Oh my free time

As I'm sitting here, attempting to read my tests and think about the events of the past few days, I'm contemplating a reoccurring thought that has been on my mind for years now. Though I may be young and attempting to do so in whatever capacities I can, it's a basis for my actions: I will not be around forever, and my time now, however long, grueling, fruitful, uneventful, life-changing (and/or just about every single other adjective you can think of) it may be, needs to be beneficial in some way, shape, or form. There are good, bad, and neutral things; it's necessary to improve upon them all, either by emphasis, change, information, awareness, and a whole host of other positive methods. This is not just for the here and now or the special occassion -- rather, it is a style of living, my style of living (or at least what I would like to be my style of living) and it's central emphasis is this: treating others with empathy and/or sympathy, acting with the Golden Rule in heart and mind, and working to make the world around you, no matter how grand or minute in scale an action it may be, a better place. If I can do one thing, one thing at all, to make this world better, then I believe mine will have been a life worth spent.

On that note, I realize how little and how much time I have here in Kyrgyzstan. It's a lot because it's two years in a foreign environment, doing work previously not done, learning a new language, customs, values, style of living etc. I'll be able to establish relationships and do many things that would be unthinkable if I did anything other than be a volunteer. On the other hand, if the past few years have taught me anything, years tend to fly by. The here-and-now may seem long, but in reality it's short and miniscule. Some things I will have to adapt to here, some things I will not. For instance, I fully intend to start up some sort of youth dialogue/awareness club (perhaps for the summer, but it can be integrated into my English Club) in order to talk about primarily Kyrgyzstan but also the rest of the world, pros & cons, perceptions, opinions, etc. It's a difficult task because this culture is fairly adamant about avoiding any such discussion directly - people have their ideas, but they're often conveyed via middleman, and even then it can take a long (i.e. perhaps six months) to reach the subject of conversation. But I don't have that kind of time, to ask a question and wait for weeks or months for a response. As I've mentioned before, people are adamant about me "taking a girl" - this is a concession I will not make, and I don't care about offending people about it. There are several important and alarming issues facing this country, and rather than sit back and simply be a teacher, it's my duty and call to be the volunteer that I decided to be and do something more than sit idly by and comply with every single societal norm. Some things, yes. Some things, absolutely not. Time will tell how it pans out, but my job here is to follow what my sentiments and beliefs in the previous paragraph are.

--

The other day it started snowing here. None of it stuck, fortunately, but that still doesn't bode well. I've got my ridiculously heavy (the thing weighs about 20 pounds) winter coat and matching Jigeet (typically just a guy, man, dude, w/e) hat to go with it. The only thing I need now is a decent pair of boots, and something good in the way of undergarments (which I hope will arrive soon). The bazaar is devoid of many familair foods, with bread, potatoes, apples, persimmons, and expensive oranges taking the primary role now. Inside is little relief from outside, though honestly it's not much different from Harvest Lane (you know, with the whole not having/turning on of heat). It certainly makes for rough days, though, with the power going out for so long. I'm wearing multiple layers every day, my gloves, my new hat, would be wearing a scarf if I had one, and my socks will transition from regular to heavy. I just picked up my smoke detector from PC, which is a req. due to my home requiring a whole bunch of coal (and no, I don't think it's NE PA coal) to stay moderately warm. My school is, I believe, closing for much of the winter - from Dec. 25-sometime in March. It's the #1 concern here.

