Journals from theEdge: By Charis Althouser*

Ama: Tibetan, noun: grandmother or very old woman, usually around 70-plus years old.
After a particularly long day on the trail, Ivy* and I strolled, or rather hobbled, into town just as the sun was setting. The house we would be staying in that night was one of a small collection of homes. At most, there were 10. A sweet old woman welcomed us when she arrived, which was about half an hour after we did. She found out we had cameras and excitedly communicated to us by part gesture, part Tibetan, part Nepali that she wanted her picture taken. We gladly obliged and started to get our cameras ready. Then to our surprise, she ran off to the bedroom to get ready. When she emerged, she was decked out in traditional Tibetan dress and had brought two different hats for her photo shoot! She was adorable to photograph, even while Ivy and I were wishing the lighting were better. I think she was more excited than we were about the whole process, but she seemed a little disappointed that the pictures didn’t instantly pop out of the camera. Sorry, they’ll have to wait for next year.

A long evening around the woodstove later, we all decided to hit the hay for the night. Our national partner and porter were going to sleep in the common/kitchen/dining/living room. Tibetans really get their money’s worth out of the word multipurpose. Ama had graciously offered Ivy and me her storage room to sleep in. Her initial offer included her bed (a three-foot wide wooden platform with a throw rug basically), which we firmly declined, repeatedly. I have never met more persistent women than Tibetan women. With the smoke from the evening’s fire hanging around our heads, we tried to maneuver the multiple carpets she had brought to us, with our thin foam mattresses and our sleeping bags, onto floor space not intended for three people. Finally everything and everyone got settled.

Or so I thought.

A familiar sound starts catching my attention no more than two minutes later. It’s a sound I’m very familiar with, and if you’ve ever lived in Asia, you know it. It’s a sound that you start to tune out because (1) you hear it so often and (2) it’s grotesque, so you don’t really want to intently listen. It’s the sound of someone clearing his or her throat to expel whatever is lodged there. Just as my brain started to register what I was hearing, I was thinking – I believe out loud at the time, out of sheer panic – “Noooooo! Ama remembers that I’m down here, right?!”

Just as I was processing this thought, that dreadful sound crescendoed and culminated in a wad of spit landing on my sleeping bag six inches from my face. Ama hocked a loogie on me! No, she indeed did not remember that I was down there. So then I begin to somewhat recover from the trauma. Life will go on, even with this wad of foreign spit on my nice, down sleeping bag. While nursing deep hopes that there won’t be a repeat incident, I start to settle down. And she does too. The night is looking better.

Or so I thought.

This is starting to feel like one of those horror stories you tell around the campfire. Don’t worry. It only gets worse.

I start to think over the day – how long, how trying, how exhausting it has been. I think about tomorrow, how it’s already 9:30 p.m. – so early I know, but so late for the mountains! I think about how glad I am to be in bed finally because I have to get up at 5 the next morning to start trekking again. Tomorrow we’ll be crossing the pass, so it’ll be even harder … and … my thoughts are starting to come slowly because I’m starting to drift to sleep….

Or so I thought.

Into my wonderfully sleepy state of being begin to drift sounds. Little sounds. Movement. Pitter-pattering. Sounds that sound like mice. Those sounds quickly emerged in three-dimension as said rodents moments later. After initial rounds of shivering with disgust and squealing and burying myself in my sleeping bag, I began to realize that regardless of the changes in my reactions, those creatures were not changing their locale for the night. I even tried to mummify myself in my bag by pulling the drawstring tight and completely hiding myself inside, including my head. It didn’t work. I had two options: suffocate or brave the mice outside. Unfortunately, I had to opt for the latter, since suicide isn’t exactly smiled upon even when facing a terror as great as those innumerable beady eyes and gnawing teeth in the dark.

They seemed to be staying up on the shelves overhead, so that must be where the open food source was. So long as they stayed up there all night, I should be able to get some sleep.

But they didn’t.

All night long they kept creeping closer and closer and closer. Their footpath of choice was the span of mattress directly behind our heads. Occasionally they chose to run the ceiling beams for a little extra diversion. And then they would fight. And gnaw. And squeal. And run. And then for fun, they’d repeat the whole cycle again. The only variation was the one daredevil rat that ran into the side of Ivy’s sleeping bag. This continued all night long! Trust me, I kept checking my watch. By intervals I seethed with anger, writhed with restlessness, cried in fear or exhaustion, complained to Ivy, and prayed in desperation … but I didn’t sleep. Based on my observance of the passing hours, the only time I missed was between 3:15 and 4 a.m. Approximately. Not that I was wishing for dawn or anything!

–30–

*Name changed for security reasons.

Charis Althouser is a Journeyman serving on theEdge in South Asia.