15. October, 2003
I just spent three days with one of the new volunteers! PC sent all the new volunteers all over the country with volunteers from our group to see what volunteer life is like. I had an excellent time with Carol, and enjoyed meeting the other trainees, too. (We had all met in Talas City to pick up those who were visiting Talas Oblast.) I’m glad that they will be able to benefit a little bit from our experiences, and not feel as lost as I did when I first got to site.
Teaching is going rather well. I just had my fifth Russian lesson with Rosa, my neighbor, and she told me flattering things about how much she hears the students like English.
I just spent three days with one of the new volunteers! PC sent all the new volunteers all over the country with volunteers from our group to see what volunteer life is like. I had an excellent time with Carol, and enjoyed meeting the other trainees, too. (We had all met in Talas City to pick up those who were visiting Talas Oblast.) I’m glad that they will be able to benefit a little bit from our experiences, and not feel as lost as I did when I first got to site.
Teaching is going rather well. I just had my fifth Russian lesson with Rosa, my neighbor, and she told me flattering things about how much she hears the students like English.
October 20, 2003
Holy shmokes. It was just the two of us at lunch today, and Keshimjan (my host mother) told me about their big marital problem. I had actually heard the rumor of this before she did, but apparently the conflict only broke out here at home two weeks ago. Azimkan (host father) has a daughter as the result of an extra-marital affair. Apparently, he added insult to injury by going out and doing it again, and the woman is pregnant now. He says it isn’t his, but Keshim says that’s what he insisted last time, but then he went and put his name on the birth certificate when the baby was actually born. Apparently, Azim recently gave this woman 5,000 som, or so Keshim assumes since the money is missing. She said to me that she is angry because Keshim and Azim work for their money, while this woman just stays at home and does nothing with her four children. She gave Azim the ultimatum, either you move out (and in with that other woman) or I’ll move out, to Bishkek. He said he’s not moving out, and Keshim says it’s because he’s afraid, because she’s twenty years younger than he is. (I’m not sure what he’s afraid of. That she would be too much for him? Run around on him? Make too many demands? Cook bad plov?)
It’s bizarre to me that the focal point of the conflict is the money issue rather than the issue of infidelity. I think that the infidelity is the issue, it’s just that Keshim doesn’t know how to treat it, because Kyrgyz “tradition” does allow for two or more wives. It’s like they have lived between Kyrgyz and Western culture for so long, they can’t be confident of their own moral responses. So the money is the issue. The fact that this woman is living impoverished and exiled in her own community, long abandoned by her husband, and raising 4 soon to be 5 children at least one of whom is Azim’s, is not an issue. The fact that Azim had to be a jerk and go have an affair is not the issue either, or at least she can’t say out loud that it is.
Keshim also told me that everyone who comes to the store is looking at her differently, and I think she hates it. (Understandably!) She told me with sadness that they lived well together so many years, she doesn’t understand why it has to go bad now. They worked together in the militsia, they adopted three children together. She pointed out that he never ever beat her, unlike our next and next to next door neighbors, where the husbands beat their wives (both of whom are my colleagues) when they get drunk.
It’s depressing. I listened to her calmly while I ate my lunch, and tried to think of the right things to say, and I felt bad that I’m so hardened now that I was slow to come up with a compassionate emotional response. I’m trying not to think about this right now, but if they really split up I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t think Azim will leave, but I don’t think either that Keshim will actually have the guts to move to Bishkek, and where would Elderbek (the 6 year old) go? Maybe it will all blow over, but that’s not exactly a good resolution either, is it.
Greetings from Kyrgyzstan! It’s a beautiful fall morning, and I have Megan to keep me company. We are having coffee and bread and butter and listening to Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and relaxing. Megan’s school is closed for twenty days, due to an outbreak of mumps, so she came to classes with me yesterday, which was nice. Megan is good company. Yesterday, in an effort to stay up past 9 PM on a Friday night, we amused ourselves by reading to each other – we read a children’s book, “Bunnicula”, that recently arrived from an organization that sends free books to schools. Most of the books turned out to be too difficult for my students, but I’ve had a lot of fun rereading books from my childhood, like “Little House on the Prairie,” and others. It’s funny how you can slip back into your childhood self by rereading books that made an impression on you when you were 10. Megan and I also played cards. We played Kanasta until Megan got tired of losing, and then we played memory, which I’m really bad at. It’s like all my blond hairs come out and I get really ditzy. So I got creamed.
