Clean at last!

June 8, 2013

Fairly early this morning, smoke began rising from the banya. I was feeling disgusting. Not only was I hungover from the previous day’s shenanigans, but I was utterly filthy. My hair was greasy and slick, my pits were sweaty and stinky, and then there was the whole period catastrophe… smoke from the banya was a welcome relief. Surely it meant that I would be able to cleanse myself. Surely.

But first Rakhat had to do laundry, using the water heated by the wood burning furnace of the banya. I was as excited about washing my clothes as I was about the possible opportunity to wash my body. Hand-washing clothes is back-breaking work. I had only a few items to clean, and my back muscles were smarting by the time I was through. Poor Rakhat had to do the washing for five people, plus sheets and such. It took her something like eight hours. I cannot even imagine how her back must feel.

Around 3pm I went for a walk. Other than doing my laundry, I hadn’t done much with my day. I should have been planning lessons or making copies of handouts or something, but I was just hungover enough to cause inaction. By 3pm I realized that I really needed to clear my head, and I figured a nice walk in the fresh air would do me good.

I had a pleasant walk. At one point I heard the familiar strains of Gangnam Style thumping from out of a passing yard. I caught a quick glimpse of middle-aged and elderly locals dancing in the courtyard, then quickly scurried past to avoid getting sucked in. Several groups of kids stopped me along my way to ask me to photograph them so that I could then show them the resulting photo on my camera’s view screen. Two girls got one of their friends to take a picture of them with me.

The weird hand-gesture is me trying to explain which button needs to be pressed.
Turkeys!
Hoopoe! I've been trying to get a decent picture of this guy since the day I arrived in Toguz Bulak. With my long lens out of commission, it's pretty tough. This is the closest I've come so far.
Sheep are everywhere. I hadn't brought any photos of sheep to use in class because I hadn't wanted to deal with the one sheep/two sheep plural irregularity, but now I'm rethinking that decision.
The one and only (and quite new) local mosque

I wandered around the western edge of the village, attempting to photograph the elusive hoopoe. If I’d had my long lens, I would’ve been successful, but as it was I merely snapped more blurred shots. I also took several photos of the village’s new (and only) mosque, built with Saudi money. Oh, Saudi philanthropists, if you really want to help these people, you’d fix their broken wells and get them running water! Ahh well.

My walk got me out of the passive funk that I’d been in all day. Instead of waiting to be summoned to the smoking banya, I asked when it would be available. And I was told that as there was very little water coming out of the well – and as Rakhat needed to finish the laundry – it really depended on whether or not there would be enough water available once the laundry was finished.

I could have cried. Instead I went inside and wrote in my journal and got busy planning lessons. I may have sulked a bit. Around 9:30 I was told that the banya was available. Thank the gods! Clean at last, clean at last, clean at last! Thank god almighty I’m clean at last!

For those of you who don’t know what a banya is, it is essentially a steam-sauna powered by a wood-burning (or trash burning, or dried cow-pat burning) stove to heat the water, and gravity to allow the hot and cold water to flow out of a spigot and into a bucket when needed. You collect hot and cold water in buckets and mix them to the ideal temperature. You then bathe out of these buckets while relaxing in the hot steam sauna. It’s really quite a lovely experience – if only it didn’t occur at a rate of about once a week or so!

In which we slaughter a sheep and I drink half a bottle of vodka

June 8, 2013

WARNING: Some of the photos in this post clearly depict sheep-slaughtering.

Yesterday after breakfast, Rakhat informed me that we’d been invited to our neighbor’s in order to slaughter a sheep in celebration of the birth of his first grandchild (a granddaughter). The fellow across the street – a 77 year old man named Jumabek, or “George” as he told me to call him “but not Bush!” – is a distant cousin of Altynbek, and quite a jovial fellow. He seemed just as excited about the birth of his granddaughter as he was to be able to ask me questions about the US. (“Is it true that there are mostly black people living in Washington DC?” “Did you know that there are a lot of Kyrgyz living in Chicago?” “What is the weather like in Orlando?” etc.) He even pulled out an old encyclopedia so that he could locate Orlando on the map and so he could look up the entry on the city (which essentially said that we have citrus trees and Disney World – still fairly accurate, even if the encyclopedia was from the early 1980s).

