Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Serdar Yoly and other treats

The great and honorable Turkmenbashy, Father of Turkmenistan and first and life-long President of said country, before his unfortunate death in 2006 gifted his people with Serdar Yoly, a “health walk” outside of the capital city. Serdar Yoly consists of an 8-mile set of stairs up and across the mountains bordering Turkmenistan and Iran (below) and a manicured park at the walk’s base (left). As one of the only free entertainment/ hang-out places in the city, the park is filled on the weekends with teenagers, young families, and college students. And last Sunday, to this group was added myself and the Intermediate-Low English class from the Balkent: Turkish Language Center in Ashgabat. My principal’s 19-year daughter (and my friend/tutoree) takes classes there and so I was invited along as the guest of honor and the opportunity-to-practice-English guinea pig. The girls were all Russian or Turkish (all were born here, but they know even less Turkmen than me) and so we spoke halting English in order to communicate our opinions of Justin Timberlake, the dance moves of Usher and Shakira, the beauty of Mariah Carey vs. Rihanna, and the various merits of using English to be a translator, an oil baron interpreter, or an English teacher. I learned that my badminton skills have not improved since middle school gym (the birdie nearly fell in the “river” filled with dead fish twice) and I have forgotten how to jump rope (I blame the grass and the skirt). It was another of those great field-trip days where there isn’t really a story because everything went right. We ended the day singing along to Savage Garden and Rihanna on someone’s cell phone and laughing as we stuffed our faces with chocolate and Coca Cola.

I’d explain the picture at right, but I think I’d just ruin it. Just enjoy and ponder.

An aside -
As I write this, the kitchen smells like raw sheep’s bowels. Most of you probably have no sensory memory to identify that smell and you should thank your lucky stars individually and by name for the privilege of not knowing what the intestinal tract and bladder of a sheep smells like. It’s like the sheep meat aftertaste times ten and then mixed with sewage, blood, and wet dog hair. Bon appetite!

As a final special final treat, take my Mid-Term Exam for the 7th-9th graders’ class:
Part 1: Which word doesn’t belong?
1. a) orange b) purple c) jeans d) gray
2. a) glasses b) earrings c) shoes d) hat
3. a) skirt b) dress c) blouse d) umbrella
4. a) watch b) tie c) mittens d) glove
5. a) mittens b) pocketbook c) purse d) briefcase

6. a) singer b) nurse c) doctor d) hospital worker
7. a) cook b) carpet-maker c) dress-maker d) shepherd
8. a) teacher b) driver c) director/ principal d) student

Part 2: Fill in the correct word in the sentence and/or answer the questions
9. What do you want to be?
a) I don’t want teacher.
b) thief, street fighter, and drug addict
c) I want to wear a white shirt and jeans.
d) I want to be a rich businessman.

10. Do you know English?
a) I “kinda” know English.
b) English difficult think I am.
c) Do you guess I know.
d) I guess I made a mistake, that is my English.

11. I think that ____ _____ my pants.
a) this is
b) that are
c) these is
d) those are

Extra Credit: Fill in the blanks
A. May I help you?
B. Yes, please. I’m looking for a _____.
A. Here’s a nice _____.
B. But this is a ____ _____!
A. That’s okay. _____ _____s are very popular this year. American girls wear them.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Loitering in limbo (but with discos)

There is something bewitching about transitional periods. Before I elaborate, I’ll tell the story of what led up to this observation. Last week I attended the Peace Corps Project Design Management (PDM) Conference, the first of several in-service training sessions. In practical terms, this meant five days surrounded by other Ahal region volunteers learning about what we can do to be more than just teachers at site. Socially and professionally it was an awesome time. The social part is more entertaining so I’ll start with that and move on to the professional bit later.

Elsewhere in the city it was World Health Week as well as World Recognition Day so all our usual hotels were filled to the brim with pharmaceutical companies and oil barons. Since hotel rooms are cheap (about $5 for a double room), companies tend to buy up all the rooms in a hotel, including the empty ones, so that their employees can have total privacy and run of the premises. So we humble volunteers were left with few options: commute back and forth from site every day (a two hour trip one-way), stay up all night at the disco and then crash at the PC Office when it opens at 5AM, or find a hotel so bad that no other company wanted to stay there. And that’s how we found ourselves staying at a hotel on the edge of town that could easily be the set for a remake of The Shining. Our rooms weren’t bad (if you overlook the polyester sheets that hadn’t been cleaned in awhile). The boys were put into a suite decorated for the Rat Pack with an (unstocked) bar, black leather arm-chairs, plastic Art-Deco lights, and other black and silver garnishes from the 1950s that made you feel like you should be holding a martini. In contrast, we girls were put in the harem room. Red curtains hung over piles of red, pink, and yellow pillows and mattress pads scattered across a (factory-produced) red and yellow Turkmen carpet. Only the hookah was missing, although burns in the carpet testified that past guests had provided their own.

