I craned my neck to peer between the guards.
“Did everyone make it?”
“I think I see Larry now.”
“Where are Victoria and Tammy?”
“I don’t think they’ve made it.”
We were in a cheerless room of cold marble and weak fluorescent lights, more a gesture than a genuine attempt at illumination. We had as cheerless a task: indefinite waiting for an unknown end. There were no windows in the room and but for the dull glow of glass doors at the end of the room, the scuffed marble floor would have reflected nothing but our weariness. The room had one entrance, minded by a guard whose discretion formed the boundary between tawdry desperation and a moment of salvation.
Location: Manas International Airport’s domestic gate, day two of our collective attempted escape from Kyrgyzstan’s northern capital, Bishkek, to its southern capital of Osh.
We were a group of 13 volunteers who live in the South and had flown north for our Mid-Service Training, round-trip tickets in hand. But when the last flip chart had been flipped, the last line-dance danced, and departure time rolled around, Osh was wearing two feet of fresh snow and enjoying an on-again, off-again romance with a southern fog.
We had numbered 17 at the start of the day, but one volunteer made it out early in the morning, reporting a smooth flight, from Osh. Three more had been seen entering the domestic gate a few hours after that, triggering the exodus of the remaining volunteers to the airport, but they had not been heard from since. Text messages sent them by cell phone ominously disappeared into an abyss of silence.
For three days, most flights had been cancelled. And now there were enough would-be passengers waiting around with just enough hope and frustration to make the situation tense. Our own tired group was beginning to express the fraught and tragic pathos of Lord of the Flies or Hotel Rwanda.
It had all started for us the day before. At around noon we were all enjoying one of Bishkek’s western-style restaurants and puzzling over mixed messages from Peace Corps and other sources as to the status of our flights. Finally, around one, we were told to go ahead to the airport as intended. If our planes didn’t take off, we were to exchange our tickets for the next day’s flights.
A leisurely lunch of club sandwiches, Philly cheese steaks, and onion rings reluctantly gave way to tallying tips, balancing tabs, and negotiating cabs. Everyone made their respective ways to the airport and re-congealed before the ticket window where we exchanged our tickets. Though we were now set to fly the next day, we still had the option to wait and see if we could get on an evening flight if the weather changed. Two of us chose to wait, Greg and yours truly. I’d had my fill of the big-group dynamic, but more importantly, it was my boyfriend’s birthday.
Still, I got a little gloomy in about an hour and a half, when the Peace Corps bus finally arrived to pick up the rest of the group and take them to the hotel. More importantly, I had become a little anxious. Was this just the nagging nervousness that comes sometimes when you’re about to part from a group you’ve been traveling with, or was this a foreboding about the possibility of being on the first plane to test the snowy runway in Osh?
I’ve admired the know-how of people in Kyrgyzstan who are accustomed to trouble-shooting problems when most Americans would make good on a warranty or call a specialist. Automobile engines, stereos, electrical outlets and appliances are all fair game, stripped of the mystique of fine-tuned functionality. I also admire locals’ ability to take problems as they come and not waste the present moment on fears for the future.
But for me, this casual, can-do attitude becomes somewhat too cavalier when expressed in, say, driving habits: “I don’t know what’s around that sharp turn in the road, but I won’t let that slow me down – I’ll deal with it when I come to it.” As much as I wanted to get on an evening flight, I wasn’t too confident that it was entirely prudent.
As it turned out, my fears for the future were indeed a waste of the moment, or rather the many moments I spent waiting at the airport for my shot at a seat on a south-bound flight -- but not because it didn’t come. It came at about 6:30.
Greg and I were waiting in one of the airport’s café areas for 7:00 to roll around. We had been told that at seven they would do another visibility check in Osh and update the flight status. So, when we heard an announcement for a plane to Osh a half hour early, I thought it was a good sign.
We rushed down stairs to the domestic gate to find a clump of humanity plugging up the single-door entrance. Now, lines are generally an aberration in Kyrgyzstan as can be the principle of equality expressed in the first-come, first-serve rule that lines embody. I’ve been kept waiting to see our university’s Rector for up to two hours at a time for what would amount to five minutes of business, while other visitors arrived after and left before me.
Similarly, I’ve waited at the neighborhood store, where I’m a regular, for customers ahead of me to make their purchases before requesting my own small list of items only to be interrupted mid-sentence by a man barking for, and immediately getting, bread, vodka, pickles, whatever, as though I’d been asking myself for eggs and t.p. And then, of course, there is the all-out pushing and shoving that make the bazaars and marshrutkas the Darwinian adventures that they are.
Based on these experiences, we assumed that the check-in procedures would basically be a free for all. But all things considered, it wasn’t so bad. There was pushing and shoving and standing at 45 degree angles to hold your position while protecting your bags. And there was a loud and leathered, drunk Russian guy. But it wasn’t too ugly. Some people even joked, two sixty-something women pleading pregnancy after the security guard tried to prioritize “women and children with little baggage.” And some people, of course, ended up being the ones to patiently let the pushier folks go first.
But in this case, that wasn’t us. We pushed our ways to the front fairly quickly, showed the guard our tickets and were given the first enigmatic clues as to what was going on. Greg was told simply to wait, while I was told I couldn’t get on. With a little more prodding, I learned that my ticket was with another airline and that their check-in was upstairs.
I jogged up the escalator as the logistical implications of being split up unfolded (cell phone and taxi complications).
At my gate, it seemed that they’d been letting people through security for a while. I prepared and launched sentences in Russian. “Is this the right gate?” “Can I get on this plane?” “I’ve been waiting all afternoon.” The guards told me to wait. They were boarding people with tickets for yesterday’s flights first. If there was room, they’d let others on.
A small group hovered around the entrance to the gate and I planted myself right next to the door. Then a large Kyrgyz man came up and filled the space before the entrance. Was this going to be like trying to buy eggs at the store or seeing the Rector? If this guy was going to play the important man card, I was going to play the Peace Corps card. I took out my Peace Corps I.D. and casually held it out where the guard could see it, just in case that little leather chunk of bureaucracy could work some magic.
But in five minutes they said that the plane was full -- they weren’t taking any other passengers. A young woman in red protested that she needed to lead a seminar the next day, it was very important. But no go. I hung around another minute or two, knowing that there are many last words in most arrangements in Kyrgyzstan, but to no avail.
I had been assured earlier that if I stayed and the weather cleared up, I would certainly get a seat on one of the flights. So now I inquired about the next flights. Would there be any? When would they be? Where would the check-in be this time? Flights were scheduled. That was about all I could get out of the security guards, even after the woman in red took it upon herself to repeat it to me in English.
So, I went back downstairs and found Greg somehow tethered to the same spot by the door, as every couple of minutes the guard would take a ticket and the mass of people would convulse and expel an individual and her bags across the threshold and into the check-in area. Now the airport staff said that they were taking people with tickets in the order of their original flights. I waited a horrible, slow-motion wait, just watching and listening and calculating what to do should Greg go or not go.
Finally, they called out Greg’s flight and it seemed he had a chance. “If the guard was going to be at all subjective, that could help Greg,” I thought, recalling enviously how Greg had talked to him in the warm, clacking syllables of Kyrgyz, calling him by the customary “baikay,” meaning big brother. Finally, the guard took Greg’s ticket and I watched him disappear into a press of people just beyond the door.
