Documenting the Slow and Eventual Death of my Beloved Mother Tongue
April 15th, 2010
It’s inevitable, when you live abroad long enough, that the way you speak tends to change. In addition to getting accustomed to speaking like a five-year old in your new language, you must also- as an Language teacher- learn how to speak your own language using grammar and vocabulary at levels that your co-workers and students will understand. And as most students have the grammatical understanding equivalent of 7 year olds-this results in that between the two languages you end up having the linguistic flexibility of a oversized toddler, complete with bad pronunciation (just think of David Sedaris “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, SO true Sally). And as all the textbooks here use British grammar, and people don’t understand a lot of American idioms or vocabulary, I often find myself saying things like “Yes, Aman is a clever pupil, he should go in for football.” or “Why, what lovely trousers you have today Begench!”, without a single trace of irony.
The only real chance for us to speak English with other native speakers occurs when volunteers get together on weekends in the cities, or during conferences in the capital. However, this can be anywhere from once a week, to once a month, or even longer for the more hermitic amongst our ranks. When the latter occurs, and a lot of time has passed without seeing another English Speaking person, what usually results is what one fellow volunteer here diplomatically titled (pardon the vulgarity) “explosive verbal diarrhea”. Even the most private of volunteers might find themselves rattling on and on about the most mundane or personal things, which can range from expressing our deepest darkest fears about the future to a person we haven’t seen in 6 months and who just happens to be sitting in front of us, to launching into a detailed hour-long monologue of the latest gross thing our Turkmen host brother did with a cow head (oblivious to whether or not the story is actually even remotely interesting to anybody besides ourselves). And because of our superior understanding of English, we find ourselves talking at breakneck speeds with the patience of drunken sailors so that a simple sentence might go something like this, and be completed in about 2.5 seconds flat:
“Imean,comeonit’slike,didshereallyexpectmetoeatthatIjustsawherpourlike,ahalfabottleofoilinthere,seriously!TherewasnowayinHellIwasgoingtoswallowthat.”
Previously, there had been a running competition amongst pcv’s to see which volunteer would crack most under the pressure and say the most outrageous things, which would be published in the volunteer newsletter. After some pretty hilarious results though, this competition gradually petered out, perhaps because it has been realized that each and every one of us have reached our moments of verbal desperation at some point or another during the last year and a half (mine was last summer when after nearly 2 months of not seeing another volunteer, I managed a nearly 30 minute monologue about my deeply violent feelings towards “The Mosquito”. Let it be known that EVERYBODY has his or her breaking point).
Added to the hilarity of us speaking like Ritilin-deprived drunken Sailors, over the last year and a half, most volunteers have all acquired certain vocabulary words from the Turkmen language that have become ingrained into our way of life, and thus do not need any translating in casual conversations amongst each other, but which would baffle anyone who didn’t have at least a general grasp of both languages (much like Spanglish, as it were). A typical conversation between two volunteers might consist of something like this:
“Hey Dave, gowumi?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Ehh, boljak. Yesterday my eje decided she wanted to go to our gonshy’s toyy, but my gelneje didn’t want to go because
everybody says he’s like a Narcoman, but we went anyway, and then I got sick cause the chorba had some serious yag in it. But I’m ok now. What’s new with you?”
“Not too much, we’re doing some remont at our school, so my bashlyk wants to close some classes for a month. So my kids don’t have anywhere to meet for clubs.”
“Bummer, can you meet somewhere else?”
“Ehh, bolonok. They only have permission for the school, because there was some problem with the Hakimlik before.”
“Bah!? That’s just samsak.”
“I know man, seriously. Give me a break already!”
Speed this conversation up, and toss in some Russian terminology conjugated with one of the five regional dialects, and you might have a dialogue that even the most hardened linguist would find difficult to crack. I have often thought the army should consider employing ex-volunteers to write military code. The era of Navaho is over my friends-try cracking a partially Russian-Uzbek-Turkmen-English code. THAT will keep you busy for a few days.
It wasn’t until I went to Nepal, where English speakers are a dime a dozen in the cities, due to the proximity to India, and also as a result of the tourism trade, that I realized how pathetic my control of the mother tongue’ has gotten. This occurred when someone asked me what my native language was WHILE I was speaking English to them, thinking that I was a Eastern European on vacation and English was my second language (Kia dear, you will understand that one). And imagine his surprise when I told him I was an ENGLISH teacher. Hah. THAT was a fun conversation.
So, as the months pass here, I continue to fear the slow and eventual death of my Beloved Mother Tongue, and I can only hope that in the time that remains here, it will not completely disintegrate into useless babble. And if that is the case- to be as dramatic as I possibly can- then perhaps I may consider a life in silent religious contemplation, or a career as a professional mime. We’ll see how it goes.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
In the land of the Buddha...
In the Land of the Buddha,
One perk of joining the Peace Corps is not only to be able to work overseas, but also the possibility of border hopping in lands unknown during the time abroad. As most of the countries where volunteers serve border numerous other countries, it is fairly easy to obtain a visa, cross the border, and do a bit of cheap sightseeing during breaks from school, or when work is slow. For every month of service overseas, we accrue two vacation days to do with as we want, and most of us here hoard our days and lump them into two or three short vacations throughout the two years of service. Even though living overseas might seem like adventure enough, the truth is that after a few months, the daily grind here becomes just as tedious as anywhere else in the world, and it’s not long before most of us are staring dreamily at our maps on the walls in the anticipation of a little excitement. So this March, faced with an entire week of no classes due to spring break, I decided to plan my escape. The destination of choice? Nepal.
