The End

And I'm home. It's amazing how quickly the last two years in Turkmenistan become like a sort of twisted delusion, a trick of memory that never happened. If it wasn't for the bag of carpet cell-phone holders, a new ability to drink 2 liters of Coke in an afternoon, and a variety of bizarre photos on my harddrive, I could probably convince myself that it didn't happen. My Turkmen host family neighbor once asked me where on the moon Americans live; if someone told me now that the Turkmen live on the second star to the right and straight on till morning, I'd probably agree with them. I get asked often if the transition is hard, how I managed to survive the last two years, how difficult it all must have been. The truth is that normalcy is not normal. What's "normal" on any given day shifts as often as the latest gossip on the grocery store magazine racks. One day it's normal for Tiger Woods to be the glowing symbol of all that's good and moral in this world, the next day... just look at what happened to Michael Jackson? He's the biggest running joke of a pedophile loony in the world, and the second he's dead he's a pop god. You get used to an outhouse in a day, treading around cow and camel poop in the street within three days, no Internet access in a week (or two), no fellow English speakers within three months, and the lack of tasty comfort food within six months. By the end of two years the only aspects of life that remain truly bizarre (and occasionally unbearable) are: the smell of boiling goat guts for dinner and a communal form of existence that sees privacy and individual rights as a form of cruel ostracism. But even when you want to scream with frustration when your host mom walks into your room without knocking (again), that's also just life as usual.

Being home is normal too. It's been almost three weeks now and all is falling into place. I leave for London on December 28 to start classes in International Non-Government Organizations at Webster's University, part of Regent's College located in the scenic Regent's Park in the downtown center of London. Classes start on January 8, so that leaves two weeks to find housing, get a cell phone, and get hired for as big a job as my student visa will allow. Although I wish for a longer transition, it feels good to be on my feet and running onward to the next adventure.

If I have stories to tell, the blog will continue. If not, then good night, good luck, and go visit Turkmenistan -- it's like nowhere else on earth.

So long, farewell

“There’s a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall and the bells in the steeple, too. And up in the nursery an absurd little bird is popping out to say cuckoo. (cuckoo, cuckoo). Regretfully they tell us, but firmly they compel us, to say goodbye to you. So long, farewell, Auf Wiederschen, good night.”

The sad sort of clanging is from some one’s cell phone used as an MP3 Player to play Enrique Iglesias’ “Ring My Bell” on repeat. The sound from the minarets is the call to prayer playing through an outdated Soviet tape deck. And in the nursery – the dusty streets where kids play freely dodging cars – the dogs bray babaloo (babaloo babaloo). Regretfully they tell us, but firmly they compel us, to say good bye to Turkmenistan in only a few more short weeks. I leave Baharly November 29, leave Turkmenistan December 2, and I admit to mixed feelings. The large scary adult world of debt repayment, medical insurance, rent, and transportation costs awaits me. In comparison, the devil I know – the wasps nest in the outhouse, the churned sheep fat for dinner, reminding students to reshelf library books spine out (is this too hard a concept? Seriously, you’d think I was asking them to do something hideously difficult, like alphabetization) – really isn’t too bad.

When all is said and done, I will miss a lot about this place. I will miss my students. I will miss my 3-hour afternoon nap every day. I will miss my coworkers asking me again why I’m not settling down and marrying a nice Turkmen boy. I will miss reading a book a week. I will miss the random farm animals appearing in the yard only to reappear the next day in bloody pieces on the living room floor. I will miss watching several hours of TV on DVD every night. I will miss taking my city fashion cues from Russian whores. I will miss falling asleep to the sounds of Turkish soap operas turned up so loud you can hear distinct dialogue through two walls. I will miss negotiating the different street dogs’ territories and cow pies while walking to school. I will miss our constant reporting and bureaucratic paperwork to justify PC’s existence to Congress. I will miss walking past the world map mural every day down the halls I wrote the grant to get cemented and going “I did that.” I will miss wearing a short-sleeved cotton dress and sandals in mid-November. I will miss taxi drivers who ask permission to smoke after they’ve already lit their unfiltered Soviet cigarettes. I will miss the simple joy of a cold liter of Coke straight from the fridge after drinking warm flat Pepsis for a week. I will miss listening to camels braying to each other like dinosaurs from the neighbor’s yard. I will miss finding excuses to turn down soup at weddings where the goat meat is still on the leg with the hoof attached and bits of fur floating among globules of fat. I will miss dancing at Turkmen parties where only the arms wave around like cleaning windows for ten minutes and the legs trudge around to the beat. I will miss feeling like the town celebrity. I will miss people talking to me in Russian and getting insulted when I reply in Turkmen. I will miss watching the bales of cotton growing at the cotton factory storehouse into 50-foot hills of white. I will miss free all-inclusive PC medical insurance. I will miss hearing my students butcher songs (“Do Re Me” is a bull-s***, kids don’t learn to sing that fast). I will miss decorating my classroom with maps and collage murals from American magazines. I will miss owning three dresses appropriate for work, each of which is an unflattering cylindrical sack. I will miss Fridays at the Peace Corps office talking English so fast I forget syllabubs and word breaks. I will miss being part of a small regional family of PCV connected closer than biology. I will miss stuffing meat ravioli with my host mother for an hour to make lunch and hear her litany of physical complaints. I will miss the look on my students’ faces when they hear something true about the world for the first time (eating fat makes you fat, drinking water doesn’t).

