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!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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.
“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.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Saturday, June 20, 2009
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.”
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.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
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.
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.
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