The truth is that the eeriest part of living here is how quickly really gross and bizarre elements of life simply because normal and ignorable parts of the scenery. For the entire summer and the beginning part of fall our faucets were merely decorative and when guests came to the house and tried to turn on the water I couldn’t resist a little laugh at their innocence and naiveté. Silly rabbit, there’s no water in Turkmenistan. Now that our water is no longer being diverted to irrigate the cotton fields, the one working faucet in the yard is once again a purposeful addition to the household rather than a reminder of happy days long past. And, as happens, stuff tends to accumulate around it: dishes that have yet to be washed, empty buckets that someone meant to fill, soap dishes with fragments of soap clinging to the bottom, dish rags soaked with the previous pot’s grease and crumbs. It’s the dish rags that get my special attention as these three wash-clothes are used for cleaning all of our dishes and silverware after every meal and are rarely (if ever) washed themselves. Now this is gross. I can hear the cringes coming from across the Atlantic as my nice suburban hygienic family imagines what kind of stuff is growing on those rags. They sit outside in molding wet bunches at all hours and are used equally to scour pots of boiled sheep head and home-made apricot jam. But imagine this, I was walking back from the outhouse last night and I saw one of the cats crouched by the faucet. All fine and good, it’s thirsty, there’s water. But then it stands up and pees all over the dish rags with the nonchalant relaxed air of a creature doing a familiar daily routine. And my first thoughts were, “well, at least it’s sterile, right?”
Remember how back in April I began a project to renovate the first floor of my school? My principal wanted an entire new school building and I talked him down to simply re-cementing the first floor hallway, which is so torn up and peeling that it’s a safety concern, along with replacing the ceiling light-bulbs (which haven’t been replaced since they were installed in 1991). I discussed the idea with my principal and counterpart in April, wrote the grant in May, got the money from Peace Corps in June, and we finished up the World Map mural in July. So now all we need to do is get the cement and the light bulbs and start the renovation. And August passed with no word and September began and school started, the building filled with students and teachers, and word finally came: there is no cement. The cement factories for the entire country sit on the outskirts of our town and there is no cement. The roads leading to the cement factories, which sit like metallic and smoking Emerald Cities against the silhouette of the hills, are lit at night with strings of Christmas lights blinking “Cement! Turkmen Cement! Cement!” And there is apparently no cement. One of the factories is broken and the other has increased their prices threefold to a point where we couldn’t afford to cement one of the first floor’s hallways.
The last week in September we get word that the mayor of Baharly has decided to take an interest in our project and will intervene to get us cement at the previous price. Great news, awesome news. And we sit waiting for anything to come of it. The second week of October the principal comes rushing into my classroom breathless, he tells me that we need to go RIGHT NOW to the cement factory and buy the cement. I dismiss the kids early, run home to get the money from Peace Corps, dress up in my best Turkmen dress, and the principal and my counterpart, Altyn, pick me up with not a minute to waste. We speed to the one functioning cement factory, the principal jumps out and just as I’m about to follow, Altyn grabs me and pulls me back. We’re women, we wait in the car. And we wait. The money from Peace Corps sits in my bag and we wait. Altyn and the driver are old classmates so they chat about this and that as I take in the scenery: a huge sprawling unapologetically industrial factory of pumping gears and billowing chimneys. The dust and gravel parking lot is lined with dirty Soviet-era trucks, some still with wind-up gears in the front, and the lettering for “Cement” written out in pealing Cyrillic on the sides. Feral dogs of various sizes lounge under the shade of the trucks, occasionally getting up to snap and growl at each other with a menace that gives me shivers even sitting snug in the car. The entire scene looks like something out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome; at any moment Tina Turner in chain-mail shoulder-pads was going to come out and wail on Mel Gibson’s leather-clad ass.
