It’s officially fall here. The locals are actually referring to it as winter, but by Alaskan standards, its fall. It has been raining constantly, its incredibly cold outside, and all I want to do is curl up in a big blanket on the couch while reading a book. Instead, I have been trudging around the village going between language lessons, the clinic, the dressmaker’s, and the other volunteers’ houses. A lot of people’s phones aren’t working very well because of the rain, and some of the other villages have even been losing power.
We had club again on Saturday, and even though it was raining and gross outside, we still had about forty kids show up to hang out with us. We drew big posters about healthy lifestyles, and the kids got to use markers from “the America”, it was quite the event. The markers were Mr. Sketch markers (the ones that smell really yummy, like different foods), so the kids were in heaven. Turkmen kids really like to draw, and there aren’t markers in Turkmenistan, so anytime they get to make posters with markers, they are happy as clams.
I’m really starting to dig my host family, they take really good care of me. My mom and dad were supposed to call from America on Sunday morning. I had been looking forward to hearing from them for two weeks, and my host family knew it. Sunday morning dawned, and because of the heavy rain, the phone wasn’t working. I was so sad that I wasn’t going to be able to talk to my family, but I was trying not to act disappointed in front of my host family since I knew that it wasn’t their fault that the phone was out of order.
They realized how much it meant to me, and before I knew it, my whole family was sitting in the middle of the living room ripping apart pieces and parts from three different phones. One half hour, a butter knife, a spoon, and a large roll of duct tape later, we had one functional phone, and still fifteen minutes until the appointed call time. Life was good.
This morning was a little stressful. I was supposed to be at the bus stop (a twenty minute walk from my house), ready to visit Dashoguz for a week at nine am. Being myself, and completely incapable of punctuality, I was still working on packing my bag at 8:50. I don’t know what it is, but I can never seem to travel light. I always start packing with the best of intentions, but it seems that by the time my bag is ready to travel, it alwayshas grown to monsterous proportions. (Case in point, my luggage for the plane ride to Turkmenistan was classified as “cargo” because it were so heavy.) My “small travel bag” for my week in Dashoguz was no exception, and by the time I had managed to hoist my 26 kilo (That’s a little under fifty-five pounds for all you non-metric users) bag over my shoulder and toddle out the door, there was no way I was making it to the bus stop by nine. Realistically, there was probably no way I would have made it to the bus stop at all with that bag… My sweet little family came to my rescue again, and my host brother (the one who never talks to me) actually offered to drive my behemoth bag and me to the bus stop. Phew, thank goodness!
I spent the rest of the day catching up with the other volunteers as we spent the day in Ashgabat going through training sessions from Peace Corps. It’s amazing how much I find myself craving that American interaction. It concerns me a little because right now I live in the same village as four other Americans and I still get excited when I get to see more. Hhow am I going to hold up when it’s just me in my village? We are going to spend the next few days in Ashgabat meeting what they call our
Counterparts. These are the Turkmen who will be assigned to us at our workplace when we get to site. We’re supposed to meet them in Ashgabat, then travel with them to our site on the 28th. Cross your fingers for me that everything goes well…
Monday, November 26, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Pictures!
Hope the pics work out guys! The fun picture of food and tons of people is at the Tekke Bazaar, not quite a shopping mall, but as close as I can get for the next two years. The large group of Turkmen with babies are my current host family, the large group of Americans are my village-mates (Carrie, Kelly, Lex, Me, and Dan). The pretty Turkmen women are brides, the sunrise is right by the clinic I work at, and the mosque is the biggest in central Asia and its a twenty minute walk from my house. Love you all! Promise to post more blogs after I get home from Dashogouz visiting next week.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
November 22nd
I’ve been hanging out with my host sisters more, I really feel like we’re starting to bond. They all came trooping into my room the other night with a tub of ice cream and four spoons. We sat there looking at pictures from America and eating ice cream, it was great. I even helped (sort of, at least) them make dinner the other night. I’m tragically bad at cooking and preparing Turkmen dishes, but they were patient and I think they anjoyed the fact that I was trying to be helpful, even if it wasn’t necessarily the end result.
