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.

This ends happily

Let me begin by telling you all the end – this story is going to have a happy ending.

Last Sunday I was unceremoniously kicked out of my host family house (where I’d lived for over a year) -- in the middle of the night in the dead of winter -- because someone in the house stole every cent I own (and some that wasn’t mine) and I told them I was required by PC law to look for a new family. I left exchanging insults and curses with my host sister and slept for a week in a friend’s back closet on a pad on the floor. Last Wednesday we found a new host family, really nice people, and I moved in. Three days later as I was leaving for the city I heard the keening of human beings in heart-breaking pain from the adjoining house and learned my host aunt (age 30 with 5 kids) had died the night before from a sudden brain aneurism and I may have to move out. I left for the city. I went to the bank to withdraw money and was told my debit card came up in the system as lost or stolen and they were required to take it and cut it up. I went to sleep over at my best friend’s new apartment and was told by her angry Russian land lady that no girls are welcome to guest on her property because all females are thieving liars. A good fit of begging meant I could still stay over for that one night, but my overnights in the city may be at an end. The next night was the farewell party for two of my very good PC friends who are COSing (“close of service”) on Tuesday before returning to America. At the party I got to baby-sit four friends who by mixing beer, vodka, and absinth intoxicated themselves past the ability to sit in a chair. Then I got to watch a guy I had a major crush on a few months ago go home with a girl he met five hours before. The next morning I found myself so low on cash I couldn’t even buy a sandwich and then, starving, I went back to Baharly.

Remember that bit where I promised a happy ending? I found out there is a secure way to send money through the embassy, so even if my debit card never works here I can still go on vacation in the future (late July I’ll be back in Maryland for two-three weeks, fair warning). My friend worked on her landlady and called me to say she’s hopeful I will be able to stay there in the future, so long as I don’t come in wearing a ski mask and a trench coat. When I returned to site I immediately received two pieces of wonderful news: 1) I don’t have to permanently move out of my new host family, 2) for the first week of wailing (Turkmen funeral traditions dictate the family must sit in a room and scream and cry 24/7 for the first week after death and be served food by neighbors) I don't have to stay there. I get to stay at my friend’s house in her closet (it is a very nice closet, very Harry Potter, and I love her happy lively family who like me and know me). And everyone involved was wonderfully mature and chill with everything. My friend, Altyn, is happy to have me around, her children are ecstatic. From a miserable weekend of financial worries, sad good-byes, irrational rejections, and wretched parties, coming home to happiness and friends felt like, well, coming home.

In other news, it’s Christmas. Happy holidays, everyone. There is no Christmas here, by the way. I had to go to work and no one knew why I kept looking at the calendar date and making a silly face. The large decorated evergreen trees you see everywhere around Ashgabat and Baharly and the illustrations of Santa Claus, stockings, ornaments, reindeer, gift-wrapped presents, and shiny streamers are all in honor of New Year’s. They even sing “Jingle Bells.” In English! They’ve never heard of Christmas, they just stole the decorations and paraphernalia the same as we stole it originally from the pagan Winter Solstice festivities. When they dub over American Christmas movies, (“Home Alone” is probably the most popular American movie in the world after “Titanic,” but they refer to it as the “Kevin!” movie), they substitute “New Year’s” for “Christmas” whenever it is mentioned. It’s therefore really frustrating to try and explain to them that New Year’s is a relatively minor holiday in the states with few real traditions: getting really drunk and making promises you don’t intend to keep is pretty much it. For Turkmen, on the other hand, New Year’s is a huge deal, worthy of bankrupting yourself to buy enough food to feed the hundreds of people who will come from all corners of the town to eat food at as many houses as they can visit. It’s like Halloween, Chinese New Year's, Marti Gras, and Christmas all rolled into one. Good times.

Happy holidays everyone and a very happy New Year’s. Consider this my gift to everyone – a big box of schadenfreude wrapped in old horoscopes wishing us all nothing but the best.