A full hour later the principal returned to the car with news that struck none of us as too surprising – we didn’t have the right paperwork and we’ll have to come back again. And when are we going to have the right paperwork? Well we need to talk to a guy who needs to find it and talk to another guy who owes us a favor so it shouldn’t be too hard for him to help us out and talk to this other guy who is the only one with the right signature and then it’s only a matter of time before he gets back to us. And how long should this all take? Next week, or may be the week after, or may be next month. By New Year’s definitely. Thanks, guys, that’s awesome, great doing business with you.
The drive back from the cement factory was surprisingly jolly considering that we hadn’t actually accomplished anything and that three out of the four of us had spent the last hour pointless baking in the car in an industrial wasteland. I should also mention that I’d had food poisoning the week before and hadn’t eaten a real meal since then. I was living in constant fear that whatever small snack I’d just consumed would suddenly and unexpectedly coming out from either end while in a public place. The day before I’d had to literally run out of the class in the middle of describing the difference between present simple and present continuous tense and I made it to the outhouse with barely 5 seconds to spare before losing control of the entire contents of my digestive system. So little fuel was remaining in my stomach I barely had the strength to remain standing throughout class. So after all the excitement and let down of the cement factory, what I wanted more than anything in the world was my bed, my pillow, and a jug of hydration fluids to stop my pounding head. But the principal had other plans.
Half-way back to Baharly he instructs the driver to make a fast U and take us to Kow-Ata, a sacred site and natural wonder that I visited almost exactly a year ago during training with the rest of the T-16 volunteers. It’s a cool place; I liked it the first time round. There are ice cream and barbeque stands serving fresh kabobs outside the cave and then you enter and go down twelve to fifteen flights of stairs into the depth of the earth where there’s a deep geothermal lake you can swim and float around in with your friends. Again, great the first time round when I was wearing sneakers and pants for climbing up and down the stairs and brought a bathing suit for the lake. Back then I was also a whole lot more enamored with visiting a site of legends, songs, and Turkmen cultural history than I am now. At this point the little voice that used to giggle and bounce up and down at a chance for anthropological exploration now goes, dead-pan, “oh look, a cave. Awesome, when do we go?”
But I am a loyal employee, a decent volunteer (85% of the time at any rate), and a good friend so I got out of the car with Altyn, the driver, and the principal and we headed into Kow-Ata. Altyn (who’s 27) and I (24) walked down those stairs complaining like a pair of curmudgeons three times our age. We stopped at the landing of every flight and discussed our weak knees, our aching thighs, our poor calves, our dying hearts, and how ridiculous this entire trip was. When the principal came back, we were going to insist that we go home right now. Right now. Yep, just as soon as he came back, we were going to give him a piece of our minds, just you see. Huff huff huff. Going slower than I ever imagined possible from myself, we inched our way down as the smell of sulfuric rotting eggs and piss became increasingly nauseating. The principal, meanwhile, had run ahead of us at the entrance, flying down the stairs with a childish glee that looked positively goofy on his middle-aged, slightly overweight, and usually oh-so-stern face with the one glass eye and perpetual frown. Altyn and I reached the bottom of the stairs probably a full 10 minutes after the principal had run down. After a bout of mostly jibbing complaining, there was nothing else to do but turn around and climb back up the stairs. This time we almost ran it, stopping to rest only twice before speeding ahead toward light, water, and a chair. We complained in between pants, but at this point we wanted out. Now.
We reached the top out of breath and with a new appreciation for the glory of sunlight and non-sulfuric breezes. We sat contemplating the ice cream and food we hadn’t brought money with us to buy and waited for the principal to emerge, dripping and smiling like he was having the best day of his life. He told us to come back to the car (we joyfully complied), opened up the trunk, and presented us with his surprises: a picnic lunch prepared especially for us. And what did our dear principal pack us? Warm cheap beer and Snickers bars. I think the sound of my grumbling dissenting stomach could be heard across the Iranian border, but I ate my Snickers and drank a Dixie cup worth of the beer and sat smiling and nodding and imagining what would happen if I accidentally threw up in the principal’s hair while he was driving.
