17 October 2008

Hanging in there:)

Thank God for my adult English club! The kids in my school are terrible. I really feel like I should write a personal letter to every teacher I’ve ever had with whom I had poor relations and apologize profusely. Kyrgyzstan is a country in a very strange transition. It is extremely poor by Western ‘standards’, but is one of the wealthier countries in all of Central Asia. Subsequently it also suffers from all of modern societies social ills; namely very passive and just down-right bad kids in school. I hear a lot of stories from other developing countries about the students there being “eager to learn”, or “walking 10 miles to and from school” just to get a basic education. In America I feel like a lot of kids would rather spend their days playing videogames or sports with their friends because American society is so comfortable they truly don’t know how lucky they are. Kyrgyzstan suffers from the same problem. Although their society is about 200 years behind America in general, there’s enough modernity to distract its youth and give them a false sense of security and inevitability. Due to this, and the fact that in this country if they don’t pass into the Lyceum (good High School) in the 8th grade they can pretty much immediately lose all hope for a higher education, most of them genuinely don’t care. So I guess it’s modernity’s social ills coupled with an education system still modeled after the now-defunct, yet still-in-use (just one of many contradictions in this continent) Soviet style that’s been providing so many little pains in my ass for the past few weeks! Sorry for the bitching, but these kids just don’t appreciate the fact that they have an education system period, and it’s hard for me to watch them piss away what future they could have on a daily basis. Wow, and I’ve only been teaching for three weeks…two more years of this could get interesting!

On another note: I am again the “no-strings-attached” James (or “Joey” as my friends Natalie and Tiffany lovingly call me:)) that I was coming into this crazy adventure. Yup, that’s right o’ loyal readers ye, Becky has flown the coop…or to use the technical term, “ET’d”. ET stands for Early Termination, not the lil’ brown Spielberg alien…although that’d be awesome if Peace Corps was in on that secret! As much as I already do miss her, she decided to quit for her own reasons and that’s enough…eh, c’est la vie!

Also, in case you’re curious as to why I posted another blog so soon after my two-fer last time, it’s because I’m in Talas city again this weekend! Thank bloody God that it’s only a 45 som Marshutka ride from my city to Talas…I think I might actually do this every weekend! A bunch of us Talas volunteers are throwing down on a ‘flop’, or shared apartment for us all to use any time we come into town for any reason. Subsequently my friend Kristen and I have decided to kick it there tonight watching Season 1 of Deadwood and drink vodka while making delicious Americanish food. It’s going to be one hell of a night…and considering the time difference, rest assured that by the time you read this, it was one hell of a night!

Well, there you go. I couldn’t very well use the Internet/pay to use the Internet without providing my friends, family and other interested parties back home with a little update, now could I? Although the first paragraph was a bit of a diatribe, rest assured that I am still having a blast here and have even begun to lay the groundwork for my epic plan mentioned in a previous blog posting. Sure as it’s about to get to negative-fucking-freezing here I’m going to master this language enough to give my kids the ol’ “сенин апасын айтып!”…yeah, that’s “I’m going to tell your mother!” in Kyrgyz:) Then again, it never worked for me so…ah hell, I’m screwed!

12 October 2008

Newer Blog!

This posting is a follow-up to the last one. I wrote the previous blog last week, though haven’t been able to use the Internet until now, and upon reviewing it I realize that the tone is a little bit sarcastic and misplaced. Last week was a pretty stressful week, so that’s why the frustration I was feeling came out through that blog. I haven’t edited it at all, but I want to post this one as well in order to express some positives to balance out the overall tone of my page.

