Turkey!

Turkey and Turkmenistan are not the same country. I realize that they start with the same first syllable, but they are as different as Canada and Cancun. And yet small hints remain. In Istanbul there were chickens living in the highway median. In Ankara girls wore headscarves with jeans too small across the ass (a contradiction that isn’t seen in Turkmenistan yet, but would not be out of place). Our oh-so-Western and educated guide in Ankara said Mom got food poisoning because of the weather (I almost fell over laughing in the van). Our tour-guides were also generally more often of the Central Asian model than the Western: their purpose was not to give an insider insight and show us the places outside the tourist track, but rather to make sure that we stayed on the tourist track and only received the party line. It’s like we paid for our own KGB agent to show us around and tell us that the man being arrested in front of us was a perfectly safe individual who hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet the government was right to arrest him (true story). One of our fellow tourists (whose family is Turkish) told me that Turkmenistan is exactly like Turkey 30 years ago and I believe it. As Turkey is an immensely cool country which I wouldn’t mind living in when I grow up, I see this as a very optimistic prediction for Turkmenistan which I’m doing my part to bring to fruition.

I will spare you all a detailed blow-by-blow of our itinerary. My parents and I spent three days in Istanbul getting on and off a bus seeing the major attractions of the city and the Bosphorus. Then after a quick flight to Izmir we spent a day wandering through the immense Ephesus ruins. It was a rather impressively-preserved site, but our attention was distracted by trying to keep ahead of the Italian cruise-ship crowd advancing behind us like a solid horde of bronze-tan wildebeests in big sunglasses. The next day was Pamukkale (“Cotton Castle” because of the calcium deposits that make it look like a tiered sugar cake) and the ruins of Hierapolis, a Roman town built to take advantage of the Pamukkale thermal springs. I resisted the temptation to get covered in expensive mud. Then we saw Cappadocia for three days (see below). After Cappadocia we jumped back in a plane to see Ankara for two days, viewing the makings of Western civilization at the Hittite ruins of Hattusas and Phrygia Gordion, as well as the massive monuments where the modern Turks worship their republic’s founder, Ataturk; very cool guy apparently. As might be apparent, the word “vacation,” when traveling with my parents, is not synonymous with “resting.” It is in fact more synonymous with “journeying,” or -- do I dare? -- “working.” My parents got on their plane back to America 10 hours before I was scheduled to return to Turkmenistan so I used that time to “vacation”: sitting in various scenic locations reading “The Book of Air and Shadows” by Michael Gruber (really amazing book, far better than “The Da Vinci Code,” of the same genre), playing on the internet (everyone should see “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” at drhorrible.com), and watching movies in an honest-to-God movie theater (“Wanted” is okay, the Batman movie wasn’t out yet in Turkey).

I hesitate to gush about Cappadocia because I don’t want to give away the surprise. Call me an ignorant cretin, but I hadn’t heard of Cappadocia before this trip. While we were in Istanbul we’d run into other tourists and the first thing they’d ask us was “have you gotten to Cappadocia yet?” and we’d say, “no, but it’s on our list,” and they’d turn away with looks of secretive envy. Neil Gaiman in “American Gods” describes places of power, places in the world where sacred energy has gathered and human beings traditionally respond by building temples, monuments, and (in America) road-side attractions. I felt it in Delphi in Greece, in the slave pens in Zanzibar (for different reasons), and now in Cappadocia, that intangible something that leaves a mark on your soul. It isn’t just the physical wonder of the place, an ancient lava bed where erosion has eaten away at the rock and turned the landscape into walls of curling, sloping cliffs like the sides of a macaroon pastry and towers euphemistically called “fairy chimneys.” And it isn’t just the history, where ancient Hittites began carving out homes in the soft rock towers to hide from invaders and then early Christians built monasteries and chapels as well as entire under-ground cities linked by miles-long tunnels that go over 40 meters into the ground and served as places of storage and refuge. Functioning underground cities. Seriously. But there is a sense of wonder that goes beyond all that, a sense of sacredness that goes deep into the soil and is tangible even when flying hundreds of feet over it in a hot air balloon at dawn. Thank you, again, Dad for that trip.

