Fake Flowers and Dogs

To my adoring fans,

I have two stories to share with you today.  I suppose a better term would be essays or commentaries, but whatever.  They are what they are.  Before I copy and paste however, a few tid-bits: 

·        I had a fascinating discussion with my host sister Bagul the other day on Turkmen folklore.  She also told me about Noah and the Ark, the Crucifixion, Creation and Adam and Eve which amazed me.  I have a copy of the Koran at home and now I’m curious to read it (this is not a hint for you to send it to me, Dad, as my bookshelves are stocked).  Apparently she read all these stories in the Koran and other Muslim books.  Please don’t think me totally naïve when I say I had no idea we shared those stories (if indeed they are in the Koran).  Interestingly enough, her versions of these stories concluded with things like this, “And that’s why the snake has a forked tongue,” etc. (There’s a word for stories like these but I can’t remember it).

 

·        I ate tofu this week and liked it.  Shocking! (And no, it was not purchased here).

·        Still happy, still healthy and still rainy

Presenting:  “Fake Plastic Flowers” and “Dogs.” 

On Fake Plastic Flowers

Flowers are the choice gift on Women’s Day – March 8.  Turkmen are incredibly confused about the fact that we American’s don’t celebrate Women’s Day because it’s actually called “International Women’s Day.”  How can’t we celebrate it?  It’s international!  (Which really just means more than one country celebrates it but they don’t get that).  Women’s Day, according to my encyclopedia, is “an important occasion for promoting women's issues and rights, especially in developing countries.”[1] 

 

Well, I don’t know about how other countries celebrate, but Women’s Day in Turkmenistan was just another day of TV specials.  I didn’t hear any talk about women’s issues or rights.  I didn’t hear anything about trying to get more Turkmen girls about of the restricting village life and into institutes and universities.   No one said anything about men helping around the house.  There was no talk about equality.  Nope.  The government gave each school girl 200,00 manat – about $14 – to share with their mothers and that was it.   Congratulations on having a vagina, now have lots of babies.  Girls who aren’t in school or who don’t work don’t get any money.  Suckers!

 

Oh, but wasn’t receiving dozens of flowers just fabulous?  I stashed mine in a corner of my room.  I pretend I’m a celebrated opera star and my adoring fans can’t help but heap flowers upon me.  I have four dozen.  That’s right: four dozen flowers.  And they’re all FAKE.  Some are okay replications, some aren’t, none are passable, some are perfumed, some aren’t.  But I am now the proud owner of 48 fake plastic flowers. 

 

Fake flowers are a nice gesture, I suppose.  And I don’t know where Turkmen would find real flowers in March except in the cities, but I still think they’re tacky.  Turkmen like them.  They keep their fake flowers in vases tucked in shelving units – they’ll be there forever.  You don’t have to buy more.  They’ll never lose their beauty, never turn brown or lose their petals. 

 

Frankly, I remain unconvinced.  At least now I have lots of flowers to re-gift!

 

 

And now a change of pace:

On Dogs

I write this as someone who loves dogs.  I mean, I love cats too, (What’s up, Bangu! [like the cat reads my emails and understands this]) but this piece in particular pertains to dogs. 

 

Turkmen don’t have the same relationship with dogs as we Americans do (well, most Americans that is.  Certainly there are people in the US who mistreat their animals.  Shameful.) In your average Turkmen village, dogs are outside animals.  They aren’t bathed or groomed or otherwise taken care of.  Some are kicked and angrily yelled at.  I’ve yet to come across a dog that had been spayed and/or neutered (although I hear there are vets in Turkmenistan).  I don’t know if they get their rabies and distemper shots like they should.  From what I gather, dogs are primarily for guarding the house. 

 

As puppies, Turkmen Alibis (their “National” dog – unsure of that spelling, really) are removed of their ears and tails because they get into fights and of course ears and tails are easy targets.  This has probably been a tradition for a long time because I haven’t seen or heard any real dog fights.   And I think it’s probably a learned behavior.  They might not have to remove the ears and tails if they a) didn’t kick or otherwise abuse dogs b) fed the dogs and c) didn’t encourage fighting.  I think dog fighting may have been sport before.  I don’t know if it’s practiced in my village but nonetheless, ear and tail removal has stuck and so you see a lot of funny looking dogs.  Russian dogs and dogs of other unknown descent are left intact (apparently they’re pacifists and eschew fighting).  Garagoz is a Russian dog and that’s why he has ears. 

