I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Krygyzstan from 2005-2007. I worked as a TEFL/Community Development Volunteer. This is my story.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
No Worries.
I just didn't want anyone to worry about me because I won't be posting for another couple weeks. My director took a vacation so he won't be able to review my blogs until he gets back and I think I am assuming correctly that he'll also have a lot of other stuff to take care of. I think it'll be one of those situations where I'll end up posting four or five blogs at a time every few weeks. It's not ideal because a lot of the material will be dated by then but I don't really have a choice. Oh well.
A little shout out:
Jess, I forgot to do this one earlier, but thanks so much for the Curious George Soundtrack, I love it so much and I listen to it all the time. I am circulating the disc around to the other volunteers so they can put it on their i-pods too.
The month of May should go by quickly, only 27 days, 15 hours and 32 minutes until I leave for Istanbul...
I have never been a person to take myself seriously. Those of you who know me know that when people laugh at me, I am usually laughing the hardest. Well I reached a new low last week in school. I was teaching body parts and illnesses to my 10th grade class and in front of them I sang the "heads, shoulders, knees and toes" song. I think all my students lost a little respect for me after I did that. Note to self: only sing and dance in front of my 6th grade class.
One of my best friends from Australia noticed how people always seem to come to my rescue and help me out. He said, something about you just screams helpless and people are always just waiting to take care of you. I really couldn't argue with him, I know I'm not entirely helpless but I do seem to elicit help from other people pretty frequently. On purpose or not. So lately my village cow hasn't been producing much milk and I love to eat oatmeal in the mornings and I'm sick of just plain water. The other day I went on a quest to find out who else sells milk in the village. I went to 3 houses and finally I asked a grandpa if he knew where I could go to get milk. He must have been so happy that I asked him because he personally took me around to each of the houses where he knew sold the best milk and bought me a liter. He's actually one of my neighbors and he told me that he sees me walking around all the time but has never tried to talk to me so he asked me the standard, "what are you doing here" questions. Even 10,000 miles away from home, people don't think I'm self-reliant.
Side note: Mary Ellen, I am snacking on the pop tarts you sent me right now and they taste sooooo good. Thanks again for being so thoughtful.
I have always noticed young boys playing outside in the streets and they are always playing this game involving rocks. I finally started paying more attention and after watching them all line up and take turns throwing their rocks, it occurred to me that they are actually playing "bocce ball" without the shiny colorful ready-made balls. It never ceases to amaze me how resourceful kids can be, no matter what country they're in.
So my host brother went back to his hometown, Kochkor for a few days and brought back with him a huge smile and… his little sister. Recently, his 17-year-old sister was kidnapped and his family is afraid that his 15-year-old sister will be kidnapped too, far too young for a bride, even by Kyrgyz standards. So now she’s living here and is going to find a job in the city, and maybe finish school? But I don’t know if that’s in the plans or not. So now we have 6 people living in my house, Bocktaer and I have our own rooms, Jildez and Kundus share a room, Japara sleeps in our living room on the couch and now his little sister is sleeping in our “dining room”. As for now, I’m laying low, observing how things are going, waiting for the fun to start. Earlier Jildez told me that everyone was leaving and by summer it would just be Jildez, Kundus and I but as far as I can see, we keep adding, not subtracting people.
The weather has been warm all week which means the kids turned into little hooligans over night. When I first came here, I was like a novelty to them, they listened, they worked, they hung on my every word. Now that they realize I’m just a normal person and not some superhero from America, they lost all interest in me and could really care less about my English lessons. Trying to motivate my students is the hardest part and this week I had it up to here (think forehead) with them. They know I’m not going to punish them but now they are blatantly taking advantage of me (coming into class 30 minutes late, talking through the entire lesson) and I’ve had enough. This was probably my most eventful week so far. I broke up my first fight; I threw one kid out of class, I told one kid not to come for the rest of the quarter and canceled my English club for an entire class of kids who didn’t do their homework. Look who's boss, now.
Ever since being here I have taken on a new perspective of life and how to deal with the end of it. Every time I am on the 45-minute marshrutka ride back from Bishkek I pass through miles and miles of cemeteries and graveyards. It seems like it is the main area where the people of Kyrgyzstan are laid to rest. Some of them are on hillsides, some of them are on valleys, some of them have gravestones, and some of them have mausoleums.
I think its part of the culture not to attach sadness as a means to deal with death. Yes, people mourn, but it’s in the context of paying respects, not for what is actually gone. My host Mama is 69 years old and she talks about dying all the time and every time she starts, I go to yell at her to tell her not to “talk like that”. Tanya corrects me and says, no she’s old, and it’s about her time. There’s no morbid undertone. They don’t assign meaning to death like that. Here you live your life and when you are unable to do all of the things you have done for yourself all along, then that’s it. It’s your time and they know when that time is and they’re ready. They’re ready without regrets, they just know that they have done the best they could.
