If you can’t take the heat, stay out of Uzbekistan

Friday, June 6, 2003
Sovhoz 22, Uzbekistan

I regret the seldomness of these journal entries. But I’ve been here for so long now that sometimes I wonder if anyone from outside of my life here will be interested in what I do and think about every day. Does anyone care that I’ve mastered the most water-efficient methods of bucket bathing? (I can get pretty clean with only a quarter of a bucket.) Does anyone care that ash from the clay oven makes excellent kitty litter? Is anyone wondering how to pick out a quality plastic bag from the plastic bag vendors at the bazaar? Or how to avoid bloody knuckles from scrubbing your clothes clean in salty water? Would anyone be interested in knowing that duct tape and dental floss are the two most versatile supplies in my life right now? Anyway, it’s easy to become accustomed to these details in my daily routine and forget to write about the larger developments every now and then.

Summer in Sovhoz 22

Summer is here, which means a lot of things. It means it’s hot in Uzbekistan, and HOT in Bukhara. It means laundry can dry in as little as one hour. It means the gardens are blooming and fruits and vegetables are once again a part of my diet. That’s good because I was getting sick of eating dough and bread all day long. The kids in Sovhoz 22 are out of school, which means they are free to help their parents out in fields picking grass for hours every day under the scorching sun. They fill their donkey carts and bring the grass back home to feed the cows. They go twice a day. (They can’t take the cows to eat the grass themselves because the cows will eat the grapes, which aren’t ripe yet.) Summer also means people who aren’t picking grass (i.e.: the American and people who don’t have cows) stay within the cool, dirt and clay walls of their homes for most of the day until the sun goes down.

Summer is here, and that means that have I survived my first school year. And maybe I even taught the kids a thing or two…maybe. Toward the end of the year, I did start to see some small successes in my class, but probably the biggest success is that I’ve stopped fretting over things like sustainability and improved teaching methods. That stuff is not a priority in this village. Teaching has become nothing more than my day job. I’ve experienced more success stories outside of the classroom, and they have made me realize that my real job here is just to be me and let people get to know me and my ideas. I’m sure most people in this village will think I’m merely the crazy American with crazy American ideas that have no place here. But I think, and I hope, that a few or more of the young people around me will remember something I once said or did and take the risk of doing something new and different as they grow up. Maybe they will start to go for evening walks. Maybe they will make carrot cakes or use a new spice in their cooking. Maybe they will teach their kids to smile in photographs. These might seem like little things, but the bigger hope is that these kids will learn that doing something different instead of the way it has been done for decades isn’t so bad and might even be good. I’m not trying to change the culture here, I just want to get the kids to start trying out new ideas. Does that make sense? I have an example. The following incident, as minor as it may seem, has been one of my proudest moments in my service so far:

A success story outside of the classroom

Several weeks ago, girls ages 15-17 from around the Bukhara region were submitting applications for this summer’s Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) Camp. GLOW camps are kind of a Peace Corps tradition, and they have been particularly successful in Bukhara in previous years. About 10 girls from my village submitted applications. Five of them, including my host sister, Hajar and two of our neighbors, Solmaz and Zarina, were called for interviews. The interviews were to be held all weekend in Bukhara, which is a 14 km, 150 so’m bus trip from Sovhoz 22. The girls from my village were scheduled to interview on Sunday morning.

One afternoon prior to the interview weekend, I was sitting on the bench outside of my house, as I often do in my free time, chatting with Solmaz, who is one of my best friends here. Zarina’s mother came from next door and joined us. We were having a polite conversation about random things, and then we started talking about the GLOW camp.

“What time will you take the girls to Bukhara on Sunday?” she asked.

“Well, I have to go to Bukhara on Friday, so I won’t be here to take them on Sunday, “ I explained. “The girls will go to Bukhara by themselves.”

Zarina’s mother responded with a gasp of motherly concern and disbelief at the thought of independent girls, a reaction that was all too familiar to me from my own adolescent years. “They can’t go! How will they go? They don’t know Bukhara.”

“It’s not hard,” I said. “Bukhara is not a very big city.”

Another gasp, this time of frustration with the American’s lack of concern. “It’s not hard for you because you go every weekend. You know the city. But the city is much bigger than our Sovhoz, and our girls aren’t used to other places.”

I explained to her that before I came here, I didn’t know Bukhara either. But I went a couple of times, and I quickly learned my way around. “I will tell them how to get to the interviews, and they will learn, too,” I said.