--

So I've gotten back from the city with a bunch of goodies in hand. I bought some fresh persimmons from the bazaar, some of the cookies (that taste oh so good, and help with the hard times here) that are both comparatively cheap and delicious - vanilla and chocolate cookie with a chocolate filling, oreo style - some peanuts, of course, and a rare and expensive treat - dried pineapple. When I saw the pineapple my mouth was dropped in disbelief, and again at the price, but I just had to have it. It's not the best I've ever had, but for my favorite fruit I'd go for it again. I wish I had gotten some bananas while I was shopping - they were very cheap this trip, about 15 som a banana (they're usually 25+ som per) - but I was hankering for the persimmons more. There are a bit more oranges out now, but they're pretty expensive and will go down in price during the winter (I believe) - now they're about 25 som per orange, and in prime season they'll cost about 60 som per kilo. Of course, if prices aren't marked, one can always sodalash (bargain) the price down, as I did for my coat, hat, and some other small items. But that's usually a case of bringing an inflated price down to the norm, particularly since the perception is that Americans have lots of money, regardless of being a volunteer or not.

My daily life here is so strange. I'm constantly requesting to help out, have the fam show me their cooking techniques, etc. etc. but they never let me do anything. They'll say alright, but when the time comes it's no deal. A bit aggrivating, particularly as I'm sitting on my bed that's had no sheets for the past 4 days due to them insisting on washing things themselves. I can understand my clothes washing situation a bit - what with having a relic-of-a-washing machine - but I'm 'required' to do my own personal laundry (ie undies & socks) in the banya, which means I get to do a few pairs every week before my head explodes from how hot the banya room is. It's more a factor of me not feeling like I fit in here, feeling quite worthless at home, and feeling like the typical lazy Kyrgyz man who does nothing but sit around, complain, and bark out orders (which I don't do, but still). Whenever I even try to do something on my own, someone either coddles me with a 'Thanks very much! You did such a good job! Now go sit down, I can finish...' or 'No no, let me do that, you can watch but I'll do it.' At least I'm 'allowed' to clean my own room...

Kyrgyz men. These days nothing boils my blood quite like this group of people. Like I said earlier, they're typically a lot of lazy do-nothings. Now, I don't want to sit here making some sort of rash generalization, but evidence has, for the most part, proven this to be so. For example, here in KY women pretty much do everything - working in the fields, cleaning the house, making food, doing all the hard work. Men do... uh... lets see... well, at my school, the 1/10 or so staff that's male teach. Sometimes I'll see a random herder or worker, but women do that as well. For the most part, the men get drunk, very early on in the day, and either gamble in the baike circle (ring of guys squating on the side of a street, usually, with a bottle of vodka) or put on a facade of working at whatever they can consider their job. A favorite pastime of theirs is to harass volunteers, particularly female volunteers, so I'm always on my guard about that. Now, that in and of itself is enough to aggrivate me to no end. But what really gets me going is how they treat the women here - there is no such thing as gender equality here in KY. At work, the men generally ignore the women (and consequently vice versa), stick to a ring and converse among themselves. At home, men generally sit down and watch as the women do all the work, and are quick to lash out with admonishing commentary or criticism, despite A) not doing the work themselves and/or B) not even knowing how to do said work. It really angers me that women are beaten here. One of my friends, who lives in the most remote part of KY that PC goes to, has had a few neighbors bride kidnap women since he arrived at site. There is a super machismo here, but really nothing to back it up. The men do all sorts of messed up things, and none of the things they actually should be doing. In my mind, most of the men here are anti-men.

Now, a strong case for why this is so is present in the following: KY has had a very rough time after the Soviet collapse. Former doctors, engineers, and other such prestigious professions have had to either become farmers/store owners, or move to different countries. Despite being a primarily Muslim country, the most prevelant drink here is vodka, which is undoubtedly an influx from Russia. Before vodka, people drank kumuz (fermented mares milk) and gave toasts with that drink at parties etc. - now, however, it's pretty much all done with vodka. There are very few jobs in the villages, where Kyrgyz primarily live, so it's hard to live a successful life without being a farmer (or at least owning a few animals yourself). People marry very young (high school graduation is called Kuz [girl] bazaar) and many families are gigantic. Prior to Soviet rule, most marriages in KY were arranged. During Soviet rule, marriage was changed to be more in the style of what we in the west have - however, this met with resistance from the Kyrgyz, so some people opted to 'kidnap' one another, a practice that is present in KY's history but only very rarely, and the manner that is so prevelant today was strongly opposed and had severe consequences during and prior to Sovietism. This method evolved a bit over time starting from the 1930's-40's, and has become strongly ingrained into the mindset of people here as being a tradition - so nowadays, many men bride kidnap, often forcably (since dating seems to be nonexistant here, and the villages are so set in their ways).