But the sad clanging compels me onward. I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly. Good bye, good bye, Auf Wiederschen, good night

Walls

This last weekend my friend Andrea and I had the rare and awesome privilege of watching an absent-minded man talking on a cell-phone walk straight into a glass wall. It was one of those awesome cosmic moments when all the elements aligned: the nicest supermarket in the country, automatic sliding glass doors next to large planes of unmoving glass, a new sparking cleaning, a loud cell-phone yacker. Step step step SLAM. Amazing stuff. We held it together until he was just out of ear-shot and then nearly fell over in giggles in the middle of the cracker aisle. The story looses a bit in the retelling, but whenever either of us did something silly, awkward, or clumsy for the rest of the night we would look at each other and go “well, at least I didn’t…” and there was no need to finish the statement.

The visual humor aside is a welcome distraction from the biggest news around here: the possible ending of Peace Corps Turkmenistan. I may be over-reacting, but for the first time in 18 years, the Turkmen government has denied entry to our newest shipment of volunteers. Here’s what we were told (slightly abbreviated) from Chris, our acting country director:

“Most of you are already aware that the T18’s trainee input will not happen this year. Our staff was well prepared for their arrival and only was made aware of the Governments decision on September 29th [they were supposed to arrive October 2]. In a dip note sent to the U.S Embassy, they stated that 50 volunteers would be welcome to come in September/October 2010. I will be meeting with the Deputy Chairman for both the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health this week and hope to get a better understanding of their reason for this decision. I can assure you it has nothing to do with the quality of work you are doing in the field and or the mission of Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. I have spoken with Washington and they are working to place the trainees in other countries as needed. All volunteers currently in country will be able to continue with their service as planned.”

So we have a verbal promise that another group can come next year and the program can continue, but I don’t know many volunteers who believe this. The group who arrived at our mid-service – the T-17s -- can continue their last year, but then that may be it for Peace Corps Turkmenistan. The T-17s will finish up their service with no new volunteers to switch up the social scene, the volunteer population halved with only each other for company. I get lonely and bored just imagining it, I hate to think how hard it is going to be for them to live it.

The loss of the T-18s input has the further consequence that I won’t be replaced at site; I am the alpha and omega of Baharly volunteers. In class, since I heard the news, I’ve been hit with occasional pangs of sorrow looking at my brilliant motivated students and knowing that when I’m gone, their window of opportunity for a good education will be shut. If I had been replaced at site they could have had two more years of English language classes and might have learned enough to qualify for a scholarship to an American high school exchange program, but none of them are ready yet. The thought makes me a little ill, honestly, that I’m leaving them all pictures and dreams of a world far away without the skills to reach it. I had hoped to show them a door that my volunteer successors could show them the way through, but all I’ve done is showed them a lock without a key.

My only comforts are my secondary projects which will continue to teach once I’m gone: the world map mural still hangs in all its glory in the school entranceway and the books in the library have become a valuable and useful part of the school. Even if these kids won’t have opportunities to actually visit foreign lands, I’ve left them with the resources to travel there in their imaginations; I just hope they’ll use them.

Seasons of bugs and religion

The rainy season (as in, the season when it rains occasionally instead of never) has begun. As winter approaches I remember the colors of the produce section of Safeway with misty-eyed reverence. Autumn in Turkmenistan means the leaves fall from the trees with no intermediary color display and the days continue to be sweat-soakingly hot except for once a week when it rains for 15 minutes. This is lovely because it means days are generally a little cooler with less dust storms. It also heralds the arrival of bugs so plentiful and alarming I’m sure a Turkmen would greet Old Testament plagues with a huff and a shrug. Mosquitoes are out in force and I’m getting eaten alive. They attack at night, leaving me with itching burning lumps as wide as a quarter. Some nights I can’t sleep due to one big itch stretching across my legs and arms, and I wake to dig around the medicine box for the few remaining anti-itch lotion packs. With so much white paste over me, I look like mid-career Michael Jackson.

There are also 36 spiders in the outhouse, several of which have red marks on the back. Surely a bad sign. Several sections of the sidewalk have turned black due to the concentrated swarming of ants. My host mother lost the use of her right arm to the elbow for three days last week after being stung by a bee the size of a baby sparrow. Regular- size bees are getting territorial of the dying grape vines next to the driveway so the trip to the outhouse resembles a harrowing bomb dodging war reenactment.