The big battle at my house right now is breakfast. “Breakfast” actually only consists of a cup or two of green tea, along with a slice of bread with some jam on it. It’s hardly what you would call a hearty start to your day. I’ve been really bad about hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock lately, and will wind up getting out of bed in the mornings only ten minutes before I need to be at Kelly’s house to go to school. As a result, I’ve been skipping “breakfast” in favor of those few extra minutes of sleep. My family finally confronted me in an intervention of sorts, and told me I was no longer going to be permitted to leave the house in the mornings without breakfast. Apparently even if it is only one cup of tea, it is the only way I’m getting out the front door to go to language classes. Oh lord. Bring on “breakfast”…
We went to see Iran. Okay, not literally, but sort of. There is a big mountain range that separates Turkmenistan from Iran, and there is a cable car that runs up the side of the mountain for people to go up to the top and appreciate the view. There are still a few mountains that technically obstruct the actual view of Iran, but to know that it’s that close is kind of cool. It was a beautiful day, and it was really nice to be up in the mountains, it reminded me a lot of home (except that Alaska’s mountains specifically will always have a special place in my heart).
Monday was quite the day for me. Lex and I spent the morning in the clinic, pbserving the dentist at work. This was horrifying and fascinating all in the same moment. I got to see a molar pulled out with a pair of plyers. I’m not kidding. It (the molar) had a hole the size of a ballpoint pen head, that went all the way from one side to the other (from a cavity), and I couldn’t imagine what would have hurt more, having a tooth rot completely through, or to have the tooth in question pulled out with a pair of plyers similar to what I would fix my kitchen sink with. Hopefully I won’t ever have to find out firsthand…
After our morning with the dentist, I went home to help my family get ready for our “gelin party”. In Turkmenistan (and especially in the more conservative villages), it is a big deal to be a Turkmen bride (a gelin). They have this special bridal clothing they have to wear, along with about 80 pounds of silver jewelery (no, I swear I am not exaggerating) for forty days after their wedding. They have to have an escort walk around with them due to the extreme weight of the stuff they’re wearing, and they don’t really talk to anyone, their escort talks for them. People will hold “parties” for these new brides, and they’ll make a lot of food and invite all of the neighbors to come over to look at the new gelin. The tragic part of all of this is that the gelin doesn’t really even eat at the party, she just sits there, trying not to move or talk, while everyone else stares and eats.
Anyway you cut it, our family hosted a gelin party on Monday. I helped them set everything out and then I pigged out on a spread of vegetables, salads, fried rice, and beef. Yyyuuuum. I also took a few pictures of the guest of honor. She was absolutely gorgeous, I was so impressed with how many details go into her outfit. The embroidery on her dress and robes was amazing, and the jewelry was absolutely stunning. The jewelry is so extravagent and there’s so much of it, that most Turkmen actually just rent it for the forty days that the gelin has to wear it, instead of buying it. Kind of like tuxedos in the US, except a whole lot more intense.
The biggest deal this week was the announcement from Peace Corps as to where our permenant sites would be. We all were together for a hub day and there was this big map of Turkmenistan on the floor of the room we were in. They called each of our names one at a time, told us where we would be going, then had us stand on the map in the approximate location of our site. We had all been DYING of curiosity for weeks to find out where we were going to be working for the next two years after training, as well as to find out who our American neighbors were going to be for that time. It was a big day.
I had been campaigning with the staff to be sent to Dashoguz weleyat (the Turkmen word for province), which is the northernmost weleyat, and also the coldest one in Turkmenistan. I figured it would be the most like home for me, and I also heard it was the least conservative out of the five Turkmen weleyats. As much as I enjoyed my long dresses and demure behavior in public, I thought it might be a nice change to see how the less conservative Turkmen conduct themselves. Sure enough, when my name was called, I was told that I was going to Dashoguz weleyat, to a little village by the name of Gok Chage.