--

Two days ago (Oct. 27th) I experienced one of the strangest experiences I've had here in Kyrgyzstan. I head to school for my afternoon classes, which are supposed to start at 2:00. I arrive at 1:55, wait in the teachers' room for about 15 minutes with nobody showing up, and finally some Ejes come in and say that my counterpart is in the cafeteria. Ok, I think, what the heck is going on now, we're missing class... So I head to the cafeteria, and there, 'lo and behold, is the majority of my school's staff, sitting around having a party. I'm not given time to digest the site - my presence is noticed and I have 10 people telling me to sit in 10 different places. I befuddledly stumble to a spot and promptly have all the markings of a Kyrgyz feast/party - candy, lots of bread, lots of borsok (fried pieces of dough), soda (ie soft drinks), vodka - shoved in my face. As I grogily take a piece of borsok and have 3 people pour me some off-brand orange soda (off-brands, while in the US are usually the exact same, are in my opinion terrible here - they all have a same candy-esque taste and aftertaste to them, feel like they'll burn a hole through my teeth, and just overall taste bad), people start getting up and giving toasts, with vodka of course, in what is today the Kyrgyz style. My counterpart decides to come over and talk with me a bit; I try asking what the heck is going on, but before long I'm on the spot to give a toast of my own. So I'm standing with a coffee mug of putrid orange soda, no idea what the heck is going on or what's being celebrated, with 20 people telling me to give a toast in Kyrgyz. I rattle off the standard 'Thank you everyone, good health to you all' and have a brain fart directly after as I realize I A) have no idea what this is for and B) even if I did probably wouldn't know the appropriate way to say it in Kyrgyz. So I speak for about 1 minute, in English, about how it's an honor to be here, thanks to you all for being hospitable, etc. I sip my soda; that's not good enough! Down it in one gulp! So I comply, sit down, and try to stop my head from spinning.

I'm shipped off to class on my own as my counterpart helps clean up. The classroom I'm supposed to go to is locked, so I flounder back to the party area. Go wait in the teacher's lounge. Alright... When all's said and done, my counterpart and I head to what was presumably our next class. Only our schedule was all messed up, and we arrived one period ahead, so had an empty classroom for about 40 minutes. I glean that the celebration was for my counterpart; she was celebrating (re: being the woman, making food and serving for 3 days straight) the fact that one side of the family had given her and her husband wedding gifts. Note: I think they've been married for one year already, or something. But the party at school was to celebrate the fact that she had a celebration and now had gifts. That, in a nutshell, is the way Kyrgyz people celebrate stuff - if someone they met once on a corner 5 years ago during a storm happens to go out and, say, buy a car, or donkey, or plants a tree, or something, everyone is inclined to celebrate it with plenty of food and drink. As my mind is trying to buffer the thought process of this celebration method, my counterpart and I got into a discussion about how she thinks she's too old to have kids, and I think she's almost too young to be married. For the record she's 25, and according to her, her doctor, and most Kyrgyz people, she will be an old hag incapable of producing life very soon. I just call it crazy, especially her bit about 18-20 being the best time to have kids. Oi...