For me, the drama was over and I was happy to exit the scene before the final curtain. Having moved off from the crowd, the rest of the airport felt eerily empty and emotionless. I checked in at the information desk to find out when and where the next plane would be – about 9:30 on the first floor. I hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I grabbed three over-priced cookies at the airport café and went back upstairs to find the woman in red.
The woman in red, it turned out, works at one of the NGOs where a fellow-volunteer used to work. This made it a little easier to ask her if she could give me a ride into town if we made it to Osh. I was unsure about the cost and safety of riding in a taxi alone if there were even to be any, so late on a snowy night.
With her easy offer of a ride, I gratefully went back downstairs where I called Stas to tell him of my good chances of getting on the 9:30. Hanging up, I imagined the cheerful triumph of a literally eleventh-hour homecoming to warm soup, clean underwear, and of course the birthday-boy.
I returned to my friend in red and settled in contentedly for a wait, even opening the only reading I’d brought and avoided all week – an adolescent’s guide to the history of painting -- written in Russian.
Before Greg left he’d arranged to have another volunteer back at the hotel call me at 8:00 because my cell phone was running on empty. Tim called as scheduled and I gave him an update. He told me there was a hotel room for me if I needed one and said he’d call back in another thirty minutes.
In his second call, Tim said that he’d just heard from Greg, who had actually never left the ground but was being held indefinitely in one of the airport’s anonymous and inaccessible chambers.
What happened?
The plane that I had been unable to get a seat on had taken off and flown to Osh and skidded on the runway upon landing. Meanwhile, Greg’s airline had actually boarded two planes. The first heard about the skidding on their way to Osh and turned around in mid-flight to go back to Bishkek. Greg was on the second plane, which was still waiting on the runway when the crew heard about the skidding. Airport staff cancelled the flight, and ushered the passengers into a room to await their bags.
I resignedly called Stas again and broke the bad news, predicting an arrival the next day. I waited for Greg to resurface and collect his bags, and then handed over 175 soms for a taxi ride back into town.
Having a hotel room to my self and left-over pizza and Coke was some consolation as I watched the last thirty minutes of The Mirror Has Two Faces in blurry Russian and slept my way late into the morning of day two.
At around 10 A.M. we heard from Peace Corps that they didn’t want us to try to fly out that day – that we should spend one more night in Bishkek. My heart sank. Not only did I want to get home, but I wanted to finish what I’d started. Nevertheless, I began to acclimate to the idea of a day in town with opportunities for internet and Indian food. I called Stas with the last nine units on my cell phone to tell him to get on with his day and not expect me till tomorrow.
Exactly one minute later Peace Corps called again telling us to go to the airport. And so it was that we all headed out, once again, to the airport, bags in tow. Within just minutes of our arrival the guard opened the door through which Greg had disappeared the night before (only to reappear an hour and a half later), and the mad push began again. But this time it was personal.
I shamelessly pushed to the front and soon had my I.D. and ticket in the guard’s hand. While the night before and earlier that morning they were taking passengers with the oldest tickets first, they suddenly changed the rules and were only accepting passengers with tickets for the present flight. Though unfair, it worked to my advantage as I was soon let through the door, with Tim close behind. As we waited to go through security, volunteers behind us were still caught in the melee. Tears were shed as one volunteer attempted to defend her position and her bag as a big, swarthy Kyrgyz man in a tall, fur, Russian hat* bulldozed his way to the door.
But, eventually, 12 volunteers got through, the remaining thirteenth having been refused admittance because he hadn’t exchanged his ticket the day before (and despite the fact that he’d been waiting as per the oldest-ticket-goes-first rule since the preceding flight which had been boarded according to said rule). But, even he was allowed through the security check of another company’s flight leaving from the other gate on the second floor.
Sitting in the boarding area, I was excited. I’d conquered my arch nemesis, the dramaturge of Darwinism, and reached the Promised Land. Still, I’d learned a lesson in the last 24hours and decided not to call Stas until I knew I was on my way. Indeed, as the minutes ticked by and my victory faded I began to sense that the boarding area wasn’t so much a promised land, as a land of promise. There was promise of getting on a plane and promise of getting home to Osh but that was really merely in relation to being on the other side of the security check. There was still a long way to go.
Like the children of Israel, we had little else than the clothes on our backs – just a few modern-day bundles of be-backpacked belongings -- and we too were short on food in this unexpected stint in the wilderness of skepticism. A couple of volunteers passed around their single-size bags of Doritos, rationing everyone a crunchy and wonderfully artificially-flavored orange chip.
Before long a portentous sign flashed before our eyes: the airport’s ferry-bus. They use it to transport passengers between the airport building and the planes on the runway. Through the sliding glass doors we saw that it was empty, yet still heading out for the runway. More than one volunteer predicted that we would soon see the bus again, heading back to the airport with passengers, including the three volunteers who had boarded a plane earlier and had, they guessed, either turned back in mid-flight or never taken off.
Though we never saw the bus again, these three volunteers did indeed report that they had turned back on their way to Osh due to the weather, and were being held indefinitely in a waiting room on the airline’s hope that it would soon clear up again and they could re-board the plane.
And so it was with bitter-sweet feelings that I re-crossed the threshold of the domestic gate – bitter that my victory had been so ephemeral but sweet with the knowledge that I had the glorious freedom to leave the airport, unlike the three still waiting for clearance.
We quickly got in touch with Peace Corps and were told that hotel rooms were again waiting for us but this time they couldn’t send the bus. I told someone I was running upstairs to let the 13th volunteer know what was going on. When I got there, our Kyrgyz friend who had also spent the last couple of days trying to get back to Osh was there writing and holding up messages to the two-inch thick virtually sound-proof walls of glass between herself and the volunteer. I told them about the hotel reservations and then headed back downstairs to join the others.
Looking around the first floor, it seemed that the whole cumbersome troop had somehow disappeared wholesale. It seemed like some kind of impossible magic. But before I could even go outside to look for them I got a call on my cell phone from one of the volunteers saying they were all on their way to the hotel and – oops – they had left me behind.
I quickly hung up so as to preempt any bitter words, but I also preempted an opportunity to ask which marshrutka to take to the hotel from down town. (Living in the South, I’m not often in Bishkek and don’t know my way around very well). Having used my last units that morning I could only receive calls on my cell phone, I couldn’t call out. It seemed I was destined to spend some more quality time at Manas International. I went back to check on my friends upstairs, to find out about a marshrutka or, ideally, leave with them.
As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one having trouble getting away from the airport. Upstairs, my friends were in the middle of a jail break. While our airline downstairs had cancelled their flight, this airline seemed determined to wait out the weather and to make their passengers do the same, whether they liked it or not. The security guards were literally not allowing our volunteer to leave despite, even, the assistance of our local friend. Finally, he simply found an un-minded opening in the endless glass barrier and made a break.
But then there was the small matter of reuniting with checked baggage. Thankfully, I was spared the details of this half-hour process. I sat in a waiting area on the first floor, called Stas on a borrowed cell phone and watched the two of them go back and forth between various rooms of the airport, dragging this staff person, and then another to get whatever gamut of in-person approvals was necessary in order to gain access to and reclaim their own bags.
Finally it was done and time to resign, once again, to fly another day. The three volunteers who’d returned mid-flight were still being held in a waiting room. Did I envy them or pity them? I couldn’t decide.
