Just one circle, please

Do you remember your first multiple choice test? I remember my first official standardized exam, the California Achievement Test (CAT) administered when I was in fourth (third?) grade to see if I was eligible for honors elementary school (I should have a bumper sticker that says “tracking worked for me”). I thought the point was to finish first rather than answer the questions correctly and the result was I did so badly I was categorized as mentally retarded. But at what point quizzes, exercise sheets, exams, and all other qualitative and quantitative evaluations began to take the form of A,B,C,D, and become an integral part of our educational experience, I have no idea. It was probably about the time we learned how to read. How do you spell the word for man’s best friend? A. DAWG; B. DOG; C. DOGG; D. WALLET. Teacher feeds the sheet through the scanning machine and job done. Welcome to the American educational system as we know it.

Turkmen children don’t know how to take multiple choice tests. I found this out last week. School started last Monday and I’m starting up a whole new round of after-school English clubs. Unlike last year when I broke down clubs by grade (one for the fourth graders, another for the fifth graders, etc), this year I’m breaking them down by language level, with the 4-6 graders split into three levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced (“advanced” in this case used rather loosely) and the 7-10 graders split along the same lines. To be fair, I made three different versions of a placement exam (no cheating) and then administered it to anyone interested in getting into the intermediate or advanced levels. It took me three days of giving this exam to finally get my directions spiel down so they understood how to take it. There are 20 questions, each question has four options (not just A or B, but C and D are also viable options), and each question has only one answer (you can’t circle all four and expect me to give you credit for finding the right one). If you circle the wrong answer, cross it out so I know it’s wrong and circle the correct one (if you circle two, don’t expect me to recognize which one you know is right). I’m not going to tell you which is the correct answer and I’m not going to translate the answers into Turkmen. And no matter how much I like you, I’m not going to give you a hint of which one is right.

Because there is the difference between exams as I give them and exams as these students have experienced them – they’re about demonstrating skills rather than making marks in a teacher’s journal to give to the regional educational department. According to all official figures you will read in world atlases or country fact and figures sheets, Turkmenistan has a 98% literacy rate. Why? Let’s look at your average English mid-term exam. The main graded section is from something called “dictation.” Students are told ahead of time which paragraph will be read to them from their textbook and then the day of the exam the teacher reads the paragraph aloud slowly and the students write what they hear. If they’re unsure of what the teacher said or about the spelling, they are welcome to ask the teacher for the translation and the spelling (which are given without reservation). If they still don’t understand, they are welcome to copy directly from the book. So, what’s actually being tested here? Oh, right, the ability to copy. Illiterate students still receive low scores, but teachers are forbidden to write the scores of failing students in their grade books. Why? It makes the school look bad, and what’s bad for the community is obviously bad for the individual student and teacher, so what’s the problem? And while we’re talking about official figures, Turkmenistan also has a low infancy death toll, no homeless people, no AIDS, no homosexuals, and no non-Muslims. Thank you, Mr. President, for giving us such a blessed and perfect country; you don’t need to change a thing.

PS – I was given a new classroom which, unlike the last one, came unfurnished. So this last week my job (besides getting these clubs started) has been to fill up the blank walls with order, design, tension, composition, balance, light, and harmony. For fellow PCV these collages could work as a “name that Newsweek issue” game. I started out intending to make them illustrations of American life, values, and personalities (notice Marilyn Monroe and Obama). But at some point in the middle of the second I realized that they’re at the back of the room where I’m the only one looking at them while teaching, so they’re ultimately about what I like to look at (can you find the Oxford University skyline? The wooden bowls were made my dad). They serve the educational function of inspiring questions and aesthetics that these students otherwise don’t have access to (other than from their satellite TVs), but mostly they serve the personal function of helping me find serenity. Oh, pictures of James McAvoy and Clive Owen, grant me the composure to teach those who wish to be taught, the strength to slap around those who wish to fart around, and the wisdom to know the difference.

A week with no Coke

Day 1: The resolution is set. I will give up drinking dark sodas. Those who know me well from earlier days may be surprised, as if Willie Nelson gave up pot or Jesus gave up wine. It’s not just the carcinogens, the calories building around my middle, the acids sucking the calcium from my bones, the sugars eating away at the plaque of my teeth, or the caffeine robbing my sleep, it’s the monetary cost of it. For the second month in a row I’ve had to exchange dollars at the end of the month to live my intended lifestyle of coming into the city on weekends for internet and American company. News flash, being a volunteer is not a very well-paid gig.