My host family. If I could describe it in one statement at the moment, it would have to be: spectacularly mediocre. Not bad, not good. It's a real struggle trying to do most anything - since kids are pretty much supposed to do all the work, and my house is anything but lacking kid-power, I can't really do a whole lot here. I've offered countless times to help and have simply been brushed off. My life at home seems to consist of three rooms - the dining room, the outhouse, and my bedroom where I spend most of my time. I haven't seen my host Eje (still disturbed that it's Eje and not host mother) for a while. My only solace is the oh-so-rare conversation with a family member at the dinner table, or spending time with my youngest host brother. I've tried talking about napkin usage at the dinner table with my family due to my nose issues (note: every meal tends to be scalding hot soup with some nice hot tea to wash it down, which my nose just loves...). They all seem embarassed about it, and lately it's been me and my sister eating meals, then afterward (or sometimes even beforehand) everyone else piles in to eat. Oh, my family also stopped buying toilet paper for some reason, instead opting for the old used notebook or Soviet handbook - I think right now the spiders of the outhouse understand me more. Oi vei.

The food here. While it's not bad, I'm starting to miss the better tastes of life (particularly after the 5th or so day straight of soup - have to pee so much every day now). It's gotten to the point where I'm retreating to my room, raiding my personal stash every day. Things have left me desiring something more; granted, not exceptionally more, but one can only do so much with potatoes and cabbage. The other night I was literally dreaming of cinnamon buns - I woke up soon after, finding I had drooled all over myself. Hot broth and noodles and cabbage and potatoes - decently filling, not pleasant for my pallet after so many days straight (particularly since they love putting dill - which I hate - fairly liberally into soups). Something non-soup would be wonderful right about now. A taste from home would be even more wonderful. I sure hope the Kyrgyz postal system doesn't pull shenanigans with my mail, as they've been known to do. So far, no packages since before I arrived at site, when PST ended and I was as of that time not yet a volunteer.

So today is my brother Sean's birthday. Happy birthday. Sorry I can't really get you a present, I'm kinda on the other side of the world. Good luck with football and hope everything goes well. Don't be too miserable - look at me, I'm in a place even colder than home, using an outdoors bathroom with spiders all the time, get to stand in a van for 40 minutes if I want to go anywhere, have to wait at least 4 hours before I have usable water, and don't have electricity for the greater majority of the day. I'm not that unhappy either! So have a good one, and eat some good food for me, maybe I'll start dreaming of it.

Three times. It's snowed three times so far in the past week's worth timespan. Unfreakinbelievable. My heater is sitting here, uselessly plugged in during our unforgiving period of electric drought. It's cold enough to make me chilly 24-7, but not outrageously so. And when I say 24-7, I mean 24-7. With my heater, my room can get maybe into the mid-60s. Heat is a winter commodity that's nigh-impossible to come by. It's either "Oh my God" cold outside, or "Eh, slightly less" cold inside. No refreshing warm showers, no thermostat to crank, no exceptional covers to crawl under. There's the 1-3 times a day I eat, getting something warm, and that's roughly it. Park myself next to my heater when the electricity comes back on, and my toes might thaw. Oh ho, it's going to be a fun fun winter. Please, post office, don't screw around with my packages and take my warm clothes...

--

So privacy is a bit of an issue for me. My family is cool about it - heck, half the time they treat me like I have the plague. It's the outsiders that give me a hard time. My room is situated as the first part of the house you can see, being front and center. My home is sort of a comunal hotspot - we have a banya that several people in the neighborhood utilize and a water pump that's frequently used by the locals. That, plus all sorts of other business deals, friends dropping by, and lord only knows what else, and we have a regular hotel lobby going on here. In Kyrgyzstan, it's rare for a house to have a doorbell, so people bang, yell, and whistle. When whatever random person they're calling for doesn't answer, they come on in and bang louder, opening doors, etc. Unfortunately for me, this means they'll come right up to my window and start banging and calling. Also, the closed door seems a foreign concept to people here - I've had a few incidents of completely random people walking into my room. That scares the hell out of me; fortunately nothing has happened yet, but my presedence hasn't been completely established. I always lock my door when I'm not at home. Finally, the curtains to my room. Like I said earlier, my room is the first one you can see when walking into the house. It also has a rather large berth of window exposure, and just a thin see-through curtain which serves almost no purpose but decoration. So yeah, I have to hide every time I change, lest I flash the entire community. Privacy, thou art a commodity.

