Welcome to JP Melville's review, experience, and statement on foreign aid and the international development industry. A conservative faith in family. A love affair riding the riotous tensions between money, personal freedom, the majestic travesty of our specie's ecological footprint, and economic politics. Selected writing of both prose and poetry, anecdotal travel log to rhetorical essay, dating back from the 1980's to the present. Enjoy!

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Losar, Lhasa, Tibet




just listening to gg vikey
Benin musician who disappeared inside himself
have spent this saturday visiting with various people in their homes,
eating food, drinking butter tea
losar
not much unlike Christmas
exclude commerce and vanity of consumption
so family, friends, food, timelessness
like a dream i once had
deja vu

and in a moment of silence a young girl starts talking about her grandfather,
his death, his reincarnation
only myself listening,
and a young woman working for Future Generations translating
a story
from nowhere
a monastery, fallen into disrepair somewhere far away,
and a gap through which the nuns can no longer pass...

then new guests arrive
more food
meat
the girl
there
gone

for me, losar started three nights ago, in Tsetang,
shared soup, toasts, songs, all around a wood stove
a tibetan house
the following night here in this hotel, with staff
young people
winter
time together, bound by their work
living in the hotel
empty excepting few guests
myself,
and several foreigners working on a project in the east
who were travelling the next day

last night, after a day's work on papers and computer,
locked in this hotel room
a quiet evening, ate in the restaurant next door,
chatted with one australian
he down on the costs of foreign experts, the softness of bureaucrats
he a rugged man who spent 20 years working in the outback with aboriginals
no time for sensitivities

then at midnight, reading Civilization, wrapped in blankets
blasts of fireworks, rockets
new year arrived
i turned off the light
and listened
and slept

then this morning
food and ritual in the early hours with hotel staff in the lobby
songs

then visiting
and back to the beginning of this story...

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