The Basics of Life

Long time, no write!  I realize that 5 months into my great Turkmen adventure is a little late to be really starting my blog, but unfortunately, circumstances took their toll.  Somehow, I didn’t manage to write a post in the two months of training when I had weekly access to the internet, and then shortly after I got to my permanent site (which doesn’t have anything remotely resembling an internet café) the phone service I had been using declined to renew their contract with the Turkmen government, which effectively cut off my access to the World Wide Web.  But better than late than never.

I’ve been a Peace Corps Volunteer for just over 3 months now, and things are going pretty well.  I live in the Balkan welayet (one of Turkmenistan’s 5 regions, the others being Ahal, Mary, Lebap and Dashoguz).  It’s the region closest to the Caspian Sea, although honestly I live closer to the capital than the big sea-side town.  My work site is the village of Jan Ahyr (or Janahyr, depending on what sign you’re looking at), just a 5 minute bus or taxi ride from the town of Serdar, which is incidentally the district center.  Of course, that doesn’t really mean too much, except that it has an open air market and a lot more shops (and some restaurants).  Although the school where I work is located in Jan Ahyr, I live in Serdar, and take a very retro bus to work every day (or catch a ‘gypsy cab’, which is basically short distant hitch-hiking that you pay two manat for.  It sounds a lot more sketchy than it is, but I do at least 4 or 5 times a week).

I’m currently living with a very nice English teacher, Dunya, and her 17 year old daughter, Gulruh.  Living in a household with an English teacher does have its ups and downs.  On the one hand, if I need to speak English, I’m generally understood – and I do need to speak English, because while my Turkmen is functional, it still doesn’t have the capacity to express complicated ideas.  On the other hand, speaking English then becomes so easy, and I’m not always strong enough to express myself in Turkmen, even when I have the ability.  But life is generally pretty good.  I live in an apartment building, which is a huge change from the house that I lived in for my first 2 months of training, before becoming a volunteer.  In the apartment, we have running water, a flush toilet, and a combination bathtub/shower.  In my previous accommodation, I had an outhouse, a bathtub that didn’t actually have a faucet but WAS permanently filled to the brim with water from a hose (and absolutely no RUNNING water), and a small plastic tub from which I poured ladlefuls of water over my head.  Culture shock indeed!

I think currently the best part about living in Turkmenistan is my host sister.  She’s an absolute delight, despite her love of Twilight (I still maintain she’s mostly just seduced by Robert Pattinson).  She’s always laughing and playing around.  Once, when I asked her about all the joking, she answered that she just really likes to smile.  She wants to be an airline stewardess, which I really hope she achieves, because I think it would be wonderful for her to be able to travel.  We bonded incredibly quickly, in fact.  One of the first days in my new home, we were sitting in the main room of the apartment, watching TV, when the power went out.  I dug out my high-power reading light, and we kept talking, and intermittently begging the lights to come back on.  Jokingly, I raised my hands upwards and said ‘Let there be light!’  Gulruh quickly adopted the phrase after I explained it to her, and lo and behold, a few minutes later, just after she had said it, the lights came back on!  We laughed, and she grinningly proclaimed that she was God.

My workplace is school #10, in Jan Ahyr (although there are nowhere near 9 other schools in the town.  I’m not even sure there’s another one, although once when I was in a cab heading to work, the driver started driving the wrong way once we got to town, and explained that he thought I meant the ‘new’ school, as I apparently work at the ‘old’ school.).  It’s a fairly small school, with 500 kids and 51 teachers.  Only three of those are English teachers, and as I teach 4 different grades (4^th, 5^th, 6^th and 8^th, the 7^th graders being way too rowdy for me), I work with all of them.  Officially, my counterpart is an older woman named Arzygul, but I also work with two other women named Gulbahar and Shasoltan.  School is simultaneously rewarding and very frustrating, often in the same day.  My one big struggle just now is getting all the kids in all my classes to raise their hands quietly.  As of now, they practically chant ‘teacher’ while coming out of their seats, even standing up.  I think I’ll be completely pleased with myself if I can get them not to do that in my classes by the end of two years.  And of course, there are the students that just don’t care about English – or care more about having THE AMERICAN teaching them than they do about the lesson – but that’s something you’ll find world-wide.  And just like in America, there are students that already have shown me that they’re very motivated to learn English, like a boy named Matym in my 5^th grade class (who is, incidentally, the son of Shasoltan).

Well, that’s about it for the generalities of life in Turkmenistan.  Unfortunately, I only really get to blog about once every few months, but I promise that the next one will have a lot more scintillating details.  Stay tuned for stories about a life almost entirely devoid of furniture!