The Week of Disapointment

This week started out so promisingly, but quickly found itself in a strong backslide. Tuesday I was supposed to teach my very first health class at the local school. I decided to teach about dental health, and I was so excited. Whenever we had taught health to the kids in our training village, they had loved it, and I was hoping it would be the same story with my new village children. I went in, armed with my prettiest pictures of teeth (which I had stayed up all night drawing), the words to the “brush your teeth” song, and my flashiest Turkmen dress. I was unstoppable. Or so I thought.

I showed up to the school fully expecting to be welcomed with open scholastic arms, but instead was greeted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Through chattering teeth, the school staff informed me that their students were MIA due to the fact that the school’s heater was broken and the resulting ambient temperature made learning next to impossible. I could have cried. Drat mother nature for conspiring against my healthy tooth lesson. I went back on Thursday, hoping for another shot at it, but was tragically informed that the heating would be out for the remainder of the week. Wimpy kids. So what if they couldn’t feel their fingers or toes while we sang the brush your teeth song, at least they’d have pretty pictures to look at. Right?

Wednesday dawned with a distinct opportunity to redeem the week. It was the day of my second seminar for pregnant mothers. After the success of last week, I was heading in with high hopes. I had planned out a lesson on the stages of fetal development, and couldn’t wait to tell my mothers all about it. All of the ladies who had been there the week before had promised to return for this week’s exciting continuation, and as I sat there waiting for the minutes to tick by until ten o’clock (the class’s starting time), I could hardly contain myself.

I’ll admit, when the clock had reached 10:25, and there was still no sign of any pregnant mothers, my enthusiasm began to dim slightly, but I remained optimistic. Maybe they were stuck in traffic or something. Because I’m sure there’s a lot of cows and stuff on the road this time of day… By 11:30, I resigned myself to the fact that no one was going to come for my lesson on fetal development. I wanted to cry (just a little), but instead decided to drown my sorrows in an emergency snickers bar I had been saving for just such an occasion. Even though the circumstances were less than optimal, it was still pretty dang tasty.

On Friday, I knew things were going to turn around for the better. I had talked my boss into letting me skip out on work for the day to go into the city to use the internet and check my mail at the post office. Usually these things would be minimal blips in the schedule of my life, however, it had been almost a month since I had had an opportunity to check my e-mail, and for someone who checked it multiple times during the day in America, the wait was killing me.

I met up with another volunteer (Alice), and the two of us proceeded to track down the first stop on our wild list of communication tasks: the post office. I had a package that I’d been meaning to mail to my parents for the better part of the past two months, and figured that it was the perfect opportunity to do so. After waiting in line for almost two hours, I suddenly began to doubt the intelligence of my choice, but was far too committed by then to cease and desist. Upon getting to the head of the line, Alice and I were so happy to see the final postage being placed on the package, we could have kissed the wrinkled old woman manning the counter, it didn’t even matter to me that I had paid twice what I should have to send it, and had absolutely no incoming mail in the mailbox. At least I had managed to accomplish something.

After eating lunch, we were ready to tackle the local internet café. Accustomed to the notion of waiting after our morning of post office merriment, the two of us weren’t even fazed by the forty minutes it took for the internet to dial up and connect. Once the internet finally came, I realized the tragic reality. Somewhere in all the excitement of welcoming the new volunteers, the current Dashoguz volunteers had failed to mention that access to America-based internet sites (including Hotmail, Myspace, and Blogspot) was blocked. Do not pass go; do not collect two hundred dollars. After dreaming of internet access for the past 24 days, I finally had it, but couldn’t access any of the sites that I needed it for. The irony was overwhelming. Alice mentioned to me that there was a Russian-based e-mail that I could sign up for, which I did, but after seeing that it took over half an hour to send a single e-mail with it, I began to realize that I very realistically was going to have to kiss internet use goodbye until I made it into Ashgabat in July. Whoa Nellie. So this is what they mean when they talk about “roughing it”. Boo.

My morale was absolutely in the toilet by the time Alice and I left the internet café, and at that point I was desperate; I needed contact with America and I needed it right then. I was so desperate that I decided to go to the telegraph office to call my parents. There are two important factors to keep in mind as you picture this. First of all, it costs a dollar a minute to call America from Turkmenistan, and my salary for an entire month is only $93. Secondly, it was 3:45 in the afternoon as I headed to the telegraph office, which would make it almost 2 o’clock in the morning in Alaska. Clearly I was in a very reasonable state of mind.

As I came into the telegraph office, the woman at the counter could tell from my stormy expression that I meant business. As I began writing out my request to call home, I realized tragically that I had no idea what code I needed to dial to get to America. I hoped the counter lady would know, but as I asked her (in less than excellent Turkmen) what numbers I needed to put before my state code, her blank expression told me all that I needed to know. I was SOL. I tried asking a few people in line if they knew what numbers you needed to dial to call America, but the results were similar to my having asked them if they knew how to walk to Antarctica. (“America? Why would you call America?”)

In review: no phone, no internet, no mail. In short, no communication at all, and no chance of coming into the city to try again for at least another two weeks, according to my boss. My best chance of getting word from the outside world was to employ the use of a carrier pigeon. Where am I? The twilight zone? I understand that as a Peace Corps volunteer I’m going to have to get used to living differently than I did in America, but this is… hard. At least harder than I thought it would be. I miss home.

There were some plus sides to the week. For one thing, I think my office has developed into the official lunchroom at the clinic. I’m not going to kid myself into thinking its entirely because of my sparkling wit and charm (although I’m suuure that is probably the bulk of the cause); my office actually has somehow been blessed with the most effective heating out of all of the offices in our clinic. I realize that heating doesn’t usually enter one’s mind when considering a good lunch location, but when its negative thirty degrees Celsius (this is very very cold in case you were wondering), effective heating suddenly becomes a major consideration for the location of anything you do, from eating lunch at work, to doing one’s laundry, to going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. (I’ll admit it, one night I opted to pee in my Nalgene bottle instead of braving the elements. Don’t ask for details, you don’t want them. Trust me.) Anyways, the point is that socially I am beginning to fit in at the clinic really well, with all of my nurses and my counterpart eating in my office every day. It’s a nice feeling.

I’ve also started running. Not a lot, don’t get too excited, it was really only jogging, but it was really great to get outdoors and in the fresh air. There’s been a significant amount of snow here lately, and my family lives near to the outer edge of our village, so after about five minutes I am out of the village and surrounded by an empty snowy wonderland. Just me, my iPod, and an occasional passing car on the way to the next village up the road. There’s even a railroad track that I can see from where I walk. I love it. Everything is quiet and clean. It’s a great cure for the homesickness and isolation I’ve been feeling the past few weeks, I just clear my mind of all of the mental clutter and appreciate the surrounding Turkmen wilderness.

The only down side is the occasional canine companions I encounter on my forays into communion with nature. As we have discussed, I could live without the dogs in this place, and the dogs I ran into this week were no exception. They usually just growl and bare their teeth from a distance, but one afternoon a particularly irritating specimen actually came hauling after me, hell bent for ankle grabbing. My normal reaction in the situation would have been to freak out and hope that a large able-bodied Turkmen man was nearby to protect me, but I was in an especially intolerant mood and had a particularly aggressive song playing on my iPod. Instead of retreating in fright, I turned around and started running after him hollering expletives and death threats while making like I was going to grab him. It turns out the dog was all bark and no bite (thankfully) and the little coward tucked his tail between his legs and took off after realizing that I outweighed him by more than a few pounds. Ha. One bastard dog down, 1.5 million more to go. Bring it on.