The sheep slaughtering was a fairly quick process (although undoubtedly for the sheep not a painless one). First the sheep’s feet were tied. Then we stood in a line facing west and prayed ‘omin.’ Then the sheep’s head was held over a bowl and its throat was slit. Its head was held over the bowl until its heart stopped pumping and the blood flow ceased. Then I rinsed the open neck with water from a tea kettle.

At that point the sheep was strung up and dressed in much the same fashion as I’ve seen hunters dress deer in the US. The one exception to this was that EVERY part of the sheep was kept to be used. This included the guts. While it was the men’s job to skin and butcher the sheep, it was Rakhat’s job to clean the stomach and intestines of the, well, shit. It was fascinating to watch the care with which everything was cleaned and preserved (including the heart and lungs, the head, the feet, etc.).

Rakhat cleans intestines.
Nursultan and the fresh cuts of meat

The complete set of photos from this and several other sheep slaughtering events can be seen HERE.

Once the entire sheep had been butchered and cleaned, Rakhat began cooking kurdak, a fried meat and potatoes dish – using the meat from the sheep, of course. The rest of us retired inside to watch TV. Oddly enough, we watched Francis Ford Coppola’s late-90s take on The Odyssey. (While it was apparently a mini-series, many – but obviously not all – of the episodes had been edited together into a movie for Kyrgyz television. Several key parts of the story had been left out, and the whole thing had been dubbed into Russian.)

Eventually the food was ready to eat. Now, I wholeheartedly believe in eating what you kill. (There’s a bit of a problem with hunters in my neck of the woods in the US who hunt for sport and just leave the carcasses behind to rot, and I thoroughly despise people who do this.) However, despite my desire to actually eat the sheep which we had just slaughtered, I was unable to eat much of the kurdak. There’s a certain method of cooking that is sometimes used here. I don’t know what that method is, but it makes the meat utterly unpalatable to me. Unfortunately, this was the method used to cook our sheep. Out of politeness – and to honor the sheep’s sacrifice – I forced myself to swallow several chunks of meat, after which I concentrated on the potatoes.

I really didn’t eat very much. This was rather unfortunate, as after we had finished eating lunch, Rakhat produced a bottle of vodka as a present for Jumabek. Now Rakhat and Altynbek don’t drink, which left only me and Jumabek to consume the entire bottle – sadly split fairly evenly between the two of us – as we drank toast after toast to his granddaughter, to me, to him to Rakhat and Altynbek, to my mother, to his children… (To those of you who have never been in a situation like this, let’s just say that being unconscious or claiming that you don’t drink at all due to religious beliefs are really the only ways to avoid shot after shot…)

When we returned home, my goal was to stagger up the stairs without falling and then to pass out. 

Unfortunately, in front of our gate were two local elderly women (one of whom I’d met before, although I can’t for the life of me remember where – At the school? One of the stores? At Rakhat and Altynbek’s?) and five students from the school! They weren’t any of my students – thank goodness – but they all see me around regularly, and had obviously come over for the express purpose of visiting me. I, meanwhile, was in absolutely no shape to socialize with anyone. It took all of my willpower to keep myself upright and my eyes open during the course of their 30 minute visit. I’m sure it was pretty obvious that I was a good twelve or so sheets to the wind. Sigh.

After they left, I stumbled upstairs and promptly passed out.

(I later learned that one of my good friends had given birth to her daughter at approximately the same time that Jumabek’s granddaughter was born. I count this as my celebration of the birth of my friend’s baby!)

Plague!

(A slight break from posting my travel blog to bring you current events out of Kyrgyzstan...)

Last night I learned that in rural Kyrgyzstan in recent days, one person has died of Bubonic Plague and three have come down with symptoms. Bubonic plague, despite being the Black Death of the Middle Ages is (typically) treatable with modern antibiotics, assuming that treatment begins in time. Early reports just said that the boy who died was in the Issyk Kul region. Now, I spent my summer in the Issyk Kul region, and it's a pretty big place. This morning I learned from this article (in Russian) I learned that the incident occurred in the Ak-Suu area of the Issyk Kul region, which is the area at the east end of Lake Issyk Kul over by Karakol. As of this evening, it was reported that the specific village where the outbreak occurred is Sary Kamysh, to the east of Karakol. A couple of websites have reported that the deceased youth contracted plague while "after eating barbecued marmot while visiting relatives in southern Kyrgyzstan" (see here and here) although everything about that claim seems rather fishy to me.

