Saturday, February 2, 2008

Akapunsik

Tibetans are amazing people, so happy and eager to meet you. They will usher you into their homeand before you know it a pot of freshly brewed rea will be sitting infront of you. It will usually sit ontop of the cast iron stove, fired by yak dung and coal that is sitting infront of you, but thats another story.
I was fortunate enough to meet Akapunsik the other day. An ex-tibetan-buddhist-monk that was forced to give up his practises as the age of 14, around the time of the cultural revolution I think.
Now an old man with a face weathered by time and an extreme environment he heards yaks. Sending them out each morning only to bring them back slowly but surely each evening, chasing them down form the graying pastures on the mountain ridges each evening with his bowed legs.
I was on my way down from a hike amongst the yaks upon one of the ridges to a tibettan prayer flag -a totem of faith to the gods, palced there by the lovals in a hope to earn some merit and save themselves from a horrible rebirth- when i ran into the school headmaster, our host. A freind of Akapunsiks, he invited me to come and drop by and say G’day. One of his extended family members is sick at the moment and in hospital so the rest of his relatives, his usual visitors, are away looking after them.
I was ushered into the square walled propert with various rooms lining the outer wal and a central courtyard that came complete with piled up Yak dung. Akapunsiks home is a small two room dwelling, if we had to write it up for a real estate magazine it would probably go something like this... “A small two room dwelling, easy to maintain in traditional Tibettan style. A must see for all those looking for that ‘rustic charm’ – rustic maybe, but charm would definately be bending the truth probably to the point of breaking, so much so that, if truth were an object you would be picking it up with a dustpan and sweeper whilst hoping not too many of the small bits slipped under the pan, you know those bits that just wont get in there! People here live a simple yet contented life.
He was seated quietly in his livingroom/bedroom/dining room, smoke lightly enveloping everything around and beam of afternoon light shining though a small window, resting gently on his face casing shadows across his worn down facade. The scene was quite surreal, something i had heard alot about but still didnt know fully what to expect of how to behave.
As we sat around the stove I watched as Akapunsik slowly rose and begun to prepare the tea ducking in and out through the curtained door that divided the two rooms of his dwelling withough even asking if we wanted any, tea is a given, you will always have it. Tea leaves that crumbled like thy were held together with dirt were the first in the kettle, left to slowly bubble away. Next came the nilk, I must have looked a little nervous, i was bracing myself a little, ‘would htis be my first taste of the fabled yak butter tea’; something most western visitors dread. I was reassured though that this would just be tea with Australian millk (the milk is actually imported from Australia, and we dont have many yaks back home) by my fellow guest.
As the old tibettan slowly made our tea he wiped his his hands with a cloth encrusted with dirt, our bowls recieved te same treatment. The cloth was presumably cleaner than our bowls but I’m not sure you would ever be able to tell.
To be honest it wasn’t too bad an experience to say the least, the tea was refreshingly warm for this cold world. We sat, they talked about hte smaller things in life, enjoying long stints of silence, not awkward (for them at least, i was the new comer), just the silence shared betweeen good freinds.
As Lars would say, ‘this was nice’

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