November 11 is the official halfway mark. As of today, I’ll be seeing you in 417 days. Haha. It’s a long time, still, na? Sometimes that is scary, but sometimes that seems good because I still have a lot of time to make some things better that I’m not happy with yet. Like learning Kyrgyz better and making my Russian better, and being a better neighbor, learning to know my students better.
Yesterday was the fall festival. It was held at the “club,” a building I had never been in. It’s very dilapidated building, but was once a center of soviet dispersed culture. There was a coat-check room, and entrance hall, and then a large hall with the stage. In olden days, famous singers would give concerts here. I wish I had taken photos yesterday. It was a riot. It was a competition, as all school events seem to be, with a jury that announced the scores after each round. The different classes competed against each other in different categories: greeting the jury and introducing themselves, singing, dancing to pop music, waltzing (!!), and fall fashion. The fall fashion bit involved making creative costumes with harvest food. Most of the classes didn’t do so well with this, but the 11a class (Mirbek’s and Nargeeza’s class) was fantastic. There was a girl wearing a dress made from cabbage leaves, there was a girl with a sun of leaves around her head, there was a girl with a clear plastic umbrella and a dress made from a plastic sheet (the idea was preparing for fall weather, I guess). There were other costumes, too, but the best part was the finesse with which they carried out the fashion show, really strutting their stuff like models on a catwalk. Actually the best part was the one girl who darted among them and filmed them with a “camera.” The camera was a meat grinder! She used the grinder part to roll the “film.” It was great. There was an inspired, rather racy dance to a Shakira song, so racy in fact, that you would not expect it to come from a muslim country where women cover their heads. (Please note: this is the holy month of ramadan, a period of fasting and spiritual cleansing.) There was also a lot of off-key singing, not enhanced by the fact that there was yamaha piano that blasted out corny pop beat accompaniments. Mirbek and Nargeeza were the MCs, and they carried it off professionally. The energy level was high in the audience and among the performers. It reminded me that there is so little excitement in these kids’ lives, events like these are really important for them to act out their teenagerness. They imitate the Russian stars they see on TV, and the audience imitates the audiences at the concerts they see, complete with signs to cheer on their favorite contestants. There was a “surprise” category. The 9a form had a mystery box. They asked the jury to guess what was in it. The jury guessed “apples,” but it turned out to be two pigeons, who were released into the hall and spent the rest of the afternoon banging into the four walls of the hall. The other part of the 9a’s “surprise” presentation was a jack-o-lantern that Megan had made for them. They talked about Halloween in America, which apparently won them points with the jury, because they won that category. The pumpkin was green on the outside. When Megan made the pumpkin, it looked fine and halloweeny, but from the audience we thought it looked a little peaked and perplexed. (“Why am I in Kyrgyzstan? Where are the other jack-o-lanterns? Why am I green?)
All of the classes had team names, which were very uncreative. Golden fall (two teams had this name), golden team, golden leaves, and 9a said their team name in English, (golden fall). Some of the “b” and “c” classes didn’t show up at all. Even though the exhibitionism of this event is good for some students, I imagine it causes a lot of anxiety, too. Because the classes are divided by academic strength as determined in the first grade, the “a” classes are always stronger than the “b” classes. 11a won; I think that this event and events like these probably reinforce the inferiority complexes of the weaker classes.
Watching this event reminded me about how much I have grown to care about these kids, and made me wonder what will happen to them.
My host parents seem to have made up. Apparently, Azimkan went to the woman he had an affair with and informed her that it wasn’t his baby. Despite the fact that this is not true, that was all Keshimjan needed to be able to put this in the past. It’s so messed up.
I haven’t seen so much of Essengul. I stopped at her house. Her daughter-in-law, who gave birth two weeks ago, looks really unwell. The new grandson, Bekbol, apparently has really bad diaper rash, and his skin has red splotches everywhere, and Essengul doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s seems so scary to bring children into the world here.
