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.