I’m in excellent company. There are seven other T-16 volunteers going with me. (This is how we refer to people in our training class. We’re the 16th training group to come to Turkmenistan, hence “T-16”s, the group from last year were T-15s, the group next year will be T-17s, etc.). On the Dashoguz roster is myself, Val, Jon, Alice, Noah, Dennis, Julia, and Kelly. I realize these names may not mean much to you right now, but I get the feeling that I’m about to get to know these guys a whole lot better over the next two years. I think they all seem really great so far, everybody has a good sense of humor, and they’re all pretty outgoing. Of course I’m really exciteds that Kelly and I are still going to be close to one another. After being neighbors for the first two months of training, it would have been really hard to have to say good bye to her at the end of December. After site announcements, the Peace Corps staff let us know that we’d all be going to visit our new site in the last week of November. I’m a little nervous, I really hope my new village likes me…
Thanksgiving was an interesting day here. It was cold. The weather has been consistently hot since we came from America, it rarely went below eighty degrees (which for an Alaskan is HOT!), even at night. There was actually rain on Thanksgiving, and a cold wind. I think its possible that fall actually might be coming. Our training group all got together and made a big Thanksgiving lunch (all vegetarian for Kelly, carrie, and Lex!), then we went into Ashgabat to drink some beers and hang out for awhile.
It really hit me while I was sitting there with the girls as to how much in my life had managed to change in the course of only one year. Last year, at Thanksgiving dinner was when I told mom and dad that I was thinking about joining the Peace Corps. I had never talked about it before that day, and I think they were a little skeptical at first as to how serious I was about going. Only one year later, here I am sitting in a café in the middle of Turkmenistan… I really hope I made the right choice.
The big battle at my house right now is breakfast. “Breakfast” actually only consists of a cup or two of green tea, along with a slice of bread with some jam on it. It’s hardly what you would call a hearty start to your day. I’ve been really bad about hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock lately, and will wind up getting out of bed in the mornings only ten minutes before I need to be at Kelly’s house to go to school. As a result, I’ve been skipping “breakfast” in favor of those few extra minutes of sleep. My family finally confronted me in an intervention of sorts, and told me I was no longer going to be permitted to leave the house in the mornings without breakfast. Apparently even if it is only one cup of tea, it is the only way I’m getting out the front door to go to language classes. Oh lord. Bring on “breakfast”…
We went to see Iran. Okay, not literally, but sort of. There is a big mountain range that separates Turkmenistan from Iran, and there is a cable car that runs up the side of the mountain for people to go up to the top and appreciate the view. There are still a few mountains that technically obstruct the actual view of Iran, but to know that it’s that close is kind of cool. It was a beautiful day, and it was really nice to be up in the mountains, it reminded me a lot of home (except that Alaska’s mountains specifically will always have a special place in my heart).
Monday was quite the day for me. Lex and I spent the morning in the clinic, pbserving the dentist at work. This was horrifying and fascinating all in the same moment. I got to see a molar pulled out with a pair of plyers. I’m not kidding. It (the molar) had a hole the size of a ballpoint pen head, that went all the way from one side to the other (from a cavity), and I couldn’t imagine what would have hurt more, having a tooth rot completely through, or to have the tooth in question pulled out with a pair of plyers similar to what I would fix my kitchen sink with. Hopefully I won’t ever have to find out firsthand…
After our morning with the dentist, I went home to help my family get ready for our “gelin party”. In Turkmenistan (and especially in the more conservative villages), it is a big deal to be a Turkmen bride (a gelin). They have this special bridal clothing they have to wear, along with about 80 pounds of silver jewelery (no, I swear I am not exaggerating) for forty days after their wedding. They have to have an escort walk around with them due to the extreme weight of the stuff they’re wearing, and they don’t really talk to anyone, their escort talks for them. People will hold “parties” for these new brides, and they’ll make a lot of food and invite all of the neighbors to come over to look at the new gelin. The tragic part of all of this is that the gelin doesn’t really even eat at the party, she just sits there, trying not to move or talk, while everyone else stares and eats.
Anyway you cut it, our family hosted a gelin party on Monday. I helped them set everything out and then I pigged out on a spread of vegetables, salads, fried rice, and beef. Yyyuuuum. I also took a few pictures of the guest of honor. She was absolutely gorgeous, I was so impressed with how many details go into her outfit. The embroidery on her dress and robes was amazing, and the jewelry was absolutely stunning. The jewelry is so extravagent and there’s so much of it, that most Turkmen actually just rent it for the forty days that the gelin has to wear it, instead of buying it. Kind of like tuxedos in the US, except a whole lot more intense.
