Okay, I’m getting a little cranky and a little homesick. Maybe more than a little. It’s cold here, like really cold, like all the time. Our clinic hasn’t has any gas (as in natural gas, as in the stuff that makes our heaters and stoves work) all week, so I’ve been freezing to death for seven hours a day, and the only consolation I’ve had has been the constant stream of warm tea that I’ve been making with my new electric tea pot. Best invention ever.
I realize it seems like I’m whining a lot about the cold considering my home state, but let’s discuss for a moment the crucial differences between “Alaska cold” and “Dashoguz cold”, shall we?
1.Alaska and Dashoguz are both approximately the same temperature when its “cold” outside, and both have low humidity, and a fair amount of snow. So far we’re batting pretty evenly, right?
2.Alaskans usually drive everywhere, with cars that have heaters that sort of, kind of work sometimes. We also have snow tires, four-wheel drive, and a general knowledge of winter driving.
Turkmen drive almost nowhere, and when they do, it’s in a taxi that has the most archaic non-functioning car heater known to man. No snow tires, no four-wheel drive, rarely even seatbelts. You can’t even stomp your feet to keep them warm because it’s possible they may go through the car’s decaying floor. Suddenly the public bus system in Anchorage is looking pretty posh.
3.Alaskans do all of their shopping in malls and supermarkets. This is typically a fast process that involves shopping carts, reasonably organized aisles of merchandise, set prices, and a bagger boy who follows you out to your car to help put the groceries in.
Turkmen do all of their shopping in an outdoor bazaar. In the freezing cold. This is a painstakingly tedious process due to the fact that Turkmen bazaars have no rhyme or reason in their product placement (one stand will sell onions, eye brow tweezers, socks, matches, and toilet paper). You could wander for hours and still not find everything on your shopping list. In addition, there is no such thing as a final price, everything has to be haggled for. This is particularly torturous when you can hardly count the agreed upon amount of money out to the seller due to the fast developing frostbite in your fingers. Finally, once you have managed to find everything you need, and managed to carry it all around the bazaar with you in a motley collection of plastic bags, you then have to find a car to take you home, with all of your groceries barely contained in your lap, as you share the back seat of a tiny four door sedan with three other people.
4.Finally (and most importantly) there is the issue of indoor heating. In Alaska, most people have pretty good insulation in their walls, and typically employ the use of natural gas heaters to keep the inside of their homes comfortable when its cold outside. If that gas should ever “go out” all we have to do is pick up the phone and call our local gas company whose perky customer service attendant will assure us that our problem is being rectified immediately.
In Turkmenistan, people most commonly use mud and hay as their primary means of insulation (and building materials, coincidentally). This is not always the most effective method of keeping one’s home warm, particularly when your primary heat source (natural gas) has a nasty habit of disappearing for days at a time. Not joking, people around here will be without gas for days, sometimes weeks. It’s hellaciously unpleasant. And when there aren’t any phones in your village, its rather challenging to call one’s gas company to complain… because I’m sure those complaints would be met by a perky customer service attendant who would reassure us that our problem is being rectified immediately…
As a result of the cold this week (and the lack of gas), I once again found myself without a school to teach at, and no one came to my pregnancy class at the clinic on Wednesday (I’m beginning to wonder if my fetal-development lesson is cursed). It was very sad. The stupid cold weather is taking all of my friends away. To compensate, I’ve begun writing letters, long ones. Having never been a big fan of letter writing, this is a big adjustment for me, but in light of the lack of internet, I think its probably my only shot at remaining sane. We’ll see how it goes. It’s nice at least to have an opportunity to express myself in English.
In other news, I found out that my gelineje is going to have a baby in August of this year, and my host-sister (who doesn’t live with us because she lives with her husband) is going to have a baby in May. I think this will make me an aunt… sort of. A host-aunt maybe? Anyway you look at it, I’m going to have two brand-new babies to play with this summer. It should be interesting. I miss Bagila, she’s been gone for three weeks. On the plus side, I feel like I’m getting to know the other nurses and doctors in my clinic better since Bagila isn’t here for me to hang out with. It’s funny how much I crave close relationships here.
Sunday came, and my homesickness came to a head. I needed to talk to my family. I had been asking around the village and other volunteers, and had finally figured out that you need to dial 101 before dialing the state code in America. So now you know, in case you were having the same trouble.
I hopped into a taxi to head into the city, and once there, headed straight to the one place I was always sure to find an American: Kelly and Dennis’s building. Peace Corps was terribly considerate, realizing that I am occasionally imbued with difficulty in finding my way around large metropolitan areas, and as a result (of me, I’m sure), they decided to put two of our city volunteers in the same apartment building, only two floors apart. The building is even on a major street, which makes it an ideal first stop whenever I happen to be in the city.