The 'A' marks Sary Kamysh. (There is another village named Sary Kamysh located closer to Balykchy on the north-western edge of the lake; however, it is not located in the Ak-Suu area.) For those worried about catching the Black Death while vacationing at Lake Issyk Kul itself, I'd say there's little need to worry, given the location of the outbreak.
And just to refresh your memory, here are the locations of the two villages where I spent my summer, with respect to Lake Issyk Kul, so that you can compare their location to that of the outbreak.
Bubonic Plague Scare Hits Kyrgyzstan Boy Dies of Bubonic Plague in Kyrgyzstan Death from Bubonic Plague Reported in Kyrgyzstan Bubonic Plague Kills Teen in Kyrgyzstan

Anniversary of June 2010

June 5, 2013

We are approaching the three year anniversary of the June 2010 riots and ethnic cleansing in Osh andJalalabad – or as Altynbek put it, “the war between the Kyrgyz and the Uzbeks.” I watched a TV “special” (all in Kyrgyz) on the events from three years ago. While I couldn’t understand most of what was said (as I speak very, very little Kyrgyz), the special showed a lot of archival footage from the events, most of which I hadn’t seen before. The special also inspired Altynbek to tell me in his broken Russian that “Все Узбек – хитрый” (‘All Uzbeks are sly/crafty/untrustworthy’). I asked him why he thought that. His answer was “I don’t know, but it’s true. They all are.” I really didn’t know what to say to that.

For the past few days there have been protests in Jalalabad (which closed the main through-road between Bishkek and Osh, causing massive traffic jams and delays in and around Jalalabad). As far as I could tell from the Kyrgyz language news, the protests were somehow connected to the June 2010 events, although unlike the events of three years ago, these protests were peaceful, and the road has since re-opened.

Curious to find out more, I emailed C, whom we had met in Jalalabad. I told her of Altynbek’s comments, and asked for her take on the events in Jalalabad. This was her reply:

I absolutely love your host-parents' take on current events in J-Bad. To be honest, most of my friends here have similar opinions- when I ask them about it, they mostly just disdainfully explain that it's politics, nothing unusual, typical meetings. Nobody really seems interested in it, and the city itself is calm, even if they had closed the road to Osh for a couple days. I don't think it's related to the anniversary of the 2010 events, though, or even to the "xitrie Uzbeks." I met with the [pro-democracy organization] in Bishkek this week, and they talked a great deal about the five vying political parties. Apparently, one politician suggested overthrowing the governor (they have a video of this, even). He's been arrested, and now there are just general protests/gatherings related to all this. Or there were- I think everything has pretty much passed for now. Never a dull moment in the south!

Period. (Possibly TMI. You have been warned.)

June 5, 2013

You have got to be fucking kidding me. I brought enough birth control with me to allow me to take it continuously throughout the summer, which should have enabled me to skip my period for the entire time of my stay in Kyrgyzstan. Knowing that for the bulk of my time here I would be showering once a week or so (at this point I have bathed once in the past ten days), I really didn’t want to have to deal with menstruation and the cleanliness issues associated therewith. This also meant that I could save space when packing by not having to include maxipads or tampons.

But whaddyaknow. This did not work out as planned.

I awoke from my afternoon nap with back pain of the sort that usually accompanies my periods, but I didn’t think anything of it until several hours later when I went to the pit squatter and – surprise! Period! Not even spotting; full on menstruation. (I should also mention: no toilet paper. My host family uses old news papers. And yeah, pit squatter.)

Having already carefully perused the meager stock at the two tiny local shops, I already knew that pads and tampons were not available locally. Now, back in the US I actually use cloth pads, which I’m guessing is what they use here… but unfortunately Rakhat has gone to a nearby village to spend a few days with her mother, so I can’t ask her, and I am certainly not asking her husband! I have folded up one of my very few pairs of underwear and am using it as a cloth pad (it works quite well, actually). Hopefully this will be a short-lived, light-flow period.

* It was neither short-lived nor light-flow. And it lasted through June 16th. For someone whose periods normally last 4-5 days, this was ridiculous. And given where I was and that I had been trying to skip my period entirely, well let’s just say that this was an utter failure. I was able to get to Bishkek on June 14th, where I was able to buy pads and new underwear… just in time for the longest period of my life to end. Ugh. Let’s just say thank the gods I’d packed wet-wipes, as I got to bathe ONCE during this whole catastrophe.

