I write blog entries in segments. Moments such as watching a kid sneeze in his hands, pat down the family bread, and then me still eating it two minutes later (more on hygiene later), inspire me to quietly scribble prose in the corners of notebooks and the back of lesson plans when the people around me think I’m diligently studying Turkmen prepositions. A few days ago I wrote a lovely paragraph about how the bitter frozen winter had transformed into spring as suddenly and beautifully as a cliché. I slept without socks for the first time in weeks and it was glorious. The weather was so perfect I had my club kids practicing the present continuous of “to run” and “to walk” by actually running, walking, skipping, and stopping around the court yard like a scene out of “Dead Poets Society.” But that’s the only bit of that paragraph you’re going to get because the view out of the window is an inch of snow that’s only getting higher. The perverseness of the weather means that in the morning I leave the house with five-six layers of clothes obscuring every scrap of skin and then by the afternoon I’m sweating in 60-75 degree warmth and stripping down to one or two layers to teach and walk home. As the sun sets, I re-layer and the cycle begins again. Fun fact discovered recently – the reason it’s so damned cold and no one warned us to pack for it is that this is the coldest winter Turkmenistan has had in 70 years. Apparently I’ve got it easy here in Ahal. Rumor says some of the other regions, Mary and Lebop specifically, have two to three feet of snow, the schools are closed, and the volunteers there – a month at site – still haven’t started teaching yet.The photo is of my bedroom - yes, I live in a wedding cake. The television was moved to the kitchen.
The biggest news in Baharly town is that the President has officially declared it a city. He said it on the news last Sunday so it must be so. And thus from the time I went to bed on Sunday evening and woke up Monday morning, I became a resident of (and sole American in) Baharly City. When this will have any practical application (high-rise buildings, more jobs, road repairs, functioning gas and electric to the surrounding villages, larger schools that can accommodate all the regional children, a faster post office system, traffic lights, yada yada yada) is anyone’s guess. No one’s optimistic enough to guess. The President says “soon.”
So as of January 26 I finished my first month as a Peace Corps volunteer. This is significant not only because I doubled Thomas’s survival time (my good-old Godkepe site-mate left T-stan after two weeks), but I have completed what all PCVs say is the hardest month in the two years. During January my survival strategy was simple: survive. I went to school, taught, went home, and hung out with my host family for a few hours before disappearing into my wedding cake room to plan glorious lesson plans, watch comedic action and literature adaptation films, and plow through the latest bestseller I never had the chance to read at home (In the past two weeks - “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortensen was really intimidating, although it did give me a glimpse into what men on the other side of the wall are talking about as I spend all my days with gender-segregated Muslim women. “Middlesex” by Jeffry Eugenides is an amazing piece of writing and a great story, every chapter earns its Pulitzer Prize. I’m now in the middle of “Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow). I established myself as a worthy teacher: attendance at my four clubs (one for 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th-9th graders) has risen rather than decreased, kids in the hallways beg me to come teach in their English classes, and the assistant director held a meeting for all language teachers (German, Russian, Turkmen, English) instructing them to all come watch me during their free time so they can duplicate what I do. At home I established myself as a shy, monosyllabic speaker who went “to sleep” at 9:00pm (I actually sleep around 11 or midnight most nights; doing nothing is really time-consuming), and was constantly asked if I missed my mother. I survived.
Now it’s February and I’ve started a new survival strategy: enjoying myself. It’s a profound yet remarkably simple concept, really, although it does require a change in my routine. It requires making friends and leaving my room. So I put the new strategy into practice by making a calendar with three blank slots on each day: one for the morning, afternoon, and evening. Parts of the day when I teach are filled in and all the free times are blank. In the blank spots my club students can sign up for me to come to their house, meet their mother and family, explain what I’m doing here, and allow me to get around more in the community without randomly knocking on doors and hoping a “narcoman” doesn’t live there. When I first devised this plan I imagined I would be just doing what a good PCV should: spreading good will, answering questions, facilitating cultural comparison, moving on. The results, even in the first week, surpassed my wildest dreams. Not only were the students overjoyed that I was showing an interest in their lives, I discovered that a good chunk of my brilliant, motivated young students have brilliant, motivated older sisters in their early to mid-twenties who are eager to hang out and be friends with the new American. And thus in a week my circle of friends has increased from three (my host sisters) to 7,8,9 and getting larger daily. From only finding solace at night alone with my liter of Coke (the local store restocked and so I’m refueled as well) and Firefly episodes, I suddenly have folks to hang out with watching Turkmen and Russian music videos and compare Turkmen and American dating rituals. Our marriages aren’t arranged, for a start (Turkmen dating and marriage deserve an entire entry – or a thesis, just kidding – in their own right). As a good Turkmen-girl-in-training, I have not exchanged more than a “hello” (and never eye contact) with a non-American man between the age of 14 and 30 in the last four weeks. For the motivated and intelligent Turkmen female dreaming of a life away from carpet weaving and tailoring dresses, life in Baharly can get really darn boring and sometimes they’re entertained by just watching me read. Seriously. They love seeing photos of American people doing American things, so if you have photos of you, your family, your friends, or strangers doing normal activities in the midst of American opulence (normal life), print me out a copy and send it on to Baharly. You’ll make a lot of people very happy. Put in a couple Pop-tarts for me and I’ll consider you worthy of sainthood.