Monday was the end of Ramadan so school was cancelled (hooray 3-day weekend!). It’s possible that other families actually celebrated the end of fasting, but we didn’t. You have to fast to make eating again a bit deal, I guess. As is the pattern in these parts, we only celebrated the parts of Ramadan that are done publicly. At the beginning we gave out treats to the singing children, and last Wednesday we made pilov and distributed it to all the neighbors (and ate their distributed pilov for dinner instead of our own). I wish I got a picture of my host mom in the kitchen surrounded by the dozens of plates of neighbor’s pilov covering every surface of floor and countertops. But the other parts of Ramadan – the fasting, the praying, the private communion with Allah, eating after sundown, all of that is unenforceable by society so we didn’t do it. And so Ramadan ends with as little fanfare as when it began and we got Monday off because of it. Reminds me when we had snow-days in all Montgomery County when there was ice in Poolesville, but the rest of us had clear skies.

For better or worse, Turkmenistan ensures my last two months will not be boring. To my library contributors I say “thank you” once again, the shelves are under construction, the books are now the official property of the school and under the supervision of the Turkmen librarian (hooray sustainability), kids are borrowing them and giving them back at a responsible and encouraging rate, and we should all be pleased and proud of how well it’s turning out. Pats on the back, everyone!

December 2

Received my Close of Service (COS) date.

See you then.

:)

Summer tomatoes

In America someone who does their own canning is considered charmingly eccentric. A health nut, perhaps, scared of preservatives, or an ecologist mindful of individuals’ carbon mark. For Turkmen, canning is an essential part of annual winter planning. In winter there will be no vegetables in stores, no fruits in the market, no color at all in either nature or for sale. For an obscene price a few withered bananas might be available, imported from Pakistan, but most families wouldn’t consider buying them except as a centerpiece for a New Year’s spread. So, to make up for the four-five month vitamin dearth, Turkmen take the fruits available in summer and turn them into hand-made jams and turn the vegetables into sauces and pickles. Last summer my host family did these tasks without me as I was working all day at the school and doing projects after classes, and the dynamic was more like a lodger than a family member. But since I moved, and since my classes ended early so I could spend the summer on vacation, I had no such excuse this summer. I had to help.

For the record, cutting tomatoes for sauce changes from a charming novelty into a chore after ten minutes. It begins well. I was squatting on the ground in the yard with five other women, surrounded by freshly washed tomatoes glistening in the light of the single light-bulb in the night like glass ornaments or globules of blood. They gossiped and chatted and it was all fun and games. The kids washed the tomatoes in the outdoor faucet and brought them in heaping platters to us, who cut off the head and then chopped them into large chunks, and then the oldest women took our overflowing bowls of disemboweled tomatoes and put them into the three boiling cauldrons and fed the wood fires beneath them. The anthropologist in me was pleased and proud to be included in this multi-generational task of preparing for winter, a simple ritual that has barely changed in thousands of years. And then I looked down at my watch and realized that I’d been doing nothing but chopping tomatoes for ten entire minutes.

At the half-hour mark I realized with horror that we were really going to chop the entire pile of tomatoes tonight in one go. The pile was huge, enough to fill the interior of a four-door car from the floor to the window. With five of us going, we had barely made a dent in the pile since I sat down.

At the one hour mark I developed blisters on three fingers from where my knife was rubbing against my skin and layers of tomato peel and juice. My poor host sister was the victim of my increasing clumsiness as my tomato juice splash-zone more often than not got her instead of me.

At an hour and a half I began to systematically try different positions on the ground as my knees were beginning to snap and crack from squatting so long.

At the two hour mark, when I was released from duties, I sent a prayer to God to never leave the land of supermarkets again and that I would exercise twice the next day to hopefully regain the use of my legs. In the two and a half hours that we worked without break, five of us produced 25 huge glass jars of tomato sauce. And we’re going to have to do it again the day after tomorrow and next week as well. It’s a good thing I leave for a conference next week, otherwise I’d be roped in for apricot jam production. Sounds fun, huh? Imagine pitting apricots at midnight for nearly three hours and if that sounds like a grand night, you’re free to take my place in the cutting circle.

As most who know me personally are aware, the reason for the long break between blogs was that I’ve been on vacation for the last two months: first to America for three weeks and then to Thailand for two. Thank you to everyone who made my two vacations so splendid, I can’t wait to see you all again in December. Most important wisdom learned during my vacations: smoothies can make every day better, and smoothies with friends who love you are the best thing ever.

A reading

Everyone (and everyone that you know) should read:

“Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” by John Perkins, in order to understand the world and how it operates;

“The World According to Garp,” by John Irving, in order to understand human nature and how it works on others;

And

“High Tide in Tucson,” by Barbara Kingsolver, in order to survive it.