Exam-day classes and feasts

June 3, 2013

Today was the beginning of final exams for the graduating seniors. Various exams will be held on different days throughout the next few weeks. About half of my first class consists of graduating seniors, so on days that exams are held, we will be missing half of the group. Today was one of those days, and Group 1 only had four students in attendance. Meanwhile, my other classes were packed full of eager and very energetic students.

Last week I had been asked if I would be willing to teach a class for the teachers at the school who were interested in learning English. Despite the fact that I’d only signed on to teach three classes a day, not four, I didn’t really feel like I could say no. Besides, what else is there for me to do here in Toguz Bulak?

The teachers’ class was supposed to be held at 2:30, immediately following Group 3. This afternoon at 2:25, one of the teachers stuck her head in and asked if I was almost finished. I was asked to go to the teachers’ room as soon as my class was finished. I figured that the teachers were getting antsy and wanted their class to start. I couldn’t have been more wrong.* I hurried through the end of my lesson with Group 3, wondering how I would be able to teach in the teachers’ room as it had no chalkboard. When my time with Group 3 was finished I gathered my things and scurried down to the teachers’ room… only to find that yet another feast was underway to celebrate the start of exams. Luckily this one was only two courses and had fewer toasts… but still! Then there was the fact that I’d already eaten lunch during my break between Groups 2 and 3, so I really was not hungry at all. But in Kyrgyzstan, not being hungry is not an acceptable excuse for not eating.

The feast was almost over (people were packing up and getting ready to go) when Three Important People arrived. They were apparently from the regional department of education, and they were going from school to school checking to make sure that the kick-off of final exams was going properly. They were also partaking in the equivalent feasts at the various other schools they visited. The two women of the group (the man being the designated driver) were a few drinks past tipsy when they arrived to prolong our feast.

The Three Important People insisted that I move to sit by them, and they insisted that everyone take more shots. Then they decided that they, the school’s director, a couple of high-ranking teachers and I needed to adjourn away from the masses to drink in the director’s office. Sheesh! Luckily, after the first round (and after the designated driver fellow told me that if he was my father he would have taken a knife to my arm to remove my tattoo), the school’s Russian teacher rescued me by telling the Three Important People that I had somewhere I needed to be.

Me, with the Three Important People, the school's director, and the school's Russian teacher

It was 5pm when I finally left the school, and the weather over our village was lovely and clear – even though I could see rain advancing across the valley from Kul-Tor. I decided to walk to the southeastern corner of the village where I had seen a desiccated sheep’s head on our drive back into town from the farm on Saturday. It was still sitting there. I photographed it, and managed to scurry home before the rain hit.

*In the end, there never was a teachers’ class. I think this was an idea of the director’s that the teachers themselves didn’t exactly endorse. Given how much work all of these women do at home after a day working at the school, I can understand why none of them would want to prolong their time at school.

Recovery

June 2, 2013

The weather yesterday morning as we walked to the Children’s Day festival was wonderful – blue skies, temperatures around 80F. Everyone around me was complaining about how hot it was, although for a native Floridian like me it was wonderful – especially considering that there was virtually no humidity.  However, as we were walking home from the Children’s Day festivities, a wind began to blow, clouds began to roll up, and the temperature began to drop. I had planned to at least spend some of the day wandering around the village taking photos, but instead I retreated to my room to listen to the wind howl and the rain fall.

I also decided to edit all of my photos that I had taken thus far. This took about four or five hours. About two hours in I started feeling headachy. I took an Excedrin and continued working. By the end of my photo-editing session, I had a splitting headache. I took another Excedrin and curled up in bed. No result. By the time dinner-time rolled around, I was in full-blown migraine phase. I couldn’t eat anything. I was barely able to swallow one of my four Imitrex tablets (curse you insurance for limiting me to four per month when my doctor had prescribed me eight per month!) which thankfully did the trick – although it knocked me out as well.

Today I’ve felt shaky, and a bit like the migraine is still with me, although masked by the Imitrex in my system. This is actually probably the case. I spent four hours lesson planning – of which the bulk of my time was spent hand-copying handouts for my students. I briefly checked my email, but to be honest I am terrified to look at the computer screen, lest it trigger another migraine. 

