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."