cambodia and the separation of the sexes in Afghanistan are two glaring differences.

The Wedding of Mr. No's Daughter


When Deb Rutherford, Emergency's Medical Coordinator, and I arrived at the wedding party for Mr. No's daughter we were greeted by the families of the bride and groom at the elaborate entrance to the restaurant. The bride, in lavender satin and the tallest, pointiest, most impractical matching pumps, and the groom in a white ill-fitting baggy, and I suspect very fashionable suit, greeted us at the top of the stairs. She smiled though a severe application of industrial strength foundations, eye-liner, mascara, eye-shadow and lipstick. Her heavy, gold, snake-coiled ankle bracelets were a masterpiece of improbability. I wanted to take a picture of them, but thought it a bit rude to concentrate my photography on the bride's feet. It is sometimes difficult to know what such brides look like without the extra layers. The groom's warm, ready smile seemed to say, "accept, accept, it will all wash-off tomorrow."



Entering the cavernous room of the wedding party we were engulfed in deafening music and oppressively humid heat. We declined a table of honor in the front near the speakers and sat at an empty round table that quickly filled with a dozen of the hospitals newly hired single young male nurses and therapists, the young bucks. They got down to business and opened the "banquet packs" piled on the table. Each plastic wrapped pack contained a half dozen small plastic bowls, wooden chopsticks, and thin metal spoons. They passed around the cans of warm beer and soda and procured a bag of ice. Drinking beer with ice through a straw wouldn't go down in my town's New Atlas Bar, but somehow seems in keeping with the enjoyment of a SE Asian banquet.



Toasting
Diluting beer with ice is a lifesaver in the heat and helps to avoid total alcoholic dissipation that comes with the Cambodia habit of toasting. Sometimes the toasts come as a challenge: a friend arrives at the table with a full glass and invites one person or all the members of the table to a toast, pointing to the bottom of the glass, a drink to the finish. All this is accomplished in a spirit of bravado and a concerted effort to get drunk. Or one can approach a table and in the spirit of friendship toast your friends. The straw makes it difficult to down the whole glass, while the melted ice, now 80% of the glass's contents, makes even a bottoms-up less potent.

The toast is not to anything or anyone in particular. One simply holds out their glass and says, "toast!" I like the idea of toasting and I especially like visiting tables of Cambodian colleagues and offering to drink with them. They like that I, the barang doctor, will initiate one of their customs. As our table, expanded to 15 with the advancement of the evening, we toasted each other every five minutes. Each clinking of glass against glass made us laugh, eager for the next toast.

The Food
The food arrived in courses set on a lazy susan in the center of the table. The first course of appetizers included little dishes of a vinegrated salad of root vegetables, pieces of dried meat, some other bits that are customary at such affairs, but whose names or ingredients I either don't like or don't know and roasted peanuts sprinkled with sugar. Picking peanuts up one my one with chopsticks is good practice, but it is far easier to put a spoonful into one's bowl and eat them with the fingers. Various platters of meat and vegetable dishes followed, including the thighs, legs and feet of birds about the size of sparrows that crunched with great satisfaction in one mouthful. A whole chicken landed on the table as the next course, pulled apart by dueling chopsticks. Shrimps in broth with rice followed. Desert was a packet of rolled wafer cookies. I piled all the unopened packages into the arms of the son of Madame Hourt, the hospital's matron.

One accepted custom, even when the party takes place inside, is to throw one's empty cans and all litter under the table. When, at my first Cambodian wedding I saw a table of men casually throwing their empties under the table, I thought it rather crass. I soon realized that it was not just common, but expected and an easy way to clear the limited table surface of unwanted cans. I don't normally throw my trash under the table, but found it a wonderfully liberating experience.



The bride and her family and attendants aren't the only ones dolled up. Cambodian women and girls seem to have a closet of extravagantly laced and sequined tight fitting satin and brocaded bodices that they wear with ankle-length sarongs. Puffy sheer sleeves and scalloped embroidered necklines are standard. Neither Deb nor I own such attire. We came in our best clothes--me looking rather dowdy and Deb looking like she could have been heading for the beach. Amidst the finery of the women, the typical man comes to a wedding in a shirt with the tails hanging out or a T-shirt. The children are dressed like dolls.