We took a marshrutka into the city, picked up some pastries, and got a cab to the hotel. Riding in the dark and freezing taxi, buttery flakes of powdered-sugared croissants sprinkled my charcoal-gray pea coat like snowflakes in the January sky.
Soon we arrived, once again, at the giant hotel. Its long, horizontal wings and orange interior glow would almost have been like a welcoming mother’s embrace after a punishing day at school if it hadn’t been for the stridency of its soviet design. After another dinner of cold pizza and Coke I gratefully gave into sleep, with no idea what to expect from tomorrow.
The next morning we heard that the three volunteers who were stuck at the airport the night before had actually made it to Osh by the end of the night. Nevertheless, no one was in a hurry to go back to the airport. Most volunteers wanted to stay in town and have a more normal day and wait for greater assurance before heading out to the airport yet again. I, myself, was ambivalent.
But most everyone was motivated to go in to the Peace Corps office. They had a small stipend for each of us to meet the unexpected costs of our unplanned stay in the city. After collecting my cash I whiled away 45 minutes chatting with one of the security guards as he tried to help me repair my cell phone charger which I’d broken when attempting to extract it from the cramped, and by now smelly contents of my backpack. It was possibly the most pleasant 45 minutes I’d had in two days.
But still, I felt myself drawn to the airport. I didn’t know why I wanted to go but gave into the dull urge like a migratory instinct. Tim also wanted to give it a shot, and I was glad for the company and for his excellent Russian.
When we got there, we found that a plane to Osh was boarding. Unfortunately, it didn’t belong to our airline. When we inquired with our airline they would tell us only that their first flight for the day was scheduled for 4:30.
How I longed for America at that moment. In America, someone would make a prediction, offer some explanation: “The weather looks good,” or “We’re waiting for an update from Osh and you can check back with us in an hour,” but no. And what’s more, it seemed like the airline employees were not only annoyed but disgusted with our questions, with our expectation that they should be able to tell us something.
But at the same time, I knew they were kind of right. Hadn’t the last two days illustrated that nothing short of arriving in Osh would tell me that I would get to go home? Anything they could tell us wouldn’t really tell us anything. It would only be a kind of pacifier and I wondered how much of American etiquette is really just some kind of binky for grown ups.
I knew that kind of deep, revelatory, culturally sensitive insight, while one of the primary reasons for becoming a Peace Corps volunteer wasn’t going to get me to Osh. So I shelved it for blog time and conferred with Tim on our strategy.
We decided that, given how the airlines were accepting each other’s passengers the day before, we were going to see if the operating airline would take us aboard. Though sympathetic, the guards at the gate said that they couldn’t do it without some kind of agreement with our airline. Returning to our airline’s office, we found one employee who was good enough to negotiate on our behalf with the other airline. Nevertheless, our airline couldn’t offer cash and no agreement was reached. We were told to wait for the 4:30 flight.
And so we would have done, if not for the arrival of our Kyrgyz friend. I don’t know what she said, but she dogged the guards until they finally relented and, seeing her enter the security check, we scurried to follow her lead. They hustled us through the security and ran us out to the runway where we waited for all of the other passengers to board and then finally, whether I was sure of it or not, the quest was over.
I should have climbed the steps in slow motion. The camera should have focused in on the sunlight beaming through the little round cabin windows and glowing in my hair. There should have been some kind of mellow and fanciful soundtrack, because it was like one of those moments when the most ordinary becomes a little heavenly.
I’d never been on such a nice plane in Kyrgyzstan. The upholstery was new. There was adequate leg room. The plastic walls were shiny and un-scuffed. It was still a tiny canary of a plane, but it was so breathable. It was like freedom. We took our seats and there were still three empty rows behind us when we took off. If it had been a greater escape, it would have been a tragedy.
* With a satiny interior that circumscribes the skull without actually covering even the tops of most ears, the main function of the Russian winter hat seems to me to be the broadcasting, by means of the luxuriant luster of its lofty and furry exterior, the importance of the wearer, lest the full force of their personhood be subdued beneath layers of winter wear.
Living Room/Bedroom/Gym/Office
Movies borrowed from Larry
Speakers from Ann
Pens, paper clips, white out, and pens from Liz and Maija
A converter from Larry
A string of Christmas lights from Liz and Maija
Map of Kyrgyzstangiven by PC
Plant from Stas and family
Vase from host family from Osh last Women’s Day
Heater given by PC
Christian Science Monitors accumulated from my free weekly subscription
Newsweeks accumulated from my free weekly subscription
Painted, wooden, Russian bowl from Nina, my tutor
Paper butterfly from Lena, my Russian teacher from training
A table and chair from Stas and family
Table cloth from Liz and Maija
Sheets, big, soft, comforter, and blanket cover left from Liz and Maija
Hand cream from Micah and Holly
Little painting of Sulliman Too from Stas and family
Felt, heart necklace from campers last summer
Glass necklace from Holly
Cell phone cozy from wife of professor from Osh TU who we ran into at Issyk-Kul
Valentine from Talgat
Guitar from Chad
Long chord thingy from James last Women’s Day
Post card from Jenny Lawrence
Cute barrettes from Micah and Holly
Book about Kyrgyzstan from host family from Krasnaya Rechka
500 Russian Verbs from Ann
Books, books, books, magazines, and DVDs from Mom and Dad
Shirt and sweater from Courtney
Bra donated by Whitney
Card from Merim
Pillow from Chad
2 pillows from Stas and family
blanket from Stas and family
Giant Valentines Day poster from the girls in my Girls’ Club
Origami paper/calendar from Micah and Holly
Stretchy exercise chord-things from Chad
Glass print from Holly
Books from the library
Gorbachov poster from Stas
Laptop from Mom and Dad
Teaching materials from Liz and Maija
Hallway
Hat from Michelle
Green scarf from Micah and Holly
Blue fleece from Michelle
Gloves from Liz and Maija
Black Ninja pants from Courtney
Trainers from Liz
Cadmium shoes from Maija
Boots from Naomi
Yak tracks from PC
Hat from Liz
Bathroom
Metal relief of Lenin’s head from Stas
Necklaces from Micah and Holly
Earrings from Marsha
Bracelet from Mirem
Baby wipes from Courtney
Conditioner from Carol
Tom’s of Main toothpaste from Mom and Dad
Burt’s Bees products from Micah and Holly
Lotion from Angela
Body sprays from Ann
Be Good Elf soap from Micah and Holly
Blue towel from Salima
Nail polish from Courtney
Under-eye makeup from Micah and Holly
Shirt pin from Stas’s aunty, Lya Lya
Sanitizing hand gel from Mom and Dad
Floss from PC
Kitchen
Rubber spatulas and spoons from Carol
Curry spices from Chad
Water distiller from PC
Table cloth from Stas and family
Walnuts from Lya Lya
Dried flowers from Stas and his aunt
Pepper grinder from Michelle
Spices from Michelle
Maple syrup from Courtney
Cocoa and decaf coffee from Mom and Dad
Baking dish from Lya Lya
Heart shaped cookie cutters from Micah and Holly
Green water bottle from Micah and Holly
Spices from Liz and Maija
French press from Chad
Cookbooks from PC
Ginger concentrate from Chad
Powdered sugar from Mom and Dad
Colored sugars from Micah and Holly
Red frosting from Mom and Dad
Yellow socks from British Air (clothes line in kitchen)
Red and black tiger-striped socks from Salima
Jars from Lya Lya
And these are just the things I can see, not the brown sugar, t-shirts, and teaching materials packed away in the cupboard and closet, snuck under the bed and behind the table cloth.