Let me say this: I was not meant to be a flatlander. I was raised romping around in hills and am not happy on a flat plane- a year and a half in this deserty place has confirmed this fact. So, fueled by Mountain Wonderlust and stories of friends and family who had visited Nepal before, a few weeks ago I dusted off my backpack and set off towards the airport. As luck would have it, there were some family friends of my uncles who were from the capital and were kind enough to put me up for a few days and get me pointed in the right direction.
I arrived in Kathmandu, tired after a night spent on an airplane, but pumped to start exploring. After filling me with some delicious Nepalese food, my Nepalese friends oriented me a bit around the capital and then set me in the right direction to do some exploring of my own. I visited some of the oldest Buddhist temples in the country, worked my way through the cultural maze that is Dubar Square, and climbed to the tops of the Stuppas to take in the views of the city. It just so happened that the day that I arrived the elderly Prime Minister passed away, and within a day, the entire city turned into a giant procession, with literally thousands of people lining the streets to watch as his family took his body to the river for the burial rites. We watched as they drove past the apartment, then later on TV that night, watched as his family and the elders preformed the lat rites and set his body on fire on the banks of the river. Even though I studied Buddhism a bit at UM, and am generally familiar with Buddhist and Hindu burial practices, I have to admit that for me it felt a bit morbid to see them set fire to him, and watch as he burned to a crisp surrounded by thousands of people. In comparison, western burials are so sterile; besides the viewing, you generally never see the body-it’s comfortably encased by several thousand dollars of wood, metal, and silk for most, if not all, of the ceremony. And even if families choose to cremate their loved ones, it is done in the privacy of a funeral home or crematory, and presented later to the loved ones. So it was quite an experience to watch a dead body burn on live television.
After a few days in the capital, the noise and dirt did me in, and I said goodbye to my Nepalese hosts and took off for what I had really come to see: Some Mountains. Because of my limited time, I decided to forego the Himalayas and instead went west, towards The Annapurna Mountain range, a less famous, but equally as stunning range that runs throughout Nepal. I took an 8 hour bus trip from Kathmandu to the city of Pokhara, stopping off halfway though the valley to take a newly built cable car to a popular temple built on a the top of a mountain, where Hindu families go to sacrifice goats for yearly pilgrimages. At first I was confused at the number of goats people were bringing up with them, and the mysterious lack of goats returning back down the mountain. It wasn’t until I saw everyone hauling large bloody sacks onto the cable cars with us as we went back down that I realized where the goats had gone!
I arrived in Pokhara (a complete haven for hippie trekkers) towards the evening, found a hostel, and began getting things in order for a short trek. I rented the basic equipment, bought a trekking permit, and arranged for a guide. The next day at dawn my guide (a young woman who works for an all female trekking company, for rural gender development) and I set off, and we begin making our way up in the foothills of the Annapurnas on the ABC trek (Annapurna Base Camp). For the next four days we wound our way though small villages, tea house settlements and lush terraced hills, over rivers, up ridges, and down through deep valleys. Nepal was one of my first times I have ever traveled solo, and it was an amazing experience. The trekking routes are like entire communities in themselves-all the guides and porters know each other, as well as the locals who run the teahouses, and within a day or so you begin to see familiar faces and meet up with other trekkers. At the end of every day, everyone gathers around the teahouses, eats piles of rice and Dal Bhat and swaps stories until the lights switch off and the hillside towns go dark. Although even up the hills, technology is never far away. At one point on our decent back to the valley, we were walking past a small group of hill women on the trail, all in traditional garb, barefoot, and hauling overloaded straw baskets attached with straps across their foreheads. Just when I was thinking how neat it was to be in such a simplistic and rustic place, miles away from any cars, trains, planes or technology, I heard a strange beeping noise, and one of the old ladies pulled a cell phone from a fold in her tunic and started chatting away on the trail!
We finished the trek, and I went back to Pokhara with some new friends to get a hot shower and stretch out my sore feet before leaving for the capital. The next day I caught a small plane back to the Kathmandu to start the journey back to Ashgabat. I made it to the airport in time, but due to bad weather our flight was canceled from Delhi. To make a long story short, I couldn’t get a connecting flight, and so after a day and a half at the airport offices, I had to transfer airports, apply for an emergency travel visa through India, and sweet talk my way onto a plane back to Ashgabat without a ticket. It took about 4 days, but I finally made it, a few days later than expected and with my nerves a little worse for wear. And despite the complications of the last few days, this trip only reinforced that I want to return to Nepal for a longer time to do it justice. But for now, the memory of cool mountain nights should be able to sustain me through most of the hot Turkmen summer, and in the meantime, it’s back to the grind once again. So, until the next adventure.
