November 6th

Yesterday was a really cool day of technical training at the clinic. Even though Lex and I can’t really understand most of what people say there, some things don’t need words to be impactive. We were sitting in a doctor’s office, watching the fascinating phenomenon of file reorganizing (yeah, they do that here too) when there was a big commotion down the hall. Upon sticking our heads into the hallway to see what was up, the two of us were greeted by quite the event. A local man had been using some variety of heavy equipment and had managed to involve his leg in the action a little more thoroughly than he should have. The result was a huge gash in the front of his shin that showed layers of muscle as well as a significant part of his tibia protruding from a gnarled mass of scorched skin. Not to sound really gross and inappropriate, but it was soooo cool looking. What really astounded me was the fact that this man WALKED into the office with a straight face, and asked very casually if a doctor was available. There’s blood gushing everywhere, you can see the insides of his leg on the outside, and this guy is acting like he’s got a sore throat or something. I was totally blown away. Our clinic is fairly small, so the only thing they were able to do for him was wash it out and bandage it up, while telling him he needed to go into the city hospital for furthur treatment. Just like he’d come in, he stood up and walked back out, ptomising them that he’d try to get into the city either that day or the next. What a rockstar.

Monday morning, I was walking to meet Lex at the clinic for a few hours of quality sitting-on-bench time, when I happened to run into our village’s police chief. After a few minutes of strained chit-chat (I really need to get better at Turkmen), he invited me to come over to the police station for tea and cookies. Even though I knew I was supposed to be in the clinic in less than two minutes, I figured the ability to get to know the police in town was far more valuable than an extra ten minutes of confused medical observation, so I told him I would be delighted to come over for tea. We had a really good time, he figured out fairly quickly the remedial level my Turkmen was at, and appropriately adjusted his vocabulary to facilitate a coherent conversation. We talked about his family, his job, and all sorts of stuff. It was a really good feeling, being able to go to tea all by myself and (sort of) manage to keep up a conversation with a local. And it certainly can’t hurt matters to be on the police chief’s good side…

I got home from work on Tuesday and the fun kept coming. After a delicious dinner, involving copious quantities of raw onions (they eat them like potato chips here), my mouth was dying for something sweet to take the edge off of the dragon breath that was pouring forth. I was about to bite the bullet and walk to the corner store to buy a Snickers bar when Mohammet suddenly produced a bag of ice cream cones. It was like magic, and exactly what I needed. It was a fabulous surprise, and I savored every lick. Its funny how little things have become capable of making me extremely happy here.