I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Krygyzstan from 2005-2007. I worked as a TEFL/Community Development Volunteer. This is my story.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Mac Guyver
Of course we’re all familiar with the old 80’s show where the main character, Mac Guyver could make a bomb out of a piece of gum and a teaspoon. Well I think I live with the Kyrgyz version of him. My host brother and I were talking about being jack-of-all trades kind of people (except I am the girl version, instead of a bomb, I can make a quilt) All I have to do is hold up a broken item, shrug my shoulders and give a “what-am-I-going-to-do-about-this” face and in minutes, presto! Problem solved. He probably thinks I’m absolutely helpless but then again, he’s always impressed when I do actually know what I’m talking about.
All of the volunteer’s worst fears include something to do with the pit toilet, either dropping something in it or God forbid, falling in it. Well I have to say that I’m the first in our group to realize that fear. I was going to go for a run and I thought I’d make a quick stop at the pit toilet. I had my ipod clipped securely (foreshadowing) to my belt with the convenient yet sleek case my parents got me and I had my earphones around my neck. The minute I went to squat, I felt a pull and heard a snap and saw my ipod plummeting to its death, I immediately lunged forward to try and grab my doomed ipod, to no avail. Before I could utter, “ohhh sshhhhiiiiiiiiiii---” I sprinted inside the house screaming frantically, “fell! Fell!” I was so frustrated I could get the Russian words out so I motioned my brother to follow me. I was like “m..p...3 player… toilet…. Fell…. Gone… ahhhh” He ripped off the wooden base and I motioned for me going down there to get it. I was like I’ll go I’ll go I’ll go. He was like, just wait, calm down. He left and brought back a garden hoe and reached down, scooped it up and retrieved it for me. LUCKILY it only fell on some tissue paper but I threw my sleek yet convenient case away and scrubbed my ipod and hands with disinfectant until my fingers were raw. After I had calmed down, he came back to me and was like, the way you were screaming, I thought you had lost something important, like documents or something. I was like first of all, my ipod is way more important than any document I have, and second of all, I’m an idiot, thank you so much for helping me. He said I was lucky because it didn’t fall in any liquid and I vehemently agreed. He was like, “I can’t believe how ready you were to go down there and get it, don’t you realize what’s down there??” Recalling all those times I was ill, the thought had crossed my mind for a second, but I think I would have risked it if there were no other choices. I have heard about those people that say they don’t know how they ever lived without their ipod and how it changed their life. I think I am now in an entirely different category if I was willing to retrieve mine from a pit toilet.
After listening to me complain and rant, one very bright volunteer said this: Here are my two pieces of advice 1) Count the days in the week and never let the bad days out number the good. And 2) If the weather is nice and you’ve just had a banya and you still feel miserable, then it’s probably a good indication that Peace Corps isn’t the place for you. She was absolutely right and her advice meant so much to me that I have a feeling that a few more people could benefit from it. It helps keep things in perspective and makes you appreciate the good days which are sometimes hard to notice when you’ve had a slew of bad ones.
Back in the states, Sunday was always my least favorite day because it was a prelude to Monday. As much as I wanted to relax, I always dreaded it. Here it’s the opposite. Sunday means that I get to clean my clothes, go for a run and my favorite part, I get to clean myself. This past Sunday the heat was particularly excruciating and I didn’t drink enough water so when I went from my run to the banya, I was even dizzier than usual. (To try and explain a banya is absolutely futile, it’s something you have to experience for yourself. Even comparing it to a sauna doesn’t do it justice, but for the sake of the story, we’ll go with sauna. It’s a very humid heat, usually around (or if it’s a good one over) 115 degrees.) This time, it was the hottest banya I’ve ever had in Kyrgyzstan and I didn’t have my sister with me and I started to panic because passing out in the banya would be a fate worse than death because the door is locked from the inside… my mind started running, “what if I pass out? What if I hit my head on the cement? What if I die in here and when they come to find me I’m sweaty and naked and lying on the ground?? I bet I’d be too slippery to be picked up…” I started to hurry, washing everything quickly to get out before my water supply ran out. I even crouched down towards the bottom to see if I could get cool air into my lungs. I waited until the last possible moment and then burst out of the room. After the run and 45 minutes in the banya, I couldn’t even muster the energy to put my clothes on. After another 15 minutes I stumbled out with my clothes stuck to me, my face bright red and the Eje had a shocked look on her face, “are you okay?” I responded, “Me? Yeah. Great. No, great, I’m fine.”
