Yo-yos

Subject: Yo-yos

Dear friends,

Fall Break!!

Independence Day is October 27 and to celebrate we have
a week off school.

I'm still crazy busy with tying up loose ends, but I came up to the city this afternoon for an evening with friends and cold beers.

I'm having a pizza party for my younger students this Friday
and a big going away party on Halloween. It'll be lots of fun -- some
other volunteers are coming, the women teachers were all invited, and
we're going to have dancing and a videographer so I can show all of
you a little Turkmenistan.

Anyway. I don't have any deep thoughts on culture this week; ran out
of time. I'll try to get at least one more email out before I leave.

Instead, I hope you'll be satisfied with a note on the erratic Turkmen
weather and my concerns about leaving my desert home.

Lots of love,
Jess


My life in Turkmenistan has been that of a yo-yo: I've been jerked
around by my emotions and I've been jerked around by the environment.
I know I sound like I'm stuck on repeat about this, but you would not
believe how sudden the weather changes here. Yes, we have had a few
autumnal days in the past month, but for the most part, October felt
like September. Which is to say, cool in the morning (60 degrees or
so) and hot in the afternoon (over 80). I could walk outside in the
middle of the night in a t-shirt and cropped pajama pants and not feel
chilled. There was nothing that prepared us for yesterday morning –
no wind storm, no subsequently cooler days, nothing. Instead, I woke
up and it was 50 degrees outside. And I thought, well it'll warm up
this afternoon. It did not. The whole day was breezy and cool. I
had to sleep in socks, pants, and a long sleeved t-shirt. This
morning I was hit in the face with cold when I walked outside. I saw
my breath when I yawned. Garagoz was feeling super frisky as cooler
weather suits his thick pelt. I threw a stick for him, went to the
outhouse, peeked at the temperature, and returned inside rosy cheeked
and marveling at the fact that a mere two days ago I was putzing
around outside in a t-shirt and shorts and now I would have to bust
out my fuzzy slippers and pack my shorts because 40 degrees is too
cold for bare feet and knees.

40 degrees. 40 degrees. The morning temperature dropped 20 degrees
in two days. Does that happen at home? Does it? In the desert –
places similar to my Turkmen environment? It must; certainly this
can't be a global anomaly, but I come from a place where the
temperature gracefully rises and falls with the changing seasons. The
sudden yank of the yo-yo string that is Turkmenistan's temperature is
unsettling.

Anyhow.

I've gotten a lot of emails recently that say, "It sounds like you're
ready to come home!" And I suppose I am to an extent. I mean, yeah,
it'll be nice to start my next adventure – I'm going back out to
Colorado (where I will suffer shock at the low temperatures, I'm sure)
and applying to graduate school. But I'm also sad to leave. I have
established a life here and it's not one I'll be able to recreate ever
again. I would love to return to Turkmenistan in the future, but that
depends on the visa gods and their whimsical benevolence.

October has felt like an hour glass: you know those sand timers you
get in board games? The grains of sand always seem to be moving
slower when you first turn it over, but as the sand runs out, the
grains go faster and faster? October started out slow as molasses
and now it's the end of October and I think, "Gosh, where has the time
gone?"

How does it make me feel? I don't know. I don't feel anything. I'm
not bored anymore and that has quenched most of my deepest longings to
come home. And I'm comfortable here. Despite all the quirks in
Turkmenistan, and often because of them, I like it here. It's a
simple life, but there's so much to learn and see. What will I have
to write about when I get home?

Obviously I'll be comfortable at home, too. Of course I'll like it (I
hope so anyway). And I am so looking forward to picking up my
friendships that have been put on pause due to slow mail delivery, my
lack of access to communication devices, and high long-distance
prices. It'll be great to talk to my parents more than once a week.
It'll be nice to dry my laundry in a dryer and not have it freeze
overnight. And, ooooh, the cheese.

