Sunday, December
29, 2002
Sovhoz 22 (somewhere near Bukhara), Uzbekistan
They
haven't fired me yet!
I've been at my site for two months now, and there has been so
much to write about that it has taken me this long to write anything
at all. Does that make sense?
The first two months at site are supposed to be the hardest. I
believe it. I've experienced just about every negative emotion
I can think of: depression, frustration, anger, homesickness,
loneliness, regret, bitterness and probably a few others. But
all the Peace Corps published adjustment manuals say that these
feelings are normal in the beginning, so I stuck it out. Sure
enough, things have started to get better in the past few weeks.
I might actually be able to do this.
A rough start
The first few weeks in good old Sovhoz 22 were the hardest. There
were physical challenges: Just as the full-body rash started to
clear up, I walked into a ditch at night in the dark and scraped
up my legs. There were emotional challenges: I missed my PCV friends
whom I saw every day during the previous three months; I missed
home and my family; I missed my Chirchik host family and the conveniences
of city life. And since I was fasting for Ramadan, I found myself
a little grumpy and easily frustrated by the seemingly ridiculous
questions and comments I heard from the local people. My favorites
include "You're from Chicago? But aren't you Muslim?"
"All of your presidents in America have been Jewish. You
just don't know it because you don't know history" (this
one came from my host father, the man of the house, who is an
expert on everything since he watches lots of government-produced
television news), and "Do you speak Uzbek with your mother
in America?" Since my mother, Suraiya, and I both clearly
have "Uzbek"names, it makes sense that we must speak
Uzbek at home.
I was playing UNO once with some local girls, and their mother
called me a "YIGIT", which means boy, after I
shuffled the cards in that sophisticated, apparently manly way
in which you bend half the deck in each hand and flutter the halves
together in the middle. "Why did you call me a boy?"
I asked politely. She replied, "Because it takes strength
to shuffle the cards like that." This coming from a woman
who likely spent her day hand washing her entire family's dirty
clothes, kneading and baking a dozen or so circle loaves of bread,
milking the cow and churning the milk into cream, and still managing
to cook three meals for her kids.
I wondered if I could really last in this village that has a number
for a name and that is not found on any map. Where people seemed
too tired with life to smile or laugh ever. Where I can't eat
lunch at a café or buy ice cream from a shop everyday.
Where I can't stop by the bazaar and buy Korean salads or juice
or chocolate on the way home. Where I can't be anonymous. Where
most homes have phones, but no one can call outside the village.
Where most people have televisions even though electricity is
never a sure thing.
The lack of smiles or happiness really started to depress me in
those first few weeks. In Chirchik, I was always laughing and
joking around with my host family, neighbors, teachers, etc. Here,
when I greeted people in the street with a smile and a cheerful
"Assalom, yakshimisiz?"("Hello, how are you?"),
the only response I seemed to get was a grumpily muttered "Assalom,"
and a stern look. I had to remind myself to smile at least a few
times every day.
My new host family, too, seemed nice but not generally happy or
friendly. They gave me a nice, big space with heat and tons of
privacy, but didn't seem to want to talk to me all that much.
From my first observations, they seemed very serious, often even
sad or depressed. No smiles around here. The parents seemed to
treat their 15-year-old daughter, Shahnoza, like Cinderella and
their 6-year-old son, Aziz, like the Royal Prince. They spoke
to their daughter only in command form. And if the little boy
yelled from anywhere in the house, his mother and older sister
would stop whatever they were doing and cater to his needs. He
screamed at and hit his mother and sister several times a day,
and they continued to try to please him. When I was showing the
family some pictures one day, Aziz grabbed at them because it
is normal for him to act as if he owns everything in the house.
But I stopped his hand and explained to him nicely that he must
first ask permission to see my things. For the next five minutes,
the whole family urged him to spit out the two simple words "Mumkin-mi?"("May
I?"), but he refused. I took the pictures back to my room,
and he threw a screaming/yelling/crying fit, which he was accustomed
to do about three or four times a day. It didn't work on me.
