27 December 2008

Happy New Year!

Wow. Christmas has come and gone and now I’m surrounded by about two feet of snow everywhere, well below freezing temperatures every night, no school until March, and a brand new year just around the corner. It’s odd. It never really felt like Christmas at all over here. Granted, I am living in a country that is 98% Muslim, with the remaining 2% Russian Orthodox Christian which is its’ own unique kind of old-school faith so there was nothing at all to remind me that it was the Christmas season. No supermarket songs and decorations laid out beginning sometime obnoxiously after Halloween, no advertisements for classic Christmas movies on TV, not even the usual break people in school and work get around the big 2-5!
I woke up Christmas morning at 7:30, got dressed in my suit and tie and went to a local school to help administer the regional English Olympiad test. I tested and interviewed 9th-11th graders until around 1pm, then went to the banya and had a beer with my site-mate Patrick. I got home after a quick cafĂ© trip at around 5 and hung out with my Kyrgyz family until my American family called at 9pm (my time) to wish me a Merry Christmas. It was certainly the oddest Christmas I’ve ever had…
In Kyrgyzstan the big holiday this time of year is Janga-Jil, literally translated to New Year. What’s so odd about it though is that they decorate Christmas trees, give presents and even have a guy that looks identical to Santa Clause (called Ayaz-Ata, or Frost Father) that treats the kids to whatever wish they may have…and they party for a full two weeks before the actual New Year on the 31st. Even then, because it’s not directly Christmas related, it still didn’t feel at all like Christmas!
I do like the way they celebrate their Janga-Jil though. On Christmas Eve…sorry, December 24, my school had their big Janga-Jil party for the upper classmen (9-11 grade). This was just like any other high school dance, but everyone was eating various salads, eating various breads, drinking various champagnes and dancing various dances with various dance competitions that became really quite varied once the various champagne was drank by all attendants in various ways. Needless to say it was a very fun party!
On a more professional note: Because I am out of school for two full months (this is due to the fact that Kyrgyzstan may or may not have power to heat the schools throughout the winter) I volunteered to go to Bishkek for a week (last week) and complete a training session on grant-writing and camp organizing. Subsequently I have written a PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) grant for a week-long AIDS, sexual health, and Life Skills camp for my area’s youth to be held in Talas. Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan has never done this before, nor have I, so this is going to be a learning process all around. Hopefully I get approved; PEPFAR has granted $2800 per camp, of which my budget only requires $2100 and some change so I should be okay. Especially considering that Kyrgyz culture is very indirect in addressing sensitive subject matter (and just about everything else) this camp is going to be extremely beneficial to the youth who otherwise would never receive this information. I’ve lined up a translator and two area health professionals to give presentations, and a bunch of other volunteers have jumped on board to help as well…I’ll keep ya’ll posted on the progress as I go. On top of that it looks like I’ll be teaching the teacher’s at my school English through the winter, as well as my host-mother who for some reason loves the nasally American accent. No school basically means I get to wake up as God intended--whenever the fuck I feel like it for two months, but I’m also certainly going to be busy which is a huge relief:)
All in all Peace Corps is going quite well. It’s harder, and easier than I thought it would be. If that sounds like a contradiction than you’ve obviously never been a Peace Corps volunteer so please just take me at my word. I’m finally getting to do some “real” work outside of my committed schedule which is extremely rewarding and on top of all that my Kyrgyz language ability has gotten to the point that I can talk to anybody about just about anything…as long as it’s a very simple subject and they forgive my grammatical mistakes:)
Keep on keepin’ on…I can’t remember where I heard that, but it seems appropriate for my state of mind at the moment. I’m just keepin’ on with keepin’ on…

14 December 2008

Doing fine again...