Due to residue drama from the weekend before (I’ll spare you), a lot of people were angry with everyone else and the first two nights were spent licking wounds and trying to get used to the sudden company of Americans. The third night, spent with four other girls watching “Sense and Sensibility,” complaining about boys, and eating three pounds of imported chocolate, was only noteworthy because none of us had done anything similar in seven months and if felt so “American” and “girly” that we couldn’t stop commenting on the novelty.

The last night, however, is the one that’s actually worth elaboration. We began at the English Pub (see photo), the most expensive restaurant in Ashgabat, patronized only by American embassy workers and foreign oil brokers. One Heineken costs a quarter of our monthly salary. The highlight of the evening was a live band who’s lead singer, Eric (white shirt, center), is a former Peace Corps volunteer who about five years ago married a Turkmen woman and settled down to live in Turkmenistan and work for a NGO forever more. Cool guy. We hung out sharing apple pie and vodka until the upstairs disco opened at 11. Until now, if we went to a city night-club, we went to the one in our favorite hotel’s basement. It’s a relatively small room with mirrors over the walls, low lights, and a few half-hearted green lasers and strobes that flash through the semi-haze of cigarette smoke. The music is pretty good, though, and we enjoy it; it’s the kind of night-club where they know your order at the bar and the hookers wear the same outfit every night. The disco on the second floor of the English pub, however, is another story entirely. It’s like something out of a Russian music video where the wealthy mob gangsters are served by scantily-clothed women in luxurious (yet tasteful) leather and chrome surroundings where all the lines are smooth and someone high on something expensive could spend the whole evening just staring at the walls. Everything is less than a year old, there are smoke machines, enough lasers and strobe lights to discombobulate even the sober, and the whores were indistinguishable from the embassy workers and professional women out for a night of anonymous fun. The music was all Russian pop and we went slowly crazy in the hours under its influence. Dancing that began as slowly controlled undulating devolved into spastic jumping and arm flailing as we realized that for one night we didn’t have to worry about whether our students remembered to use the verb to be with the present continuous or if we were acting as proper representatives of America and the Western world. We were just young 20-somethings out on the town in a place where no one knew us, and in the flashing lights we could barely even recognize ourselves.

Professionally, the conference was for us (and especially our Turkmen counterparts) to start brainstorming and planning our secondary projects. We are English teachers, but as Peace Corps volunteers, we are expected to be more than that. Past volunteers have written grammar books and visual dictionaries, built English language resource centers, renovated gymnasiums and computer labs, held sport clubs run by trained local youths, and completed countless other non-English related activities that have helped to develop and energize their communities. As new volunteers to site (we’re still rank rookies in the large scheme of things) we weren’t allowed to write grants or start large development projects until month four: April, 2008. In other words, we begin now.

So as the first three months (the learning and settling-in period) draws to a close and the next era of projects begins, I find myself in an uncomfortable transitional period. Many cultures acknowledge the power of transitional spaces: doorways, shadows, adolescence, graduation, birth, death (to name only a few) with special rituals or symbols that mediate or control them. These mystifying periods and states, the uncomfortable state of limbo, is one which we can all recognize even in the most mundane moments of life. The “where are we going to eat,” or “what are we going to do next” party discussion, the apathetic argument of what movie to watch that lasts longer than the movie itself, even the act of the daily commute illustrates how uncomfortable (and yet full of exciting possibility) transitions are to experience.

As much as I would like to move on to the more productive era of my service, I am unfortunately still lingering in the transitional limbo, held back because I haven’t had a chance to talk to the principal and the school administration about what they need. I could go in there and give them a list of what I want to do: renovate the hallway floors (there are holes that put DC potholes to shame and kids are always tripping and hurting themselves when the electricity goes off), install an AC unit in the new computer lab (the new computers are all going to fry in this summer’s 120 degree heat), put a water fountain inside the building (no more running a block for water in between classes), fix the heater (no more teaching in five layers during winter), draw a world map mural (no more arguments about whether Germany and America are neighbors and if Britain is one of the 50 American states), bring in new desks and chairs that don’t give kids splinters, and put up actual soccer goal posts in the yard so the boys don’t get into fist fights about whether the ball flew between the two book-bags or not. I could walk in there with my list of ideas, but it wouldn’t be true development work. The ideas have to come from them otherwise it’s just the American swooping in, dropping off stuff, and then leaving again. Although it would be easy to play bank cashier and just drop a lot of new stuff on my school, the philosophy of Peace Corps is that we are humble facilitators helping the community reach their own goals. We’re here for two years, they’re here forever, and they need to have complete ownership of their projects from beginning to end. So I work at their pace, on their time, with what they want. As a classic overachiever, this makes me want to grind my teeth and it forces me to loiter around in limbo waiting for them to come up with some ideas, but it will all be better off in the long run. I look forward to seeing what will become of me and my time, my work is in their hands.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

postal notice

A note on packages: some are getting stolen. For the record, I ALWAYS write thank you notes for received packages and letters, so if you sent me something and then never received word, I didn't receive it. I know how much trouble it is to go to the post office and I truly, deeply appreciate everything I receive. I'm sorry that your noble efforts are being taken and distributed by the Turkmenistan postal staff. As of yet, I believe all the letters and packages sent directly to Baharly are making it through - it's just the Ashgabat address which sprung a slight leak. If there is important news, email me. I check email about once a week, write responses at home, and then send them the next time I'm online. Please continue to try and send packages and letters, but please be forgiving if I fail to reply to something I never receive. I love you all, thanks.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

changed title

It's like Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles," except in Turkmenistan.

