Where the Hills Have More Prayer Flags than Trees

The Buddhist funeral ritual of offering 108 prayer flags has the potential of wiping off acres of forest every year. To get a perspective of the threat it poses, look at the hills stretch overlooking Lanjophakha to Taba, there are more prayer flags than trees. It’s so haunting to look into that direction and realize that it will continue to expand further. It's now buddhism against environment, which is not supposed to be. What have we done? 

The Prayer Flag Hill

 I have raised this issue before and even made a few tangible suggestions to make it sustainable. In one article, I suggested the need for every Bhutanese to plant 108 trees as a citizenry mandate so that we could equate that with the trees we would cut down for the ritual when we die.

 In another article, I floated a social business idea to startup prayer flag hiring company to help bereaved families deal with arduous process of hoisting prayer flag at an affordable cost by reusing old pole or finding alternative such as bamboo, plastic or steel poles. 

To do more on this, I have been part of a micro project where we promoted treated bamboo pole as an alternative flagpole. We couldn’t even make a dent because we realized that there is a huge resistance. 

 The big question we must address is, why 108 poles? It’s fundamentally flawed to count the poles when the ritual is about the prayers printed on the flag that will flutter in the wind. Shouldn’t we be counting the number of lines of prayers we are offering in the wind? 

 To make it worse, there is funny logic that states that bamboo and steel poles that are hollow inside cannot be used for offering prayer flags. Who is deciding this for us? Is it a wrong number? Otherwise, wouldn’t an offering that has done lesser harm be a more profound offering? 

Bamboo Flagpoles in Southern Bhutan

 I am not an extreme conservationist, I rather believe in sustainable harvesting of trees. I believe in felling a matured tree to build shelter and produce furniture. But I am opposed to the idea of felling young trees just to stretch a layer of prayer flags on it. Every tree is a golden goose and felling them for a mere pole is like killing the goose. It’s an unworthy sacrifice of a valuable natural resource. 

 There are more reasonable ways to make the offering; 

1. reuse old flagpoles that are lying all around uselessly. Make all the existing flagpoles public property that anyone can reuse once that prayers are faded. 
2. use ropes to stretch prayer flags between two poles or around one big pole. There are some fine examples. Make them popular.
3. explore recycle plastic poles. I think my friend Karma Yonten can do this. He has shown the possibility with his eco-green poles.
4. use steel poles. It’s far more economical because you can resell them. 
5. and I am wondering if it’s possible to cut out flagpoles from a big matured timber using some machine. (Business idea?)

Reusable Ru-dhar pole

 But as long as permits to fell young tree for flagpoles are freely available, why suffer a change? We are too lazy to explore better ways. We are happy with the old world, and there are old minds advising us to resist. People gossip about you not doing enough gewa if you don’t do it the old way. 

 Therefore, there should be a systemic effort to putting an end to this mindless culture of massacring young trees for nothing worthwhile: 

1. Department of Forestry, Forest Resources Management Division must stop issuing permit for flagpoles. We must put a ban on felling young trees for flagpole or any other purpose. 
2. Department of Culture and Zhung Dratshang must create awareness on how the offering is about the prayer on the flag that flutter in the wind rather than the pole. Pole can be anything or nothing. Prayers matter.

Let's state the truth that it's so sinful to cut a young tree for hoisting a prayer flag.

108 Trees in a Lifetime for Citizenship

Bhutan's first ever Guinness World Record 'Most Trees Planted in an Hour' made a statement of our relation with trees. Perhaps it must be one of the most meaningful records ever set, and coming it from a small nation like ours is a huge pride. To make it the most memorable event ever it was dedicated to the celebration of the 60th birth Anniversary of our beloved fourth king, who has placed environment at the heart of our constitution and all of our national development plans.

"Coinciding with Social Forestry Day on June 2, a team of 100 volunteers got their hands deep in the ground to plant a total of 49,672 trees in just 60 minutes, smashing the previous record by nearly 10,000."- Guinness World Record

 The record required each man to plant over 8 trees per minute, god knows how they did that. I would like to congratulate the 100 super humans, the organiser Karma Tshering and everybody in the team for the making us so proud.

Our Guinness World Record inspired a green idea. If an ordinary Bhutanese has the potential of planting 500 trees in an hour, can every Bhutanese citizen plant at least 108 trees in a life time? Easily. Therefore I think it must be made a citizenship requirement to plant 108 trees to rightfully call yourself Bhutanese.

I heard in some countries you have to serve in the military for at least a year to fulfil your requirement as citizen, and in some countries you have to have voted in an election to have access to public services. Likewise I thought we Bhutanese could do more than just being born here.