“::::: and it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon :::::” –Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
I just read that passage today, and it immediately struck home. It affected me especially because doing what I’m doing, doing what every other Peace Corps volunteer the world over is doing is hard. Every single one of us has the choice to pretend to do what we’re here to do, i.e. go through the motions and act the part, instead of actually accomplishing what we only vaguely knew we wanted, no, needed to do before we came. I know a couple of volunteers, and I am guilty of being one myself at times, that do their job and leave. They let their local language lag, or stay holed up in their room locked into their computer or iPod because they’re the only things in the entire country, other than the other Americans, that make any sense. I can either make this ‘thing’, this ‘idea’ or ‘goal’ real inside of me or I can wake up every single day and go to work pretending that I’m doing exactly what I came here to do; conning myself into believing that I’m doing great, when in reality that greatness is just over the horizon, mocking my ignorance. But what we’re here to do is more than a job, it’s more than a life…it’s…
Melancholic introspective ramblings aside, I never want to hear the words “svet jok” as an excuse for something not working ever, ever, EVER again. It happened when my marshutka broke down on a snowy mountain pass at night on my way back from Bishkek, and it happened again today. I understand if “no electricity” is an excuse for something not working that requires electricity. But just because the electricity is out is no reason to not get my package from behind the fucking door! Sorry. I’m still a little wound up. I’ve tried to get a package from the local Post Office that my friend sent me three times now. The first time it was “no, come back tomorrow.” Well, I have a job that doesn’t exactly work around the three hour lunch breaks that seem to be government norms so my next option was the weekend. But, like Post Offices at home, their weekend hours are beyond decipherable so that didn’t quite work out either. Today I lucked out and my Apa informed me that I couldn’t go to my English Club because our neighbor was joining the army so we had to go to a party at their house. Luckily I managed to weasel my way out of there before too late and walked to the Post Office two hours before they were supposed to close. Remember, there just so happens to be no electricity. No matter (I think), retrieving my package shouldn’t require such modern luxuries. I’m fairly certain that packages have been sent around the world without such a cloud-created-convenience for at least the past, oh I don’t know, thousand-plus Goddamn years so why should today be any different? Well, when I get there that lady says “no, come back tomorrow.” She’s helping other people, why not me? I get a little flustered and enquire further. To which I’m met with an abrupt “svet jok.” Yes, it indeed appears that Post Offices the world over consist of rude people who genuinely don’t give a shit because they make government benefits and you and your package can kindly fuck off! It wouldn’t be so bad if this was the first time this had happened, but I had a little liquid courage (I was just at a party) and decided to press the issue. Was I getting obnoxious? No. Should I have let it go? Yes, maybe. But I was on a roll and my diatribe climaxed precisely at the moment that I saw an old lady leave the back-room smiling because she had just received her package! Well, now they had no excuse. I proceeded to brilliantly argue that if the lack of electricity has temporarily disabled their arms and legs from retrieving my package how had they been able to recover from their temporary paralysis in time to give the nice old lady her precious parcel? To this my friends, they had no excuse. Instead, they took it one step further and informed me that it wasn’t so much the lack of electricity per se, as much as it was that they were out of the bloody forms for me to sign! “Well,” I asked “how’d that nice old lady waltzing out of here with her arms snuggly wrapped around her new present manage to defeat this red-taped behemoth of bullshit bureaucracy?” (not in so many words, of course). “Oh,” the electricless woman informed me “she just wrote down her information here.” At which point they handed me a piece of paper. I left five minutes later with my battle-won spoils and never looked back.
If it weren’t for the generous helping of candy inside (really, it’s amazing what you miss when you live abroad for an extended period of time) I’d probably have been writing this with slightly more venom. As it stands, my belly is full and I’m as ever amazed at what in the hell I’m doing here. It’s easy, no, it’s extremely easy to get disenfranchised with this whole endeavor. I’m in fact only writing about today’s lovely incident because the aforementioned quote made me take some stock of my situation and view it a little bit more…abstractly. I could have just as easily written about the countless other little cultural idiosyncrasies that I encounter every hour of every day with just as much detail, and quite possibly a bit more sarcasm, though I wouldn’t want my loyal readers to think that I’m just having fun here:) I was mad. I was mad at the disrespect that I received in such a cold manner, I was mad at the cultural red-tape I had to cut through just to sign my name and get the hell out of there, but more than that I was mad because I have absolutely nowhere to go for any sympathy. Other volunteers help, sure. But there’s a point when the bitching gets too negative and instead of the cathartic experience one craves it actually just brings you down more. I’ve decided to leave all of that alone for a bit. Instead, after opening my package and devouring the contents, I holed up in my room with my American books, my American computer, my American iPod and every other American device from home that I fully understand and am completely comfortable with in order to make precisely the same mistake so many who’ve come before me have made. Today I willingly climbed the ‘conning tower’. Sure, I had some encouragement from my frustration and I gladly leapt up the final two steps in time to reach my personally projected plateau of defeat, but I certainly went blindly. I didn’t realize what I was doing until I was three more chapters deep in Mr. Wolfe’s masterpiece. After I read that quote I realized that I wasn’t feeling any ‘better’. I was still just as frustrated. Only instead of dealing with my frustration head-on, like I would in America, I hid in my room, shut the door and escaped. I conned myself into believing that what I was doing was right when in reality I was even further from making ‘that thing permanent inside’ of me than I was before this whole debacle.
I thought about it, then closed my book and went outside to socialize with my host-family. I didn’t bitch about the Post Office lady, though I did make a quip or two about Kyrgyzstan’s president who “assured” the country we’d have power all winter…they quickly added their own carefully worded comments in agreement with that as well. But for the most part, I integrated. Not completely, mind you. Today, like every other day, is a work in progress. I’ll actually never be that far gone because such a commitment would involve copious amounts of Bishbarmark consumption that my gastrointestinal tract will never be able to handle. I did however accept where I am, what I’m doing, and am as ever getting closer to answering why…or in the words of Mr. Wolfe, now I’m “back on the bus.”