After the dinner we were given handfuls of fragrant white jasmine flowers that we threw at the bride and groom as they walked to the stage at the front of the room. Nicer than rice. No silver ribboned presents are left on a table for the bride and groom. Instead, each guest receives an envelope into which money is inserted, a name written on the outside and dropped into an elaborate bowl or given to one of the wedding party.

Dancing like Apsaras
Having eaten our fill, and tired of toasting with watery beer, as soon as the music for dancing started, everyone at our table rushed to the dance floor. At my first Cambodian wedding, I was instructed, "move your hands like Angkor Wat." The connection with the thousand year-old Khmer ruins went right over my head, until the second instruction: "like the dancing fairies, the apsaras." So we danced like the apsaras immortalized at Angkor Wat with our hands circling above our heads in graceful circles, the very same way they dance at weddings in Afghanistan.

CHANGE in CAMBODIA

An observer of change
The opportunity to periodically return to a country that is rapidly developing like Cambodia is quite rewarding. Though I stumbled into the process when it was already well established, the changes are such that even a casual observer can sense the momentum, and in the process feel that she is a part of something unique. Even if that part is only to record how it is taking place.

When I was first in the country in 2007 I was told that the Cambodians don't like change the way we in the West seem to thrive on it. The context of this particular conversation involved a large Phnom Penh hospital where there was resistance to how the goals of improving patient care and increasing the hospital's capacity could be achieved. I accepted this statement as "development wisdom." I'd seen resistance to change in a number of medical or surgical situations. Even small changes such as routinely bathing and putting clean pajamas on patients can become an almost impossible feat to implement.

Besides the visibly evident changes as seen in the increased number of motos on the road, the number of people crammed onto each, and the recent enforced laws about helmet use, some of the changes are more subtle. Despite what I was told was the situation in the hospital, many Cambodians seem relentlessly in pursuit of change.

Much of my interpretation of this extraordinary rate of change has to do with the zippy way everyone moves about. Everyone seems to be in a hurry. It takes me longer to cross the roads now than it did a year and a half ago because of the increase in traffic. I can't just look one way and then another and go, I have to repeat this a few times, go through a complex assessment of who is going to turn and which lane they will chose to turn from and into. One's assumptions must be rapidly amended, realizing that the Cambodians are attuned to using more paths to get to the desired space in the road than I. There are fewer walkers and fewer bicycles, and far more motos and cars. The man who delivers bread every morning between 05:30 and 06:00 used to come by moto; now he comes by truck. I would not be surprised if 5 years ago he made deliveries by bicycle.

I pass the same shops, the same restaurants, that I have passed on every daily walk to the hospital, but they seem larger and cleaner. The packaged goods for sale are more in number, the selection is broader or a few more tables or another shelf have been added to increase business. Though the air is full of dust, the glass display cases are cleaner. In the past they seemed grimy, uninviting. Now the bottles and cans, the plastic fruits for display, and the packaged biscuits gleam with the care of daily dusting. The corner restaurants where I turn into the "Street of emaciated cows" on my way to work now have cloth tablecloths draped over the plastic tables. The bottles of chili and fish sauce are wiped clean, not coated with thickened dribbles as I remember. People seem to care more about the appearance of what they have to sell. Maybe this is because tucked into a corner along the verge of the road a few feet away, another entrepreneurial family has set up a table and gas burner and starts chopping their vegetables just as early as the already established restaurant stall keepers.


Everywhere people are selling. One woman parks a trailer in front of the hospital every morning to sell watermelons to hospital visitors and the police at the new multistoried police office across from the hospital. Further down the road a young woman sits on the grass beside a cloth laid out with stuffed animals for sale. Why she has chosen this spot, I don't know and how much she sells or why these particular wares, I also don't know, but she is working. The cardboard collectors and the glass collectors are doing a brisk business recycling. Garbage is a sure sign of development.