This story has a happy ending. We got back to school without my stomach doing anything more unusual than hold a loud shouting debate with itself and I taught my afternoon classes without incident. Who knows when we’ll get the damned paperwork for the cement and I’m eating off dishes washed with cat-piss, but, hell, this is Turkmenistan. Stranger things happen every day. I just don’t really notice it anymore.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
The Miraculous Death and Rebirth of Gita
In a little house in a little town outside of a little city in a little country in a forgotten part of the world there lives two dogs – one good, Gita, one bad, Tuzik -- two cats – one good, Marquiza, one bad, Bagheera-- and 20 chickens – half sick, no names, they’re chickens after all. And one night at this little house there is a party and all the family comes from miles around to say “Happy Birthday” to Big Sister and bring her gifts. But the animals are not invited to the party and they sit outside the door, looking in at the family. And the chickens begin to cluck to themselves. And the cats begin to meow. And the dogs begin to bark. But the family does not pay attention and continue to eat their cake and sheep liver and don’t see the animals are unhappy. The dogs chase the cats and the cats chase the chickens and the chickens chase themselves (they’re chickens after all) and they run round and round until the air is full of cycloning fur and feathers. And the family eats on, oblivious to the building chaos until there is a knock at the gate. A stranger has arrived, a stranger with a car. The family spills out of the house, yelling at the dogs to stop (the good dog, Gita, stops, the bad dog, Tuzik, does not) and the cats to go away (the good cat, Marquiza, runs away, the bad cat, Bagheera, stays crouched by the gate) and the chickens to settle (they ran away, they’re chickens after all).
The gate is spread wide and the car drives in to the yard, bright and shiny and the family gathers to pet its shiny hood and look inside at its gleaming whistles. All new, the stranger says. And the family crouches to look beneath at its metal workings and rolls down the windows to breath in its already cigarette-saturated smell. And the gate stands open to the wide world, a gaping hole in the animals’ previously so small world. The little house is suddenly not so little, but now includes a street, two trees, and lights shimmering out of the darkness promising new worlds, possibly better worlds, bigger worlds.
Bagheera runs out into the night, with Tuzik close behind, barking like mad. Now, everyone knows a bad cat and a bad dog will act bad, it is in their natures after all, but what about the good dog? Gita is a good dog, small and white and quiet. She never barks. She never growls. She is fond of children and had her own puppies two times (all born dead, their father was also their uncle, after all). She never fights for food and would let Tuzik take all the hand-outs if the family didn’t place it directly in front of her and shoo Tuzik away. She runs on only three legs and will roll over and cover her head when she hears shouting. She was born a runt in her pack and was fed with a rag and bottle from the time she fit in Big Sister’s hand. She is a beloved and welcomed part of the family. But even a good dog is a dog after all. Bagheera runs out into the night with Tuzik fast on his heels, and Gita follows, a quiet white shadow following her chaos-loving companions. A screech of tires and a Russian curse and Big Sister and Little Sister see two still shadows in the darkness beside the road. Tuzik whines and paws at one of the still shapes on the ground and then runs back into the gate. The big world is a scary place, where friends don’t get up to play. Bagheera slowly rises and follows Tuzik back, hiding beneath the wheel of the shiny white car, bad dog and bad cat unscathed by their mad-cap adventure. But one form remains still. Gita.
Late into the night Little Sister and Big Sister sit with Gita. In the night she rises once, and then falls over. Her legs kick and she paws the ground, but swelling beneath her legs and whites around her eyes show there is more damage than meets the eye. At 1:00AM her legs stop their kicking and she stops pawing the ground. She doesn’t rise.