Peace
One perk of joining the Peace Corps is not only to be able to work overseas, but also the possibility of border hopping in lands unknown during the time abroad. As most of the countries where volunteers serve border numerous other countries, it is fairly easy to obtain a visa, cross the border, and do a bit of cheap sightseeing during breaks from school, or when work is slow. For every month of service overseas, we accrue two vacation days to do with as we want, and most of us here hoard our days and lump them into two or three short vacations throughout the two years of service. Even though living overseas might seem like adventure enough, the truth is that after a few months, the daily grind here becomes just as tedious as anywhere else in the world, and it’s not long before most of us are staring dreamily at our maps on the walls in the anticipation of a little excitement. So this March, faced with an entire week of no classes due to spring break, I decided to plan my escape. The destination of choice? Nepal.
Let me say this: I was not meant to be a flatlander. I was raised romping around in hills and am not happy on a flat plane- a year and a half in this deserty place has confirmed this fact. So, fueled by Mountain Wonderlust and stories of friends and family who had visited Nepal before, a few weeks ago I dusted off my backpack and set off towards the airport. As luck would have it, there were some family friends of my uncles who were from the capital and were kind enough to put me up for a few days and get me pointed in the right direction.
I arrived in Kathmandu, tired after a night spent on an airplane, but pumped to start exploring. After filling me with some delicious Nepalese food, my Nepalese friends oriented me a bit around the capital and then set me in the right direction to do some exploring of my own. I visited some of the oldest Buddhist temples in the country, worked my way through the cultural maze that is Dubar Square, and climbed to the tops of the Stuppas to take in the views of the city. It just so happened that the day that I arrived the elderly Prime Minister passed away, and within a day, the entire city turned into a giant procession, with literally thousands of people lining the streets to watch as his family took his body to the river for the burial rites. We watched as they drove past the apartment, then later on TV that night, watched as his family and the elders preformed the lat rites and set his body on fire on the banks of the river. Even though I studied Buddhism a bit at UM, and am generally familiar with Buddhist and Hindu burial practices, I have to admit that for me it felt a bit morbid to see them set fire to him, and watch as he burned to a crisp surrounded by thousands of people. In comparison, western burials are so sterile; besides the viewing, you generally never see the body-it’s comfortably encased by several thousand dollars of wood, metal, and silk for most, if not all, of the ceremony. And even if families choose to cremate their loved ones, it is done in the privacy of a funeral home or crematory, and presented later to the loved ones. So it was quite an experience to watch a dead body burn on live television.
After a few days in the capital, the noise and dirt did me in, and I said goodbye to my Nepalese hosts and took off for what I had really come to see: Some Mountains. Because of my limited time, I decided to forego the Himalayas and instead went west, towards The Annapurna Mountain range, a less famous, but equally as stunning range that runs throughout Nepal. I took an 8 hour bus trip from Kathmandu to the city of Pokhara, stopping off halfway though the valley to take a newly built cable car to a popular temple built on a the top of a mountain, where Hindu families go to sacrifice goats for yearly pilgrimages. At first I was confused at the number of goats people were bringing up with them, and the mysterious lack of goats returning back down the mountain. It wasn’t until I saw everyone hauling large bloody sacks onto the cable cars with us as we went back down that I realized where the goats had gone!
I arrived in Pokhara (a complete haven for hippie trekkers) towards the evening, found a hostel, and began getting things in order for a short trek. I rented the basic equipment, bought a trekking permit, and arranged for a guide. The next day at dawn my guide (a young woman who works for an all female trekking company, for rural gender development) and I set off, and we begin making our way up in the foothills of the Annapurnas on the ABC trek (Annapurna Base Camp). For the next four days we wound our way though small villages, tea house settlements and lush terraced hills, over rivers, up ridges, and down through deep valleys. Nepal was one of my first times I have ever traveled solo, and it was an amazing experience. The trekking routes are like entire communities in themselves-all the guides and porters know each other, as well as the locals who run the teahouses, and within a day or so you begin to see familiar faces and meet up with other trekkers. At the end of every day, everyone gathers around the teahouses, eats piles of rice and Dal Bhat and swaps stories until the lights switch off and the hillside towns go dark. Although even up the hills, technology is never far away. At one point on our decent back to the valley, we were walking past a small group of hill women on the trail, all in traditional garb, barefoot, and hauling overloaded straw baskets attached with straps across their foreheads. Just when I was thinking how neat it was to be in such a simplistic and rustic place, miles away from any cars, trains, planes or technology, I heard a strange beeping noise, and one of the old ladies pulled a cell phone from a fold in her tunic and started chatting away on the trail!
We finished the trek, and I went back to Pokhara with some new friends to get a hot shower and stretch out my sore feet before leaving for the capital. The next day I caught a small plane back to the Kathmandu to start the journey back to Ashgabat. I made it to the airport in time, but due to bad weather our flight was canceled from Delhi. To make a long story short, I couldn’t get a connecting flight, and so after a day and a half at the airport offices, I had to transfer airports, apply for an emergency travel visa through India, and sweet talk my way onto a plane back to Ashgabat without a ticket. It took about 4 days, but I finally made it, a few days later than expected and with my nerves a little worse for wear. And despite the complications of the last few days, this trip only reinforced that I want to return to Nepal for a longer time to do it justice. But for now, the memory of cool mountain nights should be able to sustain me through most of the hot Turkmen summer, and in the meantime, it’s back to the grind once again. So, until the next adventure.