Another change: I see more girls driving boys and women driving men on their motos. Females have always driven motos in Cambodia, but if there were a girl and a boy on the same moto, the boy drove.


Not all things change
The emaciated cows living on the street of the same name are the same as I remember--all bone and sad skin. Had Cambodia a human society, these poor bovines would have long ago been impounded. The dogs still rule this street and the black cur that rules one end continues to spread his seed along the entire length of the street.

The Hospital

Though it looks the same, the Emergency Hospital has changed. The sweepers still sweep the bougainvillea flower petals from the lawn every day. The creepers and vines crowding the small garden with its Buddhist statues still give the appearance of a secluded sanctuary.

The admission criteria have become stricter. All pediatric trauma is accepted, but only adults with open fractures or poly-trauma patients who have sustained multiple, more life-threatening injuries, are admitted. Even though the hospital's in-patient census has decreased it remains just as busy. The increased number of motos and the faster speeds that people travel on the improved roads create more devastating injuries, requiring more operating room time, more physical therapy, and more work in the wards for each patient. Two fractured femurs on one patient are not uncommon and the combination of a fractured femur and a fractured tibia seems almost routine.



At the international house I was disappointed to find a huge table that could easily seat 20 people occupying the pavilion where I do early morning TaiChi. After a week it was moved and I have recovered the use of a most perfect venue to do my exercise. The morning bird calls begin when I begin, with the click and boom of geckos punctuating the morning darkness. The hoarse chant and "music" from the nearby wats (temples) with their dreadful sound systems start at 06:00 on holy days, flooding the neighborhood with a discouraging din. These things don't change.

There was more to the statement that I heard 3 years ago about the Cambodians not embracing change: they don't accept change simply for the sake of change. But when there is a reason for change, a push from within or without, a need to go, to move, to sell and buy, then change can become the norm.

HELMETS and MIRRORS

New laws for moto drivers
Walking to the hospital on my first morning in Battambang I had the sensation that something was amiss, but it took me far too long to figure out the disconnection because it was so unexpected: every motor scooter now sported two rear view mirrors and over 85% of the moto drivers were wearing helmets. 1 ½ years ago I had been so exercised by the number of moto injuries in the hospital and the lack of rear view mirrors, I made a survey while walking to work, counting the number of cycles with one or two mirrors--12%. I even inquired from the Emergency staff why the factory installed attachments for mirrors were unused. The consensus was that "a mirror detracted from the handsomeness of the bike".

Of course. Why would anyone, American or Khmer ever put safety before vanity? The moto is a direct extension of one's self and a couple of clunky mirrors protruding from the handlebars not only get in the way, but they also alter the sleek lines of racing beauty.

That so few people wore helmets was understandable in light of the lack of all other safety precautions. I'm sure most people thought the sign at Emergency's entrance admonishing helmet use had more to do with art than a public service reminder.

What brought this monumental change? Recent helmet and mirror laws and a police force quite ready to slap on the fines for noncompliance. Pretty amazing, really to have such compliance. The mirrors are easy. You buy a couple of mirrors, screw them in and you only have to look at them once in a while. Are they used? Having mirrors installed and using them are not of the same order. One of the nurses told me he didn't trust the mirrors. He wasn't able to interpret the mirrored images with what he sensed and saw in "unmirrored reality". Even seeing a Cambodian moto driver turn and do a head check for traffic is a reportable event. When you enter a driving culture with little background experience and you drive using the same fluid rules that you use in walking, mirrors are probably something that are rather more useless than simply detracts from the handsomeness of the machine.

Someone made a lot of money selling mirrors. I wonder if certain vendors, through insider information, didn't corner the market and make a killing. Now all motos come equipped.