So, what gives? (Pun intended).
People like to give gifts in Kyrgyzstan and there are a lot of holidays on which to give presents, especially in the spring, including Men’s Day, Women’s Day, Noruz (Kyrgyz New Year), and Victory Day, not to mention birthdays, weddings, and guesting.
With one group of volunteers leaving each year on somewhat of a rolling basis, the domestic landscape includes a host of hand-me-downs. Back in the U.S. the magical combination of an adult’s pay check and an Old Navy near me meant the possibility of monthly shopping – a cute shirt, new jammies. While the bazaar is both old and oft times not unlike Her Majesty’s Fleet, susceptible to squalls, bearing live animals, and not without tattooed and loogey-hurling ruffians, I rarely make additions to the wardrobe that I lugged over here in a camping back pack and a duffel bag. So, when a t-shirt with pit stains is up for grabs, I’m not too proud to beg.
I’ll drop just about anything when I get a call from the post office – “pasilka” – package!! I dare say Mom and Dad have spent more on packages than on even my Freshman-year phone bill. Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Sauer Kraut is Spoiled Cabbage
Culinarily speaking, Kyrgyzstan is a land of meat. I am fortunate to live in the South, where there are a number of fruits and vegetables available, even in the winter. But people here eat meat (and fat) whenever economically possible and it’s difficult to find a dish without some form and amount of meat in it.
Sidewalk and bazaar vendors sell big, beautiful, browned, baked pockets of dough stuffed and steaming with chunks of meat and fat and fried onions. They’re called samsa. Seeing them for sale, especially on a chilly day, is a cruel form of torture. They make them with cheese in the North, but not here. You can find less big, beautiful, and browned samsa with just potatoes and onions inside, but it’s not the same.
All soups involve chunks of meat and/or fat. Even a bowl of chickpea soup is two parts chickpeas and one part little, white globules of fat, which, even if not directly eaten, leave a coating of grease on the lips and roof of the mouth.
Another national favorite are manti. Manti are like steamed dumplings. They, too, are usually stuffed with meat and fat and onions. The café near the university miraculously sells manti with pumpkin inside, but this is an aberration. People are incredulous when I tell them that I’m a vegetarian. And often, people don’t even understand my question when I ask if something has meat in it. They’ve probably never been asked before.
Even the salads are laced with shredded chicken or diced sausage. A bit like McDonald’s if I remember correctly.
So, I was practically elated by the abundance of pure, raw roughage in my kitchen on the day we made cabbage-carrot salad. We had hauled two huge heads of cabbage, a couple of kilograms of carrots and a new, green, plastic bucket home from the bazaar. Cabbage and carrots were chopped and put into the bucket with bay leaves, salt and pepper, pressed down with a weight and covered with a lid.
Perhaps satisfied with the absence of meat, I let my guard down. Or perhaps my elation or some self-preserving instinct towards ignorance temporarily muted my mental capacities. At any rate, I failed on that day of cabbage-carrot salad making to think through the consequences of letting those fresh and crunchy vegetables sit in a bucket on my kitchen floor for two days.
What a fool I was. It took me less than a moment to recognize the foul, brown-juiced shadow of a salad’s former self as the smelly stuff that my Kyrgyz host mother would put out on occasion, and of which I would eat a couple of spoonfuls, in consideration of the fact that it was my only chance for vegetables but at the same time that it just didn’t taste what we in America would call “right.”
In fact, it’s what we in America would call spoiled cabbage.
“This is spoiled cabbage!”
“This is perfect.”
“Uh huh.”
As the summer sunlight glinted cheerfully off of five glass jars, proudly stuffed with the wet and twisted vegetable-bacteria medley, I searched a vague inkling that spoiled cabbage is even a symbol in American culture – “. . . it’s the most heinous, most disgusting, most offensive thing you could fling at your enemy,” I thought. “Or is that rotten eggs? Well, no matter, it’s the same idea. Rotten food isn’t meant to be eaten, it’s meant to be thrown at people. If Saturday morning cartoons taught me anything, they taught me this. How could I possibly knowingly defy such a sacred and fundamental teaching?”
But there were five proud and gleaming jars of it, after all, and in 24 hours the feelings of offense had faded and I was ready to give it a try.
Over a few days, I developed a taste for it in small amounts. Then one night I was advised to fry it up with some potatoes. As I sat contemplating my toe nails, waiting for dinner to get hot, a warm, familiar odor filled the kitchen and triggered a memory I strained to identify.
“What is this smell?” I thought. “Do I like it?” I sniffed audibly. “Yes, I like it.” Sniff, sniff. “In fact, I like it very much.” Sniff. “Why, this is something I actually really like. Something I ate at home. What is it?”
Finally, it hit me: “It’s sauer kraut!”
And then it dawned upon me: “That wet, bendy, white stuff sold in plastic bags labeled “sauer kraut” – why, that’s spoiled cabbage!”
It was as though Kyrgyzstan’s culinary M.O. had been cosmically reversed for once to work in my favor.
I am Losing Weight
When my boyfriend, Stas, and I were at Lake Issyk Kul this summer, we ended up staying at the same sanatorium as a colleague from the university and his wife. He’s an Economics teacher. I had never met him before, but the men recognized each other and chatted minimally in Russian as we waited for the cafeteria to open or the clouds to clear. The couple had us take several pictures of them on my digital camera, each a Kyrgyz version of “American Gothic,” minus the pitchfork and overalls.
I ran into this colleague a few weeks ago at work:
“Ah, Liza, hello, how are you?”
“Hello! Good, good. And how are you?”
“Fine. You’ve lost weight since this summer.”
“Oh, really? Huh.”
“Yes. But that’s okay. You still look okay.”
“Oh, good.”
I am Gaining Weight
A few days later, Janara, my host mother’s sister, returned from the Chinese border. I hadn’t seen her since April:
“Janara! Hello! How are you?”
“Good.”
“How is your health?”
“Fine.”
“Oh good. And how is Aftandil?”
“He’s fine.”
“And how are your children?”
“They’re good.”
“Are you glad to be back in Osh?”
“Yes. . . You’ve gained weight.”
I am Losing Weight
A couple of weeks later, I saw my host sister, Merim:
“Liza, are you still running?”
“A little bit.”
“You’re losing weight.”
I am Gaining Weight
A few days later, I ran into my host brother, Urmat:
“Liza, are you running?”
“A little bit.”
“You’re gaining weight.”
The Only Way to Catch a Criminal is to think Like One
The only thing worse than riding in a totally packed marshrutka is being passed by a half-dozen totally packed marshrutkas as you try to catch one of the last rides home. After about 8 PM, only the number two marshrutkas go from down town to my neighborhood, Yugo-Vostok. At that hour, drivers begin to fly by the bus stops because even they must admit that not another soul could possibly be squeezed into its hot press of humanity.
During the day, a passenger sometimes tisks a driver under her breath for stopping to pick up more passengers when the marshrutka is already full. But towards the end of the evening, when it’s dark and marshrutkas stop running, the driver’s greed for another fare is miraculously transformed into an unsinkable can-do spirit and an altruistic sense of duty to see one more person safely home.