“They will get lost,” she said, her voice growing more and more worried that I would not be going with the girls.

“They are 16 and 17 years old, grown girls. They have brains and they have tongues, and they speak the local languages better than I do. If they get lost, they can ask someone for help.”

“They will be afraid. They don’t know the way.”

“Maybe they will be afraid the first time. But they will learn their way around, and then they won’t be afraid. I came all the way to Uzbekistan from America. I was afraid at the beginning, too. But then I learned the language and the customs and how to buy a train ticket, and now I’m not afraid.”

“But our girls are different. They are not American. They don’t leave the Sovhoz.” We were going in circles, and by this point we had both raised our voices a bit in frustration and were having a healthy argument. All the while, Solmaz was listening to us argue in silence, staring at the floor, probably a little nervous about the young American sharing her radical ideas with the older generation in the village. I was sure to explain, however, that I was not trying to corrupt the girls with crazy American ideas. But Bukhara is only 14 km away, and the girls should know their way around.

Both Zarina’s mother and I remained persistent. She kept saying, “They will be afraid. They can’t go by themselves.” And I must have said a dozen times, “They have brains, and they have tongues. They will be okay. They have brains, and they have tongues. They will be okay.” But in the end, I agreed to meet the girls as they got off the bus at the bazaar and take them to the school where the interviews were going to be held.

That Sunday, I kept my promise and met the girls at the bazaar. We had some free time before their interviews so I walked them through the old city and past some of Bukhara’s famous historical landmarks—the Arc, the Kalon Minaret, the trading domes, etc.—on the way to the school. We walked for about an hour, and the girls grew tired and surprised that Americans like to walk so much.

After the interviews, I had intended to spend the day with the girls showing them more of the city. But I had to stay to help with the rest of the interviews. “No problem,” Solmaz said. “We’ll wander around and take the last bus home around 4 o’clock.”

Then, I was suddenly overcome by feelings of concern and a need to protect the girls. After all, they had come to the big city without their parents, and they were sort of my responsibility. If anything would happen to them, it might be my fault. I thought of Zarina’s mother. These girls didn’t know their way around Bukhara, and weren’t accustomed to the ways of the city. I let my concerns get the best of me and started to doubt my own confidence in the girls. “Do you know where you’re going? Do you know the way back to the big bazaar? Don’t pay more than 100 so’m in a marshrutka! Maybe I should go with you.”

Solmaz looked at me and said, “Sofia Baji, we have brains, and we have tongues. We’ll be okay.”

She caught me off guard with my own words. And at once, I relaxed and felt proud that Solmaz’s confidence had overcome her fears. I told them to have a good day in the city, and I returned to the interviews. I met the girls back in the village that evening. Their feet were aching from all the walking they had done. But they couldn’t stop talking about the things they had seen and done all day in Bukhara. And they were beaming with their newfound feelings of independence. They spent the day in Bukhara, not picking grass or washing clothes or cooking dinner. For one day, they were free from their village lives.

All five of my girls got accepted to GLOW Camp. I am so proud of them. They have brains, and they have tongues, and they did just fine. And now they have seen a little bit of the world outside of Sovhoz 22.

Summer plans

School ended two weeks ago. I spent the first week of summer vacation (last week) in Tashkent, where I finished and submitted a grant proposal. I wrote a grant proposal. My first grant proposal ever. I’m finally becoming a real Peace Corps volunteer. I asked for about $2,000 to help our village’s health clinic finish renovations and reopen. If we get the money, the clinic can start treating people again in a couple of months. I might actually help the community a little bit with this project. But right now, I’m still in the waiting stage.

I also spent last week enjoying the almost-first-world comforts that Tashkent has to offer. These include going to the movie theater to watch bootlegged versions of the latest Hollywood flicks dubbed in Russian (I saw X2 and Matrix Reloaded), eating different and delicious foods at restaurants (Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern), and daily hot showers in a hotel. It was a productive and relaxing week. Just what I needed to recuperate from the end of school and come back to the village for the summer. Every Uzbekistan volunteer can use a good week in Tashkent every now and then.

This week was my second week of summer vacation, and since I’m waiting to hear about my grant proposal, I haven’t had much to do. If I end up getting money for the clinic, I will spend the next couple of weeks working with my counterpart and our school’s director to write another grant proposal. We want to develop the school’s English resource center.