A frog slowly boils

School has begun once more after a week of idle relaxing and sleeping until mid-afternoon. So I feel somewhat jet-lagged, having to once more fit my bio-rhythms into a lifestyle that includes being awake with the sun. It’s amazing how quickly the body and brain adjust to having no demands on them and then how slowly they readjust to moving, thinking, and planning. A week of stress-free easiness has at least stalled my excessive eating and my race toward obesity has slowed a little (at least for this month).

The great thing about living so close to the capital is that while other volunteers in more distant regions had to negotiate train tickets and air-fares to reach the Peace Corps office during spring break, all I had to do was catch a taxi and then wait around the computer as friends came to me. Although I didn’t plan ahead enough to really take advantage of their presence and stay the week in the city, it was good times for the brief period I could see some new faces. They came bringing new perspectives (Baharly is a really good site, apparently, with great people and decent facilities) and new stories of piss, shit, and sex from the lives of other volunteers. I’ll be a good friend and not broadcast these stories over the internet, but write me a letter/email and I’ll share (sans names) full details. If I have learned any small token of worldly wisdom here it’s that Americans (may be all people) do very strange things when in foreign countries and that these stories are always more funny than the same event occurring on their home turf.

I ate sheep intestines today at lunch and discovered that my “yuk” reflex is broken, or at least blessedly temporarily turned off so that I can enjoy my meals in peace. I also realized that I have forgotten what most fruits and vegetables, along with all Mexican and Chinese food, tastes like. I remember how the food made me feel, but not the actual flavor and texture. There was a time during training when I thought longing for my mother’s vegetarian chili and a good rare burger with all the trimmings would make me go insane, but except for an occasional dream where I’m eating a pizza I can’t taste, I’m getting over it. Hooray for cultural adjustment. Signs that I became cultural adjusted without noticing it (like a frog slowly boiling) have been abundant in the past week. I walked from my co-teacher’s house to my own busy with my own thoughts and realized when I reached my front gate that I couldn’t remember a single moment of the journey – the kind of “following my feet” phenomenon I used to only get when driving around my MD hometown. Last night I knew I had at least four distinct ants crawling on my legs and stomach, but I fell asleep anyway. I also no longer leap in my skin when I see in the corner of my eye the abnormally large frog that lives in our bathroom.

The last sign of my cultural adaptation is in details of my transformed personal appearance. It’s not just the weight gain (which is considerable), but my hair has grown out enough that it can be formed into a perfect bun every morning, pulled to the base of my skull so tight that the edges of my hair-line are sore. With two new Turkmen summer dresses (in garishly bright-colored material that I didn’t choose – one has flowers ­-- but matches my host-sisters’ tastes), I now have a full Turkmen wardrobe to respectfully teach in all seasons. I also bought my first pair of Turkmen shoes. In winter there are 15-20 styles of black shoes available in the market, styles which everyone recognizes, knows the price, and the expected wear (my nondescript and boring American shoes caused a stir simply due to their novelty). In summer, however, there is only one style of shoe (in different colors) which every female from age 5 to 75 wears: three dollar “Chico’s Italian-Made” plastic sandals with one strap across the top and a buckle. The largest size available is a European size 40 (I’m a 42, 44), so my toes drag the ground in the front, my heel pokes out the back, and I hobble along the street on thin red plastic platforms which are made to fit more conventional feet. If I was a character in a novel then this detail would probably have profound symbolic significance, but as it is, I just have dusty toes, a sore in-step, and a growing sense of irony that I joined the Peace Corps to become more materialistic.

For the record, my host uncle brought over his bicycle and it is absolutely possible to forget how to ride a bike, but falling off stays fixed in muscle memory forever.

And the latest installment in the thrilling adventure of “what is Annie reading this week” is that “Billy Bathgate” by E.L. Doctorow is a great book that has amazing cinematic potential (1930s gangsters and hustlers), and “The God of Small Things” deserves its Booker Prize (amazing story). “Possession” by A.S. Byatt is a poetically-written reminder of why I didn’t become an English major and what is at stake if you go straight to grad school and lose touch with real life: you can get utterly overwhelmed by fiction, literary criticism, philosophy not grounded in real life experiences, and whiners. I can add “Possession” to the short list of books which make a better movie (along with the original “Zorro,” all three “Lord of the Rings,” The 5th Harry Potter book, “The Scarlett Pimpernel,” and “Emma”), because you only have to endure its melodramatic plot and obnoxious characters for two hours rather than fifteen.

A moment for a Turkmen language lesson, brought to you by my helpful “Colloquial Turkmen” textbook which gives me all the phrases I could ever need for life:

Balagynyzy utuklemalimi? Shall we iron your pants?
Men bagyrm agyrar. My liver hurts.