Pit of Hell

Yes, I live in outer space

I’ve been here almost two years now and most of the time I don’t notice the weirdness. You live with Teke Turkmen long enough, spend time only with other similarly-integrated PCVs, and limit contact with the outside world to letters and the occasional phone call, and the alien-ness and simple bizarreness of where I live becomes simply part of the background. Occasionally I’ll walk out of my oh-so-Soviet-looking school and see the wrinkled brown looming mountains that separate us from Iran, a Russian Jeep so old it’s started with a crank in the front grill, some cows taking a dump on the main highway, and a new bride making her rounds of a hundred guestings while weighted down by nearly 80 pounds of jewelry and fabrics in 100 degree heat, and I’ll go, “oh yeah, weirdness.” But that’s only occasionally. It takes all these elements – plus throwing in the fact that I’m wearing a Turkmen koinek and my ridiculously long hair is pinned up in a clip like a vice – to remember that I’m not in the suburbs any more. At least, not an American one.

And I’ve learned so much. Some of it is useful. Take, for example, the dogs. When I first came here, I was terrified of the dogs. Read some of the early entries if you doubt me, the dogs here are scary: half-starved mongrels higher than your waist, too-few generations removed from the Siberian wolves they’re descended from. But I can understand them now. I know which ones are terrified of a toddler with a rock, which ones are territorial only to a foot outside their gate, which ones are too dehydrated and starved to even distinguish me from a tree, which ones are mean little bastards just waiting for a quick kick to the ribs. Interestingly, the bigger the dog, the less dangerous it is; it’s the little knee-high canine rats you need to worry about.

Some of what I’ve learned is a little scary. Earlier this week I was outside sitting with my 19 year-old host sister looking up at the moon and she asked me which of the dark splotches was America. Thinking I must have not understood correctly, she further explained that, until this conversation, she had assumed that each individual country was its own individual spinning globe in the universe, which was why I needed an airplane to reach Turkmenistan and why the flight had taken so long. She thought I came from outer space.

Sometimes it feels like it.

Summer, by the way, has arrived like a skillet to the abdomen. We had an unusually long and wet spring which lulled us into a false sense of security that perhaps we would have a “tame” or “cool” or “less severe” or “bearable” summer. Alas, it was not meant to be. At my new host family’s house (I still consider them new although I’ve lived with them for six months now), there is a single air conditioning unit pumping cool air into the back of the house and slowly percolating to the rest of the rooms like a healing aura you catch a breath of once an hour or so. Due to a quirk of the clocks, high noon actually occurs at 2:30 in the afternoon and from 1-4 there really isn’t anything worth doing except sleep. You can’t go to the stores or any public building because they’re all closed and you can’t walk across the yard to the kitchen or the outhouse without braving heat so intense it triggers your gag reflex. On the upside, the absurd heat lessens your appetite so I’m only eating one meal a day (not counting the liter of juice I chug between classes).

As hideous as the weather is, I’m really can’t complain about summer as I have a pretty sweet deal. I only have 5 hours of classes a day, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, with Wednesday in the city, sleeping on the weekends, and a 4-hour siesta in the middle of every day. And those are my intense work-weeks. More often than not I’m on vacation (USA: July 11-27, Thailand: August 4 – August 18), or taking day trips to explore the wondrous possibilities of Turkmen tourism.

Take, for instance, the Pit of Hell. In the materials I read before coming to Turkmenistan there was a frequently repeated joke that Turkmenistan might not actually be Hell, but it’s a short bus ride from there. A bus would actually have had some trouble getting over the dunes so we took 4-wheel drive Jeeps instead.

There are several explanations for how the 50 meter (give or take) gashing gas crater in the middle of the desert came to be. My favorite story, which I read before coming here, was that some Russian soldiers randomly rolled a flaming tire into a big hole (as people do) and it caught the natural gas and continued to flame forever more. The more likely explanation -- which I heard from the German geological student who took us out there -- is that the Russians routinely bombed the shit out of the desert looking for any natural gas pockets (the parts of the desert which would blow up on impact) and this hole was one that they determined wasn’t profitable enough to tap. In twenty years or so the natural gas reserve under the crater will be all used up and the huge hole of flame we witnessed will be no more.

There honestly isn’t much to do at the Pit of Hell besides joke about the satanic nature of this country (these jokes are actually sustainable for much longer than you’d think), take pictures at night where everyone is bathed in a ghostly orange glow [pictures available soon], and camp out under stars you can’t see so close to the crater’s bright light. And, of course, ask “can you believe this?!” at least seven times an hour.

The answer is always the same: “No, I really can’t.”

Uno Changed My Life

Okay, I’m the first to admit that it’s been awhile since I blogged last. But I’ve been distracted. I’ve been playing Uno. Now Uno, as just about every American child knows, is a card game involving four colors and a few mixed wild and specialty cards distributed by Mattel. The instruction manual comes in five languages so I’m assuming that it is an international phenomenon and not just an American one. The game is played by 2-10 players at a time, going around in a circle with players discarding a blue, green, red, or yellow card matching the color or number of the previously-discarded card. The player to discard all their cards first is the winner. The concept is complicated by the inclusion of Skip, Reverse, Pick 2, Pick 4, and wild cards which will, in various ways, doom your neighbor to your advantage.

