Permanent Placement Annoucement

The big news: I am living in Baharly Town for the next two years. It is about 45 minutes from where I am living now in the Ahal Region, about 2 hours (by public bus) from the capitol, Ashgabat. With 15000 people, Baharly consists of a small downtown center (where I’m living), surrounding villages, and is located at the foot of the Kopetdag mountains. The proximity to Ashgabat means I will have weekly access to the free internet at the Peace Corps office as well as regular mail. As the internet is unreliable (note how last weekend it was down), please continue to write letters. Staying in the Ahal region means I will continue to live in the most conservative and fundamentalist of the regions with the closest proximity to the PC Office (=close for medications, also close for staff’s supervision and control). No unauthorized travel for me.

More details: I will visit my permanent site to meet my host family and fellow Turkmen English teachers for five days next week so right now I only know what the PC packet says. According to the pamphlet about my placement, I have been assigned to a medium-sized school in Baharly town with 3 English teachers and around 1000 students. My school principal is an English teacher by profession. As far as ethnicity is concerned, Baharly is overwhelmingly Turkmen so I will not be learning Russian or Uzbeck. It is a new site which has never had a PC volunteer before and my nearest fellow America is Linda (one of my current training site-mates), assigned to stay here in Godkepe (45 minutes away). Some of my dearest friends among the other volunteers are assigned to Ashgabat, however, so company is an easy and cheap bus ride away. That's not including the new Turkmen friends I will be making at sites and my current Language and Cultural Trainer (LCF) who I love and is an hour away between Baharly and Ashgabat.

My host family information: To repeat, all of this is from the PC description sheets which have proven unreliable in the past, so take all this with a certain skepticism. I am living in a compound 10 minutes walk from my school and 15 minutes from the market and public transportation. My family has four members: a father who works at the Ashgabat airport (getting tickets may be really easy), a 50+ year old housewife mother, a 25 year-old sister who lives at home (yeah!), and an 8th grader sister who “speaks a little English” (= “hello”). I’m going to get really good at Turkmen. No one smokes and they have a puppy, hens, and a camel. I will have my own house on the compound with two rooms including a bed & mattress (!), a worktable, one or two chairs, a wardrobe (!), and curtains. The compound has a bucket shower, but with a gas heating system and they have a well in addition to a water pipe (which “usually works in winter,” whatever that means). They’ve gone on the record to state that I’m allowed to have guests of any gender visit and spend the night. When I talked to Ata (one of the PC staff who chose our host families), he said my family is ready to bend over backwards to be really friendly and welcoming for me – thus my own house on the compound. However challenging the professional situation may be adjusting to the conservative Ahal culture and helping them get used to the strange American in their midst, it sounds like my home situation could not be more ideal. I look forward to an exciting, challenging, interesting, and hopefully very rewarding two years.

Zack Braff and Sacred Bread

The internet was down at the Peace Corps office last weekend, so here is last week's post.

The photo at right is my 23rd Birthday party with my host sisters and site-mates.

Stories of the Peace Corps usually involve insects bigger than bats, monsoon seasons in thatched huts, and diseases involving swelling and pus. For me, the Peace Corps cultural adaptation process has been about watching “Scrubs” while eating breakfast.

Of course, it’s a little more complicated than that.

Firstly, “Scrubs” is dubbed in Russian by a single monotone male voice doing all the dialogue on top of the still-hearable English. JD and Turk are particularly easy to hear underneath the Russian as they use short slang which requires much longer Russian phrases to translate (“What’s up, bro” takes about a minute, not to mention explaining the significance of “black whale”). Unfortunately, with the exception of his sound effects, Dr. Cox’s original voice is lost beneath the Russian growl. The only time the television is not on during the day is when there is no electricity in a house, a situation which (despite its frequency) leaves the family as helpless as any American suburbanite. Their lives are designed around the presence of electricity, natural gas, and running water (I probably took our loss of both electricity and water for two days best out of all the family as I came emotionally prepped for it before I arrived).

My breakfast scene is further complicated by the fact that the table is three inches tall with the eight members of my host family plus myself all sitting cross-legged or laying sideways around it on the colorful hand-woven carpet. When it’s just us, my brothers and sisters sit and lay down haphazardly so that everyone has enough room and can still watch the perpetually-on television. When guests arrive, however, the traditional separation of the genders kicks in and the males get the guest room and the women either sit in the living room or busily prepare tea and sweets for the male guests. When a strange/guesting male is in the house, even when he’s separated by a wall, none of my sisters lie down, but rather sit with perfect posture with their legs tucked modestly beneath them. I'm still getting used to the geographical gender posture rules.