Finally, a break of pace from the soup run. A plate o' potatoes! Yay! At least it's not scalding soup, which aggrivates my nose the most. And tea is more tolerable when I don't have a gallon of broth going down my throat. Still, I miss decent cold drinks - I may freeze to death when I go back to the States just from that alone.

When I close my eyes I feel so at peace, like a weight has been lifted. I really need this Fall Break we're having next week (Oct 31-Nov 7), a time to recharge and get some planning done. Also, I might head to Bishkek with some of the other volunteers. That'll be something - I can use the post office there and attempt to get gifts (Christmas et al) sent, meet up with some friends, check out the eats, and generally just get away from the village for a few days. Hope I have enough $$! Oi. Living on about $65 a month, been saving a good deal of it for a while. Good thing my primary shop is the bazaar, where the price can be bargained, sometimes.

One thing I've realized is that despite living away from home for the greater majority of the past 4, 4 1/2 years, I've always been home for the holidays. This year will be my first away from home during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Not easy - particularly since nobody here celebrates our holidays. Instead of Christmas they have Jangu Jill, New Years, which is the biggest holiday of the year. It has Santa, and celebration, but nothing of what makes Christmas the holiday it is today. Here there's a feast, and a gigantic Santa parade because some Swedish research group found that Santa's home would be here in Kyrgyzstan if he were to feasibly make a trip around the world in one night. But it just sounds like a bigger version of every other party they have here; not bad, but not Christmas. More similar to Thanksgiving, if anything.

--

These new pictures of that studly figure are none other than yours truly, taken just a few days ago. First there's me in my pimp-jacket and baeke hat, gearing up for the long haul of winter's cold. What's missing right now is a pair of boots, perhaps some matching gloves (I have good ones but they're brown grr...) and a nice ol scarf to go along with it all, possibly some earmuffs as well (the baeke hat has a flip-down action in the back, but it's not spectacular). The second picture is me sporting my Obama shirt; it reads "Obama, for the sake of America," from Americans Abroad for Obama, Kyrgyzstan (which wasn't cheap, either - lots o money for one on a volunteer budget). You can of course glimpse my room in all it's unkempt splendor in the background. I wear big clothes to hide my skinny self! I think I'm getting back on track weight-wise -- been eating a lot of bread, and taking second helpings, and munching on my snacks, and trying to get my fruit intake, and haven't been sick, and, and, and...

I raided the PC Talas Library last time I was in the city. At my rate, I think I'll have all the books read by the end of winter, perhaps third time through 'em all by next year's winter.

So I'm pretty nervous about next week and the election. The latest news I have is from September, with some sprinklings from emails about what's going on. I'm also miffed that I won't have the opportunity to vote, stupid Windsor Post Office or whoever it was that decided not to mail my ballot because the address compilation is switched in Kyrgyzstan (i.e. country, oblast/state, rayon/district, city/town, street, name, in descending order). Oi... the biggest election and I don't get to participate. Someone revoke my Poly Sci BA. But I hope McCain is still drowning in his muck, and Palin messing things up with her complete lack of worthwhile credential. I may have to follow other volunteers and take on an extended service if I don't get to come back to a paper with Obama's sig on it. Lord knows the irony of Bush's sig on the PC papers I got when I signed up.

--

The fact that I'm here is slowly dawning on me - that I'm actually here - and it's a bit frightening, revealing, and confusing. Mainly, this brand of volunteer work is vastly different from anything and everything I've ever done. In the past I've held volunteer work as work packed for time, never a lack of things to do, plenty of people willing to share and experience. While here it's not the opposite of those things, it's a completely different brand of volunteerism. I'm not here for a few hours, a day, or a week; I'm here living with people in their environment for a greater amount of time, attempting to both be one of them and an outsider with new ideas all at the same time. There's needs and problems, but I'm not working in a volunteer-prone area; rather, working for free (almost, I still get my living allowances) is as foreign a concept as I am. I need to dig to discover, work at fitting in, learn and listen and watch. The time here is slow, very slow, and it's easy to fall into habitual neglect or oversight. People love to glaze over problems, are quick to highlight the things they're proud of; it's true of practically any culture (see: tourism) but it makes for a mountain in terms of tackling real issues. It's going to take a lot of patience and perseverance, and I hope I'm up to this task. No amount of preperation could brace someone for a situation such as this - it has to be tackled with individual touch and gradual perception, empathy, sympathy.