Something about this simple game touches the Turkmen psyche and it has caught on in ways I never imagined. I have seen children get off their chair, kneel on the floor, and beg their classmate to declare a wild card a yellow rather than green. My host brother bangs on my door at eleven at night begging to show the cards off to his friends. My 28-year old widowed host-sister mentions the time I made her Pick 4 three times in a row while we make dinner. My students complete grammar worksheets in record time with the promise of a half-hour of Uno hanging above their heads. Knowing I’ll be more likely to play if in a good mood, my host mother cooks me non-sheep-fat variations of the main meal.

My single deck of Uno cards, found abandoned in the Peace Corps office Free Box, is probably the single most valuable and coveted object within 50 miles. So, if you want to know what I’ve been up to for the past two months, it’s a simple answer.

Playing cards.

In other news – I received a 1 million pound full-tuition scholarship to attend Webster’s University in London, a part of Regent’s College, starting January 8, 2010. I’m going to check it out on my London plane layover in July and if the place isn’t a swindle, then I’m UK-bound three weeks after I come home from Turkmenistan. This time you all can come visit me.

I have a cold

Mucus! So very much mucus!

the future

April already, huh. It’s true what they say: each week may seem like an eternity, but the moment you look at a calendar you realize that the second year of Peace Corps really does fly by. I’ve been in Turkmenistan for a year and a half and I can still remember the first three months of training more clearly than the nightmare I had last night. I know my post-Peace Corps plans are of great interest to the world (and if they’re not, then you haven’t been paying attention), so I figure I’ll give a brief run-down. I am applying to two grad schools: Webster’s Graduate School (part of Regents College in downtown London), and The New School: Milano (downtown Manhattan). No more village life for me. Regardless of which school accepts me, I plan on getting my masters in Non-Profit Management with an international focus in women’s rights. Both have programs starting January, 2010; Webster’s finishing in one year while The New School finishes in two. If, however, I don’t get accepted for the January semester in either New York or London I will:

1) Join my cousin Jon on one of his organic farm cooperatives (hopefully some place foreign)
2) Get a job as a recruiter for Peace Corps at DC headquarters
3) Be an English teacher in Korea for a year (where you can easily save $1000 a month, according to some RPCV pals currently living there, even while living like a rock star)
4) Rejoin Peace Corps and hope they assign me a job as something other than an English teacher or youth coordinator
5) Take macro and micro economics (and creative writing) courses at Prince George’s Community College or Montgomery Community College as preparation for a more impressive application to Yale Graduate School for non-profit management

Here is what I will NOT do (remind me of this when these all become viable options):
1) Work at Ann Taylor or some other mall retail outlet
2) Sit around my parents’ house as a moody lump doing nothing to propel myself forward in my life except watch movies and write crap vampire novels
3) Be a high school substitute teacher
4) Get a job somewhere that includes cubicles, felt walls, and smiley face pins – unless I’m there undercover as a spy and have a license to kill

As a reminder, I am still accepting boxes of children’s illustrated books and fashion magazines to build my blooming English language library. Thank you so much to everyone who has already sent me something, even two or three magazines from CVS can really be an eye-opener and source of joy to a Turkmen child. Address available upon request.

Hard core, Peace Corps

English textbooks really don’t have Turkmenistan in mind when writing example dialogues and exercises. Don’t get me started on an entire text about how to ski. Take, for instance, this dialogue practicing adverbs of frequency, the present simple vs. present continuous tense, and expressing incongruity.

A: What are you doing?
B: I’m washing the dishes in the bathtub.
A: That’s strange! Do you usually wash dishes in the bathtub?
B: No, I never wash dishes in the bathtub, but I’m washing dishes in the bathtub today.
A: Why are you doing that?
B: Because my sink is broken.
A: I’m sorry to hear that.

Students are then supposed to substitute the action and broken object with new words, such as sleeping on the floor because the bed is broken, walking to work because the car isn’t working, using a typewriter because the computer is broken, and sweeping the carpet because the vacuum is busted. But here’s the problem: not only do most of my students no have sinks – or running water in their house – they probably haven’t seen a bathtub outside of TV. They wash with basins of water headed over a gas furnace and water stored in an underground tank. They also sleep on the floor on 1-inch thick hard mats on a nightly basis because they say beds make their back hurt (I pile my mats 3 high). Unless you’re a taxi driver, no one drives to work and I can count the number of household computers in the whole town on one hand. I’ve seen a few vacuums around, mostly used as novelties to show off to guests, but daily sweeping all the carpets in the house is a Turkmen compulsion as necessary for well-being as eating and sleeping.

So we PCV have written a “For Turkmen” companion to our English textbooks. In this version, the unusual action is driving, not walking, and they’re driving because it’s raining (getting wet invites such hazards as fevers, flu, and frozen wombs). Other examples include shouting at the neighbors because the telephone isn’t working; cooking over a fire because the gas was cut off; studying English by candlelight because the electricity isn’t working; and sleeping outside because the fan is busted and it’s too hot inside. These are the “strange,” – and yet not al that rare – occurrences that are just part of daily life here.