Helmet laws
The helmet law looks good on first appraisal. My first reaction was hurray! And to think that Cambodia is actually enforcing this seems quite commendable. When I look at the situation more closely I wonder how much good such a law actually does. Most of the helmets are rather inadequate, looking more like something one would wear on a bicycle, or as a jocky on a horse. Straps are left unhooked, or secured at such an angle to that the wearer is more likely to be pithed in the event of a crash than be saved from head injury. I even saw a driver with the chin bar of the helmet around his forehead

Can a law generate the sort of behavior change it is meant to? Only superficially at this time in Cambodia when the law only pertains to the driver. Seeing a family of 5 perched on a moto with only the father wearing a helmet I realize that people are following the letter of the law because the consequences are not pleasant. The idea that a helmet can save a life and everyone on the moto should wear one to be safe hasn't quite caught on. Maybe this is just a start, and it is certainly better than nothing, but I wonder if people will gradually stop wearing them and the police will discontinue rounding up the non-helmeted drivers, to take to pocketing the fine and convert it to a bribe, thus corrupting the entire idea.

Getting arouond the law( and into the hospital)
When I asked about the connection between the new helmet laws and the 2 young men in the ICU with frontal brain injury and significant bits of bone missing from their depressed skull fractures from moto crashes I was told they crashed at night. I didn't get the connection until One of the Khmer doctors explained that at night people don't wear helmets. The perception and probably the reality is that there are fewer police out to enforce the laws and in the dark no one can see that you aren't wearing a helmet.

There are always reasons why things happen as they do, even if the reasons aren't always readily evident.

More on helmets later.

IN CAMBODIA

1 Feb 2010

Arrival in Phnom Penh
I arrived in Phnom Penh January 28th to start a three month mission at Emergency's hospital in Battambang, the 2nd largest city in Cambodia located in the country's northwest corner, near the Thai border. This is my fourth trip to Cambodia, but only the third to work with Emergency.

The Hospital
The hospital was established over 11 years ago to deal with the large number of landmine and other war-related injuries in this Khmer Rouge dominated area. With the end of the civil war, de-mining operations, and rapid post-conflict aid-generated development the boundaries of the killing fields have shifted to now include the roads. Every day hundreds of shiny, new motor scooters are added to the many thousands already crowding the country's improved and expanded road system. The growth in the number of cars follows at the same rate, though the numbers are smaller.

Changes
Fifteen months absence from a rapidly developing country can seem to the returned visitor that she has landed in a completely different country. Readily observable change is the operative word. It is not just that buildings exist that were not present before or land use has transformed the landscape. The style, materials, and shapes of the structures don't look like the old. New means the sharp, modern lines of glass and concrete that typify global urbanization. The new buildings could be in any city. Even traditional houses sport new bright red, green, or blue metal roofs that make them stand out rather than blend with their surroundings.

The changes seemed particularly impressive because I was driven from the airport to Battambang skirting Phnom Penh through the early stages of a brand new "international city". Not until we completed the by-pass loop and turned onto route 5 far to the north of the capital did I find familiar landmarks: irrigated rice fields, roadside stands selling lotus flowers, jars of pickled bamboo--each particular item of merchandise clustered along a short kilometer of the road where they have been in the past. Most telling of all the familiarities were the delicate spires of Buddhist temples rising above the trees in the middle and far horizons.

Battambang
Though much building has taken place in Battambang, such as a new 5 storied police building and high rise, flash hotels--the grounds and buildings of the Emergency Surgical Centre have the same clean, white walls that set this NGO apart and give the hospital an inviting, peaceful air.

The market in the middle of the city remains unchanged. One end is filled with the smell of dried fish and the fragrance of Khmer food cooking. The other end houses seamstresses fashioning tight-fitting sequined and beaded peplumed wedding attire on their treadle sewing machines in their tiny shops. Around the periphery the fruit and vegetable sellers set up their wares in colorful pyramids.

