Hey, so I have no internet for the most part up here and I really want to know how everyone is doing. I haven't talked to a lot of you for months! Please write me a letter and let me know what's going on in your corner of the world. I promise to write you in return.
XXOO Shan
Here's the addy:
Turkmenistan
Dashoguz Weleyat
Merkezi Pochta
Abonent #9 (Korpus Mira) Shannon Orley
Dashoguz Shaheri 746300
TURKMENISTAN
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, April 14, 2008
In the event of a care package...
Not to be presumptuous, but if you felt incredibly compelled to send me a package, here are some things that would make me smile a lot...
Good flavors of tea
The powder packets from macaroni and cheese (don't need the noodles)
Dice
Blank DVDs
DVD movies/ TV series on DVD
Box Cake mix
Chocolate Chips (only from October thru March, otherwise it will melt)
Magazines
Beef Jerky
Mr. Sketch Markers
Crayons/ Colored Pencils
Lined Notebook paper
Construction paper
Stickers
Hair eleastics and clips
Baby Wipes (looove these!)
Blue BIC Pens
Gum & Chapstick
AAA Batteies
Mixed music CDs
PICTURES AND LETTERS OF AND FROM YOU!!!
Love you all! Thank you so much for all of the wonderful care packages I have already gotten. I am totally blessed with the greatest friends and family!!
Good flavors of tea
The powder packets from macaroni and cheese (don't need the noodles)
Dice
Blank DVDs
DVD movies/ TV series on DVD
Box Cake mix
Chocolate Chips (only from October thru March, otherwise it will melt)
Magazines
Beef Jerky
Mr. Sketch Markers
Crayons/ Colored Pencils
Lined Notebook paper
Construction paper
Stickers
Hair eleastics and clips
Baby Wipes (looove these!)
Blue BIC Pens
Gum & Chapstick
AAA Batteies
Mixed music CDs
PICTURES AND LETTERS OF AND FROM YOU!!!
Love you all! Thank you so much for all of the wonderful care packages I have already gotten. I am totally blessed with the greatest friends and family!!
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The Week of the Keek
So this school teaching thing is finally starting to come together. I actually taught health twice this week again. It was great. I did my love lesson, and I did my dental lesson. The kids seemed to dig it, there was just one slight problem: the keek.
I was teaching a class of first graders about love. We were in the middle of talking about who we loved and each of the kids was telling me one thing or person that they loved while I handed out paper for them to make valentines with. Here’s how it went: (except in Turkmen, not English)
Me: (while holding a big stack of drawing paper) Oh, that’s great, you love your cow, and how about you? Who do you love? Your car? That’s nice, I love my car too, are you going to make a valentine for it?
Them: I love flowers, I love my mom, I love Britney Spears, I love bananas, I lo… KEEK!
Me: Keek?! What’s a keek?
Them: (pointing frantically behind me, in an upward direction) KEEK, KEEK! That’s a KEEEEEEK!
Me: (looking behind me and seeing a little brown bird that was flying around the classroom trying to get out) Oh, you mean a bird. That’s not scary. Stop yelling.
Them: That is NOT a bird, it’s a keek!
Me: (looking closer and realizing it’s a BAT, not a bird) (in English now) Oh my god oh my god oh my god, IT’S A BAT!!! AAAAaaaaahhhh!
I spent the next ten minutes hiding under my pile of papers, crouched in a corner screaming while another teacher tried to chase the vampire, er, I mean bat, out of the classroom with a broom. I’d never seen a bat before in real life, and I was convinced I was going to get rabies just by being in the same room as him. Every time he tried to escape the broom and dove closer to me, I let out an especially high pitched wail. I was terrified. An excellent role model…
The bat was finally.. um, dealt with… (you don’t want details, trust me) and I tried to continue our lesson, but it wasn’t going to happen. Every few minutes, one of the kids would point behind me and scream KEEK!! really loud, and I would look appropriately petrified as they all dissolved into giggles at my cowardice. Shut up, it wasn’t funny… I really was in fear for my life!
Our family finally got the cell phone on Tuesday. That was a happy happy day. You can all call me on it now (if you feel like trying to call Turkmenistan). I would love to hear from you! I will give the number for it to my (American) parents, so if you want to try getting ahold of me via phone, feel free to hit them up for my contact information.
The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. Bagila got a cell phone too, so we can call each other now (yay!) and Bagila wants me to make some posters for our clinic’s hallway about anemia. I’m just excited to be doing stuff. I also met with the other health volunteers again, and the four of us are going to do a health day camp in Gahmya’s village later this month.
There was a big bayram this week (do you remember what bayram means?). It was called Ayal Bayram. Ayal is the word for woman, so it was kind of like a day to celebrate femininity. It was similar to our Mother’s Day, but instead of just celebrating mothers, we celebrated EVERY woman in Turkmenistan. Quite the event. It’s customary to buy little gifts and give them to the important women in your life, a way to let them know you think they’re special. I bought all of the nurses at my clinic, as well as Bagila flowers, and I bought fabric for new dresses for Rayhan and Shukerjan. They all liked their gifts, and I was just stoked for a chance to shop in the bazaar. I love the bazaar… all the cool stuff, all the haggling, all the people, all the colors… ahhhh. Anyways, I’m digressing.
To celebrate the bayram (since it was totally a day off from work), I was sitting at home reading a book, when Akmet (host dad) came in and told me there was someone at the door for me. I was a little confused at the expression on his face, because normally he would tell me exactly who was at the door, and to be honest, I couldn’t really think of a time anyone had come to the door specifically for me. I jumped up to solve the mystery of the door and to my surprise got to it only to not recognize the man standing there at all. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties, and he was holding a bouquet of roses (real ones!) for me. After a rapid exchange in Turkmen between him and my host family members, he wished me a happy woman holiday, handed me the flowers, and left. I absolutely confused. Flowers are expensive in Turkmenistan and I had no idea why this absolute stranger would have stopped by to give them to me specifically. After talking to my host family, they told me he had driven a taxi for me once, thought I was really friendly, and had remembered where I live, so he brought me holiday flowers. Hmm. I think I was flattered… I think. Meanwhile my family told me to be less chatty in taxis in the future. Oops.