Did you hear? It’s official, Turkmenistan PCV live the most hard-core lives on the planet in the most isolated place on earth. Antarctica, the former reigning champ of all things isolated and challenging, now has high speed Internet access and regular meals made from fresh gourmet food imported daily.

According to Discovery Channel News, the new Belgian “Princess Elizabeth” scientific research center opened February 17, 2009 looking like a “flying saucer on stilts” and powered by a state-of-the art, wind and sun-powered, zero emissions system. Unlike Antarctica researchers of old who talked to the outside world via Morse Code and 8-day long boat rides, current residents have access to the outside world in ways we T-stan PCV can only fantasize: Internet in their very own rooms.

Antarctica was largely neglected after its discovery in the 1890s because of its “hostile environment, lack of resources, and isolation,” attributes which in Turkmenistan have been considered bragging points and reasons to stick it out as volunteers. Of course, the only natural inhabitants of Antarctica are cold-adapted plants and animals such as penguins, seals, mosses, and lichen. The natural inhabitants of Turkmenistan are heat-adapted creatures surviving on the fuel of gossip and sheer daiza-driven will (the evergreen trees are exceptions and refuse to survive despite the late President’s wishes, the insufferable wretches). I suppose it’s a matter of debate about which is a more hard core smell to have lingering in your hair at the end of the day: boiled sheep liver or penguin poop.

books, magazines, journals, oh my!

I’ve set up a small (very small) library in my classroom. It’s one shelf long of mostly picture books and a few illustrated classics like Huck Finn and Alice in Wonderland. The Darien Book Aid people finally came through, and I got around to setting it up. Kids are already showing curiosity and I’m trying to figure out how best to use it in class – winner of a game gets a book for the weekend? Take out a book and come back next class with 10 new words? It could work. So far my sophisticated library system is to have the kids swarm the shelf at the end of class, find something they like, I sign it out, they bring it back in a week. I’m not giving reading assignments yet, I’m not making them *do* anything at all, but I want them to think of books as a privilege and a wonder, not a chore. I just want the kids to *want* to read, something definitely lacking so far in their educational experience. If the only books I’d ever seen or read in my life were textbooks, I would also want to read like a cat wants to be thrown against the wall. But, so far, they seem to like them. We’ll see how long it takes for the novelty to wear off, but I’m excited that they have books in their hands and they leave class excited and exchanging looks at each others’ covers. Brings me a little glimmer of what I can only describe as joy: I did that. I brought those kids something they’d never experienced before: excitement about books. Am I awesome or what? Sometimes I really like my job.

So far my library has exactly 27 items, that’s including each National Geographic and People magazine counted individually. There’s not enough for every kid to take out a book at the same time, but I’m working on that. Unfortunately, the recession being what it is, Darien Book Aid can’t send a second shipment, so I’m improvising.

And YOU can help!!

If you want to be part of building a library in the developing world, send me kids’ picture books and fashion magazines. Illustrations and photos are key. If you’re worried about the weight, our dear US Postal Service offers the “flat rate” box, where shipping costs the same regardless of whether the box is filled with feathers, bricks, or, yes, books for learning Turkmen boys and girls. The address of where to send them is available upon request, just remember that my remaining time here is ticking away so mail your contribution today. And I sound like PBS, when did that happen?

Pain in the ...

Why is it that some days feel absolutely epic and others fly? Last week flew, this week trudges. This morning’s classes felt like 5 hours rather than 3. I then helped prepare lunch for another 2 hours (even with three people Turkmen meals take awhile to prep), napped the nap of the exhausted, and then returned to school for another 4 hours. On a slow day, every lesson feels like it has the high gravity mass to warp time around itself and make it move slower than its normal path. I finally got around again to the class where I dislocated my shoulder and they look at me with a kind of frightened awe, as it I might spontaneously combust at any moment. It takes the pressure off making an interesting lesson plan when my sling is such an object of morbid fascination. I’ve started wearing my sling only when I teach (when I’m most tempted to fling that arm about) and then leaving it off while I walk around and sit with the family, as I draw enough attention without looking like an amputee under my coat.

use small gestures

"And the house was *this* big!"

And that's the part where I fling my arms out so wide I throw my right arm out of the socket, cry out like a wounded wildebeest, sink to the floor in front of 20 terrified Turkmen children, pop it back in with a sickly squishing sound, and cancel class. I've never see them move so fast out the door. Then came in the flurry of teachers, a mix of genuinely concerned, genuinely curious, and genuinely gossip-hungry. We called PC for advice, preferably for instructions on how long to hold on the heat pad/ice pack, and got strict instructions to come to the office RIGHT NOW! So, still dressed in my bright floral Turkmen koinek school uniform, I packed up my stuff one-handed (my usually useless left arm appendage got more work than it has in the last year), and came to the city. As soon as I arrived at the office I was hurried to the hospital for a series of tests and prods that seemed more appropriate for a fracture rather than a dislocated shoulder (especially a dislocated shoulder that's back in it's proper joint already): shots, X-rays, and emergency room tendon specialist called in from home. All for poor little old me. The result is that I have to wear a really annoying sling for two weeks, I'm not allowed to raise my arm about my head, and after two weeks I'm going to have to do intensive exercises to build up the muscle so that it will properly hold my bone in the socket. Apparently I have a naturally really flexible bone structure, but that comes at the price of joints more prone to disconnect. Well, I may have to wear a sling, but it's worth the story of reattaching my own arm in class.

