I’ve decided on a new system of blogging, where instead of waiting for inspiration to hit me for a REALLY GOOD entry, I’m just going to collect a handful of interesting things per month and throw them together into one mashup, and then post all the entries whenever I get the chance. Somehow, right now this goes as far back as September.
The first entry, however, really happened in August, but since nothing else interesting occurred then (except for my family trip to Europe) I’m simply going to lump it in with September.
For a while, we had been hearing rumors that the president was going to come to Serdar. I think the earliest he was supposed to come was in March. Then it was May, maybe. He had to come sometime, though. Ever since I arrived in Serdar there was this fenced off area in the middle of downtown, and in order for it to open, the president’s visit was necessary.
Finally, on August 22nd, he did. Casey and I weren’t entirely sure if we’d be allowed to go, because we’d hear that foreigners were discouraged from attending events involving the president. (I’m not actually sure where we got this notion from.) But if there was any chance of our being able to see the president in person, we were going to do it.
As it turned out, I wasn’t able to sleep in my own house that night because some of my host mother’s brother’s colleagues were staying the night at our apartment. Since we would have to get up pretty early in order to be in place for the President’s visit in the morning, Casey and I decided that was best for me to sleep over at his house. We would wake up early (6, I think, or 6:30), have a quick breakfast, and then head into the center of town, although we didn’t exactly know where the gathering was going to be.
What we really SHOULD have done, though we had decided against it the night before, was to go to Casey’s school and spend the night there. His students (and mine, although I wasn’t going to spend the night in Janahyr) were going to be camping out along the highway heading itno town, forming a human corridor to welcome the President. But August was still pretty hot and I guess we weren’t Peace Corps enough to want to wake up at 4 am (That’s how early the kids and teachers were being bused out to their spot in the human corridor) and then wait for the President to come for hours. We chose to take the slightly less adventurous rote of waking up a few hours later.
If we hadn’t, I bet this would be a more exciting entry. I could tell you about the sense of togetherness that probably comes out of waiting with a group of people for hours at the side of the road, waiting for an exciting event to happen. (Although given that the group was mostly made up of sleepy school children, who knows?) Instead, I get to tell you about walking from Casey’s house towards the new part of town, because we figured that if he would be anywhere, he would be near the new buildings that he was supposed to open.
Unfortunately, we left the house way too late, although it was only 7:15. We got ALMOST to the new section of town, when we were turned aback by someone running security. Not that easily deterred, Casey suggested that we try crossing over the railroad tracks and going around. Since the security guard had already herded us in that direction, it seemed like a good plan.
But we were foiled in that too, a few minutes later, when another security guard at the tracks turned us back. We actually contemplated making a break for it and spent about 15 minutes crouched out of sight with another guy, but in the end we were herded into the courtyard of a house – at least, it might have been a house – and were forced to wait there for about 45 minutes with its residents (who were unlucky enough to have an outhouse somewhere outside the courtyard so they weren’t able to go to it for the entire 45 minutes). I’m not sure what thread we actually posed, but at one point we were actually instructed to wait out of sight of the crowds around a corner, even though we could hardly see THEM. We weren’t even sure exactly when the President showed up because we were too far away, and as far as we could tell, the crowd was practicing its cheering. Unless, of course, the president came and went about 6 or 7 times.
Finally, the President moved on to another town, and we were free to go. As a consolation, we went to the newly opened square, where we were pleased to find fountains which were at the time still running. (They’re not anymore, although two of them still have water in them. The other now houses a really REALLY large fake New Years tree.) Also, it has benches. There aren’t usually many places to sit down outside in Turkmenistan. Since it’s opened (and before winter came on), I’ve gone there a couple of times with a book, and people use it as a place to gather and socialize in the evening.
Thus passes what could have been something really exciting (or really devastatingly awful) and is instead something only mildly amusing. I’ll know better next time.
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Next, something that really did happen in September. One of the volunteers in my welayet has her birthday in September, and the weather not being devastatingly cold yet, decided she wanted to spend the day in Awaza.