 

My host father likes dogs and so he feeds Garagoz.  This has made Garagoz friendly and loyal to our family.  The other day, I opened my window and he trotted over and jumped up, putting his paws on the window sill and wagging his tail hello.  He hangs out at home most nights.  Or, if my father is on sleeping duty at school, he goes to school with him.  Awww.  Not all families feed their dogs.  There were skinny dogs in Magtymguly left to fend for themselves, finding what trash and scraps they could in the desert.  Not something a Westerner can easily grow accustomed to.

 

Unfortunately, because dogs aren’t neutered here, there are a great deal of unwanted pups.  Particularly girl dogs.  Why? Because girl dogs get impregnated.  Boy dogs can do it all they want and they don’t have to deal with the consequences of having puppies (SUCH a double standard).   Last month, a stray ended up on our door step.  My sister gave it some bread. Garagoz left it alone, presumably because it was a harmless puppy.  My host father, when he came home, scared it away because he doesn’t want another dog, especially not a girl dog (which she was, I checked).  She came back a few more times but I haven’t seen her anymore.  I have no idea what happened to her and can only hope someone took her in. 

 

But that’s the thing.  Turkmen don’t feel the same way about strays as I do.  Or most Americans, I assume, based on the fact that we have organizations like the SPCA and the Humane Society.  Granted not every animal taken to the Humane League is rescued, but some are.  And that makes a difference.  Here, strays are just a nuisance.   At home in the States, two of our pets were taken in as strays. (Does Stumpy count as a stray if Mom found her under a soybean leaf?)

 

Turkmenistan isn’t easy on man’s best friend but eventually, a person becomes hardened to seeing dogs without ears, skinny dogs, aggressive dogs, trash-eating dogs, stray dogs, and dead puppies in trash piles in the desert who couldn’t find enough to eat.  That’s life. 

 

But not today.  No, today was a day for tugging on heart strings.  I had just returned from Kelsey’s village where we spent a lovely afternoon with two other volunteers.  We made amazing food and played cards.  It was super.  I had a decent taxi ride back to my village which was a relief because the taxi driver on the way to Kelsey’s village kept inviting himself to eat with us and told me he wasn’t married and needed a wife.  Thus, it was in a good mood that I disembarked from the car.

 

 The driver dropped me off on the side of the road and I started the 40 minute walk to my village (hoping, of course, to be picked up along the way).  As I crossed the bridge over the canal, I heard whimpers.  Ever curious, I walked towards the sound to investigate.  A fatal mistake.  There I saw four small black and white puppies, huddling together.  I looked around and saw no mommy.  Maybe she was nearby.  Maybe someone didn’t want them and dropped them off to fend for themselves.  I have no idea how to guess how old they were, but one would have fit in my cupped hands.  I sighed, chided myself for looking and went on my way. 

 

I was not alone.  One intrepid puppy decided to take fate into its own hands, to leave the pack and endeavor for a better future.  It followed me.  I tried quickening my pace.  It kept up.  It whimpered.  I couldn’t lose the damn thing.  Every now and then I thought maybe it had turned back, had returned to its brothers and sisters.  Yet every time there it was; right at my feet, tripping over my shoes, tripping me. 

 

I started to cry.  I wanted so badly to take it home with me.  I also knew that the house I live in is not my true home.  I cannot simply show up with a dog and say, “We have a new pet!”  What would happen in two years when it’s time to leave?  And I cannot in good conscience own an animal without taking it to a vet for shots and neutering.   I didn’t know what to do.  I hoped for someone to pick me up so I wouldn’t have to see it anymore.   A woman stopped me and told me it was following me. When it went over to her feet she kicked it.  It stumbled over itself as it ran after me.  It almost got hit by a car.  And I was complicit.  I left it. 

 

Finally, it stopped following me and began trotting after two other ladies.  I was relieved.  I looked over my shoulder every few steps to make sure it wasn’t there.  A car came and picked me up.  I didn’t look back again. 

 

Sitting in the car, I prayed for the first time in a long while.  I fervently prayed for that little puppy and it’s siblings that they wouldn’t end up in a garbage heap like so many others.

 

 

 

Until next time!

Hugs,

Jessica

On rain, cows and cardboard*

*among other things.

Hello friends!  I hope this email finds you well and eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring!  It’s been a long time, eh?  Well, totally out of character, I had nothing to impart the last time I came up to the city.  And it was a Sunday so the internet café wasn’t open either.  But you know what they say … no news and good news go hand in hand. 

 

I mean, theoretically, of course.  I could have been kidnapped by Afghani hoodlums and held for ransom in a dark cave near some treacherous border lines – hungry and dirty but not too smelly.  It would’ve been difficult to send email in such a situation. 