Anyways, my sister’s 21st birthday was Saturday and I was bound and determined to call and wish her a happy birthday Sunday morning (still her birthday in Alaska). I was really bummed that I wasn’t there to actually spend her birthday with her, but figured a phone call from across the globe would have to suffice. To my shock and awe, it actually worked. The cab ride into the city was cramped and bumpy, and the connection at the telegraph office was weak and static-filled, but I was able to talk to my family for almost ten minutes. It was amazing hearing their voices. I never thought a ten-minute phone call could be so important, but I was amazed at how much better I felt after talking to them. I guess just knowing that they hadn’t forgotten about me, and being able to tell them how much I missed them was all I really needed. We made a date to talk again in February, and I skipped home to the village in much better spirits. (Except I didn’t really skip, I took a long, cold, bumpy cab ride there, but almost the same, right?)
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
January 13th
So the Turkmen drink a lot of tea. I mean a whole lot of tea. I know you’re sitting there and nodding, but I’m talking like between a liter (a whole Nalgene bottle!) and a liter and half, per person, per sitting. We have tea at least 6 times a day, some times as many as 10 or 11. It’s insane. There’s no way I will ever be dehydrated in this country. Anyways, the point of the tea talk is that all of this tea clearly has to go somewhere (like the newly dug outhouse hole) and when our last teatime of the night is at 11pm, typically there is a middle of the night outhouse trip on the docket for me.
Lately I’ve been really depressed and down in the dumps. I think it was just part of my adjusting to being isolated here, but I was really apathetic for the first month I was here. I’d been staying in my room and watching a lot of TV on DVD and generally avoiding leaving my room unless absolutely necessary. So the other night I was up late watching Sex and the City until like 2 in the morning. I was really sleepy and so I started to doze off during one of the episodes. I woke up a half hour or so later and realized that my excess consumption of tea earlier that night had resulted in my needing to go to the bathroom very very badly all of a sudden. Sitting there in my nice warm room, very late at night, with my pajamas on, it was hard to imagine getting all of my warm clothes on and finding my flashlight so that I could trudge out to the outhouse in the backyard. Very hard to imagine.
It was really cold outside, like Alaska cold, and as I was trying to pep talk myself into getting up and going out, I saw my laundry-washing bucket out of the corner of my eye. That was all of the convincing I needed, I peed in my laundry bucket. Right there in my room. And then I went to bed. I know I should have gotten up and dumped it out somewhere, but I was tired and that still would have required me to get up and go outside. I figured I would just take it out the next morning or something…
To make a long story a little shorter, I didn’t take my pee bucket out for awhile. It seemed like every time I thought of it, there was someone hanging out in the living room or the kitchen, or the hallway. I’m sure it was just my guilty urine conscience, but I was convinced that if anyone saw me carrying my laundry bucket out of my room, full of some mystery liquid, they would totally know that I had peed in it. I couldn’t handle the idea of everyone in my house knowing I was a room-pee-er, so instead of doing anything rational to rid my bedroom of my new honey bucket, I hid it under the bed.
I tried to set my alarm a few times so that I would wake up really early in the morning and have an opportunity to take it out before everyone woke up, but that didn’t work. You know the snooze alarm and me, we are fond bedmates. After four days, the situation had become desperate. My room is really warm (I have a good heater) and the heat combined with the fact that I had a BUCKET of PEE under my bed, totally reeked it up.
About that time I decided to take a personal day from work. In truth, I wasn’t really sick, but I was still down in a depressed funk and I just needed a day to stay home and do nothing. To make it easier, I just told my family that I had diarrhea. I thought it was perfect, an entire day of hanging out reading and watching DVDs with no work and no family bugging me because I was “sick” in bed. Awesome. Until my host mom decided to bring me some soup in bed and stepped into my bedroom.
Bless her heart, she had the grace to only make a little face before she brought the soup over to my bed, but she definitely noticed the particular aroma that had enveloped my sleeping space. I made a mental note to deal with the issue ASAP and went about eating my soup and lounging some more. The next thing I know, my host mom comes back into my room and starts cleaning it! She was going all out, sweeping the carpets and wiping down the windowsills and definitely on a mission to find out what was causing the stink. I was terrified that she was going to figure out what I had done and kept trying to tell her that I could do the cleaning myself. She wouldn’t hear of it, since I was “sick” and so I sat there praying she wouldn’t decide to clean under the bed.
After twenty minutes of room cleaning, with no sign of the smelly culprit, host mom decided that it must be a bad spirit. Yes, I am being completely serious. She became convinced that a bad spirit was making my room stink, and that it was also the cause of my intestinal illness. If she only knew. So she brought in a big metal cauldron and put a bunch of traditional herbs and twigs from some sacred tree in there and lit the whole thing on fire. The room immediately filled with this thick black smoke and my Peace Corps-issued smoke detector started screaming at the top of its little mechanical lungs. What the hell? All I had wanted to do was avoid going to the bathroom in the cold. This was ridiculous.