The biggest deal this week was the announcement from Peace Corps as to where our permenant sites would be. We all were together for a hub day and there was this big map of Turkmenistan on the floor of the room we were in. They called each of our names one at a time, told us where we would be going, then had us stand on the map in the approximate location of our site. We had all been DYING of curiosity for weeks to find out where we were going to be working for the next two years after training, as well as to find out who our American neighbors were going to be for that time. It was a big day.
I had been campaigning with the staff to be sent to Dashoguz weleyat (the Turkmen word for province), which is the northernmost weleyat, and also the coldest one in Turkmenistan. I figured it would be the most like home for me, and I also heard it was the least conservative out of the five Turkmen weleyats. As much as I enjoyed my long dresses and demure behavior in public, I thought it might be a nice change to see how the less conservative Turkmen conduct themselves. Sure enough, when my name was called, I was told that I was going to Dashoguz weleyat, to a little village by the name of Gok Chage.
I’m in excellent company. There are seven other T-16 volunteers going with me. (This is how we refer to people in our training class. We’re the 16th training group to come to Turkmenistan, hence “T-16”s, the group from last year were T-15s, the group next year will be T-17s, etc.). On the Dashoguz roster is myself, Val, Jon, Alice, Noah, Dennis, Julia, and Kelly. I realize these names may not mean much to you right now, but I get the feeling that I’m about to get to know these guys a whole lot better over the next two years. I think they all seem really great so far, everybody has a good sense of humor, and they’re all pretty outgoing. Of course I’m really exciteds that Kelly and I are still going to be close to one another. After being neighbors for the first two months of training, it would have been really hard to have to say good bye to her at the end of December. After site announcements, the Peace Corps staff let us know that we’d all be going to visit our new site in the last week of November. I’m a little nervous, I really hope my new village likes me…
Thanksgiving was an interesting day here. It was cold. The weather has been consistently hot since we came from America, it rarely went below eighty degrees (which for an Alaskan is HOT!), even at night. There was actually rain on Thanksgiving, and a cold wind. I think its possible that fall actually might be coming. Our training group all got together and made a big Thanksgiving lunch (all vegetarian for Kelly, carrie, and Lex!), then we went into Ashgabat to drink some beers and hang out for awhile.
It really hit me while I was sitting there with the girls as to how much in my life had managed to change in the course of only one year. Last year, at Thanksgiving dinner was when I told mom and dad that I was thinking about joining the Peace Corps. I had never talked about it before that day, and I think they were a little skeptical at first as to how serious I was about going. Only one year later, here I am sitting in a café in the middle of Turkmenistan… I really hope I made the right choice.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
November 14th
We’ve started to accumulate a posse here. It’s quite entertaining. The kids love to walk with us as soon as they notice there are Americans on the street. They don’t talk to us a lot, for the most part they all talk to eachother and point and giggle at us, but they absolutely insist on walking as close to us as possible. Every now and then, a really brave one will say hello (in English!) and then ask us a few questions in Turkmen about why we’re there and what we’re doing. You can tell the kids are starting to think we’re pretty entertaining. Last week was our first official club day and we had planned a lesson on healthy nutrition. We weren’t really sure how many kids were going to come since we hadn’t told that many about it, but we figured maybe 15 or 20 would be a pretty good turnout. You can imagine our surprise when we had more than fifty kids show up Saturday morning, all of them ready to learn about healthy food. It was so great, and it made me feel really good about our village kids.
I’ve found a new dress maker, I’m excited to see what she makes for me. I really love this whole custom tailoring. I’ve never been in a situation where I could decide exactly what I wanted my clothes to look like and how I wanted them to fit me. Admittedly, all of the clothes I’m getting are floor length dresses with high necklines, but at least I get to pick which colors and shapes they are, right? It’s amazing how much I’m already starting to acclimate to the Turkmen idea of “proper dress”. I saw someone wearing a skirt that showed a portion of their knees the other day, and before I could stop myself I actually heard myself tsk-tsking them and shaking my head in disapproval. Are you kidding me? What happened to me?