In many ways Kyrgyzstan has blindsided me. When thinking of Peace Corps the typical image is a volunteer in shorts, t-shirts, and sandals; the typical African or Central/South American volunteer. Here I'm wearing business clothes every day. I've been thrown into a position as a teacher - and not just a teacher, a co-teacher, which is very very challenging - when I'm more used to doing volunteer volunteer work (i.e. spending time with the needy, helping out with this or that cause, etc.). It feels like a 9-5 job (sometimes 8-6 with no break), with quite a few more hitches to it. My role as a teacher is a bit aggrivating - I can't work with my counterparts outside of class due to the shame factor of them being young women in a village, materials are scarce, the old ways of teaching are quite apparant and highly cumbersome, and I generally don't have much of an idea what goes on (or what will go on, lesson plans aren't shared with me) during class. I think there are some bright points in what I've done so far - students sticking up for me, students rushing to me after class to give them their grade (I'll often give good grades for sheer effort, of which there is quite a lacking), students wanting so badly to get an English club going, students students students. Pretty much everything good that has happened to me here in Kyrgyzstan has been something out of preservice training or with my students. Granted, some of my worst moments also occurred with both, but who wouldn't expect that. I'll be the odd-teacher-out in that I'll side with the students whenever I can - homework and classwork system of books nobody has be damned!

On that note I'm somewhat unnerved with the degree to which my host family has extended itself to important positions. When talking about family, the conversation always goes something like "... and so-and-so is the director of x school, this person is part of the local government, cousin Bobbek (men often have bek - lord - at the end of their name) runs this company..." and so on. Part of me thinks it has to do with showing off, part of me thinks it's an attempt to assert something or other. For example, one host uncle-type-person told me if I had problems with anyone I should call him, and he'd fix them because he knows a lot of men (presumably police or ruffians, though they're practically one in the same here). He also wants me to take him to America once I go back, which seems to be a fairly common sentiment here, despite things being 'better, healthier, bigger...' in Kyrgyzstan. I know that to a large degree nepotism and favors play a role in what you are in this country. It unnerves me because Kyrgyzstan has quite a few problems, but nothing gets solved when a person goes to a job because their brother got it for them and they like the money, and they don't really know what to do so they show up at 10 a.m., often drunk, and just collect a paych... uh, lump of som (haven't seen a check here). The mentality here is all about helping one another out, be it friend or family, and little regard is given to efficiency or quality. It's readily apparent in school, with how students (despite me telling them don't cheat, don't talk to one another) will always shout or whisper answers, copy off one another, or throw things around the room (the real kicker is when they did it during our quarter's end exam - which consisted of them copying a text from a book, word for word; some students still failed even that). This culture is all about being part of a whole, scratch my back I'll scratch yours, and enh you're a friend of my brother's friend so I'll let that slide. Aggrivating in some regards, admirable in others.

The act of saying to someone 'you have problems' is never an easy one. It's also bad to go about something in a manner such as straight up giving them a bunch of something - the impressions of both wealth and dependence are none-too optimistic. The art of diplomacy must be employed in such a case, in my case, and I'm hoping that what experience I have will help me. I've held my tongue on numerous accounts so far in-country - I must continue to do so until a point in time when I can comfortably start including issues into my actions and words. Everything is so fresh and real, and my idealistic heart yearns to jump where my practical mind deems 'not yet.' Oh, but to have the knowledge, community integration, and understanding of my village... time feels oh so drudgingly excruciating sometimes.