05 December 2008

Sonnet 2

Questioning decisions yet to be made
my mind fears what it does not know will be.
All my life, and of all the things I gave
I’ve not let fate rule out uncertainty.
Challenges met, and goals that I’ve achieved
birthed not the peace or calm I’ve wanted for.
Both stress and fear do cloud what I must see
in that all I have gained I still want more.
Hunger must be what drives my restless soul,
and its’ insatiable quest to quench it.
As the red heat fades in my last-turned coal
I look anew to keep my fire lit.
Life’s a journey, not a destination.
This is just temporary placation.

Expanation of a Celebration

WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS NEXT POST IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 10…OR 13 IF YOUR PARENTS ARE OVERBEARING AND WANT TO KEEP YOU AS A CHILD FOREVER. OR IF YOU CAN’T FACE REALITY AND HAVE TROUBLE ACCEPTING LITTLE FACTS OF LIFE AS THEY COME AT YOU! SERIOUSLY!!
Santa isn’t real. Everyone realizes this at one point or another and (though it might take time, and years of expensive counseling) they eventually forgive their parents for lying to them about the one thing that made childhood remotely bearable since the day they were born. Tonight I attempted to explain to my Kyrgyz family what Santa is and how he relates to Christmas.
Quick note: I’m not even going to remotely try to explain to them the story of the three old dudes who found a baby in a desert who grew up to do some magic tricks and died a terrible death…no, there’s not enough time in the world to explain that one considering how difficult my retelling of the Christmas story from the north pole went! But I digress.
I began with the basics: He lives in a huge castle in the North Pole and has little people who wear green costumes working for him. Okay. Then I explained how he wears a red suit, has a white beard and is really fat. Okay, they’re actually still with me at this point. Then I explained that he has eight flying reindeer (‘reindeer’ isn’t in my dictionary so I had to act it out…it was about as funny as it sounds:)) who take him to every house in the world in the course of one night to deliver exactly whatever present(s) that particular child wants. At this point they’re all nodding in agreement and saying, ‘hmmm, this Santa fellow seems like a really nice guy’. I then proceeded to explain how every child leaves out a glass of milk, a couple of cookies, and a carrot or two…
quick note: no one ever leaves eight carrots, has anyone ever thought about how cruel that is…we’re assuming Rudolph is the lucky bastard that gets the one carrot that is left out, if one is at all, and the others are forced to fly behind the gastronomically satisfied little bastard rubbing it all in their face with a bright red nose to cap it all off. Really, first we lie to our children from an early age which probably only serves to propagate the plentiful nightmares the proportionately peculiar youth already have to put up with, but now we’re also saying that it’s okay to choose favorites on the one night of the year we should all be considering selflessness! Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to lie my ass of when I have kids…I just think it’s an interesting point. But again, I digress.
The point in my story telling that really gets my family confused is when I tell them that Santa enters and leaves every house on his journey via their fireplace. Then, in all honesty, my Apa speaks up and says (in Kyrgyz, of course) “Doesn’t his suit get dirty?” I laugh, and say “of course not, he’s Santa!” My Ata ponders this for a minute then he asks “so after he distributes the presents and somehow doesn’t get their house dirty with soot on his black boots, he climbs back up the chimney staying clean the whole time!?” Again I stifle laughter as I reply “no, he wiggles his nose and shoots up the chimney like magic!” Now my family is roaring with laughter and they’re saying ‘oh, you’re making this all up, there is no Santa Clause!’ As if the flying reindeer weren’t clue enough, right? It then takes me the better part of an hour to explain to them in great deal how Christmas really works, ie. Kids make a list, give it to their parents who promise to ‘send’ it to Santa, then they buy presents, hide them in the house until Christmas when they finally take them out and lead their children to believe that it was actually a mystical fat gentleman in a terribly tailored suit that generously procured their various enjoyment instigators until next season. To which my host sister replies “so…parents lie to their children!?” Then my whole family starts giving me looks like, ‘wow, maybe America isn’t so great after all…’
There you have it. I’m just here spinning elaborate tales that evidently do little more than highlight all Americans’ natural talent for deceit. Oh, I also teach English.