Yet, I worry: Visions of home dance through my head – of going to the
library, of buying organic greens at the grocery store, of driving
back roads, of walking through crunchy fall leaves in Masonic Homes,
of driving the back roads I know by heart. I yearn for these memories
to become truth once again, but today as I was squatting in the
outhouse, I began to wonder if I wouldn't be disappointed when I got
home. We have this image of "America" that we hold and cherish and
idealize for two years; I worry that it won't live up to our
expectations. I worry it won't live up to my expectations. I'll go
to the grocery store and think, "This is it? I imagined this moment
for two years and this is it?" And really, what should I expect?
It's just a grocery store after all. I am trying to be realistic. I
want my homecoming to be this bombastic affair, but I have a feeling
that my return to my oft dreamed about motherland will be much more
whimper than bang.

Sigh. I don't have a choice though; my visa expires on December 5 and
no one in our group has been allowed to extend for a third year. And
it could be worse, right? I mean, I am going home after all. Even if
it's boring, I'll still have access to uncensored internet, libraries
stocked with books, seatbelts, and mozzarella.

Oh, America. May you live up to all my hopes and dreams.

In exactly one month from tomorrow...

I will be home. It's nuts. And I have OODLES to do before I leave.. The bright side is that when I procrastinate these days, I usually end up working on my personal statements for graduate school.

Anyway.

Hi.

So, it's Saturday afternoon. It's hot -- well, warm, anyway. We've all escaped our villages to hang out at Collin's tonight, which won't be the last time, but could be the second-to-last time. In truth, I feel kind of guilty about leaving my host family since I've only got 4 weeks left with them. On the other hand, I need cheese.

Suddenly craving mozzarella,
Jessica

And here we go:

"Miss Manners"

We all leave Turkmenistan changed. On the whole, I think I'll leave this country an improved person: I'm more patient and flexible, an astute problem solver, and I'm slowly getting over my perfectionism. However, this country has not exerted a totally positive influence on me. Some things have changed for the worse. Here's a run-down of the bad-habits I've adopted over the past two years:

1. Table manners – forget asking anyone to pass the salt and pepper, if we need something in Turkmenistan, we just reach across the table and grab it. Got something on your plate I want to try? Please don't mind if I help myself to your food. Double dipping? No one bats an eye. And I just might eat ice-cream out of the carton, too.

2. Queuing – there is no such thing as standing in line in Turkmenistan. When we're in a situation where there would be an ordered line in the US, we merely ask who is last and remember who we're behind and who came after us. We can sit or walk away or hover, it doesn't matter; the verbal standing reigns. In a hurry? Butt. It works most of the time. Not in a hurry? Butt. Especially waiting to board planes. Don't join in the back of the throng of waiting people but enter the mass of bodies directly at the front. No one will say anything.

3. Posture – two years of sitting on the floor and eating off six-inch-high tables wrecks one's posture. My posture is dreadful; I consistently remind myself to keep my shoulders back and my head held tall, otherwise I'll return to America shorter than I left it.

4. Lying – I have given in to lying, especially when fatigued. After two years of admitting that I didn't have a boyfriend at home, I had enough of people trying to thrust themselves or their sons on me. Now, I just lie. Why, yes I have a boyfriend. Yes, he is waiting for me. And yes, we're going to get married. He was born in 1983 and we've been together for four years. I can't wait to see him. My host family thinks my new found deceitfulness is hilarious and more proof that I've fully integrated into Turkmen culture (they lie a lot).

The sad thing is I've begun lying more and more. A few days ago as I was leaving my classroom two students approached me and asked if I had a chalkboard eraser. I did. I said, "No." Erasers are hard to come by. They're hand-made. I had a few disintegrating rags with which to erase my board and had only just the day before sewn a new one with my host sister (rather, she sewed and I watched). I knew if I said yes, those girls would take my new eraser and I would never see it again. So I lied, and my eraser is still in my possession.