I was teaching a class of first graders about love. We were in the middle of talking about who we loved and each of the kids was telling me one thing or person that they loved while I handed out paper for them to make valentines with. Here’s how it went: (except in Turkmen, not English)
Me: (while holding a big stack of drawing paper) Oh, that’s great, you love your cow, and how about you? Who do you love? Your car? That’s nice, I love my car too, are you going to make a valentine for it?
Them: I love flowers, I love my mom, I love Britney Spears, I love bananas, I lo… KEEK!
Me: Keek?! What’s a keek?
Them: (pointing frantically behind me, in an upward direction) KEEK, KEEK! That’s a KEEEEEEK!
Me: (looking behind me and seeing a little brown bird that was flying around the classroom trying to get out) Oh, you mean a bird. That’s not scary. Stop yelling.
Them: That is NOT a bird, it’s a keek!
Me: (looking closer and realizing it’s a BAT, not a bird) (in English now) Oh my god oh my god oh my god, IT’S A BAT!!! AAAAaaaaahhhh!
I spent the next ten minutes hiding under my pile of papers, crouched in a corner screaming while another teacher tried to chase the vampire, er, I mean bat, out of the classroom with a broom. I’d never seen a bat before in real life, and I was convinced I was going to get rabies just by being in the same room as him. Every time he tried to escape the broom and dove closer to me, I let out an especially high pitched wail. I was terrified. An excellent role model…
The bat was finally.. um, dealt with… (you don’t want details, trust me) and I tried to continue our lesson, but it wasn’t going to happen. Every few minutes, one of the kids would point behind me and scream KEEK!! really loud, and I would look appropriately petrified as they all dissolved into giggles at my cowardice. Shut up, it wasn’t funny… I really was in fear for my life!
Our family finally got the cell phone on Tuesday. That was a happy happy day. You can all call me on it now (if you feel like trying to call Turkmenistan). I would love to hear from you! I will give the number for it to my (American) parents, so if you want to try getting ahold of me via phone, feel free to hit them up for my contact information.
The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. Bagila got a cell phone too, so we can call each other now (yay!) and Bagila wants me to make some posters for our clinic’s hallway about anemia. I’m just excited to be doing stuff. I also met with the other health volunteers again, and the four of us are going to do a health day camp in Gahmya’s village later this month.
There was a big bayram this week (do you remember what bayram means?). It was called Ayal Bayram. Ayal is the word for woman, so it was kind of like a day to celebrate femininity. It was similar to our Mother’s Day, but instead of just celebrating mothers, we celebrated EVERY woman in Turkmenistan. Quite the event. It’s customary to buy little gifts and give them to the important women in your life, a way to let them know you think they’re special. I bought all of the nurses at my clinic, as well as Bagila flowers, and I bought fabric for new dresses for Rayhan and Shukerjan. They all liked their gifts, and I was just stoked for a chance to shop in the bazaar. I love the bazaar… all the cool stuff, all the haggling, all the people, all the colors… ahhhh. Anyways, I’m digressing.
To celebrate the bayram (since it was totally a day off from work), I was sitting at home reading a book, when Akmet (host dad) came in and told me there was someone at the door for me. I was a little confused at the expression on his face, because normally he would tell me exactly who was at the door, and to be honest, I couldn’t really think of a time anyone had come to the door specifically for me. I jumped up to solve the mystery of the door and to my surprise got to it only to not recognize the man standing there at all. He was an older man, maybe in his late fifties, and he was holding a bouquet of roses (real ones!) for me. After a rapid exchange in Turkmen between him and my host family members, he wished me a happy woman holiday, handed me the flowers, and left. I absolutely confused. Flowers are expensive in Turkmenistan and I had no idea why this absolute stranger would have stopped by to give them to me specifically. After talking to my host family, they told me he had driven a taxi for me once, thought I was really friendly, and had remembered where I live, so he brought me holiday flowers. Hmm. I think I was flattered… I think. Meanwhile my family told me to be less chatty in taxis in the future. Oops.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
The Week of Arts and Crafts
Monday dawned with a fair amount of promise, I finally got a second chance to prove myself as a health teacher in the school. I had thought that after my less than stellar performance with the teeth lesson, they would never let me come back, but there I was standing in front of a group of third graders. I decided that in light of the recent Valentines holiday, I would teach them a lesson about love. It went really well, we talked about how love was just as important as all of the other basic needs (food, water, etc.), then we talked about who we loved and who loved us. After that we made (slightly tardy) valentines for those we loved and I taught them the Barney song (I love you, you love me, blah blah blah). It was a good day in the classroom. I repeated the lesson on Tuesday (two teachings in one week, crazy, huh?) and it met with equal levels of success. A few of the kids (and by a few, I mean more than half), made their valentines for ME. I was quite touched, and put all of their pretty pictures up on my office door at the clinic. It added some needed color to the hallway, and I get warm fuzzies every time I look at it. Awww…
I spent another day this week redoing all of the filing labels in Shukerjan and Bagila’s office. They have this set of shelves with a little cubby for each year that their patients were born in. They stick all of their patients’ records in the little cubbies, and that’s the extent of their filing system. The year labels on the cubbies were horribly faded, and getting more difficult to read by the day, so I decided to rectify the situation. It took forever, but when I was done, it looked great. There’s something deeply satisfying about rows and rows of matching year labels, all in the same handwriting and color. The fact that I considered that a “fun” work project doesn’t make me anal retentive, does it?
Besides the door decorating, and shelf relabeling, I managed to find even more arts and crafts projects to participate in this week. There’s an old examination table in my office that is covered in this gnarly-looking faux leather (do they call that pleather, or is that just the stuff stripper outfits are made out of…?) that had been ripped up and taped back down in several spots. I decided to make it into a coffee table since I do a lot more tea drinking in my office than examining, and that was simply no way for a coffee table to look. I bought a few yards of vinyl from the bazaar and spent Friday ripping my exam table apart, and reupholstering it with the vinyl. Not to toot my own horn, but I must say that it looked rather exquisite when I was finished with it. I immediately celebrated my success with tea and cookies (on my new table!). Way to go me.