My school celebrated “Teacher’s Day” on Saturday (students are in school 6 days a week, though I only work Mon-Fri) and I was informed by my director that I needed to be at the school at noon in order to attend a concert the children were putting on. I arrived promptly at twelve o’clock, waited around (“Azr, James, Azr” the teacher’s kept saying) until 1:30 before finally making my way to a classroom where the kids sang and performed skits for twenty minutes. After this “concert” the teachers all went back to the teacher’s lounge to wait until three o’clock when the café that had been rented would be ready. During this time the 11th form class (highest class—equivalent to ‘seniors of High School in America) came in to wish us a happy Teacher’s Day and presented everyone with a flower and card. Before leaving one of the most out-spoken of the boys also held up a bag and said “To our beloved teacher’s, please entertain yourselves with this…” he then set the bag down and left. One of the teacher’s closest to the bag opened it to reveal three bottles of expensive Kyrgyz vodka, wine and two 1-liter bottles of Sprite and Fanta soda’s. Wow. Imagine the seniors of your local High School presenting that as a gift to their teachers, in front of the Principal nonetheless! But, of course, this is Kyrgyzstan and all of the teacher’s were very thankful and we went through all three bottles (plus five more) throughout our four-course meal at the café we arrived at around promptly at four o’clock.

I love this country. It’s little nuances of culture like that that keep me smiling to myself. Different school dynamics, and being woken up in bed in order to attend an impromptu dinner at ten o’clock at night surrounded by old women whom I can’t speak with because they all have limited dental facilities are just two of countless reasons for me to just sit back and enjoy my time here! Yeah, the impromptu dinner was interesting…

More than just sitting back and enjoying my time here I feel that I am in a unique position to actually accomplish something beyond the ‘norm’ for the first time in my life. I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea (thank you thank you thank you, Mom and Dad for giving me that book—INCREDIBLE!) and throughout reading it I just couldn’t help but be motivated by every single chapter! I’ve begun to think about ways that I can affect my community beyond the English lessons I currently lead on the side and my daily 4 hour commitment to Manas Secondary School that I fill in the same capacity. I’ve got one idea in particular that is very promising and I’m going to try to meet with the Mayor of Kyzyl-Adyr next week to discuss how feasible it actually will be…sorry, I don’t want to mention it just yet because I really don’t know if it’s possible—more to come, I promise:) On top of that, I feel that throughout these next two years that I’ve committed myself to Kyrgyzstan I will only come across even more opportunity to shake things up a bit…just like in Three Cups of Tea, it’s not skill that counts as much as it is the willingness to succeed that matters in affecting change. I can only hope that my willingness doesn’t falter in times of stress and strife, and that I can walk away from this experience with more than just a certificate.

On another note, it’s my birthday on October 12th. I’m going to be twenty-five years old. Rounding that quarter-century mark in a country I couldn’t even pronounce four months ago is a milestone in itself, but more than that I feel like I’m at a new beginning. For the first time in my life I’m free of every commitment that our modern society places upon its youth; I’m free of credit debt, and have absolutely nothing to live for except every single day that I wake up. What that day brings has been completely different from every single day prior for the past four months, and as far as I can tell that’s only going to continue. I worked in a law office for two and a half years before joining the Peace Corps so I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt—living in the moment of every single completely-different-day-from-the-day-before feels great! A lot of my friends that have turned twenty-five before me complained of the feeling of ‘getting old’ or ‘lost in where their life is going’. I’m sure that this same feeling pervades the festivities of every mid-twentysomething to a certain extent, but I’m happy to say that the thought hasn’t even crossed my mind. I don’t feel that I’m on the cusp of any age, as a matter of fact. I just feel that I’m living day-to-day, soaking it in and trying to get my bearings enough to maybe accomplish a little bit more than the norm. Not a bad feeling at all:)

With that said, if you’d like to send me anything to mark this momentous occasion (goodwill, or as thanks for my entertaining diatribes) all I really would like are Mach 3 Turbo razors, Nivea for Men Sensitive After Shave Balm, and shaving cream. The good-quality American shaving supplies that are available here are too expensive for my meager monetary means, and the local stuff will tear my skin apart before burning it worse than lemon juice in a paper-cut. Yeah, I’m shamelessly begging…but if you have the means or the desire please send anything you can to my aforeposted (now I’m creating words for your benefit:)) address. My face will thank you.