Holy shmokes. It was just the two of us at lunch today, and Keshimjan (my host mother) told me about their big marital problem. I had actually heard the rumor of this before she did, but apparently the conflict only broke out here at home two weeks ago. Azimkan (host father) has a daughter as the result of an extra-marital affair. Apparently, he added insult to injury by going out and doing it again, and the woman is pregnant now. He says it isn’t his, but Keshim says that’s what he insisted last time, but then he went and put his name on the birth certificate when the baby was actually born. Apparently, Azim recently gave this woman 5,000 som, or so Keshim assumes since the money is missing. She said to me that she is angry because Keshim and Azim work for their money, while this woman just stays at home and does nothing with her four children. She gave Azim the ultimatum, either you move out (and in with that other woman) or I’ll move out, to Bishkek. He said he’s not moving out, and Keshim says it’s because he’s afraid, because she’s twenty years younger than he is. (I’m not sure what he’s afraid of. That she would be too much for him? Run around on him? Make too many demands? Cook bad plov?)
It’s bizarre to me that the focal point of the conflict is the money issue rather than the issue of infidelity. I think that the infidelity is the issue, it’s just that Keshim doesn’t know how to treat it, because Kyrgyz “tradition” does allow for two or more wives. It’s like they have lived between Kyrgyz and Western culture for so long, they can’t be confident of their own moral responses. So the money is the issue. The fact that this woman is living impoverished and exiled in her own community, long abandoned by her husband, and raising 4 soon to be 5 children at least one of whom is Azim’s, is not an issue. The fact that Azim had to be a jerk and go have an affair is not the issue either, or at least she can’t say out loud that it is.
Keshim also told me that everyone who comes to the store is looking at her differently, and I think she hates it. (Understandably!) She told me with sadness that they lived well together so many years, she doesn’t understand why it has to go bad now. They worked together in the militsia, they adopted three children together. She pointed out that he never ever beat her, unlike our next and next to next door neighbors, where the husbands beat their wives (both of whom are my colleagues) when they get drunk.
It’s depressing. I listened to her calmly while I ate my lunch, and tried to think of the right things to say, and I felt bad that I’m so hardened now that I was slow to come up with a compassionate emotional response. I’m trying not to think about this right now, but if they really split up I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t think Azim will leave, but I don’t think either that Keshim will actually have the guts to move to Bishkek, and where would Elderbek (the 6 year old) go? Maybe it will all blow over, but that’s not exactly a good resolution either, is it.
Greetings from Kyrgyzstan! It’s a beautiful fall morning, and I have Megan to keep me company. We are having coffee and bread and butter and listening to Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” and relaxing. Megan’s school is closed for twenty days, due to an outbreak of mumps, so she came to classes with me yesterday, which was nice. Megan is good company. Yesterday, in an effort to stay up past 9 PM on a Friday night, we amused ourselves by reading to each other – we read a children’s book, “Bunnicula”, that recently arrived from an organization that sends free books to schools. Most of the books turned out to be too difficult for my students, but I’ve had a lot of fun rereading books from my childhood, like “Little House on the Prairie,” and others. It’s funny how you can slip back into your childhood self by rereading books that made an impression on you when you were 10. Megan and I also played cards. We played Kanasta until Megan got tired of losing, and then we played memory, which I’m really bad at. It’s like all my blond hairs come out and I get really ditzy. So I got creamed.
November 11 is the official halfway mark. As of today, I’ll be seeing you in 417 days. Haha. It’s a long time, still, na? Sometimes that is scary, but sometimes that seems good because I still have a lot of time to make some things better that I’m not happy with yet. Like learning Kyrgyz better and making my Russian better, and being a better neighbor, learning to know my students better.
