Beyond the Sky and Earth
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| Author | Jamie Zeppa |
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| Published | 1999 |
| Publisher | The Berkley Publishing Group, Penguin Putnam, Inc. |
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Beyond the Sky and Earth or Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan is a memoir written by Jamie Zeppa of her experience working as a lecturer in English at the Sherubtse College near Trashigang in eastern Bhutan. Zeppa took up an assignment for two years. Initially she started writing a fiction based on her experience there, but she was suggested to write it in memoir form and she took the advice. The book was first published in 1999. The title of the book is derived from an expression of thankfulness in the Bhutanese language which means "I am thankful to you beyond the earth and sky".
Zeppa dedicates the book to her grandfather Patrick Raymond Zeppa and her grandmother Florence Alize Zeppa, who were immigrants from Poland settled in Canada. It is her first book on her experiences of working as a lecturer in English in a school in Bhutan, the tantric Buddhist kingdom in eastern Himalayas. She provides extensive knowledge about the country which till the early 1960s was not even connected by road links and was dependent only on barter trade, and its people were ruled by a king. The book is divided into six chapters (Arrival, Entrance, Movement Order, Peak of Higher Learning, Involvement and Love) followed by a postscript.
In the first chapter, Arrival, she narrates about her initial education in Toronto, Canada under the care of her paternal grandparents, as her parents had separated when she was two years old; her decision not to pursue a doctoral degree in English but take up a job as an English lecturer on a two-year assignment in a school in Bhutan. in response to an ad posted by the World University Service of Canada; her grandfather's skepticism about her taking up this assignment in an alien land, her departure from Canada and arriving at the Paro Airport in Bhutan after a bumpy air journey.
In the subsequent chapters she narrates about the Himalayan topography of the isolated valleys, the Bhutanese people, history of Buddhism in the country, the religious affiliation of the people to the Bon religion of shamanistic beliefs, their social customs, etiquette, food habits, poor hygienic conditions, her posting in the Sherubtse College near Trashigang in eastern Bhutan, her love life and so forth. She explains about Buddha and his teachings. She also explains the experiences of fellow teachers from foreign countries with humorous epithets like "night-hunting" (furtive entry into a girl's house in the night), "vomit-comet" (journey in a bus which stinks), "from scabies to rabies" (health conditions) and "Dysentery Danishes" (about the type of food they get). She gives vivid account of facts and events that happened during her teaching assignment at the Sherubtse College, located in Kanglung village near Trashigang; this college, the first in Bhutan, had been established by the Jesuit priest Father William Mackey in the 1970s.
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