For fear of sounding too psychological, I will try to be brief- but also since being here, life has changed in meaning for me too. Back at home we put so much emphasis on the question, “Am I happy?” And we wonder if our lives are fulfilling. I guess that is expected considering we don’t have to worry about where our next meal is going to come from or if we’ll have enough money to heat our home through the next winter. Here, it’s not a question of happiness, it’s a question of duty. Are you doing your job? Are you doing it well? It just seems like downsizing makes everything so much less complicated. Don’t worry though, I haven’t done a total 180… I still love my ipod just as much as the next person.
During our Pre-Service Training everyone tried to drill in our heads that this is an indirect culture and people won’t tell you if you are offending them or doing something wrong. I have one response: not true. This is as direct of a culture as I have ever seen one, more direct than anything I have previously experienced. I have been put in my place more times than I can count including the time the Russian lady told me that I needed to be skinny. Indirect? Not so much.
The other day I was sitting on a marshrutka with a box filled with Easter candy (thanks, Mom!) and a heavy bag at my feet. This girl, my age or younger was sitting next to me and another guy was sitting next to her. Let me just say that I am a huge baby about standing on the marshrutka on my ride home. I have had my face in more armpits than I’d like to count and having it pressed against the glass isn’t a pleasant alternative. With that said, this grandma approached us and as I’m waiting for the girl next to me to give her seat up, I’m sending a few nasty looks her way until the guy finally stands up. The grandma looked at both the girl and me and said, “and you are both younger than he is and you didn’t even think to give your seats up, you should be ashamed of yourselves.” I gave a feeble, “I don’t speak Russian, look at this heavy box on my lap” whimpering look but she didn’t seem to accept that as a good enough explanation.
Another time, back in December, Tana and I were waiting for the rest of our group to show up at the ballet, we were all going to see the Nutcracker. We had stopped and sat on the ledge for about .5 seconds when this man came up behind us and scolded us for sitting on the cement (the common legend here is that if a girl sits down on the cold ground then her ovaries will freeze). This is when our Russian skills were even worse than they are now so we didn’t quite understand what he was getting at until he started to motion towards us like he was about to push us. We quickly got the point after that.
Women and my sisters in particular always nag me to wear make-up and do my hair. It mostly comes down to me being lazy and not wanting to put the time and effort into looking decent. Like college, only worse. Seeing pictures of me really drives the point home when they see my long hair and made-up face. Half the time people don’t even realize it’s me. Am I really that hideous??
Practically every time someone figures out that I am an American they quickly bombard me with questions. I have finally gotten used to the, “which is better, here or there?” question and have a pretty standard, diplomatic answer, “it’s not better here, it’s not better there, it’s just different”. The other two most common questions (simultaneously) are, ‘How old are you?’ and ‘Are you Married?’ The minute “22 and no” escapes my mouth they are already telling me that I’m old and that I should be married by now and how they already had 7 children by my age and how no one’s going to want to marry me past the age of 23 (there goes all my hopes and dreams) then they usually proposition me with a son or distant relative that they want to marry off. I usually have a pretty sour taste in my mouth at this point so I just say that I don’t need a husband and I don’t want to get married now or ever (which usually sends them into fits of hysteria and rambling rants about how women need men). I wasn’t even aware that I had a biological clock before I got here but now I feel like it’s more of a biological time bomb. I am constantly on the defensive here, making sure I don’t step on any toes and follow the correct protocol for standing on marshrutkas. My Russian is finally getting better to be able to understand and respond to certain situations. Me being the kind of person I am, have even started to provoke people once they start getting on my case. I figure I have to keep myself entertained if I am going to go through a long line of questioning about the lack of husband and children in my life. Now I find it kind of funny and besides, I don’t even see why it should matter at this point; after all, my ovaries are already frozen.
One thing I have successfully done in Kyrgyzstan so far has been getting over my fear of the dark. I know, I know, what business does a 22-year old having being afraid of the dark? For 20 years (minus the 2 years I was still crawling around) I have been conditioned to creep around corners, expecting something to jump out of me at any minute- I am sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my older brother and I had “scaring wars” for a good 15 years. I’d have to say the worst was when he waited under my bed for oh, I don’t know, 3 hours- just until the moment I was about to tuck myself into bed for a blissful night’s sleep when he reached out from underneath and grabbed my ankles. At 10 years old, I was about to set the record for being the youngest person in history to have a heart attack. Anyone who has heard me scream before knows my shrill, blood-curling trademark; I guess I developed that perfect ‘horror movie’ scream after many years of practice. At night I still have a lot more stuff to be afraid of here, such as random town drunks and rabid dogs going through the trash but I have seem to have gotten over my fear. I know this because I can now walk to my outhouse back and forth without a flashlight (before I was armed with a flashlight, a stick, and a rock). Alright, so I may not be over my fear 100% but I’m getting there.