For two days and two nights the family stands vigil. Big Sister cries and blames Little Sister for not closing the gate. Little Sister cries and blames God for taking their beloved dog from them. Tuzik sits in corners, his face in his paws, his nose occasionally sniffing the air for a friend who is not returning. The cats can not be found, expressing their grief in the same form they express joy and friendship – grudging slinking in corners and eyeing the chickens. The chickens remain unmoved, but they’re chickens after all.
On the third day an apparition appears in the yard of the house. Gita has returned! But wait, no it isn’t. This dog is a good dog, like Gita, small and white and quiet. She never barks. She never growls. She is fond of children, but has never had puppies of her own. She never fights for food and will let Tuzik take all the hand-outs if the family doesn’t place it directly in front of her and shoo Tuzik away. She runs on all her legs, but will roll over and cover her head when she hears shouting. Her ears are slightly longer, her eyes slightly wider and blacker, her ribs slightly narrower. She is slightly less neurotic. She is a different dog. And what is her name? Gita.
It’s a miracle! An almost-Halloween miracle! And how did this miracle occur, you ask? Grandmother heard Big Sister and Little Sister were crying about their poor dog, white and small and quiet, and she looked around the neighborhood and found a new one. Where exactly did she find this dog, so miraculously similar to their old one? You know, around. But this dog is so clean and affectionate and accustomed to people, it couldn’t have come from the streets. Oh no, it definitely didn’t come from the streets, it came from a family. And did the family know it was part of this great miracle to make Big Sister and Little Sister happy? No, not really. The dog was a donation of sorts, the kind of donation that people make when they lose something they didn’t mean to lose and are not getting back. So what was the dog’s name originally, when it was well beloved by someone else? Who knows? It’s just a dog, after all, one is the same as any other. And the chickens cluck to themselves, see? It’s not just us who are disposable and replaceable around here.
The gate is spread wide and the car drives in to the yard, bright and shiny and the family gathers to pet its shiny hood and look inside at its gleaming whistles. All new, the stranger says. And the family crouches to look beneath at its metal workings and rolls down the windows to breath in its already cigarette-saturated smell. And the gate stands open to the wide world, a gaping hole in the animals’ previously so small world. The little house is suddenly not so little, but now includes a street, two trees, and lights shimmering out of the darkness promising new worlds, possibly better worlds, bigger worlds.
Bagheera runs out into the night, with Tuzik close behind, barking like mad. Now, everyone knows a bad cat and a bad dog will act bad, it is in their natures after all, but what about the good dog? Gita is a good dog, small and white and quiet. She never barks. She never growls. She is fond of children and had her own puppies two times (all born dead, their father was also their uncle, after all). She never fights for food and would let Tuzik take all the hand-outs if the family didn’t place it directly in front of her and shoo Tuzik away. She runs on only three legs and will roll over and cover her head when she hears shouting. She was born a runt in her pack and was fed with a rag and bottle from the time she fit in Big Sister’s hand. She is a beloved and welcomed part of the family. But even a good dog is a dog after all. Bagheera runs out into the night with Tuzik fast on his heels, and Gita follows, a quiet white shadow following her chaos-loving companions. A screech of tires and a Russian curse and Big Sister and Little Sister see two still shadows in the darkness beside the road. Tuzik whines and paws at one of the still shapes on the ground and then runs back into the gate. The big world is a scary place, where friends don’t get up to play. Bagheera slowly rises and follows Tuzik back, hiding beneath the wheel of the shiny white car, bad dog and bad cat unscathed by their mad-cap adventure. But one form remains still. Gita.
Late into the night Little Sister and Big Sister sit with Gita. In the night she rises once, and then falls over. Her legs kick and she paws the ground, but swelling beneath her legs and whites around her eyes show there is more damage than meets the eye. At 1:00AM her legs stop their kicking and she stops pawing the ground. She doesn’t rise.