Yesterday was the fall festival. It was held at the “club,” a building I had never been in. It’s very dilapidated building, but was once a center of soviet dispersed culture. There was a coat-check room, and entrance hall, and then a large hall with the stage. In olden days, famous singers would give concerts here. I wish I had taken photos yesterday. It was a riot. It was a competition, as all school events seem to be, with a jury that announced the scores after each round. The different classes competed against each other in different categories: greeting the jury and introducing themselves, singing, dancing to pop music, waltzing (!!), and fall fashion. The fall fashion bit involved making creative costumes with harvest food. Most of the classes didn’t do so well with this, but the 11a class (Mirbek’s and Nargeeza’s class) was fantastic. There was a girl wearing a dress made from cabbage leaves, there was a girl with a sun of leaves around her head, there was a girl with a clear plastic umbrella and a dress made from a plastic sheet (the idea was preparing for fall weather, I guess). There were other costumes, too, but the best part was the finesse with which they carried out the fashion show, really strutting their stuff like models on a catwalk. Actually the best part was the one girl who darted among them and filmed them with a “camera.” The camera was a meat grinder! She used the grinder part to roll the “film.” It was great. There was an inspired, rather racy dance to a Shakira song, so racy in fact, that you would not expect it to come from a muslim country where women cover their heads. (Please note: this is the holy month of ramadan, a period of fasting and spiritual cleansing.) There was also a lot of off-key singing, not enhanced by the fact that there was yamaha piano that blasted out corny pop beat accompaniments. Mirbek and Nargeeza were the MCs, and they carried it off professionally. The energy level was high in the audience and among the performers. It reminded me that there is so little excitement in these kids’ lives, events like these are really important for them to act out their teenagerness. They imitate the Russian stars they see on TV, and the audience imitates the audiences at the concerts they see, complete with signs to cheer on their favorite contestants. There was a “surprise” category. The 9a form had a mystery box. They asked the jury to guess what was in it. The jury guessed “apples,” but it turned out to be two pigeons, who were released into the hall and spent the rest of the afternoon banging into the four walls of the hall. The other part of the 9a’s “surprise” presentation was a jack-o-lantern that Megan had made for them. They talked about Halloween in America, which apparently won them points with the jury, because they won that category. The pumpkin was green on the outside. When Megan made the pumpkin, it looked fine and halloweeny, but from the audience we thought it looked a little peaked and perplexed. (“Why am I in Kyrgyzstan? Where are the other jack-o-lanterns? Why am I green?)
All of the classes had team names, which were very uncreative. Golden fall (two teams had this name), golden team, golden leaves, and 9a said their team name in English, (golden fall). Some of the “b” and “c” classes didn’t show up at all. Even though the exhibitionism of this event is good for some students, I imagine it causes a lot of anxiety, too. Because the classes are divided by academic strength as determined in the first grade, the “a” classes are always stronger than the “b” classes. 11a won; I think that this event and events like these probably reinforce the inferiority complexes of the weaker classes.
Watching this event reminded me about how much I have grown to care about these kids, and made me wonder what will happen to them.
My host parents seem to have made up. Apparently, Azimkan went to the woman he had an affair with and informed her that it wasn’t his baby. Despite the fact that this is not true, that was all Keshimjan needed to be able to put this in the past. It’s so messed up.
I haven’t seen so much of Essengul. I stopped at her house. Her daughter-in-law, who gave birth two weeks ago, looks really unwell. The new grandson, Bekbol, apparently has really bad diaper rash, and his skin has red splotches everywhere, and Essengul doesn’t know what to do about it. It’s seems so scary to bring children into the world here.
10. October, 2003
Professionalism
Today I went to the bank periodically from 1:15 to 3:30. When I first arrived, there was a twentyish girl all alone behind the window. The normal employees had gone someplace, but she assured me they would be back in 15 minutes. I came back in a half hour, and then every half hour until 3:30, when they finally reappeared. The main lady first had to make a point of ignoring me while she studiously folded papers. I almost burst in frustration. There was evidence on a back table that they had been to a party during today’s 3 hour lunch break, so I finally exploded sarcastically, by asking if I should just come back in another half hour. This cracked the ice, and she finally looked up. I told her that I was under the mistaken impression that the bank was open from nine to five. They laughed hard at this- I guess I said something funny. We proceeded to the usual conversation track of “won’t you become my daughter-in-law,” “no, I’d be a bad daughter-in-law, I can’t cook bread, don’t really want to learn, and don’t want to be paid for in sheep” etc. They laughed some more, and when I left they handed me some of the leftover party bread. A goodwill offering.