I realized after re-reading my last blog that I didn’t mention anything about the guesting I did with my host family at 7 people’s houses that we did to mark the end of Rammadan, nor did I mention how amazing the lungs were that my Apa cooked up, nor did I mention how my English club turned out! I’m tired of typing, so allow me to sum up:
Although we were supposed to all go to seven houses I only managed to make it to five because I was so painfully full of pretty good food. I got into an interesting conversation with an OLD Kyrgyz man about politics from the Soviet era over plentiful plates of Besh-barmahk (Kyrgyz spelling is: беш бармaк, Google it, if you get a chance:))
Lungs are delicious! I can’t speak for every lung out there, but the two my Apa cooked up were buttery, had the texture of boiled chicken and exploded with flavor of garlic, pepper and onion. Had I not witnessed the method of cooking (and the mouth-to-throat breathing entertainment generously provided by my host-mother) I never would have even known what they were! Seriously, if you’re ever offered lung in Central Asia—try it!!
The English club that Annie and I are running had its first successful lesson on Friday. We both had a blast, and I foresee this being one of my weekly highlights for the next two years!

Well, that’s about it. As always, questions and comments are greatly appreciated!

New Blog!

What am I doing here? What in the hell am I doing in Central Asia “teaching” English to kids that don’t even care? Today my counterpart again left me to teach a class I wasn’t prepared for because she had to run an errand with our director. I wasn’t prepared because for the first two weeks of class all I’m supposed to do is observe, which I have, but this is the fifth time she’s just left me in charge of a classroom with the vague instructions of ‘just teach the English you know’. Well…this might come as a shock to my loyal readers out there, but I happen to know quite a bit of English so this task is a little bit vague, to say the least! The past few times I’ve been left to wing it in front of a class of Kyrgyz/Russian children that really don’t care (after all, how much did you care when you were in a required class between the ages of 10 and 15?) I’ve been fine, but today I was teaching the 6th grade English class. Not only did the boys all disrupt my class in every way imaginable throughout the 20 minutes I attempted to teach, but they began to throw things and mock my lesson. At this point I had it, and decided to just leave to find my counterpart. Of course, she was nowhere to be found so I found the only other male teacher in the school, a wizened old Kyrgyz man whom I get along with famously despite his 0 English ability and my (for the time being) limited means of Kyrgyz communication. I told him my problem and he went to the class and scolded them. This might have been enough if the boys that were causing all the ruckus were actually present, but they were playing soccer in the hallway and couldn’t be bothered. He told me not to worry and that Narjan (my counterpart) would take care of it. Sure enough, she eventually came back and took me back to the troubled classroom. There she lined all of the boys (about 8 of the little hooligans) in a row in the front of the class and proceeded to punish them. I’ve never witnessed corporal punishment before, and this came as quite a shock to me but I stood by as the ignorant foreigner should while this was being dealt out. Afterwards all of the boys apologized to me in Kyrgyz, which I accepted and she and I pleasantly made our way to the next class with the sound of the children’s humiliated tears fading down the hallway.

After school I was walking home with more stress than I’d felt during all of PST and a new type of anger that I’ve never felt before. This anger and angst that I felt was a combination of being so utterly and blatantly disrespected by children half my size, the absolute disregard for our two week ‘monitoring’ agreement that my counterpart showed me today, as well as the introduction to Kyrgyz school punishment that I had hitherto fore never been exposed that set me to a new and scary limit. As I was walking home I stopped by a creek near my house and sat on a rock to think about it all. I realized that I’m not anywhere even close to considering the thought of calling it quits, but I also just couldn’t stop thinking about all of the positive things I could be doing here. I walked home a little calmer, and with some very clear goals in mind. However, this is at 12:10 and I had the rest of the day to think about the days’ activity.

I’ve been reading Three Cups of Tea which is about Greg Mortensen, a mountain climber, turned Pakistan-school-builder and his incredible struggle to get tremendous things accomplished in this part of the world. It has been a huge inspiration for me. I was reading a chapter about his abduction by a remote tribe of sudo-Taliban in Pakistan in 1996 and how he recovered enough to finish his first school and continue building 51 more when I got a text that turned my entire day around. My friend from PST, Annie, texted me to say that she was in my town with 6 people that she’d been roped in to teaching English. Considering she’s a health volunteer she had no idea what to do so she called me. I reluctantly (come on, I was laying in bed in my PJ’s reading and getting ready for dinner…plus, I just had one hell of a day!) got dressed and met her at the ‘professional’ building she was meeting her group at. This is a building that, I’m sure, in the Soviet era was very nice and well equipped, but to say that it’s a shadow of it’s former self would be a tremendous overstatement. The group she was meeting with consisted of six adults (four more are evidently going to be coming) that all wanted to learn English. At first I was a little put off because she literally just threw this at me with no explanation, but after I spoke to them in Kyrgyz enough to understand who they were, why they were there and what they really wanted to do I could tell that they were serious about learning English…this absolutely changed my entire outlook on the day.