Usually it takes me 5 minutes to walk home but this time it took me 20. As I was walking, I had my towel draped around my shoulders, I was taking in the scenery, enjoying my cleanliness when one Shepard who was tending his sheep called out to me, “Slokium Parum” something that you say to someone who has just had a banya. I rounded a corner, walked further and when my favorite grandpa noticed me, he called out, “Slokium Parum!” On my walk home, I have a perfect view of the mountains and on this particular day, the sky was a perfect Carolina blue, punctuated by striking white snow peaks that slowly dissolved into the dark green foothills.
That volunteer was right. On days like these, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
I can almost taste the starbucks I’ll be drinking, I can almost smell the salt surf on the Aegean and I can almost feel the crisp 5-star linen sheets I’ll be sleeping in. I feel like this last month of teaching has drained every ounce of energy I have. Wednesdays are always my worst and today I couldn’t take it anymore. In one class, the kids sauntered in 15 minutes late, were talking and walking around the class, being disruptive. I just sat at my desk and stared at them. 25 minutes into the lesson I was still sitting, still staring. They finally caught on about 30 minutes in that I was waiting for them to be ready. I was too tired to fight or argue or discipline them. Probably not the best classroom management strategy but I can’t force anyone to want to learn.
As the end of this year approaches, I have realized a few things about myself have reflected on what I’ve been doing in this country for the last 8 months and also what I am going to do differently next year. Teaching is way harder than I ever anticipated. I have always had respect for the teaching profession but now that I’ve done it, I know that it takes someone with incredible stamina and resilience. I felt like a monkey in half of my classes, jumping around, making hand gestures, trying to get my point across, looking ridiculous in the process. If it’s one thing I hate the most it’s when students mock me. I am doing this for their benefit, and yeah, sometimes I’m un-purposely funny, I would probably laugh at myself too but nothing makes me feel worse when someone makes a smart-aleck remark in Russian that they think I won’t understand.
In this country and in Peace Corps in general there’s nothing deadlier than a, “what’s the use” attitude. I know this because I’ve had one this past week and maybe even this entire last month. I got so discouraged when I did a review exercise in one of my classes of all the material we’ve been working on. All the students were relying on my 2 star students to do all the work and it made me feel like all of the energy I spent was in vain. I realized instead of having these self-defeating “why am I here” thoughts, I need to put that energy into thinking of things that I can do differently for next year. I have already offered to help the Peace Corps Staff put together a new curriculum that more accurately reflects student’s abilities and gather new materials rather than have to resort to the ridiculously out-dated textbooks where one of the exercises was even difficult for me as a native English speaker.
Hopefully this summer I’ll be able to relax, refocus and regain my energy to be a more effective English teacher for next year because right now, I’m spent.
My favorite days here in Kyrgyztan usually happen when my lessons went great, my kids listened, participated and actually benefited from my presence. On those days the sun seems to shine a bit brighter, the birds seem to chirp a bit louder and the flowers seem to bloom at the exact moment when I pass them. Let me just say that last Friday was not one of those days.
As of 3 o’clock we were supposed to be on stand fast so I had to get into Bishkek, run my errands then get out of town. Just to set up the picture, this day was a blazing 4 million degrees outside and my first stop was the bazaar. I try to avoid the bazaar at all costs, it’s crowded, I always get lost and people are always pushing me around because I don’t know my way. I just assume pay a few more sohm to walk into a store where things are more organized and I can semi-recognize what I’m trying to buy. But I thought, no, I’ll be brave, it’s been awhile since the last time I was here and this time I won’t wander around like a stray puppy for 3 hours, after all, I only have a few, simple items on my list. Right? Wrong.
First of all, no one seemed to know the word for mousetrap in Russian, even though I had it written down on paper. I had to pantomime a little mouse dying and one guy was laughing so hard and being of no use to me that I just had to walk away. So I go to about 100 more stalls when someone tells me that they are at the complete opposite end of the bazaar (Note: this is the biggest bazaar in Central Asia and takes up about 4 very concentrated city blocks, at least). Great. I dodge and weave my way through the crowds and at this point, I am already a sweaty, disheveled mess. I finally found one lady that was willing to help me and she pointed in the right direction. I didn’t see what she was referring to so I asked, “mishelovka?” (Mousetrap in Russian). She held it up this contraption, nodded fervently and said, “Yes yes. Kill mouse.” I thought… now this can’t be right. She must have said, “kill moose” because this thing more closely resembled the Jaws of Life than it did a little mousetrap. This thing was huge and metal and even had spikes on it. Spikes! I am not trying to annihilate the thing; I’m just trying to lay it to a peaceful death. I think using this thing would put me into the “cold blooded murderer category.” I asked if they had any wooden ones and tried to explain that I was trying to kill a small little field mouse, not a jackrabbit. Silly me. Of course they didn’t have anything like that. I figured I should just drop the 20 sohm to buy one rather than having to hunt it down again, so I did.