Awaza is Turkmenistan’s sea-side resort, full of lots of tall white hotels (mostly empty), restaurants, and even a man-made river. Or canal, really. And sandy beaches, lots of sandy beaches. The sand isn’t even half-bad either. It’s all about a 20 minute ride out from Turkmenbashi, one of the major cities of Balkan welayet.
Casey and I arrived in Balkanabat, where the birthday girl lives, FAR too early in the morning for politeness, especially as we were staying with the aforementioned birthday girl. Later that day, we took a minivan from Balkanabat to Turkmenbashi (about a 2 hour ride) where we met up with the volunteer who lives there, and bought lunch.
September isn’t really a peak season for Awaza, so the beach wasn’t very crowded. Still, I think we may have offended at least a few Turkmen sensibilities when we started stripping down to our bathing suits in the gazebo by the beach that we had requisitioned for the purpose of eating lunch. There were other people in bathing suits though, and let me tell you, it is a little weird to see Turkmen women in bathing suits, even one piece ones. It’s a far cry from ankle length dresses.
Even though it was getting colder, I couldn’t help but swim at least a little. I mean, I had recently been on vacation in Italy, where I had swum a bit, but come on, I’m from California! Water is kind of irresistible. (If you have evidence to the contrary, just remember that
I now live in the middle of a desert.)
It was freezing. Pretty much as bad as the Pacific Ocean. But it was fun to swim around a little and even more fun to enjoy a nice, warm drying-out period back on the sand with a book. What with the cold water and the book and the sand and the sun, it was almost as if I was back on Stinson Beach in California.
There was even a whole lot of wind.
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I have this family in Janahyr that I call my “not host family”. They’re the family that I was originally supposed to live with, and I’ve kept up a pretty decent relationship with them. I used to visit them about once a week to have tea and now I tutor one of their daughters twice a week in English. (In a quick but touching detour, I recently received a dress from this friend. Previously I had asked her sister-in-law to sew me a dress, so they already had my measurements. I really only have a handful of dresses, so new ones are always welcome. Anyway, when she gave it to me, I hugged her. She hugged me back, and then asked me if we were friends. She’s always been really sweet to me, but it made me really happy because I already felt as if she was my first local friend, and having her affirm it was awesome)
This family’s main occupation is in making carpets. (The father also cleans his neighbors’ wool, as well as teaching at my school.) The girls who have graduated do it most of the day, (the exceptions are one daughter who works in Serdar and another who is going to college in Ashgabat.) and the one daughter who is still in school now helps out when she gets home.
The Turkmen method of making carpets is like nothing I have ever seen before. They’re not woven at all. In fact, I’d liken them to close-shaved shag carpets. Learning how to make a Turkmen carpet is incredibly difficult. When I first visited this family, back when they were still my host family, I was offered the chance to help them with the carpet. Of course, I wildly screwed up the one single piece of yarn I tried to add to the carpet.
You see, to make a Turkmen carpet (at least, the traditional way, though there are carpet-making factories too), you start with a horizontal loom. The one my not-family has is HUGE and takes up most of their second-story room, with is not small either. Metal pipes form the frame of the loom. Between the two end pipes, strong string is strung, (try saying THAT five times fast) looped around each end so that it crosses itself in the middle of the loom. This creates and upper and lower layer of string. This string is called erş (pronounced ersh). About halfway down the loom, there is another metal bar, which can be pulled or pushed with a rod. One of these is called the kuji (koo-ji) and the other one is the darti, and I can never remember which is which. I THINK the purpose of this bar is to further to compress the two layers of string.
Now that we’ve got the loom frame explained, it’s time to get to the actual making. (I keep wanting to call it weaving, but that’s really not what it is.) The girls used yarn (jupe, pronounced ‘yoop’) to make these carpets. But instead of weaving the string together, they tie small pieces around the string of the loom. They do this by inserting the yarn between the two layers of string, and wrapping it around both the upper and lower layers.