On the home front, the fun was non-stop this week. It was Rayhan’s (my gelineje) 24th birthday and we had a big birthday party at our house for her with 50 of our closest friends and family. It started at 4:30 with tea, cookies, apples, and chorek (bread). It officially ended at 12:30 (am!) when all of us took one last celebratory vodka shot and said goodnight. In the between time, we went through dozens of bottles of vodka, cognac, and wine, multiple roosters, about 20 pounds of palaw (fried rice), and more pots of tea than I was capable of counting. I could barely find my way to my bedroom (which was only two doors down the hall from the festivities) due to the way the room insisted on spinning, but I had a really good time. These people really know how to celebrate a birthday party.
Bagila came back from her tuberculosis training on Saturday, I was so happy to see her. She told me that we’re really going to start working on projects now that she’s done with all of her comings and goings. I’m looking forward to it.
I went to the city on the 29th (by the way, happy leap year guys!) to get my salary for March. After the snowstorming of last week, I was looking to my trip with a great deal of apprehension, but it turns out it was for naught. The weather was a-ma-zing! I don’t know how it happened, but in the course of one week Turkmenistan went from winter to spring. There was bright warm sunshine, all of the snow had melted, and I was walking around without a jacket or sweater on. Trust me, this is a significant development. Yay for spring! Now the bummer is that I hear this weather is only supposed to get significantly warmer for the next six months. Boo. If I think the weather is perfect right now, I can imagine I may be slightly less enthusiastic about it by June. Maybe I shouldn’t have complained about the cold so much, at least I know how to deal with that…
The other big drama around here is in the form of cell phone service. Our village’s district just got cell phone service last week, its like a fever has swept the village ever since. EVERYONE has been buying a cell phone! The phones here aren’t cheap, the least expensive phone is $60, but they get up to $300. For people who are making somewhere around $100 in an entire month (frequently less), that is crazy expensive. These people can barely afford to eat like they should for the month and somehow they have managed to scrounge funds together to buy a cell phone with a camera and mp3 player. Its very confusing to me.
Confusion or not, I was still very excited to find out that my family would be getting a phone. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite) Keep in mind that I have been existing for the past two and a half months with no phone at all. The idea that we’ll now have a cell phone in our house is completely mind blowing. We’re supposed to buy it at the beginning of next week, so I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Cross your fingers for me!
I spent another day this week redoing all of the filing labels in Shukerjan and Bagila’s office. They have this set of shelves with a little cubby for each year that their patients were born in. They stick all of their patients’ records in the little cubbies, and that’s the extent of their filing system. The year labels on the cubbies were horribly faded, and getting more difficult to read by the day, so I decided to rectify the situation. It took forever, but when I was done, it looked great. There’s something deeply satisfying about rows and rows of matching year labels, all in the same handwriting and color. The fact that I considered that a “fun” work project doesn’t make me anal retentive, does it?
Besides the door decorating, and shelf relabeling, I managed to find even more arts and crafts projects to participate in this week. There’s an old examination table in my office that is covered in this gnarly-looking faux leather (do they call that pleather, or is that just the stuff stripper outfits are made out of…?) that had been ripped up and taped back down in several spots. I decided to make it into a coffee table since I do a lot more tea drinking in my office than examining, and that was simply no way for a coffee table to look. I bought a few yards of vinyl from the bazaar and spent Friday ripping my exam table apart, and reupholstering it with the vinyl. Not to toot my own horn, but I must say that it looked rather exquisite when I was finished with it. I immediately celebrated my success with tea and cookies (on my new table!). Way to go me.
On the home front, the fun was non-stop this week. It was Rayhan’s (my gelineje) 24th birthday and we had a big birthday party at our house for her with 50 of our closest friends and family. It started at 4:30 with tea, cookies, apples, and chorek (bread). It officially ended at 12:30 (am!) when all of us took one last celebratory vodka shot and said goodnight. In the between time, we went through dozens of bottles of vodka, cognac, and wine, multiple roosters, about 20 pounds of palaw (fried rice), and more pots of tea than I was capable of counting. I could barely find my way to my bedroom (which was only two doors down the hall from the festivities) due to the way the room insisted on spinning, but I had a really good time. These people really know how to celebrate a birthday party.
Bagila came back from her tuberculosis training on Saturday, I was so happy to see her. She told me that we’re really going to start working on projects now that she’s done with all of her comings and goings. I’m looking forward to it.
I went to the city on the 29th (by the way, happy leap year guys!) to get my salary for March. After the snowstorming of last week, I was looking to my trip with a great deal of apprehension, but it turns out it was for naught. The weather was a-ma-zing! I don’t know how it happened, but in the course of one week Turkmenistan went from winter to spring. There was bright warm sunshine, all of the snow had melted, and I was walking around without a jacket or sweater on. Trust me, this is a significant development. Yay for spring! Now the bummer is that I hear this weather is only supposed to get significantly warmer for the next six months. Boo. If I think the weather is perfect right now, I can imagine I may be slightly less enthusiastic about it by June. Maybe I shouldn’t have complained about the cold so much, at least I know how to deal with that…
The other big drama around here is in the form of cell phone service. Our village’s district just got cell phone service last week, its like a fever has swept the village ever since. EVERYONE has been buying a cell phone! The phones here aren’t cheap, the least expensive phone is $60, but they get up to $300. For people who are making somewhere around $100 in an entire month (frequently less), that is crazy expensive. These people can barely afford to eat like they should for the month and somehow they have managed to scrounge funds together to buy a cell phone with a camera and mp3 player. Its very confusing to me.
Confusion or not, I was still very excited to find out that my family would be getting a phone. (Yeah, yeah, I’m a hypocrite) Keep in mind that I have been existing for the past two and a half months with no phone at all. The idea that we’ll now have a cell phone in our house is completely mind blowing. We’re supposed to buy it at the beginning of next week, so I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes. Cross your fingers for me!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The Week of Bayram and Blizzard
A quick Turkmen vocabulary lesson for you: Baydak (Buy-dock) means flag and Bayram (Buy-rom) means holiday. Using your new vocabulary, you now know that the Baydak Bayram on February 19th was… that’s right! The Flag Holiday! Good job, way to know Turkmen.
Basically it was an event very similar to how most Americans celebrate Memorial and Labor Day. Just a good reason to get off of work, and laze around with friends and family. I was planning on putting some heavy effort into the “lazing” but it seemed that Shukerjan had other plans for me. She came rolling into my bedroom (while I was in the middle of watching the quality cinematic production of “Dunston Checks In” on my computer) and asked me how much dirty laundry I had. I briefly considered lying, since I was pretty sure she intended for me to wash some of it if I admitted to having any, but in the end told her that I had “a little”.