Standing at the bus stop, waiting for that late night ride, you see a number two coming. You put out your hand, and watch hopefully for signs of slowing. But usually it goes by in a blur of backs and butts and bags pressed up against the illuminated windows. If it does stop, panic grips you as five other people waiting at the bus stop also rush (and push) for the door in an effort to be the one person for whom the marshrutka has room.
One night, Stas and I were at a restaurant across town until about 9 o'clock. The most direct marshrutkas home had stopped running, so we walked to a larger street to catch a marshrutka to the center of town, in hopes of getting there in time to catch one of the last number 2s home.
We finally caught a ride and ten minutes later disembarked down town. Soon, a number two stopped and we squeezed on with two or three other folks. Stas took a seat in the back, while I sat next to a man who motioned for me to share his seat near the door.
I was relieved to have gotten not only a space on this late-night marshrutka, but a seated space at that. I vented a sigh of relief and enjoyed the cozy atmosphere that is sometimes created in a packed marshrutka at night as the orange glow of the interior light and the crazy smash of body parts produce almost a campy bonding feeling.
We slowed down to let someone out at the last of the down-town stops. As we pulled to the side of the road, I felt a hand in my little red bag, strapped across my shoulder. I looked into the face of my neighbor who had generously offered me a seat and, almost like an after-thought, he darted out of the marshrutka as we came to a stop.
I shouted, “Stop!” and without a thought sprang after the man who was now hunched over by the side of a building, directly across from the marshrutka. At the same time, I stuck my hand in my bag and did a quick inventory. Wallet – check. Russian flash cards – check. Keys – check. Peace Corps I.D. – check. Cell phone – nyet.
The driver and passengers watched as I caught up to the man and asked him to give me my cell phone back, thank you very much.
“I don’t have it. What are you talking about? I was sick. I had to get off the marshrutka.”
Stas disentangled himself from the marshrutka and stood by as I again asked the man for my cell phone. I knew I had felt his hand in my bag and told him so, as he insisted that I probably dropped it on the marshrutka. Knowing that he would love nothing more than for me to turn around and check the marshrutka, I asked Stas to look, as I asked the man to show me his pockets and the contents of his bag.
Stas of course did not find the cell phone, and to my dismay neither did I. “If I can’t find it on him, what more can I do?” I thought.
With no immediate resolution in sight, and a back seat that looked like a circle of the inferno, the marshrutka driver continued on his way.
As I gently tried to shame the man – “I’m a volunteer. I came here to help people. I use this phone to talk to my parents who are very far away,” – Stas inspected the ground where the man had feigned being ill.
“Of course,” I thought. “He had to have thrown it on the ground. I’m sure it’s there.”
But Stas didn’t find it.
For a moment I thought that I could just accept losing the cell phone. “I have so much more than him after all, and it will seem like a little thing in the long run.” But then I thought of my wallet that was stolen in January, and my camera that was stolen in May, and resolved not to let it go.
“I’m not rich, you know,” I told the man, more than a little testy now.
“What?”
“I’m not rich! I’m a volunteer and I work without pay.”
“She’s crazy!” he said to Stas, shaking his head as he started to move off from where we’d been standing.
Only later, did Stas tell me that I had actually said, “I’m not poor!” (the danger of learning adjectives in pairs of opposites). But perhaps my ridiculous Russian did more to elicit sympathy than the ideas I was trying to convey with it.
I hadn’t noticed, but we had moved down the street by several yards, and suddenly my eye caught the white blur of my cell phone cozy (that the Economics teacher’s wife had made and given me at Lake Issyk Kul) lying on the dark side walk.
The man and I both lunged for it at the same time. I got the white cozy, but he had the phone. “At least he couldn’t deny stealing it now,” I thought. But things got a little tense.
I got to see living Russian in action, as Stas tried to calm the man, addressing him as “Mujik,” -- the gentle way of saying man. “So that’s what the gentle words are for,” I thought.
I jumped in again with my song and dance about being a volunteer who came here to help people, who’s already had things stolen from her, who doesn’t deserve this.
Perhaps not unaware of Stas’s advantage in size, the man finally relinquished the phone, adding, as though it should really matter, “I didn’t know you were a volunteer.” But in the next breath, he demanded that we give him some money.
“You want money? I don’t have money. I only have twelve soms,” Stas said, indicating the bills in his pocket.
“Give me some money. This is my job. I have to feed my family,” he continued, this time directing his demand towards me.
“I don’t have any money to give you,” I said “I’m a volunteer, I work without pay.”
Finally, the man decided it was time to punch out and walked off, perhaps to catch the next marshrutka.
Some mornings, I wake up and my first thoughts are of myself, of a friend here, a friend at home, a random Peace Corps volunteer I barely know but whose well-being has been posed like a question in a dream. One morning last week, after a night of pop music blaring until 3:30 in the morning, my alarm clock catapulted me into consciousness and I strained for a thought of orientation: What day is it? What day is it? What day is it? Where am I supposed to be today?
This morning, my thoughts are of Kyrgyzstan -- sweeping thought, like that of a year and a half ago, when I was applying to be a volunteer, imagining myself in a distant place with people who existed to me only as the generalized masses of theoretical populations.
It is one year today, since I arrived in Kyrgyzstan. But that is not why I’m thinking of Kyrgyzstan this morning. It is because it is only 5:40 and the sounds of Kyrgyzstan outside my window have intercepted my waking thoughts.
My alarm clock is set for 6:30. I’m not sure what woke me up. It might have been the sounds themselves, or the discomfort of my nose that has been dry and bloody all summer with the heat.
In fact, I not only woke up, but sat up.
It’s a cool morning and I wanted very much to settle back into my giant, soft blanket, but the sounds outside my window are too interesting, especially at this hushed, poetic hour.
It is a call to prayer. At least I think it is a call to prayer. I think I hear the tinny voice of a mullah amplified over a loud speaker. But then it gives way to drums – minutes and minutes of drums, one or two, tapping out a vigorous beat. It sounds so much like a march that I wonder if it could be military training. I wait to hear the mullah’s voice again, but I don’t.
The drum continues and I notice the grind of crickets and the sound of a breeze finding the early autumn leaves of the trees in their last days of green. Then, the punctuation of rooster calls. Sharp and gurgled cock-a-doodle-dos of different volume bespeak distances and tacit locations – a garbage dump, the walled-in yard of an Uzbek home, a square of strangled grass below an apartment window.
The roosters and the mullahs must know that it is daybreak. The mullahs may have alarm clocks, but how do the roosters know? The eastern horizon is blocked by a high ridge spotted with orange lights, silhouettes of weather pains and tree tops bristling from its brow.
The drumming fades and a few dogs announce their presence. Then the drumming resumes and soon the pulse and drone of human chanting slant through the dark early morning.
I think of a report I saw on the news last night. A set of eyes revealed between the folds of black enshrouding a female form. Muslim women in Tajikistan want to be allowed to pray inside the mosques.
My refrigerator hums and clicks through its cycle in the next room.
I try to go back to sleep but I hear the bright clink of glass bottles below. Perhaps someone is sorting or sniffing through the garbage. Perhaps someone has tripped over a tray of bottles on the front step of a little store.
The sounds of Muslim prayer sound almost like the cheers from a distant stadium and I imagine bullfighting and soccer games and am amused at the idea of transplanting an arena of passionate Italian soccer fans to the dusty streets of Osh.
Finally I hear the cheerful chirp of one, and then a tree-full of birds. A car rolls between the apartment buildings. Then, a man’s voice, and the day has begun.