"I'm ignoring you because I respect you"

As a sign of respect, it is customary for newlywed Turkmen brides to remain silent in front of their mothers and fathers-in-law. The bride can speak with her husband of course and can speak with her brothers and sisters-in-law after a few days, but she must wait anywhere between 10 days and a month before talking with her mother-in-law. And even then, she cannot speak with her father-in-law. The family determines when the silence can be broken: my host mother didn't speak to her father-in-law until after she and my host father moved into their own house – five years after they were married.

If it happens that no one but the father and daughter-in-law are home, they still cannot speak. Bagul told me that when our neighbor, Nuretdin, and his daughter-in-law, Shayda, were home alone together, he would often come to our house and tell my family to relay messages to her. She would do likewise if she needed to communicate with him. Lest you forget, they live in the same house. So deeply held is this tradition that they could not speak to each other and had to go in search of a middle man to communicate! I ask you, is this respect or stupidity?

Well. If there's anything I've learned over the past two years, it's that it's unfair to call the customs of other cultures "stupid." People, of course, have their reasons for everything, even if no one can recall what they are. So instead of "stupid," let's call this practice "impractical". Because showing respect is one thing, but if the house is on fire and I need my father-in-law to call 911, I sure as hell am not going to run to the neighbor's first in order to avoid speaking to him.

"The civilized breast"

Forgive me if public sentiment has changed over the past two years but, as I recall, we Americans are prudes about breastfeeding. Women shyly drape shawls or other contraptions over their shoulders to feed their babies in public. Those forgoing said cover-ups incite outcry and national debate over the right to breastfeed in public.

The great irony is that boobs, as an organ, are not taboo in Turkmenistan. Though culturally more conservative than we – recall that women cover their hair and their ankles – Turkmen recognize the practicality and necessity of the breast. I have observed countless nursing mothers whip out their breasts to feed their infants. They do it at home in full view of immediate family and/or guests. They do it in taxis and in train cars surrounded by strangers. Women or men, it doesn't matter who is present; if the baby is fussing, it is fed and no one covers their eyes and whines about public indecency.

The first time a woman breastfed in my presence I didn't know where to look. The action was so nonchalant and the other women in the room didn't seem to notice the exposed appendage, but I felt awkward and had to fight the impulse to stare by consciously reminding myself, "Look at her face! Not the boob! Face! Not boob!"

Now, boobs are as mundane for me as for the Turkmen. Like them, I am able to delineate between breasts as sexual objects and breasts as tools. These days, when I observe women peacefully breastfeeding, I am left wondering about our own culture. Why are we such prudes? Why can't Americans behave as the Turkmen do and recognize a mother's need to nourish her child? Why should something so natural have to be kept hidden? (Yes – I can see the parallel here: we don't go to the bathroom in public. At least, not without doors. And yet, I maintain that breastfeeding is different.) Why can't we look past the silicon-implanted, sexualized object and see the breast for what it really is? Why don't we appreciate the utility of the boob?

The only theory I've been able to come up with is that our priggishness serves to set us apart from our animal kin. Mammals breast feed their young with no shame. Teats are flashed and no one rushes to cover them. Animal boobs lack sex appeal. We don't even use the same word – animals have teats or udders. Women have breasts. In nomenclature alone we are already announcing ourselves as different from them.

Perhaps when we say, "Your breasts are disgusting to me," we do so as a way of proving to ourselves that we, unlike our mammalian brethren, are evolved and civilized. We have intelligent, human brains capable of standards of decency. Keeping nursing babies behind closed doors and snuggled under blankets protects society from the painful reminder that we and our vertebrate friends are more similar than we'd care to admit.

This same prudery helps us distance our modern, developed selves from women of third-world countries. You've seen the National Geographic pictures: topless mother, baby hanging off the swollen nipple like a tick. Maybe we think, "How primitive! Ah, but our babies are not suckled so! We are more civilized!" We are too good to openly nurse our young.