 

Fortunately for you, I wasn’t kidnapped!  No indeed!  Happy-go-lucky as always, here I am, yet again, with some scribbling straight from my Central Asian abode.  Today I present thoughts on rain, cows and cardboard (etc). 

 

So a few weeks ago, Mommy[1] says to me, “How’s the weather?”  And I respond something to the effect of, “Blech.  Last week was beautiful, warm and sunny and now it’s gross and rainy.”  Mom says, “Rain?  I thought you lived in the desert.”  Au contraire!   It’s rained at least once a week for the past month or more!  Once it rained so much our back yard became a pond and algae began to bloom!  If it had been warmer, I would have wondered about malaria and things.  Surely this can’t be desert! Time for a geography lesson!

 

Turkmensitan: indeed, much of the country is occupied by the Karakum (or Garagum) Desert – one of the world’s largest sand deserts! According to my Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 Deluxe Edition (woo-hoo!) desert makes up nine-tenths of Turkmenistan’s territory. However, due to my relatively close geographical situation to the Amu Darya river, Halach and the surrounding areas are considered to be an oasis of sorts.  No palm trees or anything here, but we do have an extensive canal system that diverts river water to our villages. I live in one of the most fertile and verdant areas of the country (if not THE most fertile and verdant).  This is a great advantage because we have fresh veggies (more or less) year round (I think some are imported, but a lot of food is stored as well).  Now, interestingly enough, the swath of oasis is not very wide.  The river lies to the east of me (5 miles?) and the desert is just west – just another couple of miles.  When we took the train to Halach, we were travelling through sand and scrub brush.  When we drive up to Charjew, we drive through sand and scrub brush.   Because of our close proximity to the river, we don’t have water shortage issues, either – also a plus.

 

Now, compare this to the Balkan region in Western Turkmenistan.  Balkan has a diminished water supply.  As in nearly zero water.  The ground is not especially fertile.  Things just don’t grow.  In fact, it’s so depressed for vegetation that I’ve heard tell of people feeding the cows cardboard.

 

Let’s just consider cows for a moment.  Currently at home (America, that is) there’s a movement afoot regarding cows and what they eat.  Thanks to Michael Pollan and books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma (which I thoroughly enjoyed), people are beginning to question why cows eat so much corn when they’re not biologically equipped to be corn eaters.  It turns out that corn isn’t as good for cows as fresh sweet grass and that grass fed cows are better for us humans than corn fed cows.  Damn you, government subsidized corn!!! Anyway, as I was attending to business in the outhouse this morning, I wondered: What would we prefer our cows ruminated upon? Corn or cardboard?  And though I know corn is bad for their bellies, I can’t imagine cardboard is any more nutritious.  In which case, I suppose we should be lucky that our American cows are at least eating food stuffs and not paper. 

 

This does beg the question, however: would I rather eat cows fed on paper or rendered cow bits?  I’m undecided on this one.  Wasn’t that outlawed though?  Cows can no longer eat other cows for dinner, no? 

 

Luckily, I do not live in Balkan and our cows do not eat cardboard.  As best I can tell, they eat hay and the occasional food scraps. Including garlic, which may explain the sometimes sour taste of our dairy. 

 

 

Anyway, by March 12 the rainy, muddy transition from Winter to Spring ceased and a warm weather pattern has settled in.  The fruit trees flowered and are now budding leaves.  Bees are busying themselves will pollen collection.  And best of all, the air has that dry, fresh, almost chlorinated scent that I love so much about the air in Southern California. 

 

Having no thermometer, I don’t really know what the temperature is.  But I no longer need to wear long underwear beneath my skirts and I can play outside in a t-shirt, capris, and sandals quite contendedly.  High 60s maybe?  70s?  Spring here really seems like early summer for us back home in the Northeast.  We kinda skipped right over all that 40s and 50s business. 

 

Celebrating this lovely weather, I ventured to school one day wearing my beloved Teva flip-flops.  After all the stares from students and teachers commenting “Oh, Spring has arrived for you!” I got the hint that Tevas aren’t going to cut it at work.  That and my counterpart said “No” when I asked her if I could wear them.  Sigh.   Teachers are supposed to dress “professionally” and that includes wearing closed-toed shoes.  According to my counterpart, they’re not even allowed to wear open-backed shoes, but they do anyway because no one from the Ministry of Education comes to check.  I still can’t wear my flip-flops though. Or my Chacos.  Well, just not to school, that is. 