And in the park along the river a red shrine sits in the crouch of a gnarled much hacked-at Banyan tree--Ficus religiosus, the holy fig of Buddhism. Fine ash from the spent wands of incense litter the flags as they have for many years

PARO Bhutan

Christmas in Bhutan

After a visit to the Folk Heritage Museum in Thimphu on Christmas morning Judy and I traveled to Paro, the small town in one of the broadest of Bhutan's valleys. Every air passenger to Bhutan arrives and departs through Paro airport, the only one in the country. The Druk Air flights curve in an ascending or descending series of turns between forests and villages, skirting steep -sided mountains. No radar or directional signals are useful in such a non-linear situation and the pilots are dependent on visual flight rules. When I asked how the pilots determine when the conditions are safe, my gaze was directed to a monastery on the top of a mountain just northeast of Paro: when this is visible, the weather is acceptable. What better than this in a Himalayan Buddhist Kingdom?

The Tiger’s Nest

We hadn't come to Paro to fly, but rather to walk to the Taktshang Goemba, the most famous of Bhutan's many Buddhist monasteries. Guru Rinpoche flew to this holy site on the back of a tigress in the 8th century, giving it its name, The Tiger's Nest. The monastery buildings are perched on the sheer side of a rock face 900 meters above the floor of Paro valley. According to the guidebook, the original building was held to the rock by the hairs of female celestial beings who also carried the materials to build monastery on their backs.

From the car park, the only access to the monastery is by foot or horse. A few western tourists with guides walked the path, but most of the travelers were Bhutanese and Tibetan families on pilgrimage, with little ones making the 2-hour one-way journey without complaint. Starting in silent blue pine forest, walking on a thick carpet of pine needles and between huge granite boulders strewn about, the path rose gradually to a small glade where a water-turned prayer wheel chimed the rippling passing of a small stream. The three shaded shrines, the sound of running water and bells in the absence of people made the setting that much more conducive to the presence of "other beings”. From that point, the trail rose in steep switchbacks and the blue pines gave way to mixed broad leaf oak, holly, and rhododendron forest thickly laced with spanish moss.

Some journeys achieve their power by making the pilgrim wait for the splendid revelation of the goal until the final bend in the road. From the beginning, from the road outside Paro, every lowly pilgrim has the Taktshang Goemba in view. As the path opens at certain places and the details of the rock face make evident the improbability of finding such a building plastered to the side of the mountain, one's appreciation grows and the fatigue of the climb diminishes, spurring one on forward

Just when the monastery seems within an easy biscuit toss from across a ridge at an elevation of 3140 meters, the path descends into the chasm of an icicled waterfall before the final ascent along the cold mountain wall to the dank buildings. I have little appreciation for Buddhist iconography--the names and stories confuse me. Judy feels little different, so we didn’t spend time in the cold monastery buildings. We retraced our steps to enjoy a seat in the brilliant sunshine and eat a picnic lunch on the ledge across the chasm that had on our approach enticed us with such a magnificent view. A perfect place to savor hard-boiled eggs, crackers, and tangerines, lightening our load for a leisurely descending stroll.

Riding the Himalayas Down

Our friend, Nicola, had suggested a 14 kilometers bike ride, from Paro into the mountains to visit the ruins of the Drukgyel Dzong. The prospect of riding into the Himalayas, to the head of the trail that leads into Tibet, seemed a suspect Sunday activity for a couple of middle-aged women, neither of whom particularly fancy uphill cycling. Nicola assured us it was an easy road, though we didn't realize until later that she hadn't herself made the ride.

It was still frosty at nine when we picked up the bikes at the shop, (contact: Kuenga, cell: 17684660) donned helmets and gloves and headed north up the Paro valley. The heavy mountain bikes were in fine shape, but within a minute, we realized that the hard seats would cause far most lasting discomfort than sore legs from pumping uphill. Once outside Paro town the traffic on the one lane road thinned. Drivers politely honked to show that they saw us. To a person, they made good on the biker's ideal of sharing the road.

After about 7 kms the farms gave way to forest, the same blue pine forest we had walked through on the way up to the Tiger's Nest. The road steepened, but still didn't require a full-out effort or the lowest gears. At this point the road conditions improved due to less use, and though the sun had become warm, the forest held a lovely coolth. Having gained some altitude, we also had more curves, buzzing around them with only the hum of tires on dry pavement. Coming into a clearing south of Jetshaphu village the solid white cone of Jhomolhari (7314 meters, Bhutan's second highest peak) came into view between the peaks of closer mountains. Though we hadn't climbed more than a several hundred meters in altitude, seeing that tall mountain’s perfect cone so close made us feel we'd accomplished something of merit.