In truth, “a little” was actually more like the Mount Everest of dirty clothes, all piled up on my wardrobe’s floor. I hate washing laundry by hand, like really really HATE it. I’m not good at it, it takes me forever, my clothes never seem like they get clean anyways, and my legs always hurt from squatting in front of the laundry washtub for three hours. My level of dislike for the activity had led me to avoidance of it for more than two months, and the only clothing I had washed since coming to Dashoguz was the absolute necessary quantity of socks and underwear. Even this was a task I was only willing to participate in once my last clean pair of underwear was actually on my body. Don’t judge me, you haven’t had to wash laundry without a machine. You’d be surprised at how “clean” something can seem when you’ve only worn it three times and you want nothing to do with hand-washing it. The worst is washing jeans. They soak up so much water, and they are soooo heavy when you’re trying to wring them out. I actually have fantasies involving a washing machine with a spin cycle while I am washing my jeans… Aaah, if only.
Back to the current issue: Shukerjan’s assessment of my dirty laundry collection. Upon my admission of a small amount of grimy garments, she immediately detected my lie, and simply opened my closet doors to see for herself. After briefly glancing at my heap, she told me we were going to wash my clothes. All of them. Right now. Oh brother.
Many many hours later (since one simply does not argue with Shukerjan), I was the proud owner of one water-wrinkled and sore pair of hands, and a huge clothesline filled with my dripping (but clean) clothing. I thought I was going to faint from exhaustion. I never realized how good I had it with my Maytag in the states. Easily the most difficult part of laundry doing with Shukerjan (besides the fact that she insists that I actually do it), was the differing view of where clean underwear should be left to dry. I was of the opinion that it would be perfectly fine to dry in my bedroom, draped over the heater, behind closed doors and away from prying eyes. Shukerjan was appalled and insisted that it would never get dry if I kept it in the house, that it simply had to be put outdoors to dry effectively. This would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that our clothesline is in the front of our house, which happens to face the biggest road in our village. Shukerjan won, and all twenty-some-odd pairs of my unattractive granny panty-style underwear were thrown up on the line, in full view of the neighbors, anyone who happened to be driving by, and of course the teenage boys who were playing in the field across the street. It was like a line of hideous flags bowing in the breeze; a salute to the corpulent posterior of the American living within. I stayed in hiding for the remainder of the day, unable to face the neighborhood now that they know what I am wearing under my koynek.
Even though the weather almost seemed to resemble spring on the flag holiday (warm wind, melting snow), Mother Nature was apparently not in the mood to grant Dashoguz a winter weather reprieve just yet. Thursday morning dawned in a shroud of snow, wind, and general blizzardiness. This was incredibly unpleasant, especially considering that our car chose that particular morning to cease functioning, meaning Shukerjan and I had to walk the forty-five minutes to the clinic. I thought my feet were going to fall off.
Friday morning dawned in a similar state, if possible, I think it was even more nasty than Thursday. My little village was in the full throes of a blizzard. Lame. I could only hope that Saturday morning would be better since I was planning to travel into the city (via taxi, gulp!) to meet with the other health volunteers Saturday. With the taxis’ track records of winter driving, I could think of nothing less pleasant than being a passenger while sideways snow obscured the driver’s vision of the road. The good news is that I got my wish. The blizzard came to an abrupt halt around midnight Friday night, leaving in its wake approximately a foot of snow to show for its efforts. No wind, no snow, just peace and quiet, surrounded by a gorgeously whitened landscape. It seemed that my taxi trip may turn out to be pleasant after all. Or maybe not.
I crawled out of bed Saturday morning with a great deal of excitement for my upcoming meeting, as well as an extremely full bladder. I rushed out the backdoor, intent on getting to our outhouse as quickly as possible to rectify the situation. Upon bursting forth into the great outdoors, I found myself in a state of shock as I was immediately surrounded by white. Everywhere. White white white, no sign of the outhouse, no sign of the door I had just stepped from, not even a sign of the hand that I knew I was holding in front of my face. It was the thickest fog I had ever seen in my life, and it was everywhere. I had to shuffle along like a little old lady, cautiously placing one foot in front of the other just to get to the bathroom. If there hadn’t been a brick path for me to follow, I could very well have ended up peeing in the cows’ water trough. It was that difficult to see.
It was going to be a terrifying taxi ride into the city.
Needless to say, I made it to Dashoguz city with my life, but it was only by the grace of God. People are insane drivers in this country. Insane. Why would you try to pass a line of five cars, when you can’t even see if there is any traffic in the oncoming lane. Seriously? There is nothing worth that kind of hurry (with the exception of life, death, and half-off sales at Nordstroms).
It turned out that my scary drive was well worth it. I had the most amazing day with the other volunteers. It was Jon’s birthday, so we all had a celebratory breakfast together at Alice’s house, which included home made doughnuts with chocolate frosting and sprinkles on them. It was heaven in edible form. It was nice to see some of the volunteers that I hadn’t run into since we had parted at Christmas time, and it made me realize again how great the people in Dashoguz are. I really like the volunteers in my weleyat. They pretty much rock.
After breakfast, Alice, Gahmya, Noah, and myself proceeded to have our first official Dashoguz health volunteer meeting. It was so amazing. I hadn’t really talked to Gahmya before Saturday, and didn’t know what to expect from her. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that she turned out to be an amazing resource. She told us about all of the projects she had been working on over the past year in her village, as well as some of the projects she had coming up. It was so inspiring to talk to someone who clearly loved the work she was doing as a health volunteer. I could hardly take notes fast enough to keep up with all of the great advice she was giving us.
I left the city that day as a happy human being. My tummy was full of doughnuts, and my mind had had just gotten the jumpstart it had needed to look at my work in Gok Chage with the right perspective. After talking with Gahmya, I was determined to be an amazing volunteer. No more sitting around, waiting for projects to fall into my lap, bemoaning the cold and homesickness I was experiencing. It was time to get to work… Now I just had to figure out what work I was going to get to.