An aside. . .
If you’re one of those amazing, dear souls who actually writes me letters, you may be getting in reply soon some information about my (blank)ing Education Department who can (blank)ing (blank) the (blank)ing (blank) and isn’t getting dinner after. My school administration, students, and fellow teachers are amazing and I love them all.
Continuing. . .
My second project to better my life and change “surviving” to “enjoying life” is the “learn five words a day” program. As the name doesn’t need further explanation, I will list some of the words I found when I returned to my Turkmen language textbooks: chal (yogurty milk, usually from camel’s milk), suzme (reconstituted yogurt, looks as lovely as it sounds), dograma (Turkish dish consisting of bread bits in goat organ broth), grechka (buckwheat), mash (thick lentil porridge, it’s actually pretty good once you get past the texture), and kompot (fruit drink made by boiling fruit with sugar, a staple in winter). There are a lot of really good Turkmen dishes: manty (steamed filled dumplings), pishme (fried dough), borek (boiled dumplings), among others, but none of them produce the same kind of gut horror as “reconstituted yogurt” which sat out on a window sill all night, froze, then thawed on the furnace as hour before the meal (eaten with a spoon from a communal dish).
I would like to put on the record that I have now eaten all edible parts of a chicken (and that’s a lot more than what you normally eat in America), goat meat and several organs I couldn’t recognize, cow lung, and rabbit. Lungs should not be considered edible. I discovered three weeks after the fact that I ate reheated camel brain. Tasted pretty good.
There are days I wonder why I’m not violently ill. The other day while at another house, I saw a sick toddler vomit into his mother’s hands. His disgusted mother wiped off her hands with a towel and rinsed them off with water. In the half hour between the event and dinner I saw no further hand cleaning and I continued to watch with a numb acceptance as she fished through the communal bowl of meat for a good piece, touching so many other pieces I know I now have toddler vomit in my digestive system. That’s the essence of communal eating: sharing is caring. Before I become too judgmental of others’ questionable hygiene, I should mention that I haven’t bathed in three days and I can smell my own reek. I scratch my head and a beige crust comes away beneath my fingernails. I wash my clothes because they’ve touched my body rather than because of any exterior source. I try to avoid close inspection of my hands.
This is not my choice. My house doesn’t have water and to “shower” my host sister (sometimes with assistance) must make over ten trips to a neighbor’s house carting large buckets of water in each hand. After the tub is filled with cold water, then a second large cauldron of water must warm up on the furnace (read: wait two-three hours). To bathe, you take the rusted metal mug and fill a large metal basin ¾ with cold water from the tub which has now been sitting stagnant for the last day or so. The last ¼ water you carefully extract from the boiling cauldron to bring the basin water to a reasonable temperature. Taking the metal mug, you then dump water over yourself until your hair is wet and your body sufficiently damp in the smelliest regions. Shampoo, rinse (dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around), repeat. By this time your body is wet, soap down, then rinse (dump water on your left arm, dump water on your right arm, dump water on your chest, dump water on your back, dump water on your left thigh, dump water on your right thigh, dump water on your left shin, dump water on your right shin). Somewhere during this process the basin has run out of water so you must refill the ¾ with cold water and not scald yourself adding the last boiling fourth. While rinsing off your body your hair has half dried so you dump water on your head again, roll it around, dump water on your back and chest (dry now as well), and try not to think about the two family dogs who live in the bathroom and are watching this entire process.
