Outdoor living – Bhutan style

 25th June 2015

The phrase “outdoor living” in Australia conjures up images of comfortable chairs located outside the house, maybe on a neatly manicured lawn or a neatly paved area, surrounded by decorative plant pots or flower beds.  The presence of a barbeque with as many amenities as a well furbished kitchen is also highly likely.

It’s a little different in Bhutan.  Perhaps a question from the sample test paper in the class 7 maths text book can set the context.  It starts:

In the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan for 2005, data about drinking water showed the following:

• about 23% of the homes had piped water within the house,

• about 62% of the homes had piped water outside the house, and

• the remaining homes got drinking water from other sources such as a spring, river, or pond.

My house is considered luxurious by village standards because it has an inside toilet, 2 taps (both cold of course) and a shower (also cold – but it is pure luxury when I arrive home after school on a summer day and am able to strip off my kira, etc and wash off the chalk dust and cool down several degrees.)

Many of the houses in the village do not have water inside the house;  my neighbours behind me included, and I think maybe my landlady below.  Thus all tasks associated with cleanliness are carried out in public at the outside tap which is located over a concreted drainage area:  washing of laundry, washing of dishes, cleaning of teeth and washing of self.

The latter is quite intriguing; the younger children are bathed naked, sometimes in a large tub, sometimes just under the tap, and I suspect that the pre-pubescent boys also, but the girls undertake their ablutions fully dressed – albeit in “shorts” or skirt and t-shirt.

Pausing their bath to pose for a picture

I have a birds eye view from my front windows of my landlady’s washing area and outdoor kitchen and sometimes feel quite voyeuristic.  On a hot morning shortly after midsummer’s day, much splashing and sounds of good fun occasioned a peek out to see 4 of my young neighbours enjoying a communal bath.  Fully dressed of course.  I call down to ask if I can take a photo, so they dutifully stand up and pose, not exactly what I had in mind, but they quickly resumed their aquatic anctics.

Bath-time fun

One of my male colleagues, and his family, was, for a while, a neighbour in the house behind, and he would often be seen in his undershorts (a quite decorous garment by most standards) undertaking his morning ablutions and cleaning his teeth with much clearing of throat and noisy hawking, within metres of my back door.  I still have not worked out the protocol of whether or how one greets a male colleague while he takes his morning bath…..

Occasionally, under the privacy of dark, my landlord will fill the large tub and treat himself to a hot stone bath, stones heated up on a specially constructed bonfire, or just a hot tub of water, heated in a large pot over the cooking fire.  The grandfather was observed taking a hot herb bath in the middle of the day, but he was quite unwell at the time.

With the ambient temperature rising daily and the amount of heat generated by the gas stove in my kitchen, I can understand why some houses have separate kitchens, and why some older people in the villages shun modern amenities such as the gas stoves.  I was told by one kind gentleman who gave me a lift from Chusum to Kheni one evening, that his elderly parents live on their own (unusual in Bhutan) in a remote village (ie, foot access only) and do not want to move because they do not approve of many of the modern amenities (or the noisy grandchildren).  They like the old ways. 

I observe my landlady, who is a hive of industry, and one of the kindest people I have met.  She takes care of her children (I think there are 3 who live with her, but sometimes such things are difficult to determine), cooks (a task that can be time-consuming with third world amenities) tends a vegetable  “garden” of enormous proportions, gathers produce and sets it out to dry in the sun, assists in the new shop her husband has just built and stocked and probably has a backstrap loom with weaving in progress tucked in her house – most women do.

I see her, in the open area below my kitchen wndow, with the baskets of produce, stripping beans from their vines and podding them; stripping the dried corn cobs (maize) of their kernels, setting out the fish or strips of beef to dry on the washing line (not an overly pleasant aroma), sorting the sacks of potatoes and onions regularly  and a myriad of other tasks.  Her elderly parents live with the family.  An assortment of visitors come and go and all are offered hospitality.  I am always offered tea when I go to pay my rent, and sometimes come away with an armful of produce.