Peace
Thursday, January 28, 2010
A Trip Northland
January 25th
So, on an up-note we just finished winter semester. I had planned to travel out of country, but at the last minute it fell through, so instead I stayed home for the break. I relaxed, read some books, had a few lazy mornings, and celebrated New Years and X-mas with my host family. The next day I went to the capital to meet up with a few other PCV friends who decided not to travel out of country, and then we traveled north to stay at another volunteers place. It was good to get out of our towns, as we were all going a bit stir crazy, and so the break was well needed. The other volunteers’ family was interesting, the host father is a Wildlife Biologist-a pretty rare profession in this country, and actually used to work for the WWF. After exploring the town and meeting some of our friends’ Turkmen buddies, her host father took us up into the hills to where he and his brother keep their horses. He is a real animal lover, and though his income is small and work is scarce, he still puts aside money to keep his horses-even buying feed for them (which in the winter costs $2 a day-extremely expensive for Turkmen standards) just because he loves them. Attitudes towards animals here are so different from western ideas, and it has been a while since I have seen anyone showing genuine affection towards an animal. To put it in perspective, it’s kind of like finding a dolphin in the middle of a corn field in Iowa. I can’t count the number of dead cats and dogs I have crossed on the way to work here in the past year, and so to meet someone who actually likes animals was kind of like a breath of fresh air. He let us ride the horses for a bit, and we watched him and his son feed and brush them. It reminded me of being a kid again, messing around with my dad and ‘lil brother’ Lindsey with our own horses out behind our house. As the sun set behind the mountains, the horses began to settle in for the night, putting their backs up against the night winter wind, and so the six of us all piled in the old jeep to drive back towards town. And as we drove past the old Soviet army tanks and training barracks silhouetted against the mountains that cross over to Iran, I couldn’t help thinking that it’s funny how the most random moments here remind me of home, and how they can somehow manage to put things on an even tilt again, and make it worth it.
The Seasons of Work and Home
January 20th, 2010
So it has been a while since wrote one of these, but life has continued to march on, and it seemed like every time I sat down to write, I could come up with nothing interesting to say. We have slipped full on into winter, and thanks to a generous leaving volunteer who gifted me her winter coat, I have been surviving this school semester in our unheated classrooms in relative comfort and warmth. The last two months has been a whirlwind of checking off dates in preparation for test exams for my advanced students. Last month several of my students wrote their first two rounds of FLEX exams, which is a program that chooses 60 kids from T-Stan to send to an American High School for a year. Last year I had two students go, and this year I am crossing my fingers that I will have at least three of my girls pass it. We prepped dialogues and TEOFL material for weeks, and almost all of my students made it to the second round. So now they will wait until next month, when they will hear the results for the third round and travel to the capital for interviews. I am crossing my fingers like it’s no ones business.
Besides the Flex exam, this month has been the Scholastic Olympiad, where kids from all schools compete in subjects like Russian, English, Math, and Chemistry. It was tough, because I was prepping half a dozen kids, all knowing they would be competing against each other. Added to this, I was on the English Judging committee, and had to determine all their placements for the final round. Teachers are super-competitive here, and many of them try to cheat on the final results so that their students get the best placements. Many are my co-workers, as well as my friends, and so it was difficult to try to be as fair as I could and at the same time watch that none of them tried to change or alter the results. If their students didn’t get the marks or places that they thought they deserved, they would start fighting and yelling at each other, or try to trick me into changing them. Some of it made me very angry, and needless to say I was more than happy when it was over, and relieved that I would not be around for next years Olympiad.
Well, in terms of home life, for the last year I have wrestled with the idea of trying to get my own apartment, even though getting all the government permissions seemed daunting, if not almost impossible. Like most Americans, I have over time settled into my independent routine of doing what I wanted when I wanted, and suddenly having to live in a family setting was frustrating. As my host siblings are young, and my host mother often works, many times I found myself having to cook for the family and watch the kids. My host parents family got it in their heads that I was going to be an English tutor for the whole family (a common problem for TEFL volunteers here), but after working a 9-6 everyday at school, I wasn’t to keen on coming home and teaching more lessons. The idea of being a substitute housewife and live in free-tutor didn’t really settle that well, and it led to quite a few scenes of frustration on both sides. With living with a family, I must say that it has further cemented my belief that I am not ready for the whole family scene-I am still way too attached to my carefree lifestyle (sorry mom, you’re gonna have to wait a few more years on that one…) But over the last year I have become gradually closer with both my host parents and my little ‘siblings’, we have made our compromises, and so I made the decision to stay with them until my contract is finished next year. Although it’s not always smooth sailing, we have all become really close, and I have no doubt that I will keep in contact with them for as many years as I am able after I leave here. And for now I will just dream of the day when I will have a place all my own….with running water and a washing machine J
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
End of November...