Children’s Day

June 1, 2013

Today was Children’s Day, and it was celebrated with a big festival/talent show at the school. All of the teachers, students, as well as their mothers and grandmothers came (the only men in attendance were the ones managing the sound system and the few men who work at the school). Unfortunately, the battery in my point-n-shoot camera (the one that takes video; my DSLR does not record video) was nearly dead, and it died pretty much immediately. Sadly, this meant I was unable to record the absolute best act – a tiny, lime-green belly dancer who couldn’t have been more than seven years old, but totally knew what she was doing, and completely rocked her performance. (The two teenaged belly dancers who performed later did not come anywhere close.) I wish I'd remembered to charge my point-n-shoot, as the still photos I took didn't do the event justice.

Students were given awards for their performance during the school year, as well as for performing in the talent show. We were all then given free ice cream cones, and with that the festival was over.

(Also, I was able to re-claim my things from my classroom, meaning that I will indeed be able to plan lessons for Monday.)

Sheep Shearing Day

May 31, 2013

Around 10am, my host family and I drove up into the foothills of the mountains to the southeast of Toguz-Bulak to the place where they keep their goats, sheep, and one horse. There are two families who live and work out there, but I wasn’t clear on if they were relatives or just employees. My host family owns roughly 150 sheep, and apparently it was supposed to be sheep shearing day. I watched Rakhat and Nursultan round up sheep to be sheared, and then decided to hike further up into the foothills.

I was quite impressed with how high up I was able to get, especially as I didn’t have B or K or a trusty pack of M&Ms to lure me up the hill. (Of course as Nurel, the 2.5 year old, made it 3/4 of the way as well, I can’t feel all that proud of my efforts!) I hiked to the very top of one hill, from where I could see the entire valley in which Toguz-Bulak, Kul-tor, and one other village are located. I could also see Lake Issyk-Kul from over the tops of the mountain range to the north of the valley, and I could just make out the tops of the mountains to the north of Issyk-Kul.

Nuraika and Nurel
It's difficult to see, but Lake Issyk Kul is on the other side of those brown mountains... The buildings at the bottom left make up the farm from which I hiked.
The village of Toguz Bulak as seen from above
I could see the village of Kol-Tor and the other village in the valley, too

I hiked back down and watched a little bit of sheep shearing… but apparently the electricity connection running up there wasn’t working too well, and as they were using electric shears, this was a bit of a problem. As such, we returned home around 1:30 instead of spending the entire day out there. The sheep were then driven down into the village to be sheared using Toguz-Bulak’s more reliable electricity. (It’s amazing how much the electrical infrastructure has improved in the past five years that a village the size of teeny-tiny Toguz-Bulak can have reasonably reliable electricity!)

Sheep shearing!
The sheep after having been herded down into the village

On an unpleasant note, while we were up in the foothills, I realized that I had neglected to exchange the short (18-55mm) lens on my camera with my long (18-200mm) lens. When we returned, I tried to do that, only to discover that the cap that protects the back end of the lens (not the lens cap, the other end) has gotten wedged in so tightly that I cannot remove it. I hope that it is not completely broken :-( I keep trying to unscrew it, but so far I’ve merely managed to hurt my hand.

Gangnam Style, Toguz-Bulak Style

May 31, 2013

Yesterday was unbelievably surreal, although it started off normally enough. My lesson with Group 1 (med- to high- beginners) focused on a review of things I was pretty sure most of them already knew: different ways of greeting people in different situations, followed by questions one might ask while getting to know someone. In this way I was able to learn that every single one of my students in this class has multiple siblings. Every single one. (I can’t imagine being pregnant once, much less multiple times, much less in the land of squat-toilets.) We then spent some time discussing what they do in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. I learned that the standard question of, “What do you like to do in your free time?” has very different connotations here. These kids don’t have all that much free time. If they’re not doing homework, they’re usually helping their mothers cook or clean, taking care of younger siblings, or helping their fathers with their farm animals. Relaxing in front of the TV (if they have a TV at all, which not all do) is generally done around 9pm, while they’re eating dinner. We discussed phrases like, “milk the cows” and “shear the sheep” – very different phraseology from that featured in the Bishkek-centric textbooks from the London School!

With Group 2, I focused on greetings, followed by numbers and the question “How many _____________ are there?” I taught them the words for the shapes circle, star, triangle, and square, as well as the colors red, blue, black, purple, and green. Those colors just so happen to be the colors of the white-board markers I’d brought with me. I’d also brought along a mini white-board. Using said mini-whiteboard, I drew a variety of shapes, and had my students identify first how many stars (etc.) there were, followed by how many blue (etc.) stars there were, and so on.

