:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

New Year’s Eve is always a big night in Sydney. The fireworks on the harbour are among the best in the world. Last year, we partied at the flat of a friend in the city, then walked out onto Anzac Bridge to watch the light show. This year, we’re feeling a little anti-social, so we’re networking 4 PCs for a night of gaming.

The weather is improving – by which I mean getting more like a Sydney summer. On Wednesday, I joined Damion (who’s back from Japan for Christmas) and his family on their yacht in Pittwater Bay. The sun was fierce, yet tempered by the breeze, and the company great. With nothing but a shorts, long cotton shirt and sandals, I accepted an invitation to stay with the young group on the boat for the night. We spent a balmy evening cooking a BBQ over the stern railing and playing a Japanese card game in the cabin. I sat alone on the deck reading as the next morning began clear and warm and thought of the watery life ahead in Sydney. I’ll miss the mountains, but perhaps I can find solace in the nearby ocean.

I know I shouldn’t be writing on Christmas Day, but I don’t get access to the net so much since I moved back to civilisation. Today I’m having christmas at my aunt’s house and they have a cable ready made for me to connect my PC to so I took advantage and brought it along.

It’s hardly a traditional Aussie christmas, though. For a start, it’s been quite cold since I got back two weeks ago. Last year was 45C on christmas eve, but I’ve been wearing a jumper much of the time since I returned. At least the sun is out today. The other is that christmas is usually such a festive gathering of many branches of the family, with presents passing in every direction. This year, my parents have split up, so I don’t even have the whole immediate family together. And of course, I’m missing Marie. Then Mum, Dad and I are all in the middle of moving house, so we decided it was all too difficult to do presents.

My aunt and family have provided some sense of normality by serving up a huge cold lunch on christmas day, with ham, turkey and cold salads. And then there is a pile of bon-bons with the usual crappy jokes.

I remember Australians being friendly, but I’m surprised at just how friendly they (we?) are. I’m staying with friends in Hornsby, almost the northern limits of Sydney’s metropolitan area and catching the train into town whenever I need to. The first time, just a couple of days after I arrived back, I was walking down a small back road when an old man came out of his house and headed to his car. ‘You off to the station?’ I grunted a reply, wondering what business of his it was or if this was just modern small talk. ‘Wanna lift?’ He had no idea who I was, but that didn’t matter.

Just today, I was in a queue in the supermarket with my mother, who I’m helping house sit for a friend up the coast from Sydney. The woman at the customer service desk who takes returns had no customers, so she picked out a couple of the people in the queue with us who had few items and asked them to come around to her counter. That would never happen in Bhutan or Belgium.

I’ve been back in Australia for a couple of days now and everything is a surprise. Everything is expensive. They’re steam cleaning cars now. The layout of supermarkets is strange. Gum trees provide a familiar, alien landscape. There is a distracting amount of cleavage on display. Sydney is BIG. People speak with a very strange accent. Where am I?

One of my big fears about moving back to Australia is that I’d have to give up my life goal of breaking down cultural barriers. What is the point of this site if I can only travel once a year? The answer is that this is only a temporary situation. If my goal is strong enough, I’ll find a way to get out more in the next few years. In the meantime, I will write about Australia from my new global perspective and the reverse culture shock I have to face. I hope I’ll find time to write up Peru, Singapore, Indonesia, Italy, Canada and the many other places I’ve visited that deserve to be recognised. And of course, Australia is a multicultural society with its own racial / cultural problems that I may be able to find a way to help smooth. Life is not over. It’s just begining.

The more the time to leave Bhutan draws close, the more I consider what I’ve missed. I never did shoot a traditional bow with the locals. I never did get further east than Bumthang. I never did learn to cook ema datshi. I never learnt to speak Dzongkha or Sharshop. Actually, I don’t think I even learnt how to spell Sharshop (Sharshogpa, Shachopp?).

But I can’t regret those failures. To leave a country having done everything is to have no interest in coming back; to lose the interest in travel; to lose interest in life. What can you give the man who has everything? I think this should really say, ‘Where can you take the man who’s been everywhere?’ or ‘What experience can you give the man who’s done everything?’