The parents in this family didn't seem very interested in talking
to me. This was completely different from my previous host family
in Chirchik, in which the parents treated their kids like real
people and everyone seemed interested in each others‚ lives.
I used to talk to them about everything. They did wonders for
my language skills.
Bobo, smiles, toothpaste
But like I mentioned earlier, things have started to get a little
bit better in the past few weeks. In my search for someone to
talk to, I've become friends with a crazy grandfather character
who lives across the street. He lives in a house with some 12
other people including his wife, several sons and their wives
and kids. He wears thick glasses that make his eyes look huge,
and chews and spits some kind of cheaper-than-cigarettes tobacco
product throughout our conversations. He spends hours trying to
convince me that I'm not a real American. That gets annoying but
he's the only person I've met around here so far that really seems
interested in sitting and talking with me. So I visit him every
now and then and humor him. The other day he spent several minutes
explaining a long, complicated question about life in Pakistan,
to which I replied simply, "I don't know. I'm from Chicago."
He laughed. But even with this bobo, I find challenges. When sitting
with him and his wife, I often turn to her and ask her opinion,
trying to include her into our conversation. Most of the time
she just giggles and looks away, while her husband insists, "She
doesn"t know. She's not educated." To which, I usually
say, "She has a brain, which means she has ideas. Educated
or not, I"m interested in what she has to say." He nods
and continues to talk. She gives no response. Maybe they are humoring
me too.
I started mentioning the importance of smiles to various people
around the village. The kids seem to understand more than the
adults. But I think word is spreading and more and more everyday
people seem to be smiling back at me. I asked my host mother why
she always looks so sad and serious and why she never smiles.
She said men and women here don't smile or laugh in front of their
children. I pointed out that neither her kids nor her husband
were in the room, and maybe she could try a smile. Since then
she's shot me a few more.
I started spending time with my host sister, Shahnoza, when she's
not doing housework or watching television. Shahnoza a simple
village girl. She doesn't mind doing housework all the time because
"otherwise [she] would be bored." She likes to draw
pictures of fashionable clothes that she would never wear herself,
but that she thinks maybe she could sell to Russians and make
some cash.
The 6-year-old, Aziz, has cut back on the screaming fits, has
started to say please and thank you, and has started calling me
Sofia Opa. Sometimes he comes to hang out with me in my room.
I give him some crayons or markers and some paper, but the idea
of drawing and coloring is so foreign to him. The first few times
he didn't really know what to do. I also gave him a toothbrush,
and we brush our teeth together every night. The dental hygiene
wave has not reached Uzbekistan yet, but I seem to have this kid
excited by the "green toothpaste from America."
Sometimes it feels nice when everyone on the street greets me
by name, even though I can't even pretend to know all of their
names.
Teaching English
My main job around here is to teach English at School #9. Sovhoz
22 only has one school, so I have no idea why it‚s called
#9. I also haven‚t figured out yet where exactly Sovhoz‚s
1-22 are located. Anyway, they tell me that around 700 kids attend
this school. I don't know where they all come from, but maybe
this place has some back streets that I haven't discovered yet.
I'm not exactly the best English teacher, but in all fairness,
there are some structural and organizational issues at the school
that are making things even more difficult. Sometimes the director
calls all of the teachers to a meeting in the middle of the day
and the kids make chaos in the meantime. Sometimes whole classes
of students decide to go home early because their classroom is
cold. (It's cold now in Uzbekistan, and most schools don't have
the luxury of heat). Sometimes classes start on time, sometimes
they don't. Sometimes classes are 45 minutes, sometimes they're
longer or shorter. It all depends on how the clock in the teacher's
room is working that day. When there's no electricity during the
day, which is most often the case, the start and end of lessons
is determined by the chosen student running by all the classroom
frantically shaking a cowbell. It's a very interesting place.
At the moment, matching creativity with the lack of resources
is my greatest challenge. I don't have my own classroom, so I
can't hang stuff on the walls anywhere. The children sit in twos
in rows. Each pair's bench is connected to the table behind them,
so I can't do much with the seating arrangement.