I’m also eating the Turkmen equivalent of oatmeal for breakfast every morning: pieces of crumbled bread (“churok”) in boiled milk straight from the cow an hour previously. The “churok,” a loaf about a foot-long and an inch high, a Turkmen specialty, tastes like hearty whole wheat and has the texture of wall insulation. The bread’s baking instructions and specially- designed earthen mound stove is so ancient it goes back to Turkmen nomadic days and the bread itself has a sacred significance – it is kept in a camel-hair woven blanket, should never be turned upside down, people take pieces with them for good luck when traveling long distances, and any uneaten scraps are saved for later consumption as it is blasphemous to throw it away. The bread is so dense that even when soaking in warm thick milk for five minutes it holds it’s shape so (with a lot of sugar) breakfast becomes a sweet bog of starch, protein, calcium, and cream. Not so bad, really, considering that poor Thomas and Dan were served fried camel organs for an entire week. Breakfast is actually one of my favorite meals here as the Turkmen food pyramid is visualized a little differently than what American nutritionists usually suggest. The Turkmen word for “sweet” is the same as “delicious” so nothing can be too sweet, and the word “food” – if it doesn’t have an extra modifier of “vegetable-like” – implies extremely oily, starchy, or meat-based (usually all three). Fruits and vegetables aren’t considered foods, but rather ignorable appetizers.

When contemplating my usual breakfast scene, we must also consider what I’m wearing: my first Turkmen “koinek” (traditional floor-length dress). Although I bought the red and black-patterned material at the bazaar, my youngest sister cut the material to fit my measurements, my middle sister wove the complex embroidery around the neck, and my eldest sister tailored it to be both flattering and comfortable. The next time I get paid from the Peace Corps I’m getting another one.

But that’s my life in Turkmenistan in a nutshell. Every day I drink about a liter of Coca Cola, I read books borrowed from the PC office, exercise with my youngest sister in the privacy of my room, and (despite the difference in language) my conversations with my host sisters follow predictable girly patterns: clothes, boys, weight, movies (they know as many as I do), cosmetics, knitting patterns, and how to deal with problem students (we’re all teachers of different subjects). In all, it is a complicated mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar which at once proves how interconnected the world’s pop culture has become as well as how it is mediated and conformed into the existing traditional life styles and values. And that’s just a complicated way of saying I’m getting used to it here, and really it’s not so very different than my life in America. The differences are in the details.

"Now I know..."

After sorting through the last few weeks’ disastrous and humorous anecdotes, I found one that is both. Last week after waking with a sense of comfortable contentment, I started my day by making eggs. The Turkmen philosophy of cooking is that if it tastes good with oil, then drowning a food in oil should be fabulous. After three weeks of scrambled eggs that were more grease than eggs, I volunteered to start making my own, to everyone’s satisfaction. Of course, I can’t actually cook. That I’d made it until last week without burning down the kitchen is a sort of miracle, really. I’d been experimenting with the different kinds of oils, grease, and fats that sit in recycled unmarked bottles and cans throughout the kitchen and discovered that the oil from the Coca Cola bottle next to the coffee ground can (now filled with camel fat) was the best for lubricating my favorite iron skillet. My favorite skillet was still caked with last night’s dinner, but some scrubbing (with water, there’s no dishwashing soap here) had it looking somewhat clean. So I got out the oil and started making scrambled eggs, every step bringing a sense of accomplishment and pride as the eggs sizzled and began to solidify into a familiar omelet shape. I pushed around the raw egg a small tea spoon (the only clean spoon in the bin) and although the fire was a little hotter than usual, it worked to my advantage as the eggs cooked faster and every part of the pan was heating more or less equally. Then came the moment of truth. I found a plate and grabbed a wash-cloth and took the skillet from the fire and moved it toward the table. The skillet, which under a smaller flame was never incredibly hot, was now far too hot to hold with just one wash-cloth. I cried out in pain as the iron handle became uncomfortable in my palms and I set the skillet down on the kitchen table, which promptly began to hiss. Damn. I grabbed a second washcloth, got hold of the skillet handle, and looked down to see a perfect skillet-shaped burned hole in the plastic covering of the table and a scorch mark on the stacked papers beneath the plastic. The table itself seemed undamaged, but as I surveyed my handy-work the pan wobbled in my hands and my perfect eggs began to slip and I brought up my left hand to steady it and brushed against the bottom of the pan, making another sizzle sound accompanied with a burning flesh smell. As I cursed again, the pan wobbled the other direction and the wash-cloths slipped and my right forefinger connected with the still-hot handle. I finally got the skillet to the cool side of the stove-top, dumped the still-perfect eggs onto the plate, ran cold water over my burned fingers, and entered the living room with pain and guilt plastered across my face. I presented my hands to my eje (host mother) and explained through gestures and large facial expressions what had occurred. I got lots of sympathy and Edugul (my host sister) put toothpaste on it (not a bad idea, really). I ate half my eggs before Edugul headed for the kitchen and I followed her, pointing to the hole I’d made in the table and apologizing profusely in English and Turkmen. She laughed and I made the “I’m really really sorry” face, which she shrugged off. When I came back to the living room my eje proceeded to explain to me that I needed more than one wash-cloth to hold burning skillets, that fire made iron hot, and that I should be careful. I chuckled a little, replied “Now I know,” and they all laughed. A week later, my fingers are still healing (mostly because I won’t stop picking at the scabs), but when you see me next I’ll still have all ten.