So at this point I am just about finished at the bazaar. I have my kilo of oatmeal, my mouse poison, my mouse-death-trap and a few other miscellaneous items. Everything was starting to get heavy and the back of my t-shirt was soaked through with sweat and I had had enough. I’m just about to leave the bazaar when SMACK- a plastic bullet hits me square on the side of my head. Let me tell you right now that there is nothing more degrading than being shot in the head with a plastic bullet. It’s not enough to do damage, but it just leaves you feeling like a dumbass for being shot at by some punk kids. I turn around to give my now ubiquitous, “what-the-” look and I see a group of boys giggling and running away. I wanted to chase after them and tell them that I could be teaching their brother/sister/son or daughter English but I was too tired to make a scene so I hung my head down in shame and went home.
So to make matters worse, now I am sitting in my room, the mouse trap is sitting in my closet and my mouse is busy sleeping until exactly 3:00 a.m. (right in the middle of my R.E.M cycle) when he’ll get up and pitter patter back and forth on my floor boards until I try to wake back up in a half-zombie state at quarter to seven. I swear, one more night of this and I’m going to break out the Jaws of Death, I don’t care how messy the clean up will be.
So, my plans have been thwarted once again. Lately we’ve had a lot of travel restrictions due to roadblocks and political demonstrations. I can’t get into the specifics but if you’re interested I’m sure you can find information online. Let’s just say that ‘stable’ isn’t the word that I’d use to describe the situation. I wanted to go down to Naryn because we have 4 other volunteers down there serving from JMU. One of the girls is leaving in late May so I wanted to go before she leaves to take a picture of all of us together. My plan is to write an article about our service here and send it into Montpelier, the JMU alumni magazine. I know. I’m a dork. Hopefully our restriction will be lifted by next week. Even if I wasn’t going to go anywhere anyway, it’s just hard knowing that we can’t leave our houses (except to go to school) even if we wanted to. Oh well, Phil just gave me the complete Chronicles of Narnia so at least I have some good reading to do.
I think I experienced another one of those moments where the information I received was, ‘lost in translation.’ So I think I have started to understand why Bocktaer’s 15-year-old sister came here. It wasn’t to work in Bishkek, it was to work in our house. As much as I complained before about the ants in my distiller and how the house was always a mess I feel even worse that this 15 year old girl is solely responsible for cleaning up after everyone in the house. We are all young able-bodied people who should be self-sufficient at this point. I have started to pilfer my dirty dishes so she doesn’t clean them before I have the chance. Here, when milk comes from the local cow, it isn’t exactly pasteurized, which means that you have to boil it before you drink it. Well, I was in the process of transferring it from the pot back to the clean jar but when I went to grab it 10 seconds later, it literally vanished. Now that’s odd. Where could it have gone? It was only she and I in the house so I thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t figure out what happened to it. Finally, I asked her if she knew what I did with it and she told me she put it away. I feel like she’s walking around behind me with a dustpan at my heels. I have now realized that the discomfort I feel for the house being spic and span is far greater than the discomfort experienced by a few drowned ants.
On top of that, I recently realized I can’t even communicate with her. Since she’s from Kochkor, a pretty remote place in Kyrgyzstan, she hasn’t been exposed to Russian all that much. When she first came, everyone was like, she’s shy, she’s shy. She’s not shy. I’ve seen her talk quite a bit and she even belts out singing when she thinks no one’s listening. I guess they were just trying to save face because she and I don’t speak the same language. Trust me though, if it’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that there are a million ways to communicate that don’t involve words. Since my Russian is improving I haven’t had to resort to charades or silly little pictures anymore but I have no problem dusting those off. Some of the best conversations I’ve had in this country were in the first month when I could only say 2 (very broken) sentences in Russian. I hope she warms up to me eventually.
On a totally unrelated note, some of other volunteers and I have noticed that our English has actually deteriorated since we’ve been here. I know, that seems impossible, we’re English teachers. I’m so used to speaking Russian that I have found I can’t come up with anything besides super-simplified, over-annunciated sentences in English. It just took me 2 minutes just to think of the word “deteriorating”. I ran this by a few other volunteers and they said it’s happening to them as well. Charlie actually had to spell the word, “hospital” in his head before he wrote it down. I said that shouldn’t be right though, my vocabulary should be at an all-time high since I’m ingesting so many books so quickly. I guess recognition is a lot easier than recollection. My worst slip-up was when (I’m SO ashamed to admit this) I wanted to say “better” and actually dropped the word, “gooder”. I know. I know. Charlie and Rick slowly turned their heads towards me with faces that registered reactions somewhere between disbelief and disgust.
