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.