I know I said I’d write about what I’ve been doing for the last month or so but frankly I just don’t have the energy to sit down, rehash everything and put it into words eloquent enough to grace my dear reader’s eyes. I’m emotional enough as it is without having to live through everything twice. So let me just say that IST was a really good time, but now a lot of it is only remembered as one big blur. I guess that’s expected when we had around 7 hours of sessions a day then partied from 5 p.m. into the wee hours of the morning... Every. Single. Night. It’s the first time I felt like I was in college since, well… college. Plus we had a lot more at stake here because the next time we will all be together again as a group is in another 8 months. Then after that not till the very end at our Close of Service conference. I definitely wore myself out. We all did. As overwhelming as it was at times it turned out to be a lot of fun.
Also, I haven’t written because not a whole lot has been going on. I had my spring break for 2 weeks but it was really slow because we were banned from travel the entire time because of the anniversary of the revolution. I read, studied Russian, read and studied Russian. That’s about it. The travel restriction timing couldn’t have been worse because a few of us wanted to go down to Jalal-abad or Osh for spring break. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to make time for all that in the next two years.
Last weekend (4.7.06) I went back to Koshoi to see my old host family. Some of the Kyrgyz group ended up going home too because Anna’s birthday and her host Mom’s were both in April. Our plan was to all hang out at my house like old times but I got really really sick again (food poisoning? parasites? no idea?) so I basically laid around all weekend, moaning and groaning in agony. My host mom pulled out the big guns when she said, “you’re not allowed to leave this house until you finish your bowl of rice” my response wasn’t any better, I pouted and pouted and ate one grain of rice at a time until I finished two full tablespoons and finally pushed it away. I guess if I am treated like a child, I also tend to act like one. So all week I’ve had absolutely no energy to do anything and I just feel weak and run down. It’s weird, back home I used to get really sick once a year- here it seems to be once a month. At least I know to expect it now.
Oh yeah, I am also happy to report (for those who care) that my hair is now shoulder-length. For those who didn’t know, I chopped off a good 12 inches of my hair right before I left and donated it to locks-for-love to make the once-a-week banya washings easier. In a lot of ways it turned out to be a blessing because it’s much more manageable this way (and by, ‘manageable’ I really mean, ‘I hate it. It’s ugly. I can’t wait for it to grow back because when I chopped my hair off, it took my personality with it’). I’m waiting to trim it in Turkey because I don’t want someone to botch it. I’ve seen too many bad hairstyles happen to good people here.
A few people have sent me e-mails regarding my mysterious last post that included the Pink Floyd lyrics with no explanation. I have always been a spoiler of surprises but this time there isn’t one. I have been listening to the song for the past few months and just find it shockingly appropriate at times and since I was lazy and didn’t want to post, I thought it would be a good alternative. That’s all. Besides, ‘you’ know who ‘you’ are. Muahahaha.
I am still waiting for clearance on whether or not I can post my 4 most recent posts but I'm being patient.
But I did want to thank some people really quickly:
Mary Ellen, I got your package, thanks so much! You're right about candy being a good way into kid's hearts, I can't wait to use it in my lessons as prizes and stuff like that. I recall one instance when a volunteer bought a snickers as a game prize. Well as it turns out, none of the kids listened and were being too rowdy so he stopped the game, opened up the snickers and ate it in front of all the kids. I hope it doesn't come to that for me.
Julie, you're the best big sis ever! I got the magazines and pictuers you sent, you and Christian look so cute together!
Kathy, I got your Easter package, I definitely went on a sugar binge last night and thanks for the earrings too, hopefully I'll start to feel girly again!
Mrs. John, I got the pictures you sent from Lace's bachelorette party, as usual you girls look great and thanks for the magazines, I will definitely use them for lesson plans when I finish reading them!
Hey Kathy. I promise all is well, it's just now I have to follow a certain procedure before I can post it because like I said before, freedom does not come without certain consequences. Don't worry, I do have some stuff to post soon it's just in transition right now. Coming soon...
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here.
Note: these ramblings, observations, attitudes, beliefs, opinions and views do not in any way relfect those of Peace Corps or the United States Goverment.... so don't even think about it.