I spent the next hour speaking to them in Kyrgyz about their lives, telling them about mine and discussing what their goals were for our impromptu gathering. After I explained that I had no lesson plan ready because I didn’t know what to be prepared for, we set a time to meet every Tuesday and Friday at 5pm to conduct English lessons. After this gathering Annie and I went to a café to share a beer and talk about it. I can’t express more how absolutely elated I was at the prospect of beginning this class, and considering she hasn’t actually been doing much work in her village because Peace Corps seems to place the health volunteers arbitrarily in situations where there’s little to no organization for them to work with she was more than happy to help me with this endeavor, and expressed it wholeheartedly over our Baltica 9’s.

Since I’ve been here it seems that every single stressful situation has been relieved by a seemingly innocuous occurrence that completely turns everything around. Today I experienced yet another. After that horrible class of little bastards that got the shit kicked out of them in front of me I was feeling lost, pointless, and confused. Today, seeing the looks on these adults’ faces, their expressed willingness to learn what I’m here to teach and the eagerness with which they made their case known has one hundred percent brought me back into the fold.

What am I doing here? On the surface I’m here to teach. A little beneath that open-ended answer I could say that I’m here to share a cross cultural experience with my host family and maybe make a difference in my community with my ‘American’ ability. Today I learned that regardless of the boundaries with which my actual set teaching schedule is confined to there is a wealth of opportunity for me to actually make a difference in this village. There are people here that are eager and willing to learn what I can teach, and maybe throughout this process we can share some culture and I’ll be able to pick up even more Kyrgyz…I just need to be open to every opportunity that comes my way! I’m excited at this prospect, and I only have my friend Annie and her surprisingly random text message to thank for this opportunity. After all, it’s not every day one gets disenfranchised and completely converted to the cause again all in one day!

On another note. Have I mentioned how much I love my host family? Today, before the epic text message from Annie, my Apa knocked on my door saying “James, Azr, cen kel, cen kel” which means “James, now (or later, someday, soon, whatever [see previous blog for explanation]) you come, you come.” Ooookaaay…I got up from my bed where I was reading (thank you Three Cups of Tea, you’ve been a boredom destroyer lately!) and wandered out to our kitchen where she showed me the remnants of a cow that my Ata recently slaughtered. By ‘remnants’ I mean that she held up the throat and lungs of the cow and told me to take a closer look. Now I’ve always held an interest in science and biology. Life in all its forms provides an endless fascination for any curious mind, but having my Apa hold the throat of this freshly killed beast up for me with the lungs just dangling there was almost too much to bare. Then, to be sure I understood what they were, she put her mouth to the opening of the throat and blew into it to expand the lungs. Wow. All I can say is that was AWESOME! I told her that she’d better brush her teeth afterwards and she explained that she doesn’t have to because she’s only using her lips…sorry Ata:) Then she had me pour some milk-like substance into the throat through a funnel she’d inserted and I watched as this entire bucket of liquid expanded the lungs to their full capacity before she had me tie off the throat with a string. Then she told me she’d boil it so we could eat it tomorrow. Wow, wow, WOW. Now (‘American’ now, meaning “at the immediate present moment”) we’re going to eat an actually ‘Americanly acceptable’ meal before I head off to another blissful sleep of wonder at this amazing country!

Oh, and tomorrow classes are cancelled because it’s the end of Ramadan (Orozon, in Kyrgyz) so everyone has to go guesting at seven different houses throughout the day…gotta love these Kyrgyz holidays!

More to come soon…I’m sure:)