A Bittersweet November
November 26th, 2009
Literally, before my eyes, November has come and gone. And what a month it has been, Jeeze. My site mate deserted me, I aged YET another year (I am now 21, if anybody was wondering), and winter had come roaring in with a vengeance. It has been a bittersweet month, both some really good times, and some sad ones. Due to unforeseen circumstances, no new volunteers have come to join our ranks here in this sandy patch of the world, and with the previous Volunteers contracts being up, well it’s like they say in show business: curtains baby. This month begins their departures, and by the end of December, they will all be gone on to continue their lives elsewhere. It’s also a running joke here that Peace Corps Turkmenistan is a lot like being in Harry Potter Movie, as we are all divided into the five regions (Ahal, Mary, Dashoguz, Lebop, and Balkan) and have thus been given nicknames (my region is the Slitherin house, for any of you Harry Potter peops out there...still don’t know why) We see the volunteers in our respective regions most often, as we spend holiday and birthday events with one another, share work duties such as workshops and camps, and tend to travel in packs sharing taxi rides, planes or trains. So over time our ‘region buddies’ have started to become like family. And as December closes in, it has started to hit us that our family is going to get a lot smaller very soon.
Recently, all the Ahal Volunteers gathered in the capital to commemorate their last days among our ranks, and because it was the last time most of us would see each other, we decided to throw together a early thanksgiving day feast. As we went round the table giving thanks before eating our piles of delicious grub, it was resoundingly apparent from everybody how much of an impact that we have had on each other in just this short amount of time. A year ago, when we were sitting in our training rooms in Philadelphia, filling out the last of our paperwork before we boarded the plane, one of our trainers said to us. “Look around you guys. All these people are strangers now, but in ten years they will be the people coming to your weddings, and holding your babies, or sitting around the table with your families.” A lot of us laughed and were like “Ok, dude, cut down on the cheese factor a little, why don’t ya…” But to a certain degree, he was right. We have all come from vastly different walks of life as far as Americans go, but looking at my comrades around the table on our last day of celebration before they left and listening to everybody’s heartfelt speeches, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘It’s good to be around family’. I can only imagine what another year will bring. And ignoring the dangerously high rating on the cheese-o-meter, on my part, I’m thankful for family, whatever form or shape that it comes in. So, with that said, I wish everybody a Happy Thanksgiving. And to Dan’s mom, remind him to write me. He will be missed.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Go to Hell
Go to Hell!
October 29th, 2009
Fellow PCV: “So, are we still going to Hell this weekend?”
ME: “I don’t know, it might be really cold”
PCV: “Dude, even if we froze, I would still go.”
ME: “Alright, Hell it is then. But pack extra socks.”
Yeah, this snippet of conversation might seem a bit odd. Actually, what we were talking about was the Crater of Darveza, known locally as the Pit of Hell. To backtrack, a while ago some fellow volunteers has told us about a place they had heard of that was this huge burning pit literally in the middle of the desert. To reach it, you had to go north into the center of Gara Gun desert, drive off the main road a while through the sand dunes with a 4 x 4, and then camp out at the site overnight. There was no cell phone coverage, no town within a several hundred-kilometer radius, and no marked road to show where you needed to go. For a normal person this might sound like more trouble than it’s worth. For a bunch of entertainment and adventure-starved volunteers, it sounded like GOLD. And rumor had it there was a group of Russians who rented out SUV’s and for a dime or two, would take curious travelers out there to check it out. So it was then that on fall break a group of fellow volunteers and I, faced with a week of free classes, escaped our work sites, piled into SUV’s, and headed into the desert. As I hadn’t left site for nearly two months, I was more than ecstatic to be out and about. (I suffer from a bad case of zip code claustrophobia-too long in one place and I start to go a bit bonkers. Ecstatic might have been an understatement.) Although I have lived here for over a year now, working a six-day week and travel policies really limit how much of the country I have seen, and as my work site is a fair stretch from most of the other volunteers, my social calendar is pretty much slim to none. Thus far my experiences have been mostly around my region, and so little excursions do a lot to make life here a little bit more exciting.
Added that this week was the celebration of Turkmenistan’s independence, a few of us decided the best way to ring in another year of Independence would be to camp out under the stars next to a burning pit of gas. As 4 of our assembled group live in the south and the other 4 live in the north, we had to coordinate meeting up before hand. Being as there is no cell phone service or road marks, this process was a bit tricky. But we did know that the stop was exactly halfway between the capital city and the Northern city of Dashoguz (about half of a 6 hour trek in), so what we came up with was to leave at the same time, and the group with the SUV’s would pull over on the side of the road where the halfway point was and wait till the other half of the group arrived, roughly within the same hour. When the second group spotted our vehicles, they would stop, switch to the SUV’s, and we would all head into the dunes together. As retarded as this sounds, believe it or not it actually worked, and in the middle of nowhere almost without a hitch we managed to locate the correct lone vehicles on the side of the road, exchange rides, and head inward in search of the pit as the evening closed in on us.
The history of the pit is a bit sketchy, and there are a few different versions to how it came about, but most of the stories circle around the Russians drilling expeditions. One story goes that in the 50’s or so the Russians were drilling for natural gas like they did over most of the country, and they hit a small pocket, but concluded it wasn’t large enough to draw from. So they decided to burn it out it so that the stagnant gas wouldn’t be left exposed. Apparently there was more gas there than they bargained on, and 50 years later the pit is still burning. Another story goes that while they were drilling, one of the workers accidentally dropped his cigarette into the pit and it lit the gas on fire. There was no putting it out, and so they had no choice but to leave the deserted pit burning. Probably was kind of hard for him to find another job after that. Yet another story says that while the workers were drilling they hit an unexpected air pocket that collapsed underneath them and took the drill head with it. When the drill hit the bottom of the cave, it hit rock and sparked, and the sparks hit the gas, and ta-da, the oversized Bunsen burner was born. Whatever the real story is, it resulted in a large fiery pit about the circumference of a small football field and the depth of a three story building, that has been nicknamed by the locals the Gate of Hell, or The Pit of Hell, and is pretty damn cool when the sun goes down amid miles of stretching sand and dunes.