Lex and Maya and I went to a big birthday for the father of one of the doctors at our clinic. It was really neat, he’s a big figure in the arts community in Ashgabat, so for his birthday party, they rented out a concert hall in the city and prestigious artists, singers, musicians, and actors all came and performed for him. It was my first real exposure to the Turkmen aarts, and I enjoyed it tremendously. There were a few opera singers who were absolutely phenomenal.
I’ve found a new dress maker, I’m excited to see what she makes for me. I really love this whole custom tailoring. I’ve never been in a situation where I could decide exactly what I wanted my clothes to look like and how I wanted them to fit me. Admittedly, all of the clothes I’m getting are floor length dresses with high necklines, but at least I get to pick which colors and shapes they are, right? It’s amazing how much I’m already starting to acclimate to the Turkmen idea of “proper dress”. I saw someone wearing a skirt that showed a portion of their knees the other day, and before I could stop myself I actually heard myself tsk-tsking them and shaking my head in disapproval. Are you kidding me? What happened to me?
Lex and Maya and I went to a big birthday for the father of one of the doctors at our clinic. It was really neat, he’s a big figure in the arts community in Ashgabat, so for his birthday party, they rented out a concert hall in the city and prestigious artists, singers, musicians, and actors all came and performed for him. It was my first real exposure to the Turkmen aarts, and I enjoyed it tremendously. There were a few opera singers who were absolutely phenomenal.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
November 8th
I woke up and my eyes still were really sore, so I had to wear my glasses again, and I had forgotten it was Thursday, so even though I needed a shower in the worst way, my family wasn’t going to let me within a ten foot radius of the bayna. Needless to say, I walked out of the house looking like I had been run over by a Turkmen cement truck. I was so busy focusing on how gross I was, that I didn’t even notice my host brother trying to talk to me at first. Really, my older host brother was talking to me! On purpose! He asked me if I wanted a ride to school, which is huge since he hasn’t even said hi to me since I have lived here! I had to go meet Kelly, so I had to thank him profusely and refuse his offer, but I was beyond stoked that he and I had experienced a major communication breakthrough. I was on cloud nine all the way to Kelly’s house.
My morning stayed interesting as Kelly and I headed towards school. Ahead of us, we saw this lone old man who was pushing his clearly broken-down car up the street while he attempted to steer it around the random smattering of animals and children walking to school. We felt really bad for him, so we both came up and started pushing his car from behind. He took this as a good sign and started pushing faster. I kid you not, we seriously RAN with his car all the way past where we usually turn to go to school. I have never been so thankful that I live in a completely flat village. I realize that we were only pushing this fairly light car for maybe 10 minutes, but I was totally exhausted by the time we got it to the garage. I think it’s time to lay off the massive quantities of choreck and surprise ice creams.
The morning stayed in a super high-speed sort of mode because as soon as we got to school, some people from the Peace Corps showed up to teach us how to take blood pressures. We are going to be doing a big hypertension project and part of it will be doing blood pressure counseling. I am really excited, but I feel a little bad for my family now because I am absolutely obsessed with trying to practice on them. I’m like that annoying little dog that is constantly trying to hump your leg, except I’m really into arms, and I come with a stethoscope attached. Oh, and I’m really slow, so they have to sit there with their arms going numb for a good three or four minutes while I try to figure out whether they have really high blood pressure or whether I’m just listening to the wrong side of the stethoscope. My poor host family.
We totally get excited about the dorkiest things in language class. We seem to have our favorite game of the week. I use the term game loosely, because in any other circumstance I don’t know how “fun” any of our games would be. Presently, I think they are pretty good stuff.
Our current favorite is sort of like Boggle, but not really. Maya will sit all of us in a place where we can’t cheat by looking at anything on the walls, then will randomly pick a letter of the Turkmen alphabet. We will each write down every single Turkmen word we can think of that starts with that letter (I am happy if I can think of 10), then after 2 minutes of writing, we will go around and see who could think of the most words that no one else had. On a good day, it’s five. Usually the winner has three. We still have a long way to go with language.