Family dearest

An anthropological moment…

I don’t know many people who *enjoy* their families. I know many who can tolerate, survive, get through the day, and even like and love their families. But ask someone, “so, do you love your family?” they’ll usually say the automatic “yes,” then pause, and begin a long list of clarifications beginning with “but…” Sure, I’ve got some addendums myself, but it’s a short list. Most of the time being around my family tends to brighten rather than darken my mood and I’m flying back from T-stan this July to not miss out on the fun at the family reunion. Even living in the states I recognized that I’d won the family lottery, at least in terms of ending up with amazingly supportive and accepting people, even if only branch of the extended family has any money. Living here, however, reminds me that not only did I won the lottery, but most of the people I know who complain constantly about their families ended up pretty well off as well.

If the Greeks are right and you get to choose your next life before taking a drink to forget all about your last one, don’t choose to be a Turkmen. Or -- let me clarify for those familiar with Turkmen regional cultural differences -- don’t choose to be born into a mega-conservative traditional Ahal Teke Turkmen family. I have now lived in three and can tell you with a certain authority that as much as you might dislike, feel harassed by, be embarrassed by, and try to avoid your own family, you could have it SO much worse. You could have grown up in Baharly.

As Americans, we take pride in saying – with various amounts of sincerity – that we don’t care what other people think. This is an utter lie in almost every instance even when (perhaps especially when) we act in opposition to expectations. But here, where police are more hypothetical threats than real powers, gossip is the actual force keeping anarchy (and individual expression) at bay. What other people think of you is the single most important thing in your life. I mention this now because the following family rules and guidelines may sound ridiculous and you may start thinking to yourself “well, I wouldn’t do that.” Well, yes, you would. You would do it and never step a toe out of line because if you break a rule, and someone sees you, then you can ruin your family’s honor (which in term means they’ll never be able to get a financial loan or be hired for local jobs) or your family will be forced to disown you (which, if you’re a woman, means you’ve got one option left: prostitution). Keeping in mind that these are the consequences of misbehavior or trying to be different than everyone else…

Girls, when you get married, you won’t be able to leave your husband’s house until you read middle age – you might or might not be allowed to use the phone to call your mother. You must wear a head scarf (so does everyone else), and cover your mouth when in the presence of your mother-in-law or her adult female relatives. You may only speak to your father-in-law in an absolute emergency, but under no circumstances may you talk to, or look at, your brother-in-law (if he comes into the room, you stare at the floor). You will be expected to cook, clean, make tea, and do all labor-intensive chores in the house – other unmarried women in the house should also help. If you never marry, your fate will be exactly the same as a newly-married woman, except that with no children, you will never have the chance to rule over them and their spouses and will be a live-in servant. If your husband becomes a drug addict or an abusive alcoholic, your in-laws will blame you solely for their son’s behavior. If you work outside of the house, half of your salary will go to your in-laws, who are free to give the money elsewhere as your portion of the salary is the one expected to pay for food, clothing for yourself and your children, and any house renovations or improvements.

Young adults, if you have problems, under no circumstances do you go to your parents. Any boyfriends or girlfriends (who you can only talk to over the phone or by complicated webs of lies orchestrated through your peers) must be kept utterly secret, or you’ll be severely beaten and never married. School may not be challenging (staying awake is probably the hardest part), but it’s 5 hours when your behavior is being carefully evaluated and judged by all around you and your future prospects entirely pivot on their opinions of you. Being popular might literally be a life or death, eat or starve, proposition.

Boys, once you reach puberty the only girl you will ever see are close family members (who will be too busy to talk to you) and prostitutes. You will have no work at home so you will be shut away in a back room with a TV and other smoking, half-drunk men, away from the working women who you can see if you scream out into the hallway for more food, tea, or vodka. Or you can squat in groups of 2 or 2 in the street chewing seeds and staring at the traffic in utter silence. Pedestrians will walk around you as if you’re just another shrub or cow cake on the sidewalk. For those with jobs, this vegetative state is limited to the evenings and the lunch break, but for the many unemployed with nothing else to do during the day, the brain and body slowly wither until your large-bosomed wife with 7-14 children to coordinate is serving meals to a patriarch skeleton who everyone forgets to mention.

Unfortunately, this is a realistic worst-case scenario rather than an exaggeration. My former host mom, my new host mom, as well as my new host dad are all from families of 10 siblings. Actually, there are worse-fates: I’ve known of two girls since arriving here last December who lost hope, poured gasoline over their naked bodies, and set themselves on fire in their bathrooms.