After they have completed a certain amount of carpet – I’m not sure how much, but it usually takes about fifteen minutes of finger-flashing speed – they pull another piece of string (different from the string the loom is made of, thinner and called argac, pronounced argach) between the two loom strings. They then proceed to compress it, and the yarn, against the previously completed carpet with an implement called a darak (pronounced…well, like it looks: dah-rahk) bringing it down against the yarn violently. The darak has these evenly spaced metal teeth, so it slides between the loom strings. When that’s done, they cut the extra yarn off with scissors that look like scissors turned on their side. The finger holes are still vertical, but the actual blades are horizontal. Those are called syndy, which I believe is pronounced a lot like Cindy. And they are a lot harder to cut with than they look like, especially when they’re not exactly brand new and therefore probably pretty dull.
As I said, the one time I was invited to participate in Turkmen carpet making, I didn’t do such a good job. In the first place, the yarn is way more fragile than I expected it to be. I’m a knitter. I knit a lot, and mess up an equal amount, so I’m used to yarn being pretty hardy stuff. Not this yarn. No, this yarn breaks the first time I try to tie it around the string. And the second time. So much for string tying. What about darak using? No, not much good at that either, judging by the fact that I caught thee string between two of the metal teeth and managed to break the string, which my host sisters then had to fix. And as I mentioned, it’s pretty damn hard to cut the string to the proper length with those scissors.
So it turns out I’m pretty much a failure at Turkmen carpet making. However, I intend to press-gang either these not-sisters of mine or my host mother into teaching me over the summer. I probably won’t be able to make one, but at least I think I can learn not to break EVERYTHING.
Some interesting tidbits to leave you with about Turkmen carpets:
- Every Turkmen girl, according to my friend, receives a Turkmen carpet. I’m a little fuzzy on the when and from whom (I’m guessing from her own family), and am not sure if this is a universal thing, but that’s what she tells me.
- Tying the loom strings around your head prevents headaches
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I think I may have mentioned once before that I sometimes take taxis from my hose to my school. I called it ‘short distance hitch-hiking’ and I think I’d like to briefly return to that subject.
Now, hitch-hiking isn’t something you’re supposed to do, right? I’ve never done it in America. I probably never will, because I’m not that brave. So, why do I fell so comfortable doing it in Turkmenistan? I mean, it’s the same thing, except payment is (usually) mandatory, instead of merely the polite thing to do.
In fact, gypsy cabs are pretty much the rule in Turkmenistan. I’m not sure how it is in other Central Asian, Soviet-influenced countries, but gypsy cabs were also a very common form of transport when I studied in Moscow for a summer. Whenever a restaurant or club was just too far from a metro station, or we were getting out late from said club, we stood by the side of road, stuck our hands out, and waited for a helpful citizen (who wanted some quick cash) to pick us up and take us to our destination.
Of course, in Moscow there was also the possibility that a legitimate, licensed cab might also have picked us up. Moscow does have them, being a cosmopolitan city. Turkmenistan has no licensed cab company in the entire country. (That I know of. I think they’d be prohibitively expensive if they did exist.) So the options are either to take a bus (in my village), or walk. Or, stick out your hand.
Of course, because everyone does it, it’s a lot safer than hitch-hiking in America. There are some precautions to take, of course. Girls should probably not sit in the front seat, or get into a taxi with more than 2 guys, especially after dark. Both of these are from the obvious safety reasons. Other than that (and the somewhat suspect state of Turkmen roads, especially out in the country) the only real danger is from a speedster driver. Then again, bus drivers have the tendency to drive just as fast, and that’s a LOT more uncomfortable.
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So, what is it like to be a Peace Corps volunteer, living in Turkmenistan, teaching at a small village school, and living in an apartment with a small host family? I’m glad you asked, because it’s time for A Day in the Life, with your friendly neighborhood Ilana.
Unfortunately, at the time of this entry, my schedule is a lot less full than it was a few months ago. But I want to be honest with you, and what follows is a general sense of my life as it is now.