And thank you, parents, for paying my way out of Turkmenistan, for being delightful and sensitive companions, and for giving me a wondrous vacation to remember as the days tick away at site. Now all I have to do is wait for next summer. Dublin, anyone?

All-Vol

It’s a bit surreal to realize that “All-Vol,” the once-in-a-year all volunteer conference bringing in all 60-some Turkmenistan Peace Corps volunteers from across the country for education and debauchery, has finally come and gone. We looked forward to it for months, we came early (if we could) to start the festivities as soon as possible, and then stayed until the Peace Corps staff started to give us the angry eye. The first night I stayed over at Brit’s, a T-15 (a girl from the year before me, I’m a T-16), with the five acknowledged biggest partiers in T-stan PC. For someone who never went to a Greek party, never stayed longer than 30 minutes at a suites party, never got more than tipsy in 4 years of college, and never went clubbing within the United States borders, I’m doing a lot of catching up. Beer tastes a lot better these days, although vodka remains only bearable when it’s so smothered in juice and soda that it’s undetectable. Even watching other people take shots makes me feel ill. Anyway, after the first night partying at Brit’s, there were three days of conference learning about methodologies and how to get along with Turkmen culture interspersed with healthy doses of peer support sessions making “don’t quit” cards for each other.

We got all dolled up on the 4th to attend a fancy embassy party at the house of the American ambassador to Turkmenistan. In one of the oddest evenings of the last year, we walked through a large metal gate, two sets of metal detectors, and past a security booth built more securely than the Turkmen airport, and then across a lawn -- an honest-to-God-lawn with manicured grass and everything -- through a large house that looked like a Monopoly hotel piece, and then out into a grassy reception area with free wine (wine!!) and beer and a demonstration of imported Native Americans doing a sun-dance in a corner and an imported cowboy doing rope tricks in the other. In between them was a huge buffet of Mexican food which was delicious enough to inspire us to wait in line for 45 minutes for seconds and thirds even when we were way past full. The food was so delectable and novel it made almost every single one of us extremely sick the next morning. And desert was apple pie and vanilla ice cream. Once people stopped ignoring the “tribal demonstrations,” the US Airforce band started up with a series of classic rock covers that had the drunkest of us up on the dance-floor going strong within minutes. The less-drunk followed soon after and soon a good half of the volunteers were screaming “Go Minnesota!” or “Go California!” at the top of their lungs as the band called out tributes to the states and then flailing about the dance floor in a way that had the Turkmen guests equally appalled and envious. We did a lot of laughing about being on “American soil,” but considering the small patch of American twilight zone the embassy achieved on that evening totally isolating us from the rest of the Turkmen world, they could very well have imported the ground beneath our feet along with everything else.

Our All-American week concluded with a true American past-time: baseball. Well, technically we played softball and then for only five innings (seriously, though, five innings is a really nice length, professional teams should learn from our example), but I can proudly state that the T-16s whooped the T-15s’ asses! With a score of 15-10 we had a solid victory. I should say in all fairness, though, that the spirit award should really go to Scott, the T-15 captain, who continued to play and make home-runs with an over 100-degree temperature and vomiting between plays. To help out my team I did them the incredible favor of not playing and instead dispensed water and cheered really loud. I may have played soccer and danced throughout my childhood, but my coordination is only in my feet: my arms might as well be attached to my knees for all the use they are during hand-eye coordination games.

Turkmenistan is a truly amazing place filled with wonders that are not available elsewhere. It is so bizarre sometimes that I wonder if the entire country isn’t a huge hoax and someone with a hidden camera is going to jump out from behind the outhouse one day and say “gotcha!” And then other days it feels so familiar that only the camel in the neighbor’s yard reminds me that I’m far from home. And yet, for all its endless fascinating features and new experiences, it’s time for a vacation. This week I’m off to Turkey to see my parents for the first time in nine months and to take a posh tour of the historic and cultural sites along the Turkish coast. Two weeks of running water, pedestal toilets, and not being alone in a strange land. It’s time to get out of town.