Tonight, some of the volunteers in Osh are getting together for pizza to celebrate our anniversary. In the mean time, I will have a Russian lesson, wait an unconscionable amount of time to have photocopies made, check my email and post this blog, take four marshrutka rides, make raspberry jam, decipher student English, weather mild male harassment, and take my laundry from the line. I will hear Uzbek, I will hear Kyrgyz, I will hear Russian, I will hear pop music. I will be stared at by university students. I will be smiled at by the children in my building. I will be scowled at by the old, Russian woman selling sunflower seeds on the street. I will be asked if I have time to teach private English lessons. I will eat something I don’t particularly like, keep my money in my bra, and talk on my cell phone. I will read about Harry S. Truman. I will see some cows. And I won’t shower ‘till I come home at night, with sweat marks on my clothes, dust on my shoes, and a year and three more months to live in Kyrgyzstan.
It’s really cool to live in a town dating back to the 5th century B.C. in the long-inhabited Fergana Valley, but in the summer it doesn’t feel cool so much as hot. It’s been as high as 43 degrees Celsius lately, which translates to about 110 degrees Fahrenheit. I broke a sweat shaving my legs in a cold shower last night.
The skies of the last four evenings have teased us valley dwellers with the portent of rain, which one would hope might cool things off. But the heavens never delivered. Tonight, again, dark grey-blue folds pile up in staggered stacks to the south, obscuring the Pamir Alay Mountains of Northern Tajikistan.
The hollow patter of a fledgling rain fall on the dusty cement spaces between apartment buildings drew me to my balcony moments ago and I put the Beatles’ “Rain” on to celebrate. But already, the precipitation has stopped, even as the cobalt cloud folds grow darker and stretch over head. I put on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon as night settles in. It seems to fit the mood.
The door to my balcony is open and I can hear the whistling boy whistling. Along with the tease of rain, the last four nights have brought me the insistent strain of a whistle being blown by a boy I’ve come to call “whistling boy.”
One night, after ten minutes of reading the same two sentences due to the distracting sound, I thought that I might derive some kind of satisfaction from identifying the source of the offense. Looking out from my balcony, I zeroed in on a young teenage boy, perhaps 12 or 13 in a tee shirt and shorts dragging his rubber sandals around the neighborhood, intent on everyone hearing the range of conviction and power of compulsion he can express through his one-toned whistle.
Now I go out on the balcony to see the little cur once more. This time I make a movie with my camera. It’s dark out and there will be nothing to see, but I’m hoping it will pick up the night sounds of a car passing, a baby crying, and the whistling boy whistling. It may be interesting or funny or at least sentimental to me in a couple of years from now.
It’s completely dark outside. Crickets, which began chirping about a week ago, have started up for the night, and an active breeze personifies the night. Golden cubes of light punctuate the blocky soviet apartment buildings and a shop owner squatting in front of his store is silhouetted against the multicolored glow emanating from the boxes of laundry soap, bottles of vodka, and bags of snack food that line his meager shelves.
When I was in Europe I began a series of photographs of people at their windows and balconies, but I don’t see that here. People hang their clothes out, but other than that, I rarely see anyone enjoying their built-in precipice.
Perhaps, like me, they must use it as storage space. I don’t believe that it’s possible to get an unfurnished apartment here and whatever the landlord has in the way of bed, table, chairs, silverware, is an important part of the deal. That is probably why my landlady refuses to relocate two extraneous bed frames that are propped up on my balcony. At least they make a nice perch for the birds.
The early morning, lately, has been my favorite time of day, when one can enjoy the last cool hours and quiet before the sun comes up and a new day’s sweaty activities begin. If I’m not already awake, I am roused in these hours by the calls of women selling milk, eggs, cream, and yogurt outside.
Every morning but on Sunday, their melodious “Malako! Suet! Aieeron!” ring through the air as they make their way through the maze of apartment buildings, dragging their buckets and bottles in bright plastic bags. At first I found these calls kind of strange and irritating but now I love them. They even seem musical and I like to think that they are something like the field hollers of American slaves in the 19th century.
It’s nice to think of something that unites humanity, even if in toil.
I often think of what John Travolta said in Pulp Fiction, in his role as Vincent Vega: “It’s the little differences” that make cultures unique. I’ve found that many of the little differences surface when I go out onto the streets. Example: my first step out the door.
During one of our Safety and Security sessions during training, we were asked to brainstorm safety hazards in Kyrgyzstan. I believe that drunken host fathers, terrorists, and unruly cows all made the list, but perhaps the most interesting was uneven stairs.
For most people, leaving one’s apartment means going down at least one flight of stairs in which every step is uniquely different. Each has its own slant, surface, and height. In case one is tempted to take for granted the opportunity to savor this rare expression of individuality, a walk down the steep stairs to the bazaar covered in ice during the winter, or a walk down a staircase in an apartment’s unlit hallway at night keeps one in check.
Exiting my apartment building, I turn left, passing staring mothers and children who sit on the bars that pass for a bench near the entryway. Girls with short summer hair cuts wear the same tee shirts and shorts they have been wearing all week, dusty from play. Some mothers wear tight jeans and blouses, others wear elaborately patterned dresses that go down to their rubber-sandaled feet. Many women wear soft, thick, vibrantly flowered bath robes, looking much like upholstery, out on the streets.
Even in the exhausting heat of the summer, many women wear multiple long layers and head scarves, though I occasionally see a young modern woman in a short summer dress with spaghetti straps. The ak sykals, or old Kyrgyz men, can still be seen in black and dusty suit trousers tucked into knee-high rubber boots, their sun-bronzed hands sticking out of the dark sleeves of a suit jacket worn open over a long-sleeved shirt that once was white. Wool kalpaks (hats) top their ruddy-cheeked faces which blend into long, full, white facial hair. I love to see the ak sykals. They conjure images of horses and long journeys and the Kazak steppes. They never seem to break a sweat.
Turning onto the sidewalk, I pass an old Russian woman sitting under a tree, selling a meager selection of street fare on a small table beside her: gum, candy, cigarettes, and sunflower seeds. She wears a loose, flowered, cotton house dress, ankle socks, and rubber sandals. She looks at me with a snarley expression centered around the big, bulbous nose of her bright red, Russian face. She is always there.
In one block, I will pass an old Kyrgyz woman who sits on a black cloth on the ground, nestled between tree trunks, selling a few wilted vegetables and kurtop. Kurtop are balls of dried yogurt. Anywhere between the size of a ping pong ball and golf ball, they’re hard, dry, and chalky with a bitter and salty taste. Most Americans find them repulsive, but I’ve eaten a whole one without entirely pure disgust.
My favorite item of street fare is sunflower seeds. For one som, a street vendor will scoop a heaping shot-glass of sunflower seeds into a little paper cone made from yesterday’s newspaper. More a form of recreation than nourishment, people walk along cracking them open between their teeth, eating the seeds, and spitting the shells out onto the street. My cracking technique needs work, but I enjoy partaking in this ritual and relish the sound and flight of shell fragments when I spit. Unlike the average Kyrgyz citizen, I derive the additional rebellious enjoyment of doing something that would ordinarily be frowned upon in my own society.