For two days and two nights the family stands vigil. Big Sister cries and blames Little Sister for not closing the gate. Little Sister cries and blames God for taking their beloved dog from them. Tuzik sits in corners, his face in his paws, his nose occasionally sniffing the air for a friend who is not returning. The cats can not be found, expressing their grief in the same form they express joy and friendship – grudging slinking in corners and eyeing the chickens. The chickens remain unmoved, but they’re chickens after all.
On the third day an apparition appears in the yard of the house. Gita has returned! But wait, no it isn’t. This dog is a good dog, like Gita, small and white and quiet. She never barks. She never growls. She is fond of children, but has never had puppies of her own. She never fights for food and will let Tuzik take all the hand-outs if the family doesn’t place it directly in front of her and shoo Tuzik away. She runs on all her legs, but will roll over and cover her head when she hears shouting. Her ears are slightly longer, her eyes slightly wider and blacker, her ribs slightly narrower. She is slightly less neurotic. She is a different dog. And what is her name? Gita.
It’s a miracle! An almost-Halloween miracle! And how did this miracle occur, you ask? Grandmother heard Big Sister and Little Sister were crying about their poor dog, white and small and quiet, and she looked around the neighborhood and found a new one. Where exactly did she find this dog, so miraculously similar to their old one? You know, around. But this dog is so clean and affectionate and accustomed to people, it couldn’t have come from the streets. Oh no, it definitely didn’t come from the streets, it came from a family. And did the family know it was part of this great miracle to make Big Sister and Little Sister happy? No, not really. The dog was a donation of sorts, the kind of donation that people make when they lose something they didn’t mean to lose and are not getting back. So what was the dog’s name originally, when it was well beloved by someone else? Who knows? It’s just a dog, after all, one is the same as any other. And the chickens cluck to themselves, see? It’s not just us who are disposable and replaceable around here.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Seasons of Turkmenistan
Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure a year in the life of Turkmenistan? In cups of tea, in camel sightings, in harrowing Lada taxi rides, in fluctuating dollar exchange rates, in ants. In deteriorating Soviet monuments, in golden Presidential statues, in 10 foot-tall rotating Ruhnama book statues, in ripe melons. Five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes, how do you measure such a year in life? How about in summers so hot it’s like a heated skillet to the head, how about falls and springs where the rain turns the dust roads into three-inch deep mud, how about winters so cold the stray dogs crawl beneath other dog carcasses to stay warm? How indeed do you measure a year in Turkmenistan? Is it in the rhythm of the girls’ pounding away at their carpets rather than going to school, in the sound of bubbling green tea, in the sound of boys playing soccer with a half-pumped ball? You measure in the moments of insanity, the moments of overwhelming joy, the moments when you think you’re in love, the moments when you laugh so hard you think you’ll burst your intestines, the moments when you cry so hard it’s like a puddle inside, the moments when you think your world is going on end, the moment when it does, the moment when it begins again, better than before.
A year ago my parents dropped me off at the Holiday Inn in Georgetown and I met my fellow T-16 Turkmenistan volunteers. Two days later we boarded our personal versions of the roller coaster which is Peace Corps Turkmenistan, a ride with no safety belts and wheels that often don’t connect with the rails. The highlights are all about the people, the stories are usually about the food, the adventures are when things went wrong, and the parts I like best are the bits that don’t make good stories. It’s time to celebrate still being here after a year in the blessed and beautiful Turkmenistan, a land which during orientation we were warned might not be at the entrance to Hell, but is definitely just a short bus ride from there.
What still gets to me about T-stan a year in:
1) The Star Wars theme song opening the daily news broadcast on the national government-run radio station. The Imperial March opens the second half of the broadcast.
2) Taxi rides in old Soviet Ladas where you need to manually hold the door closed as you’re going down the highway and the gear shift is decorative.
3) Needing to explain to every man, woman, and child the reasoning behind my marital status within the first three minutes of acquaintance.
4) Older women greet you saying, “hello, how are you? You’ve gained weight.” Or, if they’re being complementary, “Hello, how are you? I remember you being fatter, have you lost weight?”