Basically it was an event very similar to how most Americans celebrate Memorial and Labor Day. Just a good reason to get off of work, and laze around with friends and family. I was planning on putting some heavy effort into the “lazing” but it seemed that Shukerjan had other plans for me. She came rolling into my bedroom (while I was in the middle of watching the quality cinematic production of “Dunston Checks In” on my computer) and asked me how much dirty laundry I had. I briefly considered lying, since I was pretty sure she intended for me to wash some of it if I admitted to having any, but in the end told her that I had “a little”.
In truth, “a little” was actually more like the Mount Everest of dirty clothes, all piled up on my wardrobe’s floor. I hate washing laundry by hand, like really really HATE it. I’m not good at it, it takes me forever, my clothes never seem like they get clean anyways, and my legs always hurt from squatting in front of the laundry washtub for three hours. My level of dislike for the activity had led me to avoidance of it for more than two months, and the only clothing I had washed since coming to Dashoguz was the absolute necessary quantity of socks and underwear. Even this was a task I was only willing to participate in once my last clean pair of underwear was actually on my body. Don’t judge me, you haven’t had to wash laundry without a machine. You’d be surprised at how “clean” something can seem when you’ve only worn it three times and you want nothing to do with hand-washing it. The worst is washing jeans. They soak up so much water, and they are soooo heavy when you’re trying to wring them out. I actually have fantasies involving a washing machine with a spin cycle while I am washing my jeans… Aaah, if only.
Back to the current issue: Shukerjan’s assessment of my dirty laundry collection. Upon my admission of a small amount of grimy garments, she immediately detected my lie, and simply opened my closet doors to see for herself. After briefly glancing at my heap, she told me we were going to wash my clothes. All of them. Right now. Oh brother.
Many many hours later (since one simply does not argue with Shukerjan), I was the proud owner of one water-wrinkled and sore pair of hands, and a huge clothesline filled with my dripping (but clean) clothing. I thought I was going to faint from exhaustion. I never realized how good I had it with my Maytag in the states. Easily the most difficult part of laundry doing with Shukerjan (besides the fact that she insists that I actually do it), was the differing view of where clean underwear should be left to dry. I was of the opinion that it would be perfectly fine to dry in my bedroom, draped over the heater, behind closed doors and away from prying eyes. Shukerjan was appalled and insisted that it would never get dry if I kept it in the house, that it simply had to be put outdoors to dry effectively. This would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact that our clothesline is in the front of our house, which happens to face the biggest road in our village. Shukerjan won, and all twenty-some-odd pairs of my unattractive granny panty-style underwear were thrown up on the line, in full view of the neighbors, anyone who happened to be driving by, and of course the teenage boys who were playing in the field across the street. It was like a line of hideous flags bowing in the breeze; a salute to the corpulent posterior of the American living within. I stayed in hiding for the remainder of the day, unable to face the neighborhood now that they know what I am wearing under my koynek.
Even though the weather almost seemed to resemble spring on the flag holiday (warm wind, melting snow), Mother Nature was apparently not in the mood to grant Dashoguz a winter weather reprieve just yet. Thursday morning dawned in a shroud of snow, wind, and general blizzardiness. This was incredibly unpleasant, especially considering that our car chose that particular morning to cease functioning, meaning Shukerjan and I had to walk the forty-five minutes to the clinic. I thought my feet were going to fall off.
Friday morning dawned in a similar state, if possible, I think it was even more nasty than Thursday. My little village was in the full throes of a blizzard. Lame. I could only hope that Saturday morning would be better since I was planning to travel into the city (via taxi, gulp!) to meet with the other health volunteers Saturday. With the taxis’ track records of winter driving, I could think of nothing less pleasant than being a passenger while sideways snow obscured the driver’s vision of the road. The good news is that I got my wish. The blizzard came to an abrupt halt around midnight Friday night, leaving in its wake approximately a foot of snow to show for its efforts. No wind, no snow, just peace and quiet, surrounded by a gorgeously whitened landscape. It seemed that my taxi trip may turn out to be pleasant after all. Or maybe not.
I crawled out of bed Saturday morning with a great deal of excitement for my upcoming meeting, as well as an extremely full bladder. I rushed out the backdoor, intent on getting to our outhouse as quickly as possible to rectify the situation. Upon bursting forth into the great outdoors, I found myself in a state of shock as I was immediately surrounded by white. Everywhere. White white white, no sign of the outhouse, no sign of the door I had just stepped from, not even a sign of the hand that I knew I was holding in front of my face. It was the thickest fog I had ever seen in my life, and it was everywhere. I had to shuffle along like a little old lady, cautiously placing one foot in front of the other just to get to the bathroom. If there hadn’t been a brick path for me to follow, I could very well have ended up peeing in the cows’ water trough. It was that difficult to see.
It was going to be a terrifying taxi ride into the city.
Needless to say, I made it to Dashoguz city with my life, but it was only by the grace of God. People are insane drivers in this country. Insane. Why would you try to pass a line of five cars, when you can’t even see if there is any traffic in the oncoming lane. Seriously? There is nothing worth that kind of hurry (with the exception of life, death, and half-off sales at Nordstroms).
It turned out that my scary drive was well worth it. I had the most amazing day with the other volunteers. It was Jon’s birthday, so we all had a celebratory breakfast together at Alice’s house, which included home made doughnuts with chocolate frosting and sprinkles on them. It was heaven in edible form. It was nice to see some of the volunteers that I hadn’t run into since we had parted at Christmas time, and it made me realize again how great the people in Dashoguz are. I really like the volunteers in my weleyat. They pretty much rock.
After breakfast, Alice, Gahmya, Noah, and myself proceeded to have our first official Dashoguz health volunteer meeting. It was so amazing. I hadn’t really talked to Gahmya before Saturday, and didn’t know what to expect from her. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that she turned out to be an amazing resource. She told us about all of the projects she had been working on over the past year in her village, as well as some of the projects she had coming up. It was so inspiring to talk to someone who clearly loved the work she was doing as a health volunteer. I could hardly take notes fast enough to keep up with all of the great advice she was giving us.