In America my showers take an average of 3-5 minutes. In Turkmenistan my “showers” take about 30. As annoying as they are, as much trouble as they are, I look forward to my showers like a kid looks forward to Christmas. After three days, four or five sometimes, of living and sleeping within my own filth, the feeling of water falling on my skin (even if only from a hand-held rusting metal mug) is a near-holy experience. It’s small wonder Muslims make the act of washing an essential part of worship and that the Turkmen motion for prayer is a pantomime of washing their faces. The sheer effort it takes to bathe (coupled with its infrequency) makes it one of the most significant personal acts I perform during the week. During training I longed for the Peace Corps office in Ashgabat so I could use the internet and look up on IMDB some nagging fact that had been bugging me for days. After three weeks of no internet, I no longer care. The PC office has a shower, an honest-to-God shower, and for that I will sing a gospel “Hallelujah!”
The biggest news in Baharly town is that the President has officially declared it a city. He said it on the news last Sunday so it must be so. And thus from the time I went to bed on Sunday evening and woke up Monday morning, I became a resident of (and sole American in) Baharly City. When this will have any practical application (high-rise buildings, more jobs, road repairs, functioning gas and electric to the surrounding villages, larger schools that can accommodate all the regional children, a faster post office system, traffic lights, yada yada yada) is anyone’s guess. No one’s optimistic enough to guess. The President says “soon.”
So as of January 26 I finished my first month as a Peace Corps volunteer. This is significant not only because I doubled Thomas’s survival time (my good-old Godkepe site-mate left T-stan after two weeks), but I have completed what all PCVs say is the hardest month in the two years. During January my survival strategy was simple: survive. I went to school, taught, went home, and hung out with my host family for a few hours before disappearing into my wedding cake room to plan glorious lesson plans, watch comedic action and literature adaptation films, and plow through the latest bestseller I never had the chance to read at home (In the past two weeks - “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortensen was really intimidating, although it did give me a glimpse into what men on the other side of the wall are talking about as I spend all my days with gender-segregated Muslim women. “Middlesex” by Jeffry Eugenides is an amazing piece of writing and a great story, every chapter earns its Pulitzer Prize. I’m now in the middle of “Ragtime” by E.L. Doctorow). I established myself as a worthy teacher: attendance at my four clubs (one for 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th-9th graders) has risen rather than decreased, kids in the hallways beg me to come teach in their English classes, and the assistant director held a meeting for all language teachers (German, Russian, Turkmen, English) instructing them to all come watch me during their free time so they can duplicate what I do. At home I established myself as a shy, monosyllabic speaker who went “to sleep” at 9:00pm (I actually sleep around 11 or midnight most nights; doing nothing is really time-consuming), and was constantly asked if I missed my mother. I survived.
Now it’s February and I’ve started a new survival strategy: enjoying myself. It’s a profound yet remarkably simple concept, really, although it does require a change in my routine. It requires making friends and leaving my room. So I put the new strategy into practice by making a calendar with three blank slots on each day: one for the morning, afternoon, and evening. Parts of the day when I teach are filled in and all the free times are blank. In the blank spots my club students can sign up for me to come to their house, meet their mother and family, explain what I’m doing here, and allow me to get around more in the community without randomly knocking on doors and hoping a “narcoman” doesn’t live there. When I first devised this plan I imagined I would be just doing what a good PCV should: spreading good will, answering questions, facilitating cultural comparison, moving on. The results, even in the first week, surpassed my wildest dreams. Not only were the students overjoyed that I was showing an interest in their lives, I discovered that a good chunk of my brilliant, motivated young students have brilliant, motivated older sisters in their early to mid-twenties who are eager to hang out and be friends with the new American. And thus in a week my circle of friends has increased from three (my host sisters) to 7,8,9 and getting larger daily. From only finding solace at night alone with my liter of Coke (the local store restocked and so I’m refueled as well) and Firefly episodes, I suddenly have folks to hang out with watching Turkmen and Russian music videos and compare Turkmen and American dating rituals. Our marriages aren’t arranged, for a start (Turkmen dating and marriage deserve an entire entry – or a thesis, just kidding – in their own right). As a good Turkmen-girl-in-training, I have not exchanged more than a “hello” (and never eye contact) with a non-American man between the age of 14 and 30 in the last four weeks. For the motivated and intelligent Turkmen female dreaming of a life away from carpet weaving and tailoring dresses, life in Baharly can get really darn boring and sometimes they’re entertained by just watching me read. Seriously. They love seeing photos of American people doing American things, so if you have photos of you, your family, your friends, or strangers doing normal activities in the midst of American opulence (normal life), print me out a copy and send it on to Baharly. You’ll make a lot of people very happy. Put in a couple Pop-tarts for me and I’ll consider you worthy of sainthood.