My counterpart, the school's only English teacher, won a Xerox
machine in a contest for English teachers. But the school rarely
has electricity, so the machine has been collecting dust for the
past two months. We finally got it fired up one day, but it doesn't
work. And not all of the children have books because books are
expensive. All that means that everything (song lyrics, poems,
vocabulary) must be written on the board by hand. I can feel the
muscles in my right arm getting stronger every day.
I am the second volunteer to work at this school in this village.
The good thing about being the second volunteer is that people
are now familiar with Peace Corps and certain American habits.
The bad thing about being the second volunteer is that the students
and teachers are expecting me to start all the same activities
that the last volunteer initiated. But I don't like baseball,
and I don't celebrate Christmas.
I expect things at school to get better with time. I just need
to warm up to the place and fall into a certain groove.
To pass the time
Most of my free time lately has been consumed by several hours
of independent Russian study every day. Well, it's sort of independent.
I study from a textbook on my own and then meet with my counterpart
to practice conversation. It's coming along, but Russian must
be the hardest language in the world. (For those of you who know
Russian: just when I thought I could handle the cases, I learned
about perfective and imperfective verbs. What is that all about???)
I can do the exercises in the book easily, but speaking is another
story. In any case, studying language is actually kind of relaxing
for me, and it certainly helps me pass the time. And sometimes
when I go to my counterpart's house, I get two lessons in one
because her 16-year-old son is teaching me to play chess. I won
once, but I think he let me.
And of course, like every good Peace Corps Volunteer, I've been
reading a lot. I'm currently more than halfway through One Hundred
Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez). I can't put it down.
Many of the volunteers have had boxes of their books shipped here,
so there are plenty of good reads to go around for awhile. But
if any of you are thinking about sending me a package, I would
always appreciate a good book to call my own.
New music will be appreciated too. I've listened to most of my
CD's several times already. Even the ones I never listen too.
Airmail packages arrive in 7-10 days!!
Bukhara, yes
So far I've been escaping every weekend via rickety old bus to
Bukhara. There I indulge in city conveniences. I use the telephone
and Internet, visit the post office and bazaar, stock up on toilet
paper (there are a pile of rocks next to the pit at my house),
eat chocolate, and most important, see other PCVs. I am very fortunate
that one of my good friends, Valerie, ended up in Bukhara. I stay
with her at her host family's house every weekend. To her goes
much of the credit for my still being here. She shares her blankets
at night and we spend hours venting our respective frustrations
to each other.
Valerie and I make quite a pair wandering the streets of Bukhara.
She is tall and white; local people naturally assume she is Russian.
And I, of course, must have come from India. Thus we are seen
all over town together, the tall Russian woman and the short Indian
girl. Sometimes when we are in buses or marshrutkas, we speak
to each other only in Uzbek. Sometimes Valerie will spit something
out in Tajik (she's learning from her host family), and I might
say something in Russian. It's a fun way to deal with the same
questions we get asked over and over and over again on the streets
and in the marshrutkas: Where are you from? What do you do here?
How old are you? Etc.
Bukhara is more of a town than a city. And every weekend, we inevitably
run into any of the other five volunteers posted in the region.
We know where to find each other, and most of the town knows where
to find us: one of three Internet places, the Russian café
that has fruity tea and amazing cakes, the phone place next to
the post office, or a few other places.
Bukhara is a beautiful, old town with plenty of historical sites
and, of course, a thriving tourist industry. Sometimes we get
quoted obvious tourist prices in taxis, but by frequenting the
non-tourist area cafes, etc., we've begun to make our permanent
presence known. I haven't done any sight-seeing yet, maybe in
the Spring.
'Tis the season
We've celebrated a number of holidays here in Uzbekistan these
past few months.
Early November saw the beginning of Ramadan. As far as I can tell,
many of the people in my village seem somewhat religious. There
is a mosque on my street, but women don't go. In fact, most of
the women don't pray at all. Their husbands pray, and that must
be good enough. In the same way, some people fasted and some didn't.