One of our other favorites is the “guess what I am” game. We will all think of something and write it on a sticky note on one person’s back. We all give them clues in Turkmen and they try to guess what they are. As silly as it sounds, we could probably play this game for hours on end. You never get tired of it when people are things like “an airport”, “a napkin”, and my personal favorite, “cheap”. Just to hear someone say “am I cheap?” in Turkmen sets me into a fit of giggles. Wow… I think I am officially loosing little bits of my IQ the longer I am here… oh well, at least I am having fun while doing it.
We had the really really good dinner again tonight, the one with mashed potatoes and barley and tomatoes. It was delicious as usual. This makes three times since I have been in the country so far, I think my family officially rocks.
My morning stayed interesting as Kelly and I headed towards school. Ahead of us, we saw this lone old man who was pushing his clearly broken-down car up the street while he attempted to steer it around the random smattering of animals and children walking to school. We felt really bad for him, so we both came up and started pushing his car from behind. He took this as a good sign and started pushing faster. I kid you not, we seriously RAN with his car all the way past where we usually turn to go to school. I have never been so thankful that I live in a completely flat village. I realize that we were only pushing this fairly light car for maybe 10 minutes, but I was totally exhausted by the time we got it to the garage. I think it’s time to lay off the massive quantities of choreck and surprise ice creams.
The morning stayed in a super high-speed sort of mode because as soon as we got to school, some people from the Peace Corps showed up to teach us how to take blood pressures. We are going to be doing a big hypertension project and part of it will be doing blood pressure counseling. I am really excited, but I feel a little bad for my family now because I am absolutely obsessed with trying to practice on them. I’m like that annoying little dog that is constantly trying to hump your leg, except I’m really into arms, and I come with a stethoscope attached. Oh, and I’m really slow, so they have to sit there with their arms going numb for a good three or four minutes while I try to figure out whether they have really high blood pressure or whether I’m just listening to the wrong side of the stethoscope. My poor host family.
We totally get excited about the dorkiest things in language class. We seem to have our favorite game of the week. I use the term game loosely, because in any other circumstance I don’t know how “fun” any of our games would be. Presently, I think they are pretty good stuff.
Our current favorite is sort of like Boggle, but not really. Maya will sit all of us in a place where we can’t cheat by looking at anything on the walls, then will randomly pick a letter of the Turkmen alphabet. We will each write down every single Turkmen word we can think of that starts with that letter (I am happy if I can think of 10), then after 2 minutes of writing, we will go around and see who could think of the most words that no one else had. On a good day, it’s five. Usually the winner has three. We still have a long way to go with language.
One of our other favorites is the “guess what I am” game. We will all think of something and write it on a sticky note on one person’s back. We all give them clues in Turkmen and they try to guess what they are. As silly as it sounds, we could probably play this game for hours on end. You never get tired of it when people are things like “an airport”, “a napkin”, and my personal favorite, “cheap”. Just to hear someone say “am I cheap?” in Turkmen sets me into a fit of giggles. Wow… I think I am officially loosing little bits of my IQ the longer I am here… oh well, at least I am having fun while doing it.
We had the really really good dinner again tonight, the one with mashed potatoes and barley and tomatoes. It was delicious as usual. This makes three times since I have been in the country so far, I think my family officially rocks.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
November 7th
Today was our second hub day since we’ve been here. It was also a really important day because the Peace Corps director came to have lunch with us. I’m not just talking about the Turkmenistan director, but the director of the WHOLE Peace Corps. It was super cool, and he brought his wife, and a few other people from Washington. It’s a really big honor that he is visiting our program, so I was super stoked to meet him. He was amazingly down to earth, a really nice normal guy. He also gave out free pins and patches, and you know how I feel about anything free. Good stuff.
I had the most incredibly sore eyes all day. I think there must be something in the air right now, because it felt like I had some crazy allergies going on. Like seriously, my eyes were watering and it looked like I was crying hysterically for the majority of the day. I had to switch to wearing glasses instead of contacts, and just kind of tried to ignore the constant stream of tears. Even though I could barely make it out through my haze of smog-induced bawling, I was immensely pleased to see that Mohammet brought home surprise ice cream again! Two days in a row of free ice cream before dinner, life is officially awesome!