So we arrived around sunset, cooked some BBQ with our fearless Russian leaders Sasha and Vladimeer (our drivers, who proved true any stereotype you’ve ever read about burly Russian men), met some fellow travelers from Austria who had also managed to hear about this odd place and found their way out into the sand, and settled in to watch the sun go down and the flames burn bright with some old fashioned Russian vodka to keep us warm. It was a pretty neat evening all around, and a nice change from watching my family’s Russian Soap Operas, which make up our normal evening entertainment. And let me just say, who needs fireworks on Independence Day when you have an endless supply of blazing flames coming straight from mother earth? All in all, going to Hell was a good time. Even if it was bloody cold out there and I am still recovering feeling in my toes In the future, I will definitely tell anyone to go to Hell. It really is quite a nice place.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Dirt and Glory
Uses and Abuses
Oct 5th, 2009
So, a while ago I wrote that I was going to start keeping a running tally of all the funny stuff that my students came up with. And though the last few months have been pretty devoid of interesting topics, the other day I stumbled upon an activity that yielded GOLD. Looking for something to teach modal verbs (can, could, must, should), I found a game in an old lesson-planning book, and after making a few alterations on the rules and explanations, I decided to try it out on my intermediate club to see what they could handle. Basically, the students had to come up with two separate lists; one of items, and one of people. After we had a manageable list, they had to mix and match the two lists and make up questions and answers using the phrases “What can a so-and-so do with a so-and-so?” or “Why does a so-and-so need a so-and-so?” Once they got the hang of it, my kids went wild. With the help of my dictionary, they slapped together some phrases that literally made me want to pee my koynek. Here’s a ‘lil sample of what a few of them came up with:
Q: “Why does a crocodile need a safety pin?”
A: “To catch fish with when he has no teeth.”
Q: “ What can a baby do with a beer?”
A: “ He can take a bath with it.”
Q: “What can Harry Potter do in a Chamber?”
A: “He can find Valdemort.”
Q: “What can a writer do with a chick?”
A: “He can write a book about the history of chickens.”
Q: “Why does a teacher need a cactus?”
A: “To punish bad students.”
And my very favorite, thought up by some of my rock stars…
Q: “What can an old woman do with a walking stick?”
A: “She can dismantle small children with it.”
After some thought, I have decided to call this game ‘Uses and Abuses’ and I think I am going to try it out it on some of my beginner classes to see what they can come up with. Anything to make my life a little more interesting…
The Dirty Thief
Oct 1, 2009
I have never thought of myself as a horribly dishonest person, and as an everyday rule I try to stay on the moral straight away. And, despite a few bumps along the way, I think I have done a generally good job. I know the basics: never do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself. Honesty is the best policy. Don’t ever covet anything of your neighbors: wife, husband, favorite gardening tools, or whatever. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and thus also results in a lot of doctor’s bills. Never kill anything with a social security number or passport. You know, all the general things we learn growing up. And although my family is not a particularly religious bunch, my parents did their best to instill upon us children the basic rights from wrongs, the moral guide-posts with which to live our lives by, so to speak. But this week, I failed that upbringing, and broke one of those cardinal rules: I stole.
To preface my actions, let me first just say that I was basically raised in a big Terrarium. My back yard growing up was- literally-a forest, and I am used to having such things like trees and grass and flowers and crawly bugs around me all the time. And although I have served my time in the Concrete Jungle and enjoyed it just fine, I still prefer to have natury-like things nearby. Which is why I have found one of the hardest things about this country is the lack of growing things. (* See my blog about the near tree-hugging incident) My host family here is not a particularly green thumbed bunch-they know HOW to garden, as pretty much everyone is this country does, and we have our small plot in the back yard where every once in a while we extract tomatoes, radishes, dill, grapes, sometimes figs, or other such small items. But mostly, we get our veggies at the store, and mostly our garden is a lot of weeds. During the school year I found I had no extra time to help with our garden what with all the classes I took on, and so my contribution to the effort was basically nil. And most host father was only interested when the power was out or there was nothing of interest on the TV. Some families here get really into their gardens, and added to this they grow these crazy Rose gardens and have latticed grape vines coming out of their ears-we’re talking garden of Eden style. Not so at my house. Our back yard is basically dirty sand. So in order to make myself feel a little more at home, over the last few months I have gotten lots of plant cuttings and invested, borrowed, or scrounged a variety of small pots and have installed them in my room. Among my collection I have a few vines, a spider plant, and a couple little Aloe Vera plants. These little patches of green do a lot to brighten my day sometimes, as small as they are. But flourish in the sand-mud they do not, and every week I wonder how much longer my struggling little plants will hold out.