It’s been a little more difficult for me to dismantle the cultural hard wiring and partake in the public ritual of snot rocketing. Here, people think nothing of pressing one’s finger against a nostril and blowing the contents of one’s nose out the other nostril and onto the street. And no time or place is a bad time or place to blow a snot rocket. That is, if you’re an experienced snot rocketer. If not, there are variable winds to be considered.
In addition to sunflower seeds and snot, there’s also a lot of trash to be seen on the streets. Ice cream wrappers and playing cards are especially prevalent and perhaps that is why they generally escape my notice now, just part of the landscape. Less easy to miss are the trash piles.
In Karakol, in the North, garbage trucks drive through neighborhoods twice a week at designated times and one has to be home at those times to take the garbage down. But in Osh there are big dumpsters placed intermittently throughout the mazes of apartment buildings.
From my balcony I can see and sometimes smell the torrents of garbage that overflow the three dumpsters. Every so often someone burns the garbage and every so often a truck comes and scrapes up the heap of compressed potato skins, toilet paper, and tin cans. It’s not uncommon to see dogs strangely perched on the trash piles or people picking through them. It’s sort of fun to see the piles grow and disappear and if one could turn off the left brain one might even call them colorful.
Between the sidewalk and street is a deep, gaping gutter. They’re along every urban road in Kyrgyzstan as far as I know. They used to make me uncomfortable but now I take them in stride, literally (they’re about two feet wide). This is not to say that I’ve never fallen into one. I have. Twice. But the only damage was a wounded ego.
The same might not be said of a fall into a man hole. Continuing on my walk I approach the telecom and know that soon, before the corner, is an uncovered man hole. This is especially important to remember when walking in the dark as there are no street lights.
Soon I come to the corner and it’s important to stop and look for traffic. The street leads to a mini bazaar, a residential area, and the end point of one of the marshrutka lines. There’s not a whole lot of traffic in this country of five million, but relatively speaking, this intersection sees its fare share of cars and marshrutkas come barreling through and I don’t know what Kyrgyz law says, but when it comes to the unspoken rules of the road, the pedestrian does not nearly have the right of way.
In the middle of this intersection is Kyrgyzstan’s version of the orange construction cone. At some point in the early spring a large hole appeared in the road and someone has stuffed it with branches and debris to alert people. Similarly, a few large rocks placed in the road may be translated as “Construction Ahead. Give ‘Em A Brake.” The construction crews I’ve seen have consisted of about three people with hand tools.
Walking on and crossing the street I can catch a trolley bus to work. This side of the street borders the park, or what the locals call the beach. It has a river running through it and in the summer is a favorite spot for swimmers and grazing livestock. This morning, a cow and a herd of sheep passed me as I waited for the trolley bus. In the afternoon, I descended from the bus to a group of tan boys in dark, wet underwear and sandals.
In the summer heat, it’s almost unbearable to walk to work. During the winter and spring, however, I tried to do it as much as possible, especially on Monday mornings when I had to get to the university for an eight o’clock class. If I didn’t get going early enough, I’d have to take the trolley bus, which would inevitably crawl around the corner so as not to tip over from the smash of students pressed into its every nook and cranny. I’ve been assured by several students that the trolley bus is the place where young singles meet.
Today there were few people on the bus when I got on, but someone had brought on a huge box of tomatoes and four bags of watermelons, which all went sliding as the trolley bus jerked forward.
No matter how packed a bus or marshrutka, the driver is always willing for you to squeeze on, with as much stuff as you can make room for, and I’ve seen some humongous bundles on public transportation. In fact, people here seem to be willing to carry bigger and heavier things than people in the states. And they know how to do it right. People often walk down the street in tandem, each holding one handle of a big bag between them. If its really heavy, they brace themselves by placing their free hands on their friends’ shoulders.
It doesn’t cease to amaze me just how squished people are willing to get to accommodate a passenger and her things. For that reason, the back of the marshrutka is generally the worst place you can be. In a couple of stops your view out any window will be blocked by a wall of human bodies, ten people thick. If you don’t need to move to the front to see where you are, or to be heard when you ask the driver to stop, you have to squeeze up there to disembark. Ducking under arm pits and squeezing between bottoms can take some time, so it’s best to give yourself a minute.
Despite all this, I found myself today coveting the back seat of the marshrutka, as it was the only spot with exposure to an open window. The last shall be made first and the first shall be made last. The summer heat in Osh is of Biblical proportions. Perhaps that’s why it wasn’t until six o’clock this evening that a group of protestors took to the streets. They were passing my apartment building as I got off the marshrutka, carrying signs in support of a candidate making his bid for Sunday’s post-revolution election.
I’ve just had a tough day. It’s the end of the semester and I had to fail four of my eight English Communications students. But that wasn’t the worst part of it. In fact, it was sadly something I had been looking forward to.
The dream grew steadily through a semester of Monday mornings -- 8 AM-- with only three students showing up, of Wednesday mornings with no homework done, and of Friday afternoons with these so-called English majors being too shy to speak in class. I tried to find interesting materials for them, I tried to be silly in class, I had individual conferences with each student, but in the end I resorted to threats.
“You know, I’m keeping track of attendance and homework assignments. You know, I don’t want to fail any of you, but you may force me to. I may be nice now, but I will have to give you the grades that you deserve at the end of the semester.”
But it wasn’t true. First of all, sometimes I wasn’t nice. And second of all, I did want to fail some of them. Thus it was with disappointment and frustration that I learned that I would not have the opportunity to give them each the grade that they deserved. All the bookkeeping of tests and homework and who came late by how many scores of minutes, all amounted to nothing. It turned out that my English Communications course was a “zachote” -- a pass/fail.
How would they ever feel adequately ashamed that I had not failed to notice that in four years some of them hadn’t learned to form a complete sentence, that over the last semester they’d shown little to no interest in their own educations, that they’d cheated on tests, lied about homework, and failed to show up half the time? And how could the one blessed student who only failed to show up one fifth of the time, who did her homework three-fourths of the time, and who actually studied for tests get her just desserts?
I had carefully determined each student’s degree of commitment, from “as committed as you can be when you have 11 classes a semester and parents who expect you to work in the fields and do all the cooking when you come home from school” at the top of the scale, to “my parents will pay for my diploma and I only come to class to show off my new stiletto heels” at the bottom of the scale. But now it was all for naught.
Eventually I tamed my inner avenger and acclimated to the pass/fail idea. I worked out what I thought was a fair and generous grading system by which those who scored 50% or better as a total average of their course work would pass, while those scoring below 50% would fail. A few scores were close, but in the end I felt like it had shaken out right.
So, it’s two o’clock this afternoon and my students come to have me write their final grades in their little grade books – also called “zachotes” – educational passports, if you will, a hand-me-down from the soviet system in its infinite deification of paper work. (The first time I filled one out, I was told with much gravity that if I used the wrong colored pen that, “they will be very angry.” “They,” no doubt a pantheon of administrative assistants wielding sacred stamps.)
So, my students come and I tell them their fates. The passers leave happily, but two of the students who failed ask me how they can pass, “How . . . can . . . zachote?” It’s all I can do, to resist pretending that I don’t understand and pointing out the irony of their inability to effectively communicate their simple question.
I tell them that they can’t pass, that the course is over, and refer them to the breakdown of their final scores. Unfazed, they continue to ask what they should do to pass. I continue to insist that that’s not an option, the class is over. But in a couple of minutes I begin to suspect that there’s some senseless, sinister twist to this zachote system I’ve yet to comprehend.