Day 2: So why is it that in return for English-speaking society I must give up the main non-transportation-related expense digging into my salary? A liter bottle of true Coca Cola is a little over a dollar (Turkmen Cola, which tastes like corn-syrup ass, is about fifty cents a bottle), but even drinking half a liter a day adds up quickly when your entire monthly salary is about $75 (not counting rent). Just one day without it has ignited the withdrawal symptoms: a pounding headache haunted me starting late afternoon and I was irritable and restless starting from about noon. It was about then I walked past the one store in town that sells Pepsi cans so cold there are little ice crystals inside like a soda smoothie. Trying not to think about it.

Day 3: The first big test. If I’d attended an addiction steps program I’m sure there’s some word for it, the moment when you habitually always take the substance in question, and you don’t. It was touch and go there for a bit, though. The good store that always has the cold cans is open 50% of the time when I’m going to Altyn’s and I figured if God or fate really wanted me to give up dark soda then it would be closed. It was open. I could almost taste the rich acidly sweet goodness on my tongue as I stepped through the door. But then I saw it: a 7 UP. They never have 7-Up. And 7-Up may rot your teeth, but it isn’t a carcinogen and is half the cost of Pepsi (it’s less popular). And they had a cold one. By divine providence, my abstinence from dark soda holds for another day.

Day 4: Sleeping is getting easier. As in, I seem able to nap 5-6 hours a day and then still sleep at night. Giving up dark soda apparently means not only giving up the joyful taste, but also all those jittery all-nighter evenings that only large doses of Benedril can counter-act. On the other hand, why are caffeine withdrawal and depression symptoms the same?

Day 5: This is getting ridiculous. I once tried to give up soda for Lent and made it for all of a week before I had a coke on Sunday and descended completely into a life of soda sin forever more. So much for promises to God, I serve a higher power: the God of expensively-marketed sugary poison. When I went to Turkey last month my parents brought me half a suitcase full of Diet Coke. No joke. My request from the America: movies, cute clothes (which I wore on vacation and then sent back), and Diet Coke. I drank an average 2-5 cans a day and then felt virtuous for conserving. So far the switch to Sprite and 7-Up is holding steady. The trick is the weekend.

Day 6: Should there be some caveat to the prohibition that all-nighters can include Coke? How is one supposed to stay up all night talking with people without some kind of chemical stimulant? Just pure enthusiasm? Who has that, really? On the other hand, on the Wyoming trip I learned that park rangers keep a bottle of Coke in their van to wash blood spills off the road, that it will eat the paint off of a bike, and will dissolve teeth completely when soaking in the stuff overnight. How many of these are overplayed hyperboles I don’t know, but the inch of truth is there: if I don’t want to succumb to one side of the family’s cancer or become a slave to the other side’s pattern of addiction disorders, I’ve got to give up the dark soda. Entirely.

Day 7: Wish me luck. The prohibition holds. Strange side note: my highly educated and worldly Turkmen counterpart, Altyn, who has been to Germany and watches Russian TV regularly does not know what McDonalds is. When I referenced our favorite burger chain in conversation, she asked me if it was the name of an American state. I didn’t feel like explaining that it is more a state of mind. I’m off the map, folks, and resolute.

Across the Universe

The times are changing. I was searching for a more original opening (time by its very definition and perception is always changing), but it works as a summary. I woke up Tuesday grabbing for a blanket for the first time in three months, a sign that the worst of summer is past and we’re heading back into bearable hot weather. Those two months huddled next to the fan from 11am – 3pm were less than fun.

And our street has asphalt! The main road that runs next to the governor’s office and the school got a new resurfacing, and then with the leftover materials my little side street was honored with a new black-top. So good-bye to the huge pot-holes, gravel pits, three-inch deep mud in spring and fall, and cars slowly maneuvering their way through the rock obstacle-course. Two days ago kids were celebrating their new road by running sprint races barefoot, whooping with joy. And as of yesterday a teacher’s daughter is in the hospital after being hit by a car on a road where before everyone was going 10 miles per hour and now they’re pushing 60 or 70. We hear for the first time a vroom sound outside our gate and every time we glance at each other with foreboding that soon there’s going to be a screech, crash, and squish. People aren’t sitting on their stoops anymore.