So all week, I haven’t been doing much, but at the same time I’ve been finding ways to keep myself busy. I’m still studying Russian, but it’s getting harder and harder the more I learn. I’ve also been indulging in various household chores—washing clothes, washing dishes, sweeping the dust out of my room. And of course, I continue to hang out in the afternoons and evenings with the neighborhoods kids and women.

Since it’s been too hot to do anything during the day except sit inside the house or in the shade, I’ve starting taking long walks to watch the sunset over the grape fields every evening. I’ve been walking from my village to the main Tashkent-Bukhara road and back every night. It’s about 4-5 km round trip. The first few days, people I saw along the way were really confused. People coming back from picking grass in the fields would pass me in their donkey carts and ask where I was going. I would tell them I was going for a walk to the main road and back. They would ask why. Because I’ve been sitting at home all day. Then they would offer to give me a ride in their cart full of grass. No thanks, I like walking. But after a few days, everyone along the way would see me and say, “There she goes walking to the main road again.” And now I seem to pick up different kids every day that come along for the walk. It’s been fun.

Lessons in the kitchen

I’ve also been cooking a little bit lately. Carrot cake was a big hit. And I made dinner one night this week. I cooked a spicy chick pea dish with rice. I loaded it with a bunch of different spices that are all available here but that nobody ever uses. As I was cooking, the new and wonderful aromas wafted out into the street, and the neighbor kids all came by to see what I was cooking. Word spread quickly. “Miss Sofia is cooking something, and it smells great!” I was afraid my family wouldn’t like it because all the flavors would be overwhelming. But they loved it, even though it was a bit too spicy for Jahongir, my 12-year-old host brother, and for Sobir Bobo.

I’ve discovered that cooking is a great way to explain that it’s hard to generalize about American culture. It’s an idea I’ve been trying to explain ever since I got here. In Uzbekistan, people generalize about everything. They have their national foods, their national dress, their national music, etc. Since independence, there has been an incredible push for nationalism in Uzbekistan. The kids are nearly brainwashed with Uzbek nationalism in school. So everyone is quick to list off the historical landmarks, literary icons, and national foods of Uzbekistan. And of course all of it is wonderful; nothing ever sucks. (Personally, I’m not too fond of osh. But that’s still my secret.)

And people of other ethnicities—Turk, Tajik, Russian—are quick to distinguish the differences between their cultures and Uzbek culture. So dinner is always classified as an Uzbek dish or a Turkish dish, etc. It is not uncommon for Peace Corps volunteers to be asked about American national foods. Some volunteers quickly reply “hamburgers and fries.” But I always take the time to explain, “In America there are many cultures, so there are many kinds of foods. There is no American national food.”

So when I was cooking the chick pea dish, in which I threw in whatever vegetables were around, my host sister Hajar asked me if I was cooking American food. I told her I was making it up as I went, and that’s how I cooked all through college. It wasn’t any established recipe, it was my own creation. In America, people do that. And it’s okay to put carrots in a cake.

The only slight inconvenience in cooking is that we don’t have a bazaar anywhere near the village, so I can’t ever throw something together when I feel like cooking. Anything I cook has to be planned several days in advance so I can get the ingredients when I’m in Bukhara. Still, I plan on cooking more often from now on.

More summer plans

In a few weeks, I will go back to Tashkent for an in-service language training. The following week, I will counsel at the Bukhara GLOW Camp. That takes me to the middle of July. For the rest of July, I will either come back to the village and continue working on the clinic and school projects (if I receive grant money), or I will spend some time in Ishtixon, a town outside of Samarkand where a fellow volunteer is leading his community in building a new school. In August, I might take a vacation and travel around Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The vacation plans are still a little sketchy.

So those are my summer plans in a nutshell—grants, camp, vacation, cooking, walking, etc. I think the summer will be pretty busy and will be over before I am ready to start teaching again. But I will try to enjoy the summer as much as possible. I think I will find working with the clinic much more satisfying than teaching English. The challenge now is to find other such projects to keep me satisfied for the next year.

Except for teaching English, I have really be enjoying life in my village lately. I feel as if I have become a part of this community. I have grown close to the kids who live around me. My closest friends are either 16-17-year-old girls or 10-12-year-old boys, but they are the ones who are most accepting of my differences. And they’re fun to hang out with. If I can just keep reminding myself that I don’t have to be a great teacher, then I think I can really enjoy the rest of my time here.

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