Lately, when asked if I’ll become a Kyrgyz daughter-in-law, I adapted the strategy of saying that the price for American girls is really high- you can’t afford it. It’s supposed to be a joke, but no one gets it. They say, “oh really? How much?” Then I have to explain the joke, and it’s not so funny. The “I’d be a bad daughter-in-law” line goes over much better.
Today, I went to the Talas IREX center with 10 students. IREX is a U.S. sponsored organization that is responsible for information exchange or something, and they provide free internet. It’s really slow and always crowded, so I usually don’t go there. However, for my students who’ve never seen a computer, and can barely afford the fare to Talas city, it’s a really big deal. Because of my amazing status position of PC volunteer, I was able to reserve the center just for us, and the guy who runs it taught them the basics of Microsoft word. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll go back to learn about the internet. More than half the group stayed the night in Talas, and will cut school tomorrow, because they can’t spare the extra round-trip cost of fifty cents… It’s nice to be part of providing those few students with if nothing else a diversion from normal boring life. They are such innocents. I told them they should all bring something to eat for lunch, since we’d be leaving directly from school. No one did, and they all sat complaintless and hungry in front of those old computers until 5 PM and left only after the IREX guy kicked them out.
It’s been teacher’s day all week. Someone at the top decided to extend from a day to a week. Lots of occasions for teachers to drink vodka. It’s all good.
Oh yeah, and the electricity came back on after 3 weeks! All is well, I’ve been reading lots and lots, and knitting some sloppy samples with the help of a borrowed book. This weekend I celebrated our one year in-country anniversary with the other volunteers. Next week one of the newly arrived volunteers will stay with me for 4 days to check out “volunteer life.”
Professionalism
Today I went to the bank periodically from 1:15 to 3:30. When I first arrived, there was a twentyish girl all alone behind the window. The normal employees had gone someplace, but she assured me they would be back in 15 minutes. I came back in a half hour, and then every half hour until 3:30, when they finally reappeared. The main lady first had to make a point of ignoring me while she studiously folded papers. I almost burst in frustration. There was evidence on a back table that they had been to a party during today’s 3 hour lunch break, so I finally exploded sarcastically, by asking if I should just come back in another half hour. This cracked the ice, and she finally looked up. I told her that I was under the mistaken impression that the bank was open from nine to five. They laughed hard at this- I guess I said something funny. We proceeded to the usual conversation track of “won’t you become my daughter-in-law,” “no, I’d be a bad daughter-in-law, I can’t cook bread, don’t really want to learn, and don’t want to be paid for in sheep” etc. They laughed some more, and when I left they handed me some of the leftover party bread. A goodwill offering.
Lately, when asked if I’ll become a Kyrgyz daughter-in-law, I adapted the strategy of saying that the price for American girls is really high- you can’t afford it. It’s supposed to be a joke, but no one gets it. They say, “oh really? How much?” Then I have to explain the joke, and it’s not so funny. The “I’d be a bad daughter-in-law” line goes over much better.
Today, I went to the Talas IREX center with 10 students. IREX is a U.S. sponsored organization that is responsible for information exchange or something, and they provide free internet. It’s really slow and always crowded, so I usually don’t go there. However, for my students who’ve never seen a computer, and can barely afford the fare to Talas city, it’s a really big deal. Because of my amazing status position of PC volunteer, I was able to reserve the center just for us, and the guy who runs it taught them the basics of Microsoft word. Tomorrow afternoon we’ll go back to learn about the internet. More than half the group stayed the night in Talas, and will cut school tomorrow, because they can’t spare the extra round-trip cost of fifty cents… It’s nice to be part of providing those few students with if nothing else a diversion from normal boring life. They are such innocents. I told them they should all bring something to eat for lunch, since we’d be leaving directly from school. No one did, and they all sat complaintless and hungry in front of those old computers until 5 PM and left only after the IREX guy kicked them out.
It’s been teacher’s day all week. Someone at the top decided to extend from a day to a week. Lots of occasions for teachers to drink vodka. It’s all good.
Oh yeah, and the electricity came back on after 3 weeks! All is well, I’ve been reading lots and lots, and knitting some sloppy samples with the help of a borrowed book. This weekend I celebrated our one year in-country anniversary with the other volunteers. Next week one of the newly arrived volunteers will stay with me for 4 days to check out “volunteer life.”