Drukgyel Dzong

Another couple kilometers and a short pedal to the village of Drukgyel Dzong, we reached the end of the road. And there, across the rice fields, perched on a rise were the ruins of the 17th century Dzong. The name comes from Druk--Bhutan, and gyel--victory. The Dzong had been built to celebrate the victory of Bhutan over Tibetan invaders in 1644.

The building's characteristic Dzong white wash has weathered away over its 50 years of disuse after a fire destroyed its inner buildings. It has all the appearance of a medieval European fortress with the buildings of its village neatly assembled around it within easy reach for needed protection. Walking up to the ruins, around the intact outer walls, and approaching the inner courtyard through the bent entrance, I saw shades of crusader castles, especially Krak de Chevaliers in Syria, with its similar strategically defensive architecture. The courtyard had a similar layout to those of other dzongs we had seen. Except for the remains of the central tower, little remained of the inner buildings, though the deep prisons in the bowels along the outer walls for holding Tibetan prisoners looked particularly cold and unhealthy.

We saddled up for the ride down to Paro in brilliant noon sun. After a stop for tea at the Amancora resort where we were given gracious hospitality among its luxurious surroundings despite our inauspiciously sweaty clothes and disheveled appearance, we sailed down the mountain, coasting against the wind, feeling very pleased with ourselves and our Himalayan adventure.

Bhutanese Buildings

I look at architecture with an untrained eye as to how buildings are put together or what is 'right' as far as design. What determines my pleasure in a building is based on beauty and functionality and I like to think these two should go hand in hand. Traditional Bhutanese architecture of white-washed stone or pounded mud with wood framed windows and doors rates high on both the beauty and function scales.

Traditional buildings

The traditional rural houses I've seen around Thimphu, Paro and on our trip east to Bumthang are usually 2, 3, or 4 stories high and rather large to accommodate an extended family and lot of "in house" functions that are necessary in rural life. There is an open loft under the roof for drying food and for storing fodder and wood. The wooden beams supporting the upper floors, door and window lintels are painted in traditional colors and patterns, contrasting with the stark white of the high.

The decorative paintings of swastika, cloud, conch shell, lotus, wheel, and animals, such as deer, tigers and mythical Garudas eating snakes give a whimsical quality to the buildings. Phalluses are commonly painted on the white walls of rural houses. These are said to ward off evil, spouting a spiral of semen. I can't imagine what my neighbors would say if I painted a handsome penis prominently on the wall of my house. Stone and wood phalluses emerge from walls, are the conduits for water fountains, or hang in flying form from the corners of roofs. (See picture of painting a house).

Buildings are traditionally made using no nails. Wood beams and posts are precisely cut to fit and ceilings are secured to cross pieces with bamboo strips. Roofs are flat stones in the form of rectangular or square tiles, wood shingles, or iron sheeting. Clay is sometimes used to hold down the stone tiles, but large rocks--often round, white, river rocks laid directly on the shingles, or laid on a plank of wood that holds down a row of shingles or pieces of metal--are the normal means to keep the roofs intact.

Public buildings, such as the covered, cantilevered foot bridges, temples, and huge dzongs (the large, fortress-like combined administrative and monastic complexes that are the center of provincial government) are built in the same style of whitewashed stone or tamped dirt with the same sort of beamed construction and no nails.

Besides building without nails, traditionally buildings are built without plans. This fact is stated by guides and repeated in books with pride. It seems that much else in the country is done without plans.

Modern buildings

Modern buildings in Thimphu are made in a traditional style, but of concrete (like "adobe" construction in Santa Fe). The square concrete "beams" function only as decorations. The shoddy modern workmanship does not shine like that of the glorious and loved buildings that most Bhutanese outside the towns live in.