In both classes the students continued to be incredibly enthusiastic. I don’t think I’ve ever taught students who were that excited to be in an English class before. We sang Hello, Goodbye again in both classes, and many of the students had already memorized the lyrics!

I had expected to do the same activities with Group 3 (after lunch) as I had done with Group 2. Instead, I returned to the school to a bit of a surprise: the building was locked, and the only people who were around were my students. Several of the boys tried various windows, and one even fished some nails out of his pocket and tried (unsuccessfully) to pick the lock to the school’s front door. Since Rakhat works at the school, and since her son Nursultan was in this class, I sent him off to see if his mom could round up a key to the building.

Now, if I’d had all of my things with me, we could have simply had class outside. Unfortunately, while I’d popped my ipod and portable speaker in my purse when I left for lunch, I’d left everything else in my classroom. I figured that while we were waiting for Nursultan to return, we could listen to Hello, Goodbye. I was impressed to discover that in this class as well, students had made their own copies of the text (I hadn’t asked them to do so) and many had memorized the lyrics. We sang the song twice before Nursultan returned with the news that class had been canceled for the day.

All of the students were visibly disappointed by this news. As such, I asked them if they wanted to have class outside, and the answer was a resounding YES! Of course, at that point I’d already exhausted the only resource in my possession (the ipod), and creating a lesson outside, on the fly, with no resources was rather a challenge. As with the other two classes, we practiced greetings. We then practiced colors (using the colors of their clothing), and then – using a stick (!!!!) – I drew stars, circles, triangles, and squares in the dirt and sort of recreated the lesson that I had done with Group 2.  I then had the students stand in a circle. We practiced counting in a round (to 100) and then drilled days of the week and months of the year. At that point we’d managed to fill the entire hour, so I played Hello, Goodbye one more time and sent them on their merry way.

Group 3 at the end of our outside class. You can see circles, a star, a triangle, and a square etched into the dirt.

I returned home to learn that the director of the Myrzamambetova Public School had invited us over to her house. I was expecting tea and a chat… and as such was wholly unprepared for what I was walking into. The director had thrown a huge party to celebrate the end of the school year, her daughter’s graduation from high school, and (no doubt as an afterthought, given my sudden arrival) my presence in the village. Rakhat and I were among the last to arrive, so I walked in, expecting a quiet tea to discover two lengthy tables, laden with food and surrounded by people. Nearly all of the teachers from the school were there. Most of them were women (I believe we had around five men in attendance, in addition to the director’s husband and son). I ended up seated next to the school’s Russian teacher (the Myrzamambetov Public School is one of the few rural public schools to still have Russian available). This was fortunate, as it gave me someone to talk to – although as I had rapidly grown accustomed to being a better speaker of Russian than pretty much everyone with whom I spoke here in Toguz-Bulak, I suddenly felt self-conscious, being placed next to the one person in the village whose Russian was substantially better than mine.

The table was topped with tons of boorsook, jam, and candy, as well as tea and juice and salads. Within seconds of sitting, I had tons of salad heaped onto my plate, which I diligently worked my way through before realizing that it was the first of something like seven courses. No kidding. There were also rounds and rounds of toasts. Luckily as some of those present were teetotalers, while others (like me) were only moderate drinkers, toasting with juice or wine instead of with vodka was considered an acceptable option. I toasted with white wine, and as such did not become intoxicated. (If I’d had to knock back the hard stuff, I would have been unconscious halfway through; this shindig went on for a long time. And let me just say that the manner in which the middle-aged teaching staff of the Myrzamambetov Public School could knock back the vodka was pretty damn impressive.) 

Several times we went outside between courses to dance. Apparently the most popular song of the moment in the tiny, rural, Kyrgyz village of Toguz-Bulak is Gangnam Style, which we must have listened to at least thirteen times (no exaggeration!). The first time it came on, it was rather surreal… by the end of the evening I was starting to feel like I had somehow gotten stuck inside of one of the endless number of parodies of PSY’s worldwide hit.

It wasn't all PSY. There was a lot of singing in Kyrgyz as well. 

