Buffalo Dung

Manuj and his younger brother


Its 4 in the afternoon returning back to the village from the day in Chautara. “Aunice Holly!” Says Mohan’s older brother, Manuj. I follow him to find about five of the village’s children in addition to Manuj’s mother filling up their beautiful handmade baskets with buffalo dung from the grandparent’s animal hut. One by one they kneel down with their heads back to fix the rope around their heads in order to balance the basket on their upper backs. “Basnus!” He says to me so I sit down as they fix it onto my head. Everything I do here turns people around me into laughter. The way I simply eat, drink, sit – everything. And I have come to just accept it and embrace the fact I am the laughing stalk of this region. What to do… So I use Manuj’s hands to pull me up and take a minute to get used to the strange feeling of having to use my neck muscles for the first time in my life. Thinking we would be walking to the adjacent field, I tell myself I can do it. Oh, how little did I know at the time. The walk was twenty minutes down the mountain. Almost falling with every terraced field we would have to walk down, the children couldn’t stop laughing. These kids and mother were doing this barefeet and I was having trouble with sneakers! I always knew that mountain people were physically shorter. I’m 5”2 and considered tall in the region of Ladakh where I tower over most Ladakhi women. These people are also quite short, not as short as Sherpas or Ladakhis but still comparable. Having to hike down this mountain with a huge basket of buffalo dung balancing on my head, I realized how much safe it would be to be lower to the ground!

The night before Kunzes and I had taught Manuj and the other village kids that come to our room every night to learn English, how to say “This is.” While walking behind me he decided to practice. With extremely little English he would say “This is my tree!” “This is my soil!” “This is my water!” as he walked behind me cautioning me with “Bistari, bistari” meaning “slowly, slowly.” Focusing very hard on where my feet were placed and balancing the dung, I couldn’t turn around to correct his pronunciation. “This is my monkey tree!” “This is my snake” My mind was in a zone, letting the kids laugh at me as I struggled to follow their careless steps that seemed to fall in place naturally down the step fields carrying more dung than I myself was carrying. Finally, we came to the step field that felt like 3 kilometers away from where we started. They all threw the baskets down, letting the dung form into a perfect pile. I tried to imitate their throw, but had no luck throwing it all over my head. The kids fell to the ground in laughter and then Manuj jumped up. “My snake.” I thought he was joking when I heard him say it before. I started to feel queasy. In his hand was the skin of a snake bigger than me. Bigger than my body. Then he pointed “my monkey tree” and in the tree was a white monkey with a jet back face – like no monkey I’ve seen before. I pointed to the village, gesturing for the skin to be taken to the village so I could show Kunzes. “Grandfather angry, here it sits. Ghosts don’t come” I gathered that this meant the skin must be kept on the ledge of the field to keep bad spirits from entering the fields, destroying the crops.

“fast walking!” One girl shouted “Going fast!” Manuj yelled to me. As I walked amid the children up the fields preparing for four more trips as I gathered from them, I realized something. These people don’t know anything besides this. There are no TV’s, no computers, no phones and the education system has failed here in bringing knowledge to students. On the way up I admired the pink skies getting ready to for the sun to set. I tried to imagine explaining to these people the fact that the earth spins, hence the reason for night and day. But what is the point of explaining something when it is beyond their ability to understand .

For some time I thought I would leave this village because of the unbelievable lack of understanding. The grandmother would become upset when she heard I was going to Chautara for the day because she thought I didn’t like the village. Even in translation I knew she would never be able to comprehend, to understand the idea of the internet. It literally would be a different world or planet – as this experience has been for me. But I have grown to love these villagers and have created friendships with Nakul and Parkesh – the chief’s sons. Nakul is only 16 years old and is the most polite boy along with his brother I have ever met. They smile so innocently and make sure I am always taken care of. “please let me show you Holly.” None of the villagers can believe it when they see me in the fields. “You must not get dirty.” The children sometime say to me. “This is too heavy for you.” So attempting to show them I’m just a regular person, I join and it ends in laughter and confusion.

It is difficult to be almost revered as some guest god in this Hindu/Animistic village and I feel continuously helpless as I tried to do things that are second nature to them such as tie hay into a bundle, make a fire from blowing into sticks or making bowls out of bamboo leaves. But then I guess I begin to realize all humans have different things we can do depending on our environment. When I type on my laptop Nakul just watches and sometimes asks for me to teach him how to move the curser. I once left my laptop with him for an hour to come back and find all the folders on my desktop deleted. Thank goodness I backed them up the day before. Perhaps that’s why I’m trying to learn how to build a website on my own – to feel like I can help in some small way with the skills and information I know I have access to in my life. To take advantage of my own upbringing, environment and people in my life back home to show the rest of the world that the people where I come from do care about them.

When I arrive to our home Kunzes is playing music with Nakul. She washed all my clothes for me. “Now, Holly. You must stop sitting wherever you please. That is why your pants are always dirty and mine are always clean – you just plop yourself wherever.” Oh, my sweet Ladakhi ache-le.

I turn to Parkesh wanting to know more about the snake skin in the field. I am able to get him to understand “snake.”

“Skin, parkesh. Snake skin.” Pinching my own skin, I try so hard to explain to him but his reply “I don’t understand.”
Five minutes later he comes back. “You mean cover. Snake cover.” He then pinches his clothes, “Like clothes.” I smile and say, “Yes, snake clothes.

“We must leave it there.” Wanting to understand why, his response to me was, “Because it must stay there. That is all.” And with that he passed me a warm cup of buffalo milk.

It is beyond me to understand why they wake up every morning at 4:30 to go to the rocks near the water pump and demand things from the gods. One would have to spend their lives from a child to truly understand as well as learn the skills these people have. To see a mountain and learn that with human power alone, they have created and maintained magnificent fields that have totally sustain them, from the bamboo baskets and mats to the fire they burn using mustard seed oil and sticks to homes they build from clay and mud. To look at a field of pulled up hay and with hands alone press them into perfect tight bundles ready to be brought up to the animals. To see soil and have twenty different names for a concept we only have one word for. He gave his answer through his eyes and it sufficed my need to know. Why? It is beyond my ability to understand and Parkesh knows this.