I left the city that day as a happy human being. My tummy was full of doughnuts, and my mind had had just gotten the jumpstart it had needed to look at my work in Gok Chage with the right perspective. After talking with Gahmya, I was determined to be an amazing volunteer. No more sitting around, waiting for projects to fall into my lap, bemoaning the cold and homesickness I was experiencing. It was time to get to work… Now I just had to figure out what work I was going to get to.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Week of Brain Sausage
So my family let me try a tasty Turkmen delicacy this week. They take everything inside of a cow head (yeah, I really do mean everything: tongue, eyeballs, brain, cartilage… everything), chop it up into little cubes, then they put it in a big pot and boil it for a few hours. After its all soupy, they pour it into molds (usually empty soda bottles with the tops cut off), and they will let it set for a few hours while it cools. Once it has cooled off, it hardens into this gelatinous blob of chunks in a variety of brown and red shades. They take it out of its mold, and you have brain sausage. Bon apetit!
My mom raised me to “take a polite bite” of anything someone set in front of me, and I could hear her voice ringing in my ears as I looked at the quivering mass of cow setting in front of me at the table. I actually managed to eat an entire slice of it- with a straight face. That was it, I very politely told my family that once piece per day was my non-vomit-inducing limit. And in case you were wondering, it tastes a lot like really salty spam. This leads me to wonder what exactly spam is made out of…
Bagila is gone again this week. She had to go to a conference in Ashgabat about tuberculosis, and she won’t be back until the end of the month. Sad. The only plus side to her multiple periods of absentia is that they really force me to get to know everyone in my clinic instead of just relying solely on her for support. I really do miss her though.
Valentines Day passed without any fanfare. It’s a little hard to get used to the fact that Turkmen don’t celebrate the same holidays I do. I knew they wouldn’t when I came here, but its somehow slightly different when you actually look at the calendar and realize that there was a holiday the day before and you failed to even notice its passing due to the lack of celebration around you. I’m sure I’ll get used to it as time passes, it will just make me appreciate the ridiculous levels of commercialism in America that much more when I come home. And to be fair, my mom totally sent me a valentine that got here on time. Way to go Mom.
In other news, it snowed this week, twice! Six inches in total. When I came to Turkmenistan, everyone really emphasized the fact that it was a desert, and how hot it was in the summers, but no one really remembered to mention the winter qualities. To be fair, the locals are telling me that this is the most brutal winter they’ve seen since the 1960s, so I guess that makes this proliferation of snow, ice, and frost rather abnormal. Apparently I managed to bring Alaska with me, and it didn’t even take up any extra room in my suitcase.
I went into the city to visit Alice for the day on Friday (the first day it snowed this week), and quite honestly saw my life flash before my eyes on more than one occasion during my cab ride. Turkmen are frightening winter drivers. To be more specific, Turkmen are frightening drivers, period. They are big fans of passing in places where no one in their right mind would try to pass. They also like to play with their car stereos instead of looking at the road, and their favorite thing to do is try to carry on a conversation with the American in the back seat, while not looking forward to the road AT ALL. Add icy roads and whiteout snow to this and you’ve really got a recipe for success. Or an aneurism. Whichever.
The good news is that I made it into the city in one piece. I was really excited because in addition to getting a care package in the mail, and buying some tasty cookies at the bazaar, my FAMILY called me at Alice’s house! This may not sound like that big of a cause for celebration, but calling me, and actually getting hold of me in this country, from America, is quite an event. Now that I don’t have a telephone at my house, I have to rely on the charity of other volunteers who actually have phones at their homes that my family can call. I then have to cross my fingers that the phone in question will actually be working on the day I arrange for my family to call me on it, and I have to pray that none of their family members will be in the middle of using it at the established call time. On top of all of that, I have to hope the circuits aren’t too busy so that my family’s call will actually be able to get through when they place it. Now that you understand what all goes into it, you can see why I almost wet my pants when I heard the voices of my mom and dad and Hillary (Andrea had apparently left for a trip to Norway the week before).
After talking to them for more than an hour, I was on cloud nine. You’d be surprised at how much you crave hearing familiar voices. After seeing my euphoric state resulting from domestic dialogue, Alice also really wanted to hear from her family, so we asked my parents to call them and let them know Alice wanted to talk to them and was waiting by the phone. My dad was a little nervous about calling someone who didn’t really know him (especially since it was almost midnight), but Alice and I assured him that as a fellow Peace Corps Turkmenistan parent, he would be welcomed with open arms… if that were possible on the phone. Sure enough, less than twenty minutes after hanging up with my parents, the phone rang again and it was Alice’s family. I really love it when things work out.
Besides city trips and brain sausage, the week was fairly uneventful. I have to learn to be a little less independent than I was in America. It’s a difficult transition. Whenever I go anywhere or do anything in Turkmenistan, I have to tell at least three different people where and when I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and exactly when I’ll be back. Usually I need to tell them all of this information at least a week before the event actually occurs, and there is no such thing as changing my plans mid way through the event since there are no phones in my village for me to call anyone on to inform them of the altered game plan. Considering the fact that I am 24 years old, and in no way accustomed to such tight control on my comings and goings, it has been a challenge to keep my blood pressure in check on several occasions.
Most recently it was the disco. There is going to be a big 80s night (yeah, like American 80s music!) at the disco in Dashoguz City next Friday night, and I really want to go. I figured it would work out perfectly because I am already planning on being in the city Saturday morning for our big health-volunteer collaboration, so why not come in the night before, go to the disco, then just sleep over afterwards at one of the city volunteer’s houses? It made perfect sense to me. Especially because I really really wanted to go out dancing with the other volunteers at the disco.
I told Shukerjan about my plan, and she initially said it sounded fine as long as I remembered to give her contact information for how to find me in case of an emergency. A few days after she’d said yes, she reneged, and told me I wasn’t going to be able to go. Something about a policy…
This would probably be the appropriate time to fess up to the fact that Shukerjan was actually mostly in the right for putting the nix on my grand disco adventure. There is technically a Peace Corps policy that says new volunteers may not sleep “outside of their community” for their first 90 days of service. It’s meant to keep us safe since the assumption is that it will probably take us about three months to fully acclimate to our new surroundings. In my disco-crazed state, I was willing to skew the meaning of the policy far enough to consider Dashoguz city part of “my community”, but Shukerjan wasn’t buying it. She told me that I was housebound next Friday night, and that it really was for my own good. I was mainly pissed because I knew she was right, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. How dare she be a responsible host-parent? You’d think she actually cared about me, or something…
My mom raised me to “take a polite bite” of anything someone set in front of me, and I could hear her voice ringing in my ears as I looked at the quivering mass of cow setting in front of me at the table. I actually managed to eat an entire slice of it- with a straight face. That was it, I very politely told my family that once piece per day was my non-vomit-inducing limit. And in case you were wondering, it tastes a lot like really salty spam. This leads me to wonder what exactly spam is made out of…
Bagila is gone again this week. She had to go to a conference in Ashgabat about tuberculosis, and she won’t be back until the end of the month. Sad. The only plus side to her multiple periods of absentia is that they really force me to get to know everyone in my clinic instead of just relying solely on her for support. I really do miss her though.