I had the most incredibly sore eyes all day. I think there must be something in the air right now, because it felt like I had some crazy allergies going on. Like seriously, my eyes were watering and it looked like I was crying hysterically for the majority of the day. I had to switch to wearing glasses instead of contacts, and just kind of tried to ignore the constant stream of tears. Even though I could barely make it out through my haze of smog-induced bawling, I was immensely pleased to see that Mohammet brought home surprise ice cream again! Two days in a row of free ice cream before dinner, life is officially awesome!
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
November 4th
So an average day for me… I wake up around 8:20 and eat a quick breakfast with my family before walking a block down the street to meet up with Kelly at her family’s house. This occasionally involves a quick second breakfast. Kelly and I walk the fifteen minutes to Carrie’s house, where all five of us are currently taking Turkmen lessons from Maya. We spend 4 hours working on our Turkmen, eat lunch (which Carrie’s host mom cooks, super tasty), then go off to technical training for a few hours. For Lex and I, technical training is sort of a nebulous concept right now. Theoretically, we are supposed to be learning about Turkmen medical culture by observing it firsthand and asking lots of questions. There are a few problems with this particular course of action. First of all, Lex and I don’t really speak Turkmen just yet. Don’t get me wrong, we are learning, and eventually I’m sure we’ll be really good at it, but for the time being we’re not quite there yet. This makes it rather interesting when we try to have any sort of meaningful interaction with the nurses and doctors at our clinic, and tragically limits our time at the clinic to simply sitting down and staring, while wondering what exactly is going on. I’m hoping this will improve as time goes on. After our time at technical training is finished, we will either head home to hang out with our host families or go to each other’s houses for tea and commiseration regarding Turkmen life.
After getting home for the day (which typically happens somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven o’clock), I usually wind up just hanging out with my host family while they listen to music, cook dinner, and play with the babies. I feel sometimes like I’m watching a live action version of the television show Pants Off, Dance Off when we’re hanging out with the babies. Ayjemal loooves to dance to anything, and for a two year old, she has a substantial repertoire of dance moves. There has been everything from samba shoulders to dropping it like its hot. It’s pretty entertaining to watch. While Ayjemal is busy shaking her groove thing, it seems like my younger baby, Hatija, never has any clothes on.
Turkmen have a very different view on how one should go about training their children to use the toilet, and part of their plan includes not using diapers. I’m serious, from the time they’re born Turkmen babies don’t wear diapers, they just keep soiling their pants over and over again. This results in an incredible amount of dirty clothing for their mothers to launder, but in theory, it speeds up the process of baby learning how to use to toilet. Either way you cut it, it means that Hatija is constantly in a “transitional” pants stage while they try to locate a clean pair to replace to freshly dirtied ones she is wearing. You’d think the kid was a nudist.
After dinner and the floor show, I usually wind up falling into bed like an old lady by no later than 8:30. I realize it seems odd that I would find myself absolutely exhausted at a time when most Americans are just settling down for a night of prime time television watching, but this place exhausts me. I think it’s the fact that with the new language, nothing is easy here. At home, I wouldn’t have to think twice about most things, whether it was saying good morning to my family, driving myself to the grocery store, or calling my friends to see how their day was. Here, everything is hard. I have to practice what I’m going to say in my head in multiple increments before I’ll ever say a word to my family or village neighbors, and even when I finally do say it, the effort behind deciphering what they say in response is incredible. It is literally exhausting just to listen to people talk here. I feel like such a wimp. Everyone is telling me that this will get better; its just a matter of time and patience. I’m hoping it will happen sooner rather than later. Right now I think its possible that I am sleeping more than either of the babies at my house.
In other news, this week was our first big American holiday while away from home. Halloween was on Wednesday, and at first I thought I would be really lonely for home and friends, especially when I thought about how everyone is America was celebrating while I was here. In reality, it turned out to be fine. The five of us from my village, plus Maya, all went into Ashgabat and ate pizza at a restaurant and had a few beers to mark the passing of our first month of volunteerism. I had a really good time, and have finally started to realize that as much as I desperately miss my friends and family from home, the people here are really doing a lot to help me fill that void.