Sonnet 1

If there were only some way for me to
reach back and touch the love I used to know
I’m sure that all that we have both been through
would ease my forgiveness in what time’s shown.
And yet my heart cringes still with past pain
at the memory of what could have been.
All that was said cannot be said again;
as time’s cruel clock moves forward still unseen.
Promises made in vain that still seem right,
their haunting echo coursing through my head;
whispers uttered softly in the dark night—
memories reminding me what is dead.
If only time could cease its’ churn and bind
and send me back, who knows what I would find.

Ooyat...

Ooyat. That’s roughly how the Kyrgyz word is spelled with Latin characters. Its literal translation (like most Kyrgyz words) is tough to nail down but it roughly means shameful. A lot in Kyrgyzstan is Ooyat. My host-Apa has been talking about sending a package to my parents in America with various jams and some Kyrgyz clothing despite my repeated assertions that such a package would be insanely expensive to send in Kyrgyz som. At any rate she had a friend of hers who works at the post office over for chai and began to ask her how much it would cost to send a two-kilo package to America. Her friends’ response is “oh, it’d be expensive” to which my Apa replied “well, how much exactly?” Her friends’ response is classic “Oh Jildice (my Apa’s name) you can’t ask me how much it would be exactly, that’s ooyat.” I got another example of a very ooyat thing at dinner tonight when I accidently put my bread round-side down on the table. My host-sister freaked out and tells me: “oh James, you can’t do that, that’s ooyat!” Being the curious ooyated-American that I am I enquire as to why putting my bread down on the table one way isn’t shameful at all, yet putting it down in another manner warrants such a strong reaction from my keepers? She proceeds to thoroughly explain to me that it’s because…well…it’s because it is.
It’s very interesting living in this culture for a number of reasons, but the one that I encounter every single day is the Kyrgyz’s firmly held beliefs such as this: it is because it is. As Americans we demand facts and scientific exploration before we make wide-arching speculations…well, unless we’re the governor of the largest state in the union; then we can accept just about anything on our extremist faith alone, but I digress. How can I prevent a sore throat? Eat raw pig fat. How can I avoid getting sick in the winter? Swim in a freezing cold lake, but be sure not to drink any of the water because that will immediately reverse its healing properties! How much money do I make per year? This question seems to crop up in every single conversation I’ve ever had over here, and it’s perfectly culturally acceptable; but God forbid I ever ask the precise cost of anything! The list could go on: brush your teeth, but not for too long because that’s bad for you. When invited to a party it’s considered very rude to show up any less than three hours late. When visiting a house you must eat something, even if you’re only dropping something off it is quite ooyat if you don’t at least “Ostee” (literally ‘taste’) a tiny morsel of what is probably day-old bread left out on the table, otherwise the home-owner whom you are visiting will get a sour reputation as a terrible host…even though they weren’t hosting anything.
The list could go on forever however I don’t wish to sound as if I’m ‘bitching’ or complaining, or anything of the sort. I am actually quite enamored with this culture and the people I live and work with. As my language improves I understand even more of the intricacies that make up the daily life of the Kyrgyz, and it is as ever extremely fascinating! It’s a privilege to be the ‘American’ experiencing this all first-hand. I am not necessarily bound to the same constricted social norms as the people that surround me, though a certain amount of adherence is certainly appreciated and has only furthered my ability to integrate successfully, but being the outsider that my appearance, speech, and mannerisms obviously illuminate has given me the great opportunity to impartially view and discern all of these tiny cultural idiosyncrasies that many Kyrgyz themselves only acknowledge once I bring it to their attention. Thus, I have essentially been given a front-row seat to one of the most interesting shows I’ve ever had the honor of attending! Not only do I get to watch the drama play out on a daily basis, but I actually get to interact with the players themselves.
Every time I get frustrated or stressed out (which is often because, let’s face it, Peace Corps is inherently stressful) I remind myself that I’m not here to “become Kyrgyz”, but I’m here to share my culture while learning about, and interacting within, theirs. This recognition has given me the much-appreciated ability to ‘step outside the box’, take a good look around in order to see what I’m doing anew. Though I’ve only been here five months I feel that this ability is something that is going to sustain me when it really starts to get hard. So, keep the Ooyat’s coming. Although I really couldn’t care less about which way my bread sits on the table my host-family does, and in the end that’s all that matters.