It's snobbery, frankly. I've never contemplated breastfeeding so much before, and I find myself thankful for the breastfeeding-induced examination of my own culture and subsequent conclusion that "developed" doesn't always imply "enlightened."

The end is nigh!

 

 

Dear friends,

Our two years’ correspondence will shortly be ending; I’m coming home the third week of November.  I still don’t know the exact date, but I promise you, my feet will be on American soil sometime between November 15 and November 20.  Most likely the latter half of the week, but the third week nonetheless.  And I feel…how?  To be honest, it’s been an interesting emotional switch: before our COS (close of service) conference, I was not overly excited about leaving Turkmenistan.  I didn’t feel ready, whatever ready feels like.  But after our date selection lottery, after getting an idea of when I’d be leaving, I became consumed with thoughts of going home.  Obsessed.  Couldn’t wait.  Time suddenly began to stand still and I thought November would never come.

Part of the problem was that I wasn’t working.  After the conference I went back to school, but â€" though it will boggle our western schedule-oriented minds â€" there was no set schedule of classes for the first 3 weeks of school.  This made life difficult for me, as I couldn’t plan my clubs because I didn’t know when I’d be teaching lessons at school.  I spent my days filling in the correct answers to exercises in English books which was mind numbing as well as butt numbing.  I thought my boredom was rooted in my newfound desires to beat feet out of Turkmenistan, but now that I have a regular schedule and have begun teaching I’m immensely happier.  Clearly I am just a creature of habit and don’t do well without a) something engaging to do and b) structure.  My parents can vouch for that (see: Jess’s emotional breakdown day one in Paris).

Where do I stand now?  Time has resumed a normal pace which is good.  I don’t perpetually think about leaving anymore, but I do think about it daily, just because I have so much to do before then.  Like pack.  Ugh.  I’ve started the Big Purge already.  Also, my family FINALLY hung the new curtains I bought last spring, and it’s made a dramatic difference in my room; instead of being dark and cramped it’s now bright and it seems so spacious.   Sounds bounce off the walls whereas before the gross, sun-shredded curtains muffled everything.  I love it.  And â€" I don’t know â€" having an updated room makes the time seem like it will just speed along by.

My host sister and I made a list of things she wants to learn to make before I leave.  Our peaches are nearing the end of the season now and we’ve been making peach cobblers nearly weekly â€" she really likes them. 

Anyway.  That’s what’s up with me these days.  Busy and happy and looking forward to coming home.  I don’t have a single story for you today â€" I have a post-it of ideas that I have yet to elaborate upon â€" but I do have a several shorter observations I’ve made over the last few weeks.  I hope you find them entertaining :)

Hugs,

Jessica

 

From September 13:

™    At the bazaar this morning Zohre purchased a kilo of grapes for 4,500 manat (or.90 new manat or approximately 32 cents) from a very rotund woman presiding over her wares in a manner strikingly reminiscent of Jaba the Hut.

 

From September 15:

™    Baby chicks are a little bit like lemmings.  I guess you can’t blame them â€" what baby thinks its mother will steer it wrong?  We’re totally dependent on our mommies when we’re young.  We rely on them to keep us safe.  Unfortunately for our new baby chicks, this thinking has not served them so well.  Or, I should say, it hasn’t served one of them well.  For while there used to be 11 fluffy peeps, there are now ten.  The mother hen, ever in search of greener nibs of grass, led her cheeping entourage to the field yesterday, whereupon one of them fell into an irrigation ditch and drowned.  Thanks a lot, Mommy.

 

™    I took a ride in the car with Gapur today, and marveled at the fact that in Turkmenistan, I really don’t go anywhere.  Unless I have to travel to Ashgabat for business, most of the time I don’t leave my village.  You could draw a circle with a 2.5 km radius around me and 95% of the time you’d find me in it.  Heck, you could probably even make the circle smaller.  Going to the bazaar and going for runs take me the furthest distances from my home.  Except, of course, every two weeks or so, when you’d find me about 200 km away from home.  Which is a pretty big jump, when you think about it.