Valentines Day passed without any fanfare. It’s a little hard to get used to the fact that Turkmen don’t celebrate the same holidays I do. I knew they wouldn’t when I came here, but its somehow slightly different when you actually look at the calendar and realize that there was a holiday the day before and you failed to even notice its passing due to the lack of celebration around you. I’m sure I’ll get used to it as time passes, it will just make me appreciate the ridiculous levels of commercialism in America that much more when I come home. And to be fair, my mom totally sent me a valentine that got here on time. Way to go Mom.
In other news, it snowed this week, twice! Six inches in total. When I came to Turkmenistan, everyone really emphasized the fact that it was a desert, and how hot it was in the summers, but no one really remembered to mention the winter qualities. To be fair, the locals are telling me that this is the most brutal winter they’ve seen since the 1960s, so I guess that makes this proliferation of snow, ice, and frost rather abnormal. Apparently I managed to bring Alaska with me, and it didn’t even take up any extra room in my suitcase.
I went into the city to visit Alice for the day on Friday (the first day it snowed this week), and quite honestly saw my life flash before my eyes on more than one occasion during my cab ride. Turkmen are frightening winter drivers. To be more specific, Turkmen are frightening drivers, period. They are big fans of passing in places where no one in their right mind would try to pass. They also like to play with their car stereos instead of looking at the road, and their favorite thing to do is try to carry on a conversation with the American in the back seat, while not looking forward to the road AT ALL. Add icy roads and whiteout snow to this and you’ve really got a recipe for success. Or an aneurism. Whichever.
The good news is that I made it into the city in one piece. I was really excited because in addition to getting a care package in the mail, and buying some tasty cookies at the bazaar, my FAMILY called me at Alice’s house! This may not sound like that big of a cause for celebration, but calling me, and actually getting hold of me in this country, from America, is quite an event. Now that I don’t have a telephone at my house, I have to rely on the charity of other volunteers who actually have phones at their homes that my family can call. I then have to cross my fingers that the phone in question will actually be working on the day I arrange for my family to call me on it, and I have to pray that none of their family members will be in the middle of using it at the established call time. On top of all of that, I have to hope the circuits aren’t too busy so that my family’s call will actually be able to get through when they place it. Now that you understand what all goes into it, you can see why I almost wet my pants when I heard the voices of my mom and dad and Hillary (Andrea had apparently left for a trip to Norway the week before).
After talking to them for more than an hour, I was on cloud nine. You’d be surprised at how much you crave hearing familiar voices. After seeing my euphoric state resulting from domestic dialogue, Alice also really wanted to hear from her family, so we asked my parents to call them and let them know Alice wanted to talk to them and was waiting by the phone. My dad was a little nervous about calling someone who didn’t really know him (especially since it was almost midnight), but Alice and I assured him that as a fellow Peace Corps Turkmenistan parent, he would be welcomed with open arms… if that were possible on the phone. Sure enough, less than twenty minutes after hanging up with my parents, the phone rang again and it was Alice’s family. I really love it when things work out.
Besides city trips and brain sausage, the week was fairly uneventful. I have to learn to be a little less independent than I was in America. It’s a difficult transition. Whenever I go anywhere or do anything in Turkmenistan, I have to tell at least three different people where and when I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and exactly when I’ll be back. Usually I need to tell them all of this information at least a week before the event actually occurs, and there is no such thing as changing my plans mid way through the event since there are no phones in my village for me to call anyone on to inform them of the altered game plan. Considering the fact that I am 24 years old, and in no way accustomed to such tight control on my comings and goings, it has been a challenge to keep my blood pressure in check on several occasions.
Most recently it was the disco. There is going to be a big 80s night (yeah, like American 80s music!) at the disco in Dashoguz City next Friday night, and I really want to go. I figured it would work out perfectly because I am already planning on being in the city Saturday morning for our big health-volunteer collaboration, so why not come in the night before, go to the disco, then just sleep over afterwards at one of the city volunteer’s houses? It made perfect sense to me. Especially because I really really wanted to go out dancing with the other volunteers at the disco.
I told Shukerjan about my plan, and she initially said it sounded fine as long as I remembered to give her contact information for how to find me in case of an emergency. A few days after she’d said yes, she reneged, and told me I wasn’t going to be able to go. Something about a policy…
This would probably be the appropriate time to fess up to the fact that Shukerjan was actually mostly in the right for putting the nix on my grand disco adventure. There is technically a Peace Corps policy that says new volunteers may not sleep “outside of their community” for their first 90 days of service. It’s meant to keep us safe since the assumption is that it will probably take us about three months to fully acclimate to our new surroundings. In my disco-crazed state, I was willing to skew the meaning of the policy far enough to consider Dashoguz city part of “my community”, but Shukerjan wasn’t buying it. She told me that I was housebound next Friday night, and that it really was for my own good. I was mainly pissed because I knew she was right, and there wasn’t much I could do about it. How dare she be a responsible host-parent? You’d think she actually cared about me, or something…
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Week of Being Careful What You Wish For (Part 2)
After the unfortunate fiasco at the school on Tuesday, Wednesday dawned with the distinct possibility of redemption. It couldn’t really get any worse, right? Ha.
While we had been on patronage the day prior, Shukerjan had been busy recruiting new mothers for my class on breastfeeding Wednesday morning. I had given up on my fetal development stages, figuring the lesson wasn’t meant to be, after resulting in no-shows for three weeks running. I was all ready to make breastfeeding class riveting. I had stuffed animals to practice positions with, a huge picture of a breast with all of the parts labeled, and a nice long story to read to my class about a mother who didn’t breastfeed correctly, and the resulting calamity. Stuffed animals, boobs, and story time! Who wouldn’t want to come to my class?