With two weeks left before the reopening of classes, the school building is once again filled with teachers and workers scurrying around making everything ready. It used to be that I was the only one in the building teaching my clubs Mon-Fri, but now the hallways are filled with the bickering voices of Turkmen adults grumbling to be at work. It’s a nice familiar sound. The final stages of the first floor renovation are on hold as there is no cement in Baharly (troubles between the governor and the cement factory, apparently). When I asked for an estimate of when cement would again be available, I was told “five days, ten days, may be two months.” Translation = no one knows. So it looks like we’re going to be doing the work while school is in session, which will be fun for everyone involved, if everyone considers a massive inconvenience and logistical nightmare fun.

Even without a new floor, the school is being daily transformed. All images of the past President, Turkmenbashy (people are actually beginning to open up and call him a “dictator,” it’s heartening), are being replaced by images of the new President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow (we affectionately call him “Burdy”) and Ashgabat scenery. Considering the number of images of the old President around the building (a mural, a statue, more than a dozen posters, plus 4-10 photos in each classroom), this is a very large task. In addition, by decree, all images of the Ruhnama, the former President’s literary masterpiece (there’s a two-story statue of the book in the city that spins and people dance around it during national holidays), is also being replaced by pictures of Ashgabat architecture. Last week someone took a sledgehammer to our golden statue of Turkmenbashy in the front hallway (there’s a poster of the new guy now in its place) and there is a picture of the independence monument where there used to be a poster describing the former President’s ancestry and current family tree. Folks wondered how long the new President, the former President’s dentist (and the former Minister of Health, let’s not forget), would allow images of his predecessor to hang like deities from every flat surface in the country. Apparently he lived with it for the admirable period of two years and now they’re all coming down. We’re in a new regime, a new era. So far it seems to be a whole lot better than the old one: more internet cafes, less road blocks, a more open economy, less visible KGB surveillance, etc. I’m a fan.

On the home front, a carpet is under construction in our kitchen. Considering that the loom (pieces of lead pipe, brick, and paper mache resting on the floor) stretches from one side of the room to another with about two feet of walking room around the stove, the kitchen is now effectively the carpet room. Our cozy living space with sofas, a TV, a stereo, two sewing machines, and lots of pillows is now filled with stretched wool/cotton blend string. We’ve moved our eating either outside or into the other house (where my host father used to cloister himself sitting alone in his underwear watching Russian reality TV). It’s cool to see the carpet daily develop, the huge chaos of bagged colored yarn slowing being brought into a harmonious order, but it will be nice to have our kitchen/living room back too. Even with six women working eight-hours a day, it should take three months to finish and then it will sell for several thousand dollars to a market middle-man.

With all the changes around me, I am inspired to reflect on how much I’ve changed since entering this country 10 months ago. The conclusion? Professionally, I am a good teacher. I entertain and enlighten my students as much as they will accept (I’m not a god) from Monday – Friday and in the afternoons I either teach adult classes or go to my Turkmen counterpart’s house and do the best-friend thing: complain about boys/men and how much our lives suck. She usually wins. Personally, I feel a rod of steel in my spine that wasn’t there 10 months ago, a strength that I went into the Peace Corps to find (or prove I had all along, a trick of semantics), and my salary is nearly gone from overly-partying on the weekends. I don’t know if this evens out as being more or less mature, but I like to think that I’m learning how to grow up and have fun, rather than the alternative interpretation which is that I’m becoming an incorrigible adventure-seeker. May be it’s a bit of both.

Prepare Thyself

October is approaching quickly (well, quick enough) and profiles of the incoming group of new Turkmenistan volunteers are trickling in as we stalk them on Facebook, Yahoo friend groups, and MySpace. So as a message to them (and to any perspective Peace Corps volunteers to Central Asia), I want to paint a picture of what you’re in for:

First, prepare to go insane. And not just the eccentric uber-liberal, tree-hugging crazy that people expect from Peace Corps volunteers, I mean truly gaga insane. Like the girl in Bolivia who stabbed a cow with a butter knife after it ate her last pair of underwear (the cow liked the taste of washing soap, apparently). And how when I walk through a herd of sheep every day to go to school I imagine that I’m going to me medically separated for injury-by-ramming. Those sheep may look docile and sluggish sitting there all huddled in the shade, but I know that behind those black eyes lurks a devious intelligence that’s just waiting for me to let my guard down. But I’m onto their game: I won’t let any demon wool-walker get me.