Watching paint dry was never so interesting

There are two ways to draw a world map. The first is with an overhead projector: you make a copy of the world map and then just project it at the wall. Simple, easy, concise. It requires an over-head projector and electricity in the art space to work. We have neither. So we’re doing the second method – the grid method. Using meter sticks to measure out 7cm squares across the 2mX4m space and then using the world map drawing provided by PC, copy each individual block onto its corresponding grid box on the map. After drawing the initial blue rectangle (mirroring creation, we begin the world with water before shaping land masses), we drew the first vertical line (not grid, the first LINE) along the side and the first horizontal line along the bottom in three hours. We didn’t have a leveler so each line had to be measured every inch or so to make sure it was still straight and then compared with hanging weighted strings to make sure that the vertical line was still straight. To repeat, two lines took 3 hours. Three hours. There are approximately 100 lines on the grid. The assistant principal stopped by to see our progress and politely and quietly explained that if we wanted to finish the grid, not to mention the entire map, by the end of this year, we should try something new. Taking the string we were using to check vertical straightness, we covered it with classroom chalk, stretched it across the wall from our starting to our ended points, then snapped it against he wall. The chalk on the string bounced onto the wall and made a perfectly straight line between the two points. Then all we had to do was trace along the chalk lines with pencil. Three of us working non-stop finished the entire grid in another three hours and on day 3 we could actually begin drawing the map.

The World Map Project began in 1988 when a Peace Corps Volunteer, Barbara Jo White, while waiting for a bus in the Dominican Republic was inspired to get kids interested in geography by drawing a world map on their school wall. The idea spread across the Dominican Republic and then across the PCV community until it became an iconic part of the PC organization. Until this year, each PC training group in Turkmenistan was required to draw a world map at their training site school. The program stopped when schools who had hosted multiple training groups mentioned they were running out of wall space. I am the first volunteer in Baharly, however, so this is a new task for us all.

Thankfully, I’m not taking it on alone. Although PC provided all of the materials and I’m the only one who can read the instruction manual, the project is being led by my English teaching counterpart and local Wonder Woman, Altyn, and carried out by her three student recruits: Batyr, Shamahammet, and Yurin, two 10th graders and one 8th grader singled out for their artistic ability. Working an intensive five days, three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, we drew in the continents and countries with pencil, went over the lines in Sharpie (our efforts hampered by having only one marker for the five of us), and then painted in the nations. As I write this, we’re nearing completion of the final stage: writing in the names of the countries in Turkmen. We had hoped to finish up last week, but my first bout of major stomach illness (the doctor thinks it was salmonella) sent me to Ashgabat for two days of recuperation and map efforts stalled in my absence.

Throughout the process I’ve been reminded of how important this map will be for the kids and for any visitors to the school. During the pencil outlining stage, one of my artists got off the grid by two squares, twisting China into an unrecognizable shape and making all of SE Asia appear on the wrong side of India. And here’s the clincher: no one noticed anything wrong until a good two hours of work was completed and I finished class to come check on it. Anyone with any familiarity with the shape of the world would have noticed that something was up immediately and double-checked the grid numbers. Our biggest blunder, ironically, occurred with the placement of Turkmenistan: one of the artists was so excited to draw his home nation that he forgot about Afghanistan and all of Central Asia was pushed out of kilter. We didn’t notice the problem until after we’d gone over it in Sharpie so Turkmenistan and its neighbors are a bit messier than the other parts of the world. After seeing what happened to SE Asia, I drew all of Africa myself to make sure that it got the appropriate care and attention. My drawing skills aren’t spectacular, but, like so much of this project, it’s the thought that counts.

My hope is that this map will inspire children to learn more about the world around them, ask more educated questions than “is Germany a neighbor of America?” and begin to see their lives as part of a greater landscape than their immediate surroundings. It’s possible that I won’t see the effects of the map within my brief time here, but hopefully future volunteers here will reap the benefits of students and parents with a greater world perspective and wider ambitions.