After ten minutes of being prayed over, with the black smoke filling the room, and the smoke alarm rendering me completely deaf, host mom pronounced me “cured” from my evil-spirit infestation. She took the cauldron and left my room; I grabbed my surreptitious bucket of pee and made for the outhouse as if my life depended on it. Evidence disposed of, and lesson learned. Moral of the story: don’t pee in your room, you will go deaf.
Lately I’ve been really depressed and down in the dumps. I think it was just part of my adjusting to being isolated here, but I was really apathetic for the first month I was here. I’d been staying in my room and watching a lot of TV on DVD and generally avoiding leaving my room unless absolutely necessary. So the other night I was up late watching Sex and the City until like 2 in the morning. I was really sleepy and so I started to doze off during one of the episodes. I woke up a half hour or so later and realized that my excess consumption of tea earlier that night had resulted in my needing to go to the bathroom very very badly all of a sudden. Sitting there in my nice warm room, very late at night, with my pajamas on, it was hard to imagine getting all of my warm clothes on and finding my flashlight so that I could trudge out to the outhouse in the backyard. Very hard to imagine.
It was really cold outside, like Alaska cold, and as I was trying to pep talk myself into getting up and going out, I saw my laundry-washing bucket out of the corner of my eye. That was all of the convincing I needed, I peed in my laundry bucket. Right there in my room. And then I went to bed. I know I should have gotten up and dumped it out somewhere, but I was tired and that still would have required me to get up and go outside. I figured I would just take it out the next morning or something…
To make a long story a little shorter, I didn’t take my pee bucket out for awhile. It seemed like every time I thought of it, there was someone hanging out in the living room or the kitchen, or the hallway. I’m sure it was just my guilty urine conscience, but I was convinced that if anyone saw me carrying my laundry bucket out of my room, full of some mystery liquid, they would totally know that I had peed in it. I couldn’t handle the idea of everyone in my house knowing I was a room-pee-er, so instead of doing anything rational to rid my bedroom of my new honey bucket, I hid it under the bed.
I tried to set my alarm a few times so that I would wake up really early in the morning and have an opportunity to take it out before everyone woke up, but that didn’t work. You know the snooze alarm and me, we are fond bedmates. After four days, the situation had become desperate. My room is really warm (I have a good heater) and the heat combined with the fact that I had a BUCKET of PEE under my bed, totally reeked it up.
About that time I decided to take a personal day from work. In truth, I wasn’t really sick, but I was still down in a depressed funk and I just needed a day to stay home and do nothing. To make it easier, I just told my family that I had diarrhea. I thought it was perfect, an entire day of hanging out reading and watching DVDs with no work and no family bugging me because I was “sick” in bed. Awesome. Until my host mom decided to bring me some soup in bed and stepped into my bedroom.
Bless her heart, she had the grace to only make a little face before she brought the soup over to my bed, but she definitely noticed the particular aroma that had enveloped my sleeping space. I made a mental note to deal with the issue ASAP and went about eating my soup and lounging some more. The next thing I know, my host mom comes back into my room and starts cleaning it! She was going all out, sweeping the carpets and wiping down the windowsills and definitely on a mission to find out what was causing the stink. I was terrified that she was going to figure out what I had done and kept trying to tell her that I could do the cleaning myself. She wouldn’t hear of it, since I was “sick” and so I sat there praying she wouldn’t decide to clean under the bed.
After twenty minutes of room cleaning, with no sign of the smelly culprit, host mom decided that it must be a bad spirit. Yes, I am being completely serious. She became convinced that a bad spirit was making my room stink, and that it was also the cause of my intestinal illness. If she only knew. So she brought in a big metal cauldron and put a bunch of traditional herbs and twigs from some sacred tree in there and lit the whole thing on fire. The room immediately filled with this thick black smoke and my Peace Corps-issued smoke detector started screaming at the top of its little mechanical lungs. What the hell? All I had wanted to do was avoid going to the bathroom in the cold. This was ridiculous.
After ten minutes of being prayed over, with the black smoke filling the room, and the smoke alarm rendering me completely deaf, host mom pronounced me “cured” from my evil-spirit infestation. She took the cauldron and left my room; I grabbed my surreptitious bucket of pee and made for the outhouse as if my life depended on it. Evidence disposed of, and lesson learned. Moral of the story: don’t pee in your room, you will go deaf.