Class was scheduled to start at ten, and when only one woman had shown up by 10:10, I figured it was time to get my show on the road. At least one person wanted to hang out with me, right? My “student” was a very very pregnant young woman (eight and a half months along) in her early twenties who was on baby number two. As I began showing her the proper breastfeeding positions with my stuffed bunny, I handed her a teddy bear to practice with. She looked at me as if I had suggested she dive headfirst off a high cliff, and instead set the teddy bear down on the table next to her. I decided it was time to move along to the big breast picture. This actually managed to go even worse than the teddy. As soon as she saw the gigantic nipple looming up out of the distance, she turned red and averted her eyes, refusing to look at it. I was beginning to sense the possibility that I misjudged the cultural views on modesty…
As I was frantically trying to think of a way to take my presentation from PG-13 down to a G rating, my student suddenly got a horrible expression on her face, clapped her hand over her mouth, and ran from the room. I heard her retching in the hallway sink. I must say, I was expecting a slightly different reaction to my class. She didn’t come back in. Shocker. I was so sure she’d been waiting on the edge of her seat to see what exciting activity we were going to do next. I spent the rest of the day re-writing my breastfeeding lesson plan to include far fewer visuals, and a lot more anti-nausea medication.
The rest of the week included quite a bit of visiting. I met my next-door neighbors, who invited me in for tea and fresh bread with homemade watermelon jelly. (jealous?) I also went to the next village over to visit Bagila at her family’s house. I wound up sleeping over and had a lot of fun. We stayed up until almost 1am (this is very very late for me now!) watching music videos and looking at pictures. It kind of reminded me of the sleepovers I used to have in seventh grade… except we didn’t dare each other to lick the toilet seat or run outside in only our underwear. What can I say, we were party poopers.
My family took me to see Koneurgench (cone-er-gench) on Sunday. This is the big ruin site in Dashoguz, apparently it has a lot of historical significance, or something… Someone who has internet access on a regular basis should look it up and tell me why its important, because I feel like I should know, but there’s only books about it in Russian and Turkmen, and to be honest, I don’t know either language well enough to figure out what the deal is. It looks pretty cool though.
There were a series of mausoleums and a really tall minaret, all of them from a long time ago. They were beautiful, and I was surprised at how well a lot of the colored tiles had survived on the domes on top of the mausoleums. The only down side was that the weather was still pretty cold, and I could only walk around the ruin sites for so long before my feet went numb. Note to self: come back and look at things longer when the temperature is back to somewhat bearably normal.
I also got to see Julia, the Peace Corps volunteer who is stationed in Koneurgench. It was the first time I’d seen her since Christmas, and I was happy to see that she was doing well. I was also happy to see that she had also given in and purchased one of the expensive long wool coats with fur cuffs. They really are super pretty. I swear.
While we had been on patronage the day prior, Shukerjan had been busy recruiting new mothers for my class on breastfeeding Wednesday morning. I had given up on my fetal development stages, figuring the lesson wasn’t meant to be, after resulting in no-shows for three weeks running. I was all ready to make breastfeeding class riveting. I had stuffed animals to practice positions with, a huge picture of a breast with all of the parts labeled, and a nice long story to read to my class about a mother who didn’t breastfeed correctly, and the resulting calamity. Stuffed animals, boobs, and story time! Who wouldn’t want to come to my class?
Class was scheduled to start at ten, and when only one woman had shown up by 10:10, I figured it was time to get my show on the road. At least one person wanted to hang out with me, right? My “student” was a very very pregnant young woman (eight and a half months along) in her early twenties who was on baby number two. As I began showing her the proper breastfeeding positions with my stuffed bunny, I handed her a teddy bear to practice with. She looked at me as if I had suggested she dive headfirst off a high cliff, and instead set the teddy bear down on the table next to her. I decided it was time to move along to the big breast picture. This actually managed to go even worse than the teddy. As soon as she saw the gigantic nipple looming up out of the distance, she turned red and averted her eyes, refusing to look at it. I was beginning to sense the possibility that I misjudged the cultural views on modesty…
As I was frantically trying to think of a way to take my presentation from PG-13 down to a G rating, my student suddenly got a horrible expression on her face, clapped her hand over her mouth, and ran from the room. I heard her retching in the hallway sink. I must say, I was expecting a slightly different reaction to my class. She didn’t come back in. Shocker. I was so sure she’d been waiting on the edge of her seat to see what exciting activity we were going to do next. I spent the rest of the day re-writing my breastfeeding lesson plan to include far fewer visuals, and a lot more anti-nausea medication.
The rest of the week included quite a bit of visiting. I met my next-door neighbors, who invited me in for tea and fresh bread with homemade watermelon jelly. (jealous?) I also went to the next village over to visit Bagila at her family’s house. I wound up sleeping over and had a lot of fun. We stayed up until almost 1am (this is very very late for me now!) watching music videos and looking at pictures. It kind of reminded me of the sleepovers I used to have in seventh grade… except we didn’t dare each other to lick the toilet seat or run outside in only our underwear. What can I say, we were party poopers.
My family took me to see Koneurgench (cone-er-gench) on Sunday. This is the big ruin site in Dashoguz, apparently it has a lot of historical significance, or something… Someone who has internet access on a regular basis should look it up and tell me why its important, because I feel like I should know, but there’s only books about it in Russian and Turkmen, and to be honest, I don’t know either language well enough to figure out what the deal is. It looks pretty cool though.
There were a series of mausoleums and a really tall minaret, all of them from a long time ago. They were beautiful, and I was surprised at how well a lot of the colored tiles had survived on the domes on top of the mausoleums. The only down side was that the weather was still pretty cold, and I could only walk around the ruin sites for so long before my feet went numb. Note to self: come back and look at things longer when the temperature is back to somewhat bearably normal.
I also got to see Julia, the Peace Corps volunteer who is stationed in Koneurgench. It was the first time I’d seen her since Christmas, and I was happy to see that she was doing well. I was also happy to see that she had also given in and purchased one of the expensive long wool coats with fur cuffs. They really are super pretty. I swear.
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