But there are also good stories. In my new host families, my host mom and dad seem to be friends. Not equal partners, each has their own domain and my host dad has the unquestioned authority over her movements outside the house (they’ve been married 20+ years and he still occasionally forbids her to visit her mother, as a matter of whim). But they talk together in the evening, share tea and discuss the family. They even express their thoughts and feelings on rare special occasions. The only shouting I hear is her at him. He said “hello” to his wife while walking through the room and my host sister-in-law smiled broadly at me and said “look! See how much he loves her?”

I’m asked on an almost daily basis why I don’t marry a Turkmen boy and settle in Baharly forever. After trying to explain concepts like free will and gender equality and getting blank stares, I’ve finally settled for saying that I don’t like Turkmen weather.

Rocking Out

I find it a curious fact that I only get drunk, go clubbing, and “party” in the conventional sense when in foreign countries. I’ve been to clubs in Kenya, Mali, and Turkmenistan, but none in America, despite living my life outside Washington DC and attending school outside New York City. And here in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan I attended my first “death metal” concert. According to my fellow American concert-goers, this doesn’t count. They’ve been to massive Slipknot and Mattalica concerts (just to name the bands I recognized, collectively they’ve been to dozens) and have survival stories of mosh-pits full of thousands of people and the scars along their arms to prove it. One girl told with pride the story of how she was really trashed in a mosh-pit and got a cut so bad it needed stitches, and yet she didn’t notice until the concert was over. They complained that if the concert isn’t loud enough to make you slightly dizzy, it’s not loud enough.

I think I liked our little death metal concert better: loud enough to be heard over the screaming of Russian teenagers, soft enough we could have a conversation by yelling. It was in the basement of an apartment building, a white room about the size of a garage with red plastic wrapped around a few bare light bulbs to add ambiance and a raised stage on one side about 4 feet deep and an empty space on the other for the audience to stand, scream, and try to not slip on the gray linoleum. It was originally the storeroom for the café and bar you need to walk through to get to the concert and the acoustics reflected its original purpose rather than its newest incarnation: from ten feet away the band was completely garbled, but that might have been intentional. As I said, I don’t know much about how death metal is supposed to sound.

I’d like to say that we showed up and were great cultural examples for how death metal concerts are in America and the world (some of my cohorts have been to death metal concerts in Europe as well), but I’m afraid to say we looked and acted like tools. We were dressed completely wrong: in whatever clothes we’d shown up to the Peace Corps office in that day. The rest of the audience (Russian high schoolers, for the most part) were decked out in black, leather, chains, eye-shadow, piercings, gelled colored hair, and whatever American rock punk paraphernalia they could find. I caught a few with “Nightmare Before Christmas” backpacks, although I can’t imagine where they found them. We looked like a trio of old squares in comparison in sweater vests, dress shirts, Chaco pants, running shoes, and surfing T-shirts.

We hung to the back and I listened to the others’ running commentary on how cute everything was: their “little mosh pit,” their American-imitation outfits, their Red Hot Chili Peppers punk covers (it helped that they just screamed the tunes instead of trying to make the lyrics sound hard core), and how everything was not quite as good as the concerts they’d gone to in America. After awhile they realized just how patronizing and condescending they were sounding, and then decided to out-compete each other for who could sound the MOST patronizing and condescending. I drank my beer and tried to enjoy the music (the second band wasn’t bad, they had a decent lead guitarist and drummer). But standing and staring is not the way to experience a death metal concert, you need to get in there and risk personal injury banging into as many people as possible, scream so loud you can’t hear the music over your own voice, and paint yourself up so spectacularly you’re unrecognizable.

I don’t have the experience to make an educated comparison, but I think I liked the Russian “imitation” better than my American cohorts’ infamous metal concerts where the audience outnumbers most Turkmen towns. Although they couldn’t get over how little and poser everything was, my impression is that huge rock concerts are the posers, they’re trying to create (on a large, lucrative scale) what used to be an expression of raw teenage angst. Kids used to rock out in their garage, invite their friends, and just scream their heads off in apartment lofts and back yards because no one could understand their pain except for themselves and the music. These Russian kids live in Turkmenistan, they watch Russian and American music videos and movies and these are their guides for how to live a Western lifestyle different than their Turkmen neighbors, neighbors who mostly judge them as shameless animals. These kids responded to that Turkmen stereotype, accepted it, and made it their own. With only the barebones necessary – a band, an audience, and a bar with cheap drinks (the only concert I’ve ever attended where they didn’t scalp you on the drinks), they stood in the basement and screamed F-you to the establishment and the world. It’s easy for my American compatriots to be condescending about how “little” everything is, but it has to be because it is noncommercial and pure, the way death metal began (in my nostalgic idealistic world history). I doubt I will ever have the opportunity again to say I went to a death metal concert that was innocent in its purity.

I don’t think I’ll go again.