In other news, as I walking home from the bus station today a huge party at my neighbor’s house was playing the Macarena loud enough to be heard a block away. On the curb an elderly man looking like a slightly taller Yoda crouched chewing something and nodding with solemn contemplation to the song’s bouncing beat. I thought nothing would beat last night’s Turkmen professional ice skater (this is a desert country) performing on TV a choreographed ice ballet to “House of the Rising Sun” and “Cotton-Eye Joe” in full cowboy paraphernalia.

Why Turkmen kids walk the streets singing “Hit the Road, Jack”. . .

Lessons learned from my first weeks as a camp music teacher, 3rd form (7-8 year-old) assistant English teacher, and English language club teacher: 1) Ray Charles, “C is for Cookie,” and gospel songs work for all ages and are enjoyed even if the students don’t know any English beyond “hello,” while “Why Do You Build Me Up?” and “The Ants Go Marching” require either stereo accompaniment or English fluency, and preferably both. 2) Children have the supernatural ability to not only sense a ball’s presence at the bottom of a bag, but also to pass this knowledge to one another faster than sound. They can then beg to play with it in repeated harmonized whines specially tuned to grate the ears, mind, and soul. 3) If a visual aid doesn’t move or include more than one color, then kids won’t look at it. 4) Come to class/club/camp with at least four back-up games in case every carefully planned activity spontaneously combusts due to the combined catalysts of classrooms lacking a blackboard, too many/few students, and boys/girls beating up the other boys/girls. 5) When possible, bring a translator. Without one you run the risk of facing an entire classroom of uncomprehending but expectant stares as you try to explain the directions of a game for the fourth time using toddler Turkmen and charades that only induce giggles and no new understanding.

Despite some hitches, the first two weeks of intensive teaching technical training (translation: sink or swim classroom instruction with bi-weekly “hub days” where we learn how we could have taught better four days before) have gone very well. My kids have their colors, numbers (even out of sequence!), and introductions down pat and they come running to give me hugs from three streets away. A lifetime terror of children as a race has only lessened slightly after getting to know them better, but their beaming faces after getting positive reinforcement on an answer (Turkmen teachers generally don’t say “good job”) remind me why I’m here.

In other news, last weekend was my first visit to the large Gokdepe bazaar, a world unto itself, acres wide, with twisting labyrinthine stalls and alleyways that overflow its cement walls and cover much of the surrounding valley, only giving way to the rows of buses and large vans which retrieve and depart with the bazaar’s occupants. Every dusty square foot is filled with velvet, satin, cotton, and synthetic fabrics and prints; embroidery (patterns, raw materials, and completed pieces done by hand and machine); coats, jeans, sweaters, and shirts from Turkey and China; soaps, lotions, yarn, music (cassette tapes), socks, hair pins, sponges, pots, tea sets, cleaning fluid, gasoline, car doors and headlights, cookies, backing soda, Snickers bars, cotton cooking oil in Coca Cola liter bottles, and every other conceivable knick-knack and life accessory. Carts full of sacks of flour, fresh pomegranates, and Bollywood DVDs pushed their way through the streets barely wide enough to fit them as women carrying bags half the size of themselves darted out of the way and pressed themselves up against three-foot high piles of empty shampoo bottles. It was a fascinating adventure of sights, scents, smells, and buzzing human activity (women in pants! A sight to sooth the soul and, surprisingly, make me slightly shamed and scandalized on their behalf), which I hope I can avoid doing again for at least two months. The sensory overload was worth it in the end as I now have cloth for my first Turkmen koinek (floor-length dress) which I’m designing with my host sisters’ help/dictation. I’m choosing the neckline, my middle sister is designing the embroidery pattern and sewing it with her sewing machine, my oldest sister is cutting the fabric, and my littlest sister is tailoring it to fit me perfectly. With our powers combined, and assuming I survive their enthusiasm, I should have a lovely red and black dress fit for school, weddings, and guesting by the end of next week. After living with only four outfits during the past two months, the idea of a new possibility in the morning fills with me a sublime glee. Unexpected lesson of this week: PC makes you more materialistic, interesting how that works out.