 

I’m not really a shoe person.  As I write this I realize it’s a blatant lie.  I suppose it would be more appropriate to say I’m not a summer shoe person.  I’d much rather be barefoot in summer than wear shoes.  On the other hand where shoes are required, I do have quite a collection of cute footwear to prance around in.  I’m not quite sure how to reconcile these two sides of my personality into a witty comment. 

 

You know what else spring in Turkmenistan brings?  Ants.  Lots of ‘em.   Recently, the ants have been marching in full force.  Around our “dining room” table, ants come out of the woodwork searching for food.  Attempts to thwart them are in vain.  Shoving tiny rocks in the cracks makes more work for the little black guys, but soon, they remove the obstructions and venture forth freely again.  It would be interesting to lift our house up and have a look at the ground underneath.   I wouldn’t be surprised, but I’d be kind of disgusted, to find one ginormous ant hill. 

 

My host mom brought out a bag of cookies recently and offered me one.  I don’t care for these cookies and I declined.  Boy was that a good move.  She removed one for herself and it was covered with ants.  Upon further inspection we realized that the whole bag was teeming with the little buggers.  So what did she do?  Shook them out and ate the cookies.  I gagged. 

 

Despite this recent resurgence of ant activity, my ant problem began weeks ago.  In a box I received for Christmas was a book covered with crushed bits of candy cane that didn’t quite survive the trans-Atlantic crossing.  Nothing thinking much of it, I placed the new book on the shelf.  A few days later, I noticed a great increase of ants in my bedroom and upon investigation realized they were going for the pepperminty goodness of those miniscule candy cane crumbs.  Bah humbug indeed.  I took the book outside, shook off all the ants, cleaned the cover, put it in a zip lock bag and stashed it in my suitcase.  Unfortunately, the ants didn’t take the hint and the following few weeks were marked by a steady ant presence in my boudoir.  At first I killed them with abandon, but I started to feel guilty.  They weren’t hurting anything, right?  Just looking for some tasty food to take back to the hill.  They had a route – come in through the crack in the door way, climb up the wall, traverse the wall towards the window, sniff around and return.  

 

Then I started finding ants in my clothing.  I got bit by ants at the breakfast table.  I would feel a tickle on my neck and scratch and an ant would be on my hand.  Ants crawled across my computer while I was watching movies.  My counterpart picked an ant out of my hair once.  And twice, I was woken up in the middle of the night to a strange sensation on my face only to discover that, yes, there was an ant scaling my nose.  Then I became upset.  I moved my bed away from the wall, tightly packed all my food, and kept vigil on the ant situation.  Over time, they began to lessen. 

 

Then spring came and with the warmer weather, more ants came out to play.  Out in our main room, they use the molding as their main highway.  In a line, too many to count, they make their way to the table and back to all the cracks in the walls.  My room became of interest again.  I watched them come out of a crack in the door frame.  I nervously fell asleep at night, not wanting another ant disrupting my dreams. 

 

Mom called and told me to try cinnamon.  I dusted it around my door, shoved cinnamon into the cracks with a Q-tip.  It turns out the ants do not like cinnamon.  They wouldn’t walk across it.  They didn’t emerge from cracks sprinkled with the spice.   A few days ago, I found a number of ants clamoring for a piece of noodle that was on my bedroom floor, presumably from my clothing.  I sprinkled cinnamon on them.  They cowered.  For the time being, I have won.

 

Every now and then I still find a few ants roaming about my walls, searching for most delicious treats.  But it’s rare now.  As I am writing, I don’t see any travelers.  A few weeks ago, I could count dozens walking the path towards my window.  I am at peace.

 

Ironically, my family finally bought some “medical chalk” at the bazaar last week.  Apparently ants don’t like it.  I have a hunch it’s lyme.  Anyhow, they drew on the molding, on the floor, around my door jamb.  The ants, wily creatures that they are, walked all over the lyme. 

 

The other day I watched an ant struggle to carry a large crumb across the carpet.  You have to admire a creature so tenacious and determined.  To haul such an awkward and heavy load must be one heck of a workout for an ant.  It reminds me Sisyphus and his rock.  Only unlike Sisyphus, the ant is certain to succeed. 

 

 

An ant haiku:

Middle of the night

An ant crawls across my face

I wake up, annoyed.

 

 

 

Well, I hope you have enjoyed this week’s tale of daring and adventure from Turkmenistan!   Happy spring and Happy St. Patty’s Day! And remember, if you’re not going to go barefoot, wear cute shoes!

 

Love,

Jess

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[1] Yes, I still occasionally call my parents Mommy and Daddy.  Got a problem with that?  Nope?  Good.