I chose the auspicious number 108 because that's the exact numbers of young trees we cut down to offer prayer flags when someone dies. So 108 trees will be felled for each one of us regardless of our environmental morals. However, incase of non-buddhists the number could be viewed differently or changed to another significant number, because after all it's the tree we are placing at the centre.

The 108 prayer flags ...

If this is taken seriously our 70% forest cover can be maintained for ages without affecting the developmental activities because we have the potential of planting 75,600,000 tress with our current population alone and it's only going to grow. This is well beyond any record on the planet and Bhutan's greatest gift to the world.

Teacher's Day to Remember

This Teacher's Day in Bajothang was more than a cut-cake and some happy-teacher's-day dances. It will be remembered for ages, there will be thousand trees telling the story of May 2, 2014, literally. Every student and teacher in my school planted at least a tree each around the town.

Drawing the Plan of Action at 7:30

 Planting trees is not an interesting story to tell, and some could even think we got confused about the dates. It's supposed to be June 2. Well there is a difference, June is not as good as May for new saplings to grow. When we plant in May we mean to see them survive.

The Mastermind, supporter and friend.

And Green Zone in Bajothang town remained on paper for very long. The town has so many urgent issues to take care of before they could have the luxury to think of the green zone they once planned with pride. Thanks to the Environmental Wing of PHPA-II that is led by my friend Sangay Dorji. Last year he proposed the idea of plantation and I took the matter to my school. We agreed to do a massive community service and here we are. We formed a core team who put the idea together and made everything possible. Thanks to Vice Principal Melam and Ugyen Tshering for making it happen.

Plantation as far as the eyes could see

The trees are named and their survival is put up for a competition, therefore we expect this plantation to be different from other mass plantations, we want every sapling to grow into tree. The best classes will be awarded prizes at the end of the year. One parent came looking for his child's plant so that he could nurture it when she is gone to school, but only one parent. I would request more parents to own this idea.

One businessman came forward to offer refreshment to our students, I was so happy with him but I declined because we had our own refreshment. He act of kindness and responsibility earn so much respect from me. But again only one businessman showed that mentality.

The 1,300 holes were dug by JCV, we should have rather dug them ourselves because we wasted as much time in filling the massive hole. We planned the program for an hour and it took was over three hours before we could finally return to school for cut-cake celebration. By then I was dead exhausted but the cake looked very refreshing until I realised that I forgot to pick up my daughter. I borrowed a car and ran with the cake on my dashboard. I thought it was once in a lifetime fun but at the end of satisfying event I got a few disappointed friends who hated me for taking them on plantation trip. But I bet students loved it and that's all that matter.

Finally Cut-cake celebration in School

Happy Teacher's Day to all the teachers across the country, and to all my teachers who helped in shaping my life.

Rooting Hormones

There are two special plants in my school, a shrub and a tree. Mysteriously they are alone, just one each. While I understood enough of the tree the shrub remained largely mythical until I sought help on Facebook.

 

The Shrub (Name: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)

Now I know their names and I know both propagated from cuttings. I have already begun working on multiplying the plants but given my bad track records with plants I knew I was missing on something.

The Tree

I have tried cuttings of hedges before with little success, and this time I am dealing with precious plant. I don’t want to lose this plant. I sort advices from my biologist friend Ugyen Tshering who suggested about rooting hormones that stimulate root growth during plant propagation, something I never heard before yet something that easily clicked on me. It was my environmental engineer friend Sangay Dorji who reminded this computer teacher to go to Google and search on “How to prepare organic rooting hormone” I felt very stupidly enlightened.

What I found on Google was what Sangay Dorji already shared. There are two easy ways to prepare rooting hormone at home besides commercial hormones.

1. Extraction from willow leaf
2. Honey

Extraction from Willow Leaf: Collect fresh willow leaves. Pour boiling water on it and leave to brew for 24 hours. Throw away the leaves and there you have the rooting hormone. It can be stored in refrigerator for months. Use the liquid for soaking the tip of your cuttings for a few hours before planting them in polybag.

Honey: Honey is natural rooting hormone. Just dip the tip of the cutting in honey and plant it right away. As simple as that.

But the success of rooting largely depends on how well you nurture them daily. Don’t be stupid like me- they don’t need sunlight as yet so keep the plants in shade to better the chance of their survival.

Rumor: Even Aspirin is said to have the rooting magic in it. Dissolve few tablets in a glass of water and soak the cuttings in it for some hours before planting them in polybag.