An aside. . .
If you’re one of those amazing, dear souls who actually writes me letters, you may be getting in reply soon some information about my (blank)ing Education Department who can (blank)ing (blank) the (blank)ing (blank) and isn’t getting dinner after. My school administration, students, and fellow teachers are amazing and I love them all.
Continuing. . .
My second project to better my life and change “surviving” to “enjoying life” is the “learn five words a day” program. As the name doesn’t need further explanation, I will list some of the words I found when I returned to my Turkmen language textbooks: chal (yogurty milk, usually from camel’s milk), suzme (reconstituted yogurt, looks as lovely as it sounds), dograma (Turkish dish consisting of bread bits in goat organ broth), grechka (buckwheat), mash (thick lentil porridge, it’s actually pretty good once you get past the texture), and kompot (fruit drink made by boiling fruit with sugar, a staple in winter). There are a lot of really good Turkmen dishes: manty (steamed filled dumplings), pishme (fried dough), borek (boiled dumplings), among others, but none of them produce the same kind of gut horror as “reconstituted yogurt” which sat out on a window sill all night, froze, then thawed on the furnace as hour before the meal (eaten with a spoon from a communal dish).
I would like to put on the record that I have now eaten all edible parts of a chicken (and that’s a lot more than what you normally eat in America), goat meat and several organs I couldn’t recognize, cow lung, and rabbit. Lungs should not be considered edible. I discovered three weeks after the fact that I ate reheated camel brain. Tasted pretty good.
There are days I wonder why I’m not violently ill. The other day while at another house, I saw a sick toddler vomit into his mother’s hands. His disgusted mother wiped off her hands with a towel and rinsed them off with water. In the half hour between the event and dinner I saw no further hand cleaning and I continued to watch with a numb acceptance as she fished through the communal bowl of meat for a good piece, touching so many other pieces I know I now have toddler vomit in my digestive system. That’s the essence of communal eating: sharing is caring. Before I become too judgmental of others’ questionable hygiene, I should mention that I haven’t bathed in three days and I can smell my own reek. I scratch my head and a beige crust comes away beneath my fingernails. I wash my clothes because they’ve touched my body rather than because of any exterior source. I try to avoid close inspection of my hands.
This is not my choice. My house doesn’t have water and to “shower” my host sister (sometimes with assistance) must make over ten trips to a neighbor’s house carting large buckets of water in each hand. After the tub is filled with cold water, then a second large cauldron of water must warm up on the furnace (read: wait two-three hours). To bathe, you take the rusted metal mug and fill a large metal basin ¾ with cold water from the tub which has now been sitting stagnant for the last day or so. The last ¼ water you carefully extract from the boiling cauldron to bring the basin water to a reasonable temperature. Taking the metal mug, you then dump water over yourself until your hair is wet and your body sufficiently damp in the smelliest regions. Shampoo, rinse (dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around, dump water on your head, roll it around), repeat. By this time your body is wet, soap down, then rinse (dump water on your left arm, dump water on your right arm, dump water on your chest, dump water on your back, dump water on your left thigh, dump water on your right thigh, dump water on your left shin, dump water on your right shin). Somewhere during this process the basin has run out of water so you must refill the ¾ with cold water and not scald yourself adding the last boiling fourth. While rinsing off your body your hair has half dried so you dump water on your head again, roll it around, dump water on your back and chest (dry now as well), and try not to think about the two family dogs who live in the bathroom and are watching this entire process.
In America my showers take an average of 3-5 minutes. In Turkmenistan my “showers” take about 30. As annoying as they are, as much trouble as they are, I look forward to my showers like a kid looks forward to Christmas. After three days, four or five sometimes, of living and sleeping within my own filth, the feeling of water falling on my skin (even if only from a hand-held rusting metal mug) is a near-holy experience. It’s small wonder Muslims make the act of washing an essential part of worship and that the Turkmen motion for prayer is a pantomime of washing their faces. The sheer effort it takes to bathe (coupled with its infrequency) makes it one of the most significant personal acts I perform during the week. During training I longed for the Peace Corps office in Ashgabat so I could use the internet and look up on IMDB some nagging fact that had been bugging me for days. After three weeks of no internet, I no longer care. The PC office has a shower, an honest-to-God shower, and for that I will sing a gospel “Hallelujah!”
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