Sunday, January 6, 2008
The Week of Village Life
Okay, I miss home now. I never realized how hard it was going to be to be the only American within a huge distance. Dashoguz Turkmen is a lot different than the Turkmen I (sort of) learned in training and its really hard to communicate with people in my village. I can tell they really want to include me in things, and they all seem really nice, but I just want to cry at how hard it is to understand them, and how much I miss having another American around to talk to when I’m feeling stressed. Right now my most significant confidant is the cat who lives with me. His name is Puffy (it used to be “cat” until I got here, but I decided to name him) and he is now my official boyfriend in Gok Chage.
Turkmen don’t really celebrate Christmas, but they most defnitely celebrate New Years. It’s a huge deal around here and they actually celebrate new yers in a fashion very similar to how most Americans celebrate Christmas. They have a “New Years Tree” and “Ayaz Baba” (who bears a striking resemblance to Santa Clause). They also have a tradition of visiting a huge amount of houses on New Years Eve, and doing a massive quantity of vodka shooting at each house before they move on to the next stop. Welcome to a new year in Turkmenistan. When it finally came to midnight, I had managed to drink upwards of seventeen shots of vodka and multiple glasses of cognac and champagne. I gotta tell you, Americans have nothing on Turkmen when it comes to alcohol tolerance. Meanwhile, I could hardly focus to see the hands of the clock tick to midnight. Welcome to 2008.
For the rest of the work week I tagged around with Bagila as she went on house visits (aka patronage), and worked in her office. As much as I found it fascinating to watch her work with the villagers, it still seemed incredibly frustrating that I could hardly understand anything she said to me or any of the conversations that were going on between her and the villagers. I know I’m whining right now, but I really wish someone in Gok Chage spoke English!
By Friday my linguistic isolation was driving me stir crazy, and I decided to do something about it. I knew that Jon (another T-16) lived in Boldumsoz, which is a village only half an hour up the road from Gok Chage. I couldn’t exactly remember where he lived there, but I figured that in my desperate state, I would be able to sense his American-ness regardless of his location. At least I hoped so… I tried to go both Friday and Saturday, but each time something managed to come up that prevented me from making it out there. I did manage to go to a wedding and a few birthday parties though.
Sunday was such a relief; I finally managed to get over to Jon’s village and after asking around for “the American”, we managed to find his house. He and I talked (in English!) and he came with me and my family to run errands in Dashoguz city. We had planned on trying to check our e-mail and the post office box while we were there, but were unfortunately informed that both the internet café and the post office were only opened Monday through Saturday. At least I got to see another American, even if I still wasn’t able to hear from anyone “on the outside”. I realized it’s the first opportunity that I have had to speak conversational English (unless you count the cat) since the 27th of December when I had a chance to talk to Noah.
Turkmen don’t really celebrate Christmas, but they most defnitely celebrate New Years. It’s a huge deal around here and they actually celebrate new yers in a fashion very similar to how most Americans celebrate Christmas. They have a “New Years Tree” and “Ayaz Baba” (who bears a striking resemblance to Santa Clause). They also have a tradition of visiting a huge amount of houses on New Years Eve, and doing a massive quantity of vodka shooting at each house before they move on to the next stop. Welcome to a new year in Turkmenistan. When it finally came to midnight, I had managed to drink upwards of seventeen shots of vodka and multiple glasses of cognac and champagne. I gotta tell you, Americans have nothing on Turkmen when it comes to alcohol tolerance. Meanwhile, I could hardly focus to see the hands of the clock tick to midnight. Welcome to 2008.
For the rest of the work week I tagged around with Bagila as she went on house visits (aka patronage), and worked in her office. As much as I found it fascinating to watch her work with the villagers, it still seemed incredibly frustrating that I could hardly understand anything she said to me or any of the conversations that were going on between her and the villagers. I know I’m whining right now, but I really wish someone in Gok Chage spoke English!
By Friday my linguistic isolation was driving me stir crazy, and I decided to do something about it. I knew that Jon (another T-16) lived in Boldumsoz, which is a village only half an hour up the road from Gok Chage. I couldn’t exactly remember where he lived there, but I figured that in my desperate state, I would be able to sense his American-ness regardless of his location. At least I hoped so… I tried to go both Friday and Saturday, but each time something managed to come up that prevented me from making it out there. I did manage to go to a wedding and a few birthday parties though.
Sunday was such a relief; I finally managed to get over to Jon’s village and after asking around for “the American”, we managed to find his house. He and I talked (in English!) and he came with me and my family to run errands in Dashoguz city. We had planned on trying to check our e-mail and the post office box while we were there, but were unfortunately informed that both the internet café and the post office were only opened Monday through Saturday. At least I got to see another American, even if I still wasn’t able to hear from anyone “on the outside”. I realized it’s the first opportunity that I have had to speak conversational English (unless you count the cat) since the 27th of December when I had a chance to talk to Noah.
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