I don’t go to work until the second shift at school these days (Turkmen schools are mostly taught in two shifts, with the younger grades going to school from 8:30 to 1:30, and the older kids from 12:45 to 5:40) because I had been doing an extracurricular English club in the morning three days a week. Right now, in my incredibly crowded tiny little school, there is just no extra space. So I only work in the classroom with my teachers.
Generally, I now try to wake up at 9:30 to do yoga. It used to be that my family would wake me up to have tea with them in the morning, but my host mother wakes up WAY earlier than me now. A couple of times, I faked being asleep when they called for me and now they’ve given up. It’s a little bit sad, but waking up at 8 when you don’t have to be at school until 12 or 1 seems silly. The result is that I’m on my own for breakfast now. Which isn’t that great a loss, given that breakfast in Turkmenistan is often just bread and tea at my house. There was a while there where I wasn’t eating anything for breakfast (I’ve never been a breakfast fan, honestly, at least not during the week day). Now, however, I hard-boil five eggs every Sunday and have one a day, washed down with a few gulps of whatever juice I have on hand. It could be a little bit more lush, but it does me fine.
Work is between 12 and 6, depending on what day it is. Sometimes the day is shorter, sometimes longer. I teach between two and four classes a day, and twice a week I tutor the young girl I mentioned in a previous entry. (I have also JUST picked up a second student for tutoring, but we haven’t actually started lessons yet.) In class I usually contribute about 15-20 minutes of a 45 minute lesson, always accompanied by one o0f the four English teachers at my school. School can be kind of exhilarating but often, and usually at the same time, the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced. Sometimes the students seem like they’re being willfully ignorant, and sometimes I know they’re trying their hardest and I’m still not getting through to them. Weirdly, whether or not I’ve truly succeeded, as long as I’ve TAUGHT and TRIED, I always feel good about my time in the classroom. (Except when the students are being little haywans, little (wild) animals.) I don’t…really have a lunch period. There are no cafes, restaurants, cafeterias or prepared food stands anywhere NEAR my school, and I don’t think a diet of soda and candy from the stores would be healthy, so I have to bring my own food. At the very beginning of service, I tried making sandwiches, but I’m not fond of most of the cheese or meat here. Now, I eat crackers and cheese wedges, and sometimes fruit for lunch.
Then it’s back home, where I usually unwind with an episode or two of whatever TV show I’ve got on my computer (currently completely addicted to Dexter) or a book. I tend to do most of my reading at school, though, between classes or when I’m not actively teaching in the classroom. Sometimes I go out and drink tea with my family before dinner, but usually I want some time to myself after work. That’s actually not the norm in a Turkmen family – they spend very little time alone – but my family understands now and I hope they don’t think I don’t like them.
Dinner is between maybe 7 and 9 and not really my favorite meal of the day. Turkmen used a lot of oil. In everything. Always. There are some dishes that I think I would enjoy a lot were it not for the inexplicable dose of oil. My favorite dish is now palow (rice, carrots, onions; meat, fish or raisins) which is funny because I used to hate eating more than a few spoonfuls of it. Then again, my family when I was in training used cottonseed oil, which tastes disgusting. Now my family uses sunflower-(seed?) oil, which is much more appetizing. My host sister (who does most of the cooking) will sometimes make potato somsa or manty (steamed dumplings) which are delicious. The meat kind are NOT. Also she has this tendency to pair fried potatoes and pasta, which is way, way too starchy. (And sometimes she fries pasta. No. Just no.) Turkmen also don’t usually drink anything with their meals, something I’ve had to get used to.
After dinner, I relax with my family if they’re watching TV (we get Russian MTV, and usually one of the other Russian channels will be showing some dubbed English-language show or movie. I’ve watched Vampire Diaries, Bones, True Blood, Merlin, Lost, Castle, Mentalist, Fringe, Project Runway, and the whole host of MTV reality shows that make me ashamed of American media), or help my host mother with her lessons. Otherwise, I read or prepare lessons in my room. I’m asleep by 12 or 1 in the morning. (Well, I DO get up at 9:30, so I still get plenty of sleep.)
Also twice a week, I do my shopping at the market and check the post office for mail. This is not a subtle plug for more letters at all.
