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 The sound from the minarets is the call to prayer playing through an outdated Soviet tape deck.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