During Ramadan I did a lot of guesting around the village. All
the families took turns to host iftar, the meal that breaks the
fast at sundown. It's a great concept except that the special
food that everyone wants to feed guests is osh. So I ended up
eating osh almost every night for a month. I know Uzbeks can eat
this stuff until their dying day, but Americans can only take
so much osh. I won't eat it again for awhile.
At these iftar's, the women and men sit and eat in separate rooms.
I'm not sure what went on in the men's rooms, but here's what
happened with the women. After everyone ate, and whoever wanted
to pray prayed, one of the few women around, sometimes a hired
outsider, would spend the next hour and a half or so reciting
the Qur'an while everyone else sat and listened. At the end everyone
would do a series of blessings for each other.
During Ramadan, I caught my first glimpse of the differences among
ethnic groups in the village. There are many ethnic Turks in this
village and surrounding villages. The Turkish Qur'an readings
were a bit different. The readings were broken up by group recitation
of a couple Arabic verses in a sing-songy chanting-type manner.
At the end of the night, the Turks sing songs about Ramadan in
Turkish. The Uzbek events tended to be more solemn affairs. Most
of the women looked bored out of their minds probably because
they didn't understand any of the Arabic and nothing was done
in Uzbek.
I was able to observe Ramadan traditions in my village. But in
other parts of the country, the vodka kept flowing. That‚s
just how this place is.
Thanksgiving was a blast. It came one month after we had been
at our sites, and it was the perfect occasion for a much needed
American get-together. Some 20 of us gathered in Navoi, a small
city about an hour and half away from Bukhara by marshrutka. One
of my best friends, Shari, lives their in her own apartment, which
was where we gathered for dinner. Everyone cooked. The food was
better than anything I've ever had at Thanksgiving in America.
We had two turkeys, amazing pumpkin pies, greens, stuffing, an
a bunch of other stuff. But the best part was seeing everyone
after our first month apart from each other.
The Eid-al-Fitr holiday at the end of Ramadan was not as exciting
as I was expecting it to be. In America, we tend to feast on this
day. Here, I spent the day hanging out in my room with my host
sister and her friend, and in the evening I went to visit some
other people in the village.
The first snow. Wednesday, Dec. 11. This is not really a holiday,
but it might as well be. Barely an inch fell, but it brought festivity
to the streets in no time. People were congratulating each other.
Kids went crazy throwing snow balls and sliding around in the
streets. Anyone with a camera was obligated to take dozens of
pictures. Everyone was smiling, kids were laughing. It was the
first time I sensed any sort of happiness in the village.
Christmas was pretty uneventful for me. I taught some Christmas
songs at school and decorated a little tree. Some volunteers from
out West came to Bukhara the weekend before Christmas, and the
Bukhara crowd organized a Christmas dinner. I skipped out to go
to a Turkish wedding, but I wish I hadn't. I heard Christmas dinner
was good. The wedding was outside, and I froze for several hours.
New Year's Day is one of the biggest holidays in Uzbekistan. It's
a lot like Christmas, except on a different day and without Jesus.
"Kor Bobo"(Grandfather Snow), who looks just
like Santa Claus but sometimes is dressed in blue, brings presents
to the kids. They decorate a New Year's tree. And they sing a
bunch of songs in Russian and Uzbek. People spend the day with
their families, and the big cities become festive at night with
colored lights in the streets.
Some friends and I will be heading to Tashkent on the 31st. We
will be together on the overnight train as 31st becomes the 1st.
I plan on visiting my former host family in Chirchik for a few
days before heading to Tashkent for a three-day PC conference.
I miss my old host family a lot, and I'm very excited to see them.
And any PCV gathering is always a fun time.
So...
Thanks for reading all this stuff. I will try to write more often
in the future, at least one entry a month. But for now, know that
I am dealing with everything as best as I can. Sovhoz 22 is certainly
a challenge. I haven't started loving the place yet, but I've
stopped hating it.
I promise to write again soon. In the meantime, keep those snail-mail
letters coming. It gets lonely in the village sometimes, and I
can't describe how exciting it is to get mail from abroad.
Happy Thanksgiving (belated), Eid Mubarak (belated), First Snow
Congrats, Merry Christmas (belated, but not by much), and a Very
Happy New Year!