I was walking to school on Friday and wasn’t really paying attention to my immediate surroundings. Out of nowhere, this giant dog comes charging at me from the neighbor’s yard, snarling and snapping his teeth. Normally in America I would be thinking rabies, and fearing for my life, but things here are a little bit different. For one thing, the dogs here are jerks. They’re horrible. I have yet to meet a decent dog in Turkmenistan. They all live outside, don’t get enough to eat, and are abused and neglected from the time they’re just small puppies. The resulting product is something of a Cujo-Satan mixture. They all chase you, growl at you, try to bite you, and generally make life tedious and unpleasant. I hate Turkmen dogs. Hate them. The particular neighbor dog in question was run over by a cement truck a few days later. In America the particular event would have saddened me tremendously. Here… let’s just say I wasn’t shedding any tears. Stupid dogs.
After getting home for the day (which typically happens somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven o’clock), I usually wind up just hanging out with my host family while they listen to music, cook dinner, and play with the babies. I feel sometimes like I’m watching a live action version of the television show Pants Off, Dance Off when we’re hanging out with the babies. Ayjemal loooves to dance to anything, and for a two year old, she has a substantial repertoire of dance moves. There has been everything from samba shoulders to dropping it like its hot. It’s pretty entertaining to watch. While Ayjemal is busy shaking her groove thing, it seems like my younger baby, Hatija, never has any clothes on.
Turkmen have a very different view on how one should go about training their children to use the toilet, and part of their plan includes not using diapers. I’m serious, from the time they’re born Turkmen babies don’t wear diapers, they just keep soiling their pants over and over again. This results in an incredible amount of dirty clothing for their mothers to launder, but in theory, it speeds up the process of baby learning how to use to toilet. Either way you cut it, it means that Hatija is constantly in a “transitional” pants stage while they try to locate a clean pair to replace to freshly dirtied ones she is wearing. You’d think the kid was a nudist.
After dinner and the floor show, I usually wind up falling into bed like an old lady by no later than 8:30. I realize it seems odd that I would find myself absolutely exhausted at a time when most Americans are just settling down for a night of prime time television watching, but this place exhausts me. I think it’s the fact that with the new language, nothing is easy here. At home, I wouldn’t have to think twice about most things, whether it was saying good morning to my family, driving myself to the grocery store, or calling my friends to see how their day was. Here, everything is hard. I have to practice what I’m going to say in my head in multiple increments before I’ll ever say a word to my family or village neighbors, and even when I finally do say it, the effort behind deciphering what they say in response is incredible. It is literally exhausting just to listen to people talk here. I feel like such a wimp. Everyone is telling me that this will get better; its just a matter of time and patience. I’m hoping it will happen sooner rather than later. Right now I think its possible that I am sleeping more than either of the babies at my house.
In other news, this week was our first big American holiday while away from home. Halloween was on Wednesday, and at first I thought I would be really lonely for home and friends, especially when I thought about how everyone is America was celebrating while I was here. In reality, it turned out to be fine. The five of us from my village, plus Maya, all went into Ashgabat and ate pizza at a restaurant and had a few beers to mark the passing of our first month of volunteerism. I had a really good time, and have finally started to realize that as much as I desperately miss my friends and family from home, the people here are really doing a lot to help me fill that void.
I was walking to school on Friday and wasn’t really paying attention to my immediate surroundings. Out of nowhere, this giant dog comes charging at me from the neighbor’s yard, snarling and snapping his teeth. Normally in America I would be thinking rabies, and fearing for my life, but things here are a little bit different. For one thing, the dogs here are jerks. They’re horrible. I have yet to meet a decent dog in Turkmenistan. They all live outside, don’t get enough to eat, and are abused and neglected from the time they’re just small puppies. The resulting product is something of a Cujo-Satan mixture. They all chase you, growl at you, try to bite you, and generally make life tedious and unpleasant. I hate Turkmen dogs. Hate them. The particular neighbor dog in question was run over by a cement truck a few days later. In America the particular event would have saddened me tremendously. Here… let’s just say I wasn’t shedding any tears. Stupid dogs.
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