So the other day, as I was returning from my weekly expedition to the post office to mail out a few letters, I noticed a large pile of dirt next to the road the telegraph office. But it didn’t look like normal Turkmen dirt, which is basically compacted mud. No, this dirt looked decidedly different. I opted to take a closer look, and upon inspection I made an amazing discovery. Now if you’ve ever taken a biology class, you know that what makes soil so healthy is decomposing plant life: i.e. dead trees, undergrowth, ect. And among other things, dead plants produce this great thing called Nitrogen that-wonder beyond wonders-makes stuff GROW. Well, here in the desert there is no decomposing plant life. It’s basically grainy sand, with just enough nutrients in it to support scrub grass and weedy-type plants. Thus people here just stick a tree in the sand, and hope it grows. And miracle beyond miracles, sometimes it does. But this dirt, believe it or not SMELLED like real dirt, felt like real dirt, and even had real plant parts in it! Jackpot! And it was just SITTING there, glorious and untouched. So you’re probably thinking big deal, pile of dirt, whoopee. Just grab a bucket, right? Well, let me footnote this discovery by saying that in this country every little thing here is highly coveted. Saving a dollar goes along way here, especially when you can buy a kilo of apples for 20 cents. There’s not a lot of wealth to be found, and so people guard even the smallest little scrap piles with their lives. An old metal door and some broken wood piled in the backyard? That’s a frame for the future hen house. A bunch of dusty old jars? They will cover the tomato plants when the frost comes in. That old proverb one mans junk is another mans treasure doesn’t really apply here. There is no junk. People use EVERYTHING. This also applies to grade A dirt. And this grade A dirt was sitting suspiciously near a large dug up flower-bed. So, wary of unseen eyes on me, I continued past the pile non-chalauntly, inwardly scheming of ways to get my hands on some.
As fate would have it, several days later I arrived at school to find my classes with my morning counterpart canceled, the class locked and empty (not a huge surprise) and thus two hours to kill before my next class. So, I did what any normal person would do during a long lunch hour: I decided to go steal some dirt. I arrived at the scene with two large plastic bags in my purse. After carefully checking the premises, I waited until the sidewalk was mostly empty of passerbys, then worked my way around to the backside of the dirt pile. A minute or so after I had sneakily begun to fill my little bags with the precious soil, people began to filter out of the café next door. Panicked, I began to imagine what I would have to tell my director when he asked why he had to bail his American teacher out of prison. “Well, sir. She was apprehended stealing some dirt.” The police clerk would have to say. (Don’t laugh-people are arrested here for stupider things. Just a few months ago my host father was detained for an entire day while he was jogging-all because they said he was running ‘suspiciously’) So, I grabbed what booty I could and dashed down the sidewalk as well as I was able to in my Koynek, visions of sirens ringing in my ears, my heart pounding in my ears. Lucky for me, nobody gave chase, whether for lack of interest, or for the fact they were just to perplexed by the sight of a grown woman sprinting down the street with a giant bag of dirt to do anything. So this evening, as my host siblings and I filled my new and improved flowerpots and displayed them on the windowsills, I had to ask myself, was I wrong to steal the dirt? Yes, probably. Stealing is generally not the best thing, especially when you are clinging to your citizenship by the flimsy edge of a temporary visa. But, do I regret stealing the dirt? No, not really. After all, it IS only dirt.
Until next time
The Thief
Oct 5th, 2009
So, a while ago I wrote that I was going to start keeping a running tally of all the funny stuff that my students came up with. And though the last few months have been pretty devoid of interesting topics, the other day I stumbled upon an activity that yielded GOLD. Looking for something to teach modal verbs (can, could, must, should), I found a game in an old lesson-planning book, and after making a few alterations on the rules and explanations, I decided to try it out on my intermediate club to see what they could handle. Basically, the students had to come up with two separate lists; one of items, and one of people. After we had a manageable list, they had to mix and match the two lists and make up questions and answers using the phrases “What can a so-and-so do with a so-and-so?” or “Why does a so-and-so need a so-and-so?” Once they got the hang of it, my kids went wild. With the help of my dictionary, they slapped together some phrases that literally made me want to pee my koynek. Here’s a ‘lil sample of what a few of them came up with:
Q: “Why does a crocodile need a safety pin?”
A: “To catch fish with when he has no teeth.”
Q: “ What can a baby do with a beer?”
A: “ He can take a bath with it.”
Q: “What can Harry Potter do in a Chamber?”
A: “He can find Valdemort.”
Q: “What can a writer do with a chick?”
A: “He can write a book about the history of chickens.”
Q: “Why does a teacher need a cactus?”
A: “To punish bad students.”
And my very favorite, thought up by some of my rock stars…
Q: “What can an old woman do with a walking stick?”
A: “She can dismantle small children with it.”
After some thought, I have decided to call this game ‘Uses and Abuses’ and I think I am going to try it out it on some of my beginner classes to see what they can come up with. Anything to make my life a little more interesting…
The Dirty Thief
Oct 1, 2009
I have never thought of myself as a horribly dishonest person, and as an everyday rule I try to stay on the moral straight away. And, despite a few bumps along the way, I think I have done a generally good job. I know the basics: never do unto others what you would not want done unto yourself. Honesty is the best policy. Don’t ever covet anything of your neighbors: wife, husband, favorite gardening tools, or whatever. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and thus also results in a lot of doctor’s bills. Never kill anything with a social security number or passport. You know, all the general things we learn growing up. And although my family is not a particularly religious bunch, my parents did their best to instill upon us children the basic rights from wrongs, the moral guide-posts with which to live our lives by, so to speak. But this week, I failed that upbringing, and broke one of those cardinal rules: I stole.
To preface my actions, let me first just say that I was basically raised in a big Terrarium. My back yard growing up was- literally-a forest, and I am used to having such things like trees and grass and flowers and crawly bugs around me all the time. And although I have served my time in the Concrete Jungle and enjoyed it just fine, I still prefer to have natury-like things nearby. Which is why I have found one of the hardest things about this country is the lack of growing things. (* See my blog about the near tree-hugging incident) My host family here is not a particularly green thumbed bunch-they know HOW to garden, as pretty much everyone is this country does, and we have our small plot in the back yard where every once in a while we extract tomatoes, radishes, dill, grapes, sometimes figs, or other such small items. But mostly, we get our veggies at the store, and mostly our garden is a lot of weeds. During the school year I found I had no extra time to help with our garden what with all the classes I took on, and so my contribution to the effort was basically nil. And most host father was only interested when the power was out or there was nothing of interest on the TV. Some families here get really into their gardens, and added to this they grow these crazy Rose gardens and have latticed grape vines coming out of their ears-we’re talking garden of Eden style. Not so at my house. Our back yard is basically dirty sand. So in order to make myself feel a little more at home, over the last few months I have gotten lots of plant cuttings and invested, borrowed, or scrounged a variety of small pots and have installed them in my room. Among my collection I have a few vines, a spider plant, and a couple little Aloe Vera plants. These little patches of green do a lot to brighten my day sometimes, as small as they are. But flourish in the sand-mud they do not, and every week I wonder how much longer my struggling little plants will hold out.
So the other day, as I was returning from my weekly expedition to the post office to mail out a few letters, I noticed a large pile of dirt next to the road the telegraph office. But it didn’t look like normal Turkmen dirt, which is basically compacted mud. No, this dirt looked decidedly different. I opted to take a closer look, and upon inspection I made an amazing discovery. Now if you’ve ever taken a biology class, you know that what makes soil so healthy is decomposing plant life: i.e. dead trees, undergrowth, ect. And among other things, dead plants produce this great thing called Nitrogen that-wonder beyond wonders-makes stuff GROW. Well, here in the desert there is no decomposing plant life. It’s basically grainy sand, with just enough nutrients in it to support scrub grass and weedy-type plants. Thus people here just stick a tree in the sand, and hope it grows. And miracle beyond miracles, sometimes it does. But this dirt, believe it or not SMELLED like real dirt, felt like real dirt, and even had real plant parts in it! Jackpot! And it was just SITTING there, glorious and untouched. So you’re probably thinking big deal, pile of dirt, whoopee. Just grab a bucket, right? Well, let me footnote this discovery by saying that in this country every little thing here is highly coveted. Saving a dollar goes along way here, especially when you can buy a kilo of apples for 20 cents. There’s not a lot of wealth to be found, and so people guard even the smallest little scrap piles with their lives. An old metal door and some broken wood piled in the backyard? That’s a frame for the future hen house. A bunch of dusty old jars? They will cover the tomato plants when the frost comes in. That old proverb one mans junk is another mans treasure doesn’t really apply here. There is no junk. People use EVERYTHING. This also applies to grade A dirt. And this grade A dirt was sitting suspiciously near a large dug up flower-bed. So, wary of unseen eyes on me, I continued past the pile non-chalauntly, inwardly scheming of ways to get my hands on some.
As fate would have it, several days later I arrived at school to find my classes with my morning counterpart canceled, the class locked and empty (not a huge surprise) and thus two hours to kill before my next class. So, I did what any normal person would do during a long lunch hour: I decided to go steal some dirt. I arrived at the scene with two large plastic bags in my purse. After carefully checking the premises, I waited until the sidewalk was mostly empty of passerbys, then worked my way around to the backside of the dirt pile. A minute or so after I had sneakily begun to fill my little bags with the precious soil, people began to filter out of the café next door. Panicked, I began to imagine what I would have to tell my director when he asked why he had to bail his American teacher out of prison. “Well, sir. She was apprehended stealing some dirt.” The police clerk would have to say. (Don’t laugh-people are arrested here for stupider things. Just a few months ago my host father was detained for an entire day while he was jogging-all because they said he was running ‘suspiciously’) So, I grabbed what booty I could and dashed down the sidewalk as well as I was able to in my Koynek, visions of sirens ringing in my ears, my heart pounding in my ears. Lucky for me, nobody gave chase, whether for lack of interest, or for the fact they were just to perplexed by the sight of a grown woman sprinting down the street with a giant bag of dirt to do anything. So this evening, as my host siblings and I filled my new and improved flowerpots and displayed them on the windowsills, I had to ask myself, was I wrong to steal the dirt? Yes, probably. Stealing is generally not the best thing, especially when you are clinging to your citizenship by the flimsy edge of a temporary visa. But, do I regret stealing the dirt? No, not really. After all, it IS only dirt.
Until next time
The Thief
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