Second, prepare to go ugly. Worldwide, the pattern for Peace Corps volunteers is for men to lose weight (think Holocaust-victim thin, poor fellas) and women to gain (like filling up a water balloon). I’m not going to describe what my feet look like right now. When I asked the Peace Corps doctor if I should be concerned with the discolorization and the morphed shape, she said I shouldn’t be concerned, it’s just the logical conclusion to walking around for ten months over dust and grime in sandals that tend to rub huge calluses in strange places. She assured me that ballerinas’ feet look much worse. I refrained from reminding her that ballerinas wear shoes to hide their feet while we PCV display our deformities to the world like a strange badge of martyred honor. And, of course, we have a wardrobe of approximately four (five if you’re lucky) outfits, so even if a shirt starts out cute, it loses its effect through repetition (and cursory washing) pretty quickly.

Thirdly, prepare to obsess. This may seem like part of the “go insane” prediction, but it is significant enough that it deserves its own category. Like the Victorian matron who sits in a darkened room cooking up new hypochondriac diseases for herself, PCV stew at site thinking over and over again about whatever pop culture has appeared in our lives recently. A TV show or movie that in the US might be “good” or even “really good,” is here the pinnacle of cultural achievement worthy of deep analysis, speculation, and life-changing decisions. Consider how in a recent email to my parents I spent a good page and a half comparing the relative merits of BBC Doctor Who vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the former has better guest stars, but the latter has a better all-around ensemble cast and more emotionally-provocative mythic parallels). See?

Fourthly, prepare to be given responsibility beyond what you feel capable of. This is a mixed blessing and is perhaps the reason why many of us join the Peace Corps to begin with. As 20-somethings coming straight out of liberal arts college with no skills except how to sound good on paper and subsist on Instant Mac-and-Cheese, our first jobs consist usually of grinding 9-5s where the most significant thing we achieve is getting the fax machine to work. But here you’re “the American,” the magical alien come from space with nifty toys and obscure skills (wow, how fast you type! But you can’t tailor a dress?), and they trust you to be the boss, not the intern. The first floor renovation is coming along (we have the money, as soon as the principal comes back from vacation we can buy the cement and start construction, then there’s just the paperwork) and the next project is all lined up: fixing/installing a new heater for the school. Installing and maintaining furnaces are services the local school system is usually expected to provide for schools (along with water, which we also don’t have at the moment), but it’s a bit like being on the organ donor list – there’s always someone else who the system decides is more “deserving” of the money that year. Our school is the newest in Baharly, but was built during a period of national turmoil in the mid 1990s and so is also the most shoddy. So although we need the most repairs, we’re the last on the list for funds and support because we’re still technically “new.” Nowhere but in the Peace Corps would they trust a book-worm academic anthropology/history major to over-see the assembly and funding of major construction projects. I’m learning fast.

Lastly, prepare to realize you had an adventure about a week after it happened. When answering questions from non-PCV Americans I realize that I live a rather bizarre life. There’s a new baby camel living in the neighbor’s yard, there are two dogs and three frogs that stare at me unblinkingly while I bathe over my bucket, I have a student who is an international chess contestant, cars drive over roads while they’re in the process of being paved (I was inches from getting hit by a steam-roller while in a taxi earlier today), and chickens poop on my window sill every morning. And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head and doesn’t include all the Turkmen human cultural eccentricities, of which there are hundreds. But it’s just life now and most of my anecdotal “adventures” were, at the time, just another problem to solve with as little fuss as possible. It means that any individual day just feels like another day and only when thinking about it later (or when I talk about it and someone makes a face) do I realize that, wow, I’m living in a really strange world and am having the time of my life.

Because that’s what it all comes down to: you think constantly about how you’re going insane, turning ugly, obsessing to a point where you feel like a stranger to yourself; you feel overwhelmed by the expectations of others and fulfilling a role you don’t feel qualified for, but ultimately the insanity is what makes it marvelous and I wouldn’t be anywhere else. :)

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.