As it turns out, teachers are obliged to give their failing students more tests the next semester until the students pass. Never mind that it’s an entire semester’s worth of work, not merely one test that a student is ostensibly responsible for. Never mind that students shouldn’t be expected to pass a final exam for a course that ended three months prior. Never mind that the last thing I want to do in September is create a test based on classes I have been longing to put behind me.
But it’s all quite simple. If students fail to pass a course, they cannot get their diplomas. And the university wants every student to get her diploma. Not only does it bring in tuition, but every diploma and every class is an opportunity for someone - some teacher, or administrator to get a bribe. Thus it is that every student passes every course.
I’ve known this for a while and frankly expected my failing students to simply bribe the chair or the dean or the record keeper for the pass mark they need in their zachotes. I didn’t expect to have to do the dirty work myself.
So, I have a choice. I work for this university. Do I play by the rules and give them new exams until they pass or just decide to bribe someone? Or do I play my Peace Corps card and refuse to pass students based on one test score that cannot make up for a semester’s worth of negligence? Or, do I just give them the pass mark they will inevitably get, saving my self the bother of re-administering a test and saving them the cost of a bribe?
Would that Solomon were still at his throne in the center of town.
When the revolution began here in late March, Peace Corps consolidated all
its volunteers at predetermined meeting places. I lived with four other
volunteers in one of their apartments for five days with nothing to do but
speculate as to the future of the revolution and our own Peace Corps service
as we waited for word of freedom or evacuation from HQ.
I'd never request to go on house arrest again, but all in all it wasn't so
bad. We had windows through which we could see Spring cajoling nature into refreshed liveliness and we could even open them for fresh air and sounds of
the outside world. By the second to last day we started to hit a communal
stride culminating in collaborative musical masterpieces: wrenching tales of
revolution and consolidation set to the tunes of such classics as "Blowin'
in the Wind," and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." What we would have done
without a guitar I don't know.
The worst part of consolidation was my dramatic exit from my home and host family. Not knowing when or if I would be back, my host sister and I had a
teary embrace, while my host father couldn't understand why I had to
suddenly pack my things and move indefinitely into an apartment across the street given the overwhelmingly peaceful proceedings of the revolution.
Despite my best efforts to explain the situation, he seemed to conclude that
I was going to marry my new boyfriend of two days.
A call from my Kyrgyz colleague later cleared up my host father's
misunderstanding and I shortly returned to the house, but in the end, a new
boyfriend was a pretty strong incentive to return to my natural habitat of
independent living. At about the same time, I reached my breaking point for
enduring egregious violations of what any average American would consider a very modest amount of privacy by often affectionate, usually well-meaninged, but -- let's face it - rather young people, otherwise known as children, for
whose birth, entertainment, and English homework I was not ultimately
responsible.
Add to this the fact that within the course of one week my host father asked
me for a hefty loan, my host brother passive-aggressively propositioned me
for sex, and my host parents had a fight that sounded like a horror movie,
and I was ready to go. And so it was that I joined the ranks of apartment
dwellers inhabiting Osh's five-story jungle of crumbling concrete soviet
structures.
Considered within the proper cultural context, the events leading up to my
departure were less disturbing than they may sound. No small effort was
made to leave my host family under the best of terms and my host siblings'
attentions continue with a fervor bordering on a loving harassment.
“Tsyelooyooshixseeyuh.” Doesn’t it just roll off the tongue?
Of all things, this tongue-torping word means “kissing” in Russian. But pronunciation is just one of the stupendously difficult things about the Russian language that saps my will to live on a daily basis. Other candidates for the Aspect-of-the-Russian-Language-That-Most-Makes-Me-Want-to-Bludgeon-Myself-Award include:
A) The fact that trying to use correct grammar means having to decide which of the 70 or so endings should be added to any given noun according to what role of speech it plays (subject, direct object, indirect object, and more obscure correlatives of the English language) and its number and gender.
B) The fact that there are some 60 different ways to say “go.”
C) The fact that nouns have gender.
D) The fact that exceptions to rules almost make the rules of the Russian language pointless.
I learned today that there are 600,000 words in the Russian language. Perhaps one of the reasons it’s so rich is its use of prefixes and suffixes. Russian words remind me of leggos. You can put words, prefixes, and suffixes together in different combinations to come up with different things.
For example, the verb “to give” is “Dat”. Adding different prefixes, we have different variations on “to give.” Vweedat is to give documents. “Otdat” is to give back. “Izdat” is for a publisher to give a book back to a writer. What does it say that we have no equivalent for “izdat” in the English language?
The verb “to cut” is “Rayzat” and can be used in reference to bread and fabric among other things. “Porayzat,” on the other hand, means to cut one’s nails, paper, and again, bread. “Srayzat” means to cut things such as flowers, trees, or one’s hair. “Zarayzat” means to stab or kill. One can “obrayzat” one’s body, the branches of a tree, or one’s finger, while “podrayzat” means to trim one’s hair or to hem a pair of pants. Convenient or insane? I’m not sure.
There are four basic verbs for “to go.” Two are used in reference to going by foot, and two refer to going by transport. Of each pair, one word is used to indicate a process or habitual action, while the other is used to indicate a completed action. Adding prefixes to these four verbs indicates nuances of arrival, departure, entering or exiting a small or a large place, passing by a place, and more.
With so many ways to say “go,” it amuses me that there is only one word for both fingers and toes and no word for “thirsty” -- one must simply say that one “wants to drink.”
Even though they’re a royal pain in the “popa,” verbs are my favorite part of the Russian language. But nouns, also, can be loads of fun. They have their own set of suffixes that indicate different shades of meaning. The suffix, “ka” added to a noun indicates smallness while “isha” indicates bigness. So, “rooka” is hand, but “roochka” is a small hand and “roochisha” is a big hand. “Roochenka” is a darling hand. When I’m especially darling, I’m Lizachka.
I often write little stories for my Russian lessons resulting in the rude bi-weekly reminder that languages don’t translate tidily. I can’t simply take a sentence in English and translate every word into Russian and expect it to be correct. Nor can someone neatly translate from Russian to English. One has to know in which contexts to use which words, especially verbs.
To illustrate . . .
The danger of taking a dictionary definition at face value combined with Osh’s unreliable water system afforded a good cross-cultural laugh the other day. Not surprisingly, it also involved toilets. Please excuse the bathroom humor.
I recently moved into an apartment of my own and now have the luxury of a sit-down toilet. It even has a toilet seat. Well, the toilets of Kyrgyzstan are strangely designed. Instead of a nice funnel shape that would usher daily deposits smoothly into the sewage system, toilets here are flat on the bottom.
The flushing mechanisms are generally fairly powerful, so they make up for what is lacking in gravity to move the deposits onward in their exodus. But when the city’s water is out (which is fairly frequently) one must pour water into the toilet from a bucket or jug to complete the bathroom transaction. (If one doesn’t have a provision of water stocked for when the water is out, one has to trek down to the river).
Well, sometimes it’s hard to get enough force by pouring water out of a bucket to fully flush the daily deposit and it can take a few tries. On just such an occasion, a Russian friend, having made a deposit in my bathroom, told me in English that he would “wallow in his crap.”
“You’ll WHAT?”
“I will try to wallow in my crap.”
After the tears of laughter cleared, we looked up the verb “utapeet” to find it translated as both “to wallow in, abundance,” and “to push down.”