5) Turkmen explanations for how the world works: if you’re overweight, you drank too much water and you need to eat more sheep fat; if you have a sore throat, you ate ice cream in cold weather; if you have diarrhea, you sat under the fan in cool weather; if your stomach is sore, you ate too much watermelon and fruit; if you’re inexplicably in a bad mood, a bird walked across one of your shed hairs; if you’re hit by a car, someone gave you the evil eye; the internationally weak dollar exchange is the sole fault of the new Turkmen President in conjunction with God; if a girl acts like a bitch it’s because her skin is dark-complexioned; if a child has trouble paying attention is school, their family is poor and stupid; children’s personality and behavior patterns are innate and determined by God and not influenced by parenting.
6) Herds of goats still make me paranoid.
What makes me still happy to be here:
1) My Turkmen teaching partner, Altyn, whose eyes light up when she hears a new idea.
2) The other PC volunteers, who every day inspire and astound me with their ability to joke about the taboo, ridicule the unspeakable, hate the easy, and embrace the hilarious. 3) My students who look like they’re going to cry when I tell them class is canceled.
4) My comfy couch bed, a pile of imported movies, and tons of free time to enjoy them.
5) Melons and pomegranates that make American produce seem like pale shadowy imitations of the real thing.
6) I still have no idea what’s going to happen from one day to the next.
A year ago my parents dropped me off at the Holiday Inn in Georgetown and I met my fellow T-16 Turkmenistan volunteers. Two days later we boarded our personal versions of the roller coaster which is Peace Corps Turkmenistan, a ride with no safety belts and wheels that often don’t connect with the rails. The highlights are all about the people, the stories are usually about the food, the adventures are when things went wrong, and the parts I like best are the bits that don’t make good stories. It’s time to celebrate still being here after a year in the blessed and beautiful Turkmenistan, a land which during orientation we were warned might not be at the entrance to Hell, but is definitely just a short bus ride from there.
What still gets to me about T-stan a year in:
1) The Star Wars theme song opening the daily news broadcast on the national government-run radio station. The Imperial March opens the second half of the broadcast.
2) Taxi rides in old Soviet Ladas where you need to manually hold the door closed as you’re going down the highway and the gear shift is decorative.
3) Needing to explain to every man, woman, and child the reasoning behind my marital status within the first three minutes of acquaintance.
4) Older women greet you saying, “hello, how are you? You’ve gained weight.” Or, if they’re being complementary, “Hello, how are you? I remember you being fatter, have you lost weight?”
5) Turkmen explanations for how the world works: if you’re overweight, you drank too much water and you need to eat more sheep fat; if you have a sore throat, you ate ice cream in cold weather; if you have diarrhea, you sat under the fan in cool weather; if your stomach is sore, you ate too much watermelon and fruit; if you’re inexplicably in a bad mood, a bird walked across one of your shed hairs; if you’re hit by a car, someone gave you the evil eye; the internationally weak dollar exchange is the sole fault of the new Turkmen President in conjunction with God; if a girl acts like a bitch it’s because her skin is dark-complexioned; if a child has trouble paying attention is school, their family is poor and stupid; children’s personality and behavior patterns are innate and determined by God and not influenced by parenting.
6) Herds of goats still make me paranoid.
What makes me still happy to be here:
1) My Turkmen teaching partner, Altyn, whose eyes light up when she hears a new idea.
2) The other PC volunteers, who every day inspire and astound me with their ability to joke about the taboo, ridicule the unspeakable, hate the easy, and embrace the hilarious. 3) My students who look like they’re going to cry when I tell them class is canceled.
4) My comfy couch bed, a pile of imported movies, and tons of free time to enjoy them.
5) Melons and pomegranates that make American produce seem like pale shadowy imitations of the real thing.
6) I still have no idea what’s going to happen from one day to the next.
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