Leaving unfulfilled, as I am, I am filled with desire to come back or to move on. Life’s energy pulses within me, drawing me on to new and bizarre places, with new and interesting people and new and exciting risks and new and enticing knowledge. The future beckons the unfulfilled.

I can’t believe it. It’s my second last day in Bhutan, almost certainly my last driving and I had a crash. Worse, I can’t help but feel it was my fault.

I was taking my bike down to be boxed up for shipping and drove through the southern traffic circle where one policeman directs traffic and another one or two stand around, ready to ‘educate’ drivers who do the wrong thing. Just 5m down the hill from the circle is a pedestrian crossing and an Indian man was making his way across. Anybody else would have rushed through, perhaps giving him the horn as they did. I’ve gotten into that habit too, but today I decided it was time to set things right. Why else would there be a pedestrian crossing marked on the road if the pedestrians didn’t have right of way. Already going slow after maneouvering around the circle, I slowed and stopped, just as the pedestrian waved thanks and the bang sounded. I looked in my rear view mirror in time to see a motorbike helmet disappearing to one side.

By the time I got out of the car, a policeman was already there, seeing to the two on the bike. One looked very groggy. I waited while the policeman spoke to them in Dzongkha, then asked in a gap if the bloke was alright. The policeman turned, told me he was fine and made a gesture of dismissal.

The way my emotions are right now, I had to fight tears again. How could this have happened so close to leaving? These people don’t deserve to be hurt. It just reinforces the rule I let lapse. Never, never, NEVER try to enforce my own culture, my own view of right and wrong on someone else, especially in another culture. Technically, he was in the wrong, but he had no reason to expect that I’d stop.

I’ve moved a number of times in my life. Each time, I embrace the new and am eager to move on. It’s the same now. Sydney calls. My friends and family call. All my possessions currently locked up in storage call.

This morning I bought my ticket out of Bhutan. I fly out on Friday. But as I was walking out of the airline office, I had to fight hard to keep from crying. The friends I’ve made here are close, but I’m not sure that those friendships are stronger than I had in Japan or Belgium or Australia. To see the mountains and know it’s the last time – that I won’t see them again for… Normally I’ve stayed in a country for 3 years before I move on. Could it be that?

Of course there’s Marie. I don’t know what will become of us after this and it has my emotions stripped raw. But it’s more than that. Bhutan has a lot of problems – some of which seem like they could be easily solved – but I think back to the first months I had here when I thought that Bhutan was the most civilised country I’ve ever been to. I still think it’s true. The problems, even those that could be easily solved, aren’t any bigger than we have in other countries.

I can’t stay here. I don’t want to. But I don’t want to leave either.

I’ve decided to leave Bhutan by next weekend. It’s all a bit of a rush, but there’s not much for me to stay here for. Marie has asked me to let her take the next assignment on her own – just to prove she can. I’d rather be home for christmas and I think I’d benefit from a few more years experience before relying on consulting as an income.

Before I go, I want to take a chance to tip my hat to the editor of Kuensel (whose name I believe is Kinley Dorji). I’ve never been a reader of newspapers, but I love to read his editorials every Saturday. Despite rumours that Kuensel only tells what the government wants us to hear, I think he takes a very objective stance. Each week, he picks a topic of interest to the community and presents it in a way that challenges both the traditional mindset and the outsider’s view, to come up with a rational view of Bhutan in the new world. This week, he writes on the newly formed ‘Anti-Corruption Commission’.

“…many corrupt practices are allowed to continue in society because of the sensitivities of a small community. As a result, the trend permeates deeper into the system… When we look at corruption at this stage we are questioning norms and customs that were established over time and therefore seen as accepted tradition, as well as the practices developed in recent times that are designed to look like tradition. Today we need tough action on practices that are known to be illegal and corrupt but more of a clarification when it comes to rules and regulations in the grey areas. And tough action, particularly on widespead practices, should spare no one or it will become a farce…”

It is minds like Kinley Dorji’s that will help Bhutan find the middle path into its future.