Growing brooms in the garden
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Sovhoz 22, Uzbekistan
I've been feeling a
little feverish and achy so I lit the gas heater in my room and
have been lying in bed all day. But the room was getting uncomfortably
hot, so I stepped outside to sit on the bench in front of my house
and eat an apple. When I finish, I toss the core into the dirt
in front of me. It will biodegrade or get swept up eventually.
There are few trash cans around here because there is little trash.
Most the of the garbage is food garbage-vegetable peels, apple
cores, etc.-and that stuff gets fed to the cows and chickens,
all of whom, at the moment, produce nothing for our family. The
big cow is more than six months pregnant, and the chickens haven't
laid any eggs for as long as I've been here.
It's a very pleasant
fall afternoon. Not too cold yet. It's around 3:30 p.m., and this
afternoon our street is pretty quiet. If anyone in my host family
is home, they must be asleep; afternoon napping is a part of life.
Sobir Bobo is out in the fields with the animals. Graf, our bow-legged
guard dog is also enjoying an afternoon nap, sleeping on the ground
next to me. When Graf was a baby, a neighbor kid dropped him and
broke his front right leg. A local buvi bound up the dog's leg,
but without a splint. Graf continued to walk on the bound leg,
causing the bone to heal with a curve in it.
My Tajik neighbor comes
by on her way home from working in the school's "cafeteria."
She makes pirojkes-fried dough with potatoes in it-and sells them
to the children between lessons for 25 soum each. I don't actually
know my Tajik neighbor's name. My host mother calls her "The
Tajik"-hers is one of the few Tajik families in this primarily
Uzbek and Turkish village-and the kids around here refer to the
adults as the mothers and fathers of their children. So The Tajik
becomes "Mohinbonu's mother." She is missing half her
bottom row of teeth, and she adds a "-ski" onto the
end of Uzbek words and thinks she's speaking Russian. The Tajik
stops to say hello and pours half of her handful of sunflower
seeds into my hands. I eat them in the local manner, which I've
mastered. One swift one-handed motion. Hold the butt of the shell
with my fingers, use my teeth to crack the shell longwise and
scoop out the seed. I toss the shells on the ground. They, too,
will be swept up soon. Vegetable season is over, and Sobir Bobo
is growing brooms in our garden.
A old, rusty car drives
by honking its horn and causing a small dust storm in its wake.
The back seat is filled with 20-kilo sacks of flour. We don't
need any flour today. But if a donkey cart full of onions or cabbages
comes by, we might be interested. This is the village bazaar.
Ten-year-old Gulshoda
shows up with her 2-year-old brother, Rashid, in tow, as always.
"Have you seen my mom?" she asks. "No, I think
she's still in the fields," I say. She makes herself comfortable
on the bench next to me, and begins her favorite afterschool activity:
asking Miss Sofia a million questions. "What are you writing?"
"Is that pen from America?" A neighbor is taking his
herd of sheep to the fields beyond our house. They pass in front
of us. "Do you have sheep like that in America?" "Why
do you wear glasses?" We've been over all this before, but
she still asks. Rashid is bundled up in a toddler-sized chopon-a
calf-length quilted robe with cotton padding-which is kept closed
by a string tied around his waste. He is also wearing his signature
light blue knit cap. He, too, is indulging in his favorite afternoon
activity: picking up handfuls of dirt and throwing them back at
the ground. He's quite good at it.
Finally, my friends
arrive. My host sister Hajar, and our neighbor Solmaz. Both in
the 11th form. "We're going to cotton tomorrow," they
announce. Who? All students from 5th to 11th form and their teachers.
They will pick cotton all day everyday until cotton season is
over around the end of November. Then, during their winter break,
they will have lessons to make up for lost time. The girls seem
neither excited nor annoyed. Tomorrow, they will pick cotton,
and that's that. I feel the same way. I won't be teaching English
for the next several weeks. And that's that.
It's the
end of October, the students are picking cotton, the children
are wearing chopons, and brooms are growing in the garden. It's
autumn.
