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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:)