Of course, this all makes my lack of automobile accidents more understandable.  Yes, there’s less safety when I am in a car, but I am so rarely in cars that I suppose the chances of anything happen don’t go up by any significant amount.  Or maybe not.  Either way, I’m trying to avoid taxis from here on out.

™    Turkmen babies, in general, do not wear diapers (called “pampers†in Turkmen).  But not for environmental reasons.  It’s economics.  Diapers are expensive; single diaper costs 5,000 manat, or roughly 30 cents.  f the baby must be taken somewhere â€" a relative’s house, a wedding â€" moms can buy single diapers from the various shops around the village.  But at home, no diapers.  Instead, they wear pants.

 

These pants are made of the world’s clothing scraps. They in all colors and patterns for all seasons.  And, they, like diapers, cost 5,000 old manat a pair.  The savings are obvious.  The pants can be and are reused.  When the baby pees, take off the pants and put on a new pair.  Most of the time they don’t even bother wiping the baby or even washing the pants; they just dry them for the next use.  The pants are, however, washed for number two.

 

This seems like an economical and environmentally friendly way to deal with baby waste.   Great idea, right?  There is, however, a drawback.  Yhlas, the one-year-old from next door, was visiting this afternoon, having fun taking all my spice containers out of my cabinet and handing them to me.   After he left, I noticed a wet spot on my floor.  Puzzled, I looked around for my water bottle thinking maybe it had spilt, but we hadn’t been playing with it.  In fact, we hadn’t been playing with anything liquid.  Then it dawned on me.  Yhlas peed on my floor and the pants didn’t really do a thing.  Yes, they are cheap, environmentally friendly, and plentiful, but they sure don’t keep in the mess.

 

At least wasn’t not smelly.  It could have been worse.

 

From September 17:

™    Remember those anthropological studies about the universalities between humans.  You know, we all cry when we’re sad and smile when we’re happy.  That kind of stuff.  Well, I’ve discovered another trait that crosses cultural and continental boundaries: baby talk with animals.  One need only listen to my father cooing to our cat to comprehend that treating our animals like infants is not American or Western.  It’s human. 

From September 19:

™    In what might be considered a slightly ironic regression, I have, as of late and despite the fact that my family has a functioning shower, begun taking bucket baths.  You see, we recently turned on the hot water heater since the temperature’s been dipping so low at night.  The hot water heater is tremendously powerful and when the water level is low, as it is now, it heats all the water such that only the tiniest trickle comes out of the cold faucet.  The hot water side has no regulation between warm, warmer, and hot, only near-boil.  Even turning on both faucets results in a steady flow of water hot enough to turn shrimp pink â€" certainly too hot for a person to shower in.  Ever the astute problem solver and never to be deprived of my post-run showers, I’ve begun filling up ¾ of a bucket with cool water from the faucet in the back yard.  I take it into the bathroom and let it fill the rest of the way with the scalding water from the shower faucet and am thus left with a bucket of water at a most pleasant temperature.  The heat from the water heater also heats the bathroom; despite the fact that there is no steady shower of warm water atop my head, I do not shiver.  The added benefit is that I am forced to use less water â€" this bucket holds less than 5 gallons.  Showering takes a little longer, but I’m still squeaky clean and glowing when I leave the bathroom. 

From September 24:

™    One of my students gave me a pomegranate today in class.  Sometimes life in Turkmenistan is really fun.

From September 25:

™ I made the mistake of saying hello to an old man as I ran past him today.  He wanted to talk so I slowed to answer his questions.  He knew who my  host father was, so I thought he was  innocent enough, but them he put his  arm around me, kissed me cheek, and copped a feel.  I deftly removed his roving fingers from my left butt cheek and got the heck out of there.  Lucky for me I’m faster than the average octegenarian.  Perv.

 

 

 

 

--
Greg

God = mosquito?

Subject: God = mosquito?