The meal’s main course was beshbarmak, which literally translates to “five fingers” in Kyrgyz, as it’s a meal traditionally eaten with one’s hands. I’ve had beshbarmak before, but it’s always been a noodle-and-sheep dish that seemed like something that would be very difficult to eat with ones hands. Well, while this did indeed come with a noodle-and-sheep dish, each person also got a huge chunk of meat still on the bone and to be attacked using one’s hands (I got a shoulder), accompanied by a chunk of fat (from the fat-tail of the fat-tailed sheep), as well as a cup of piping hot, greasy, boiled-sheep bullion to drink. I have to admit that I am most definitely not a fan of sheep-bullion-as-beverage, but I figured that I needed to take a few swigs in order to be polite. Well, having already manhandled my greasy sheep-shoulder, my hands were quite greasy when I lifted my cup of sheep-bullion to my mouth. I’m sure you can guess what’s coming, although it was quite an unpleasant surprise for me. The cup slipped right out of my hands and toppled directly into my lap. This was both painful (it was hot!!) and horribly embarrassing (I mean, I wasn’t even drunk, for crying out loud!). Sigh.

Shoulder and hunk-o-fat
Aha! Here's the noodle-and-sheep portion.

When the beshbarmak comes out, it usually marks the imminent arrival of the end of the party. Guests are not expected to eat all (or even most) of the huge hunk of meat they’re given. In fact, guests are also given plastic bags into which to put the left-overs to eat the following day (or days, depending).

On our way home from the party, I asked Rakhat if it would be possible for me to get into the school on the following day in order to retrieve my things as everything I needed in order to lesson plan was locked inside. I was told that the school would be locked up all day Friday, but that there would be a festival at the school on Saturday, and that I would be able to reclaim my things then.

Teaching in Toguz-Bulak

May 29, 2013

My classes today went really, really well – especially considering that I had no materials to work with whatsoever, not even a textbook to follow. I had kind of suspected that I wouldn’t be provided with anything, and as such had planned a lesson that could be tweaked to span the course of an hour with essentially any level of students. (And luckily I’m experienced enough that planning an entire 15 day course and all of the materials to go along with it shouldn’t be much of a problem.) I had brought a selection of white-board markers with me, although what I should have brought was a selection of chalk. My classroom (like all the classrooms at the Myrzamambetov Public School) has only one ancient chalkboard. Luckily it has a lot of windows, since while it has six ceiling lights, only two of them work – and they’re pretty dim.

My first class (Group 1) consists of ten high-schoolers, ages 16 to 18. They are my most “advanced” class, and I’d say they range from mid- to high- beginners. My second class (Group 2) consisted of twelve middle-schoolers, ages 13 to 15, and is solidly in the mid-beginner range. My third class (Group 3) consists of thirteen elementary school and lower middle school students, ages 11 to 14, and they are low- to mid- beginners. None are flat beginners (ie, they all at the very least know the alphabet and some basic sentences). Additionally, they all seem to speak Russian to varying degrees. While I like to use English as much as possible in the classroom, I am not one of those ESL/EFL teachers who does not believe in using the student’s native language (or in this case, pre-existing second language) to help facilitate explanations when necessary. All three classes were very excited to see me, and all were incredibly eager to participate. The third (and youngest) class especially was especially excited; students were seriously jumping over each other for the opportunity to read aloud. All three groups really seemed to enjoy the singing.

Group 1 meets from 9:00 to 10:00. Group 2 meets from 10:15 to 11:15. Group 3 meets from 1:30 to 2:30. This means that I have more than a two hour break between my morning classes and my afternoon class.

During my break, I went into the teeny-tiny store located directly across the street from the school. When I say teeny-tiny… well, this place was little more than a kiosk, containing three boxes of juice, a rather comprehensive supply of booze, a lot of cookies and candy, some ice-cream, sausages, sweaters, scarves, and socks. No bottled water whatsoever. Sigh. I bought a miniscule carton of juice and added 475som to my flash drive modem. (Sadly, as the thing is of Chinese origin, it is impossible to tell my balance. I couldn’t figure out what the Russian meant when I requested my balance, so I switched the language to English, and it is just as indecipherable. Chinglish nonsense. So who knows how long my 475som will last me.)

After my third class of the day, I returned home and napped. I nap a lot, no matter what country I’m in or what I’m doing. Rakhat seemed concerned that I might be either sick or homesick or simply bored, so I had to explain that I pretty much need a nap every afternoon