Monday,
October 31, 2002
Chirchik, Uzbekistan
Moving on, once again.
Last night,
I attended my first toi, that's Uzbek for wedding. I have
heard that tois are different depending on the region, the ethnic
group, etc. But from what I saw last night, it seems to me that
tois are the best place to see how the local culture is just a
confused mix of all sorts of other cultural influences. As the
bride and groom entered the room, a group of musicians played
local instruments, which included four karnais (a huge horn with
a deep sound), two surnais (a smaller higher-pitched horn/flute-type
thing) and couple different drums. This performance was amazing.
It was very rhythmic and was my first glimpse at traditional Uzbek
culture. But the bride was wearing a Western-style white wedding
dress and veil, which I think must be a lingering Soviet tradition.
The groom wore a suit.
Extremely loud music was piped through speakers throughout the
evening, with breaks only for congratulatory speeches from friends
and family. Modern Uzbek music itself is a strange mix of cultures.
Modern singers sing in Uzbek to fast- paced dance/techno beats.
Most of the music is like this. There are no genres. I call it
heart attack music.
But everyone in Uzbekistan loves to dance. At tois, everyone dances,
even the grandmothers, especially after several shots of vodka.
Everyone dances, all the time. Every time our Peace Corps group
gathers at a hotel, there will undoubtedly be a disco in the evening.
The main activities, then, at a toi, are eating, drinking vodka,
and dancing. Socializing is almost impossible because the music
is too loud. Next time I will bring ear plugs.
Tomorrow we
swear in and become official Peace Corps Volunteers. I joined
the Peace Corps, and 15 months later I'm finally finishing training.
I'm as nervous as I was before I ever came to Uzbekistan. I have
seen my village, but my new life is still quite unknown. I have
become very comfortable to life here in Chirchik with my American
friends nearby. But this is all normal, I tell myself. I will
move to my village on Saturday. It will take some time to adjust
to my new lifestyle and work there, but I will grow to like it.
I will grow to like it.
The swearing-in ceremony is a big deal at the end of training.
Guests include U.S. Embassy officials, Uzbek Ministry of Education
officials, our host families and of course our training staff.
A couple trainees will give speeches in Uzbek and Russian. And
some, including myself, will give musical performances. I will
be playing the dutar tomorrow night. I ended up learning three
Uzbek folk songs in the five lessons that I had. It's not much,
but our training director thought it would be a nice addition
to the ceremony. But I'm a little nervous.
Then on Saturday, we will move out to our sites. When I went to
visit a few weeks ago, I took a 12-hour overnight train to Bukhara
with the other volunteers in the region. The train is very comfortable
and is going to be our usual mode of transportation between Bukhara
and Tashkent. But on Saturday, we will be flying on Uzbek Airways.
The flight will be no more than a couple of hours.
This week we took our final language assessment, the Language
Proficiency Interview. The assessment was a 20-minute interview
conducted by an Educational Testing Service-certified interviewer.
There were nine possible scores, ranging from novice-low to superior.
The Peace Corps' goal is for trainees to reach novice-high by
the end of the three-month training. I reached advanced, the third
highest level. But the bigger achievement to me is the fact that
I communicate with my family and neighbors completely in Uzbek,
and we go beyond the necessary communication and have conversations
about life in Uzbekistan, life in America and other such topics.
My counterpart is going to start giving me Russian lessons as
soon as I get to my site.
Please visit my friend Stephen's
Bugno's site. He has some well-written journal entries about
the humorous realities of life in Uzbekistan. There is a link
to his site from my main page.
A final thought: Happy Halloween!