I wouldn’t normally consider myself a light sleeper but last night at exactly 3:47 I heard a distinct rustling noise coming from under my bed. I shot straight up with a, “what the- ” look on my face. I must have looked like I was in the middle of an exorcism. I was frantically running around my room, shuffling curtains, shining my flashlight everywhere, thinking there was something terrible lurking under my bed (so much for getting over my fear of the dark). I would crawl close to my bed, pull something out of the way then dart back as if something was going to reach out and grab me. After looking for 15 minutes I almost convinced myself that it was only a nightmare and went back to bed. Almost. 5 minutes later, the same rustling sound. I woke up like a maniac. This time, I made no mistake, there was DEFINITELY something under my bed. I armed myself with a flip-flop ready to take down this boogie monster. One by one, I took out bags and boxes until I found my perpetrator walking around nonchalantly- a small, harmless, brown mouse that had crawled out from under a bag. I sighed, threw down my flip-flop and crawled into bed, too tired to try to devise a plan to trap it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night because I felt like mice were crawling all over me. I’m pretty sure if someone had seen me last night I think they would have died from laughter.
The next day, I told my host brother (cousin, whatever you want to call him) the story. He said that the mice have probably settled in our house because we don’t have a cat and if I want to go out and find a kitten or cat tomorrow, then I am welcome to bring it home. I swear, my ‘to do’ list has never been stranger than here in Kyrgyzstan. We had a kitten back in the winter but one day it just left and never came back. I didn’t think about it too hard because I didn’t want to consider the possibilities that caused that poor ragamuffin thing to disappear (Charlie’s old puppy was mauled then eaten by other dogs). It was the scrawniest, dirtiest kitten I’ve ever seen and I wanted nothing more than to give it a can of tuna and a bath… but I digress. I was going to do the humane thing by setting up a jar/ramp/cheese getup to trap the pesky mouse and set it free but after remembering my last sleepless night, I am headed to the bazaar tomorrow to find a mousetrap. No mercy. Or I can be really inhumane and fill the jar with water… muahahaha…. alright, even I’m not that evil.
So our “running water” has been really shoddy lately. I think it’s because a lot of it’s being used to water gardens and plants now that it’s warm outside. Even the “well” in our back yard was “dried up”. My host family said it might come back tonight or next week. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for tonight. So I went for a run and I’ve gotten into the habit of warming up some water after my run so I can kind of rinse the stench away until my next banya. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. Our village has one permanent source of water so I grabbed our two buckets and trekked back up the hill thinking it’d take me five minutes to get back. Mind you, I was already exhausted and drenched with sweat at this point since I made the mistake of going out when the heat reached it’s peak. So I filled my buckets and started to head back for home, which was much more difficult than I had originally anticipated on several fronts... first of all, I had to steady myself to keep it from sloshing out against my legs but my biceps aren’t manly enough to keep my arms in a permanent ‘curled’ position, so I literally had to put it down every 50 yards or so. Secondly, every time a car or truck went by, it kicked up a bunch of dust so I had to maneuver them so I didn’t end up washing myself with dirty water. Third of all, I got caught in a ‘lamb jam’ and I had to lift the water up high enough so the sheep didn’t try to drink the water. I just wanted to get some water but it turned out to be a full-blown obstacle course. By the time I got back, my arms were like jelly and it was a chore just to keep them lifted long enough to scrub my hair. Earlier, I was going to try to find some weights in Bishkek but I guess I already found my new arm workout.
I read somewhere that we filter 99.8% of our daily stimuli because our brain would be on overload if we took everything in from all of our senses. Here, I feel like I’m on sensory overload all the time, my brain filter must have stopped working a while ago. Everything I do here, even the smallest task feels like it takes 20 times more energy then it would back home. Back in PST a few volunteers and I joked that we only have the capability to do one thing a day before we were absolutely, completely worn out, “ok, I brushed my teeth today, I guess I’ll make my bed tomorrow” or, “alright, I tied my left shoe today, I’ll get to that right shoe tomorrow.” Everyday, if I’ve done so much as gotten out of bed, gotten dressed, brushed my teeth and washed my face I already feel like I’ve accomplished enough for an entire week.
My mom called today and I must have sounded groggy because she asked if I had been sleeping. I told her I took about an hour nap and that I was so exhausted but I have no idea why. At the end of our conversation she scolded me and said, “geez, Katie, think about it for a second and give yourself more credit, you were up half the night mouse-hunting, taught 6 lessons today, went for a run, hauled 2 buckets of water up a hill for a bucket bath and you finally sat down for a second to breathe- no WONDER you’re tired. Didn’t that occur to you?” Haha, no, I guess it hadn’t.
Note: these ramblings, observations, attitudes, beliefs, opinions and views do not in any way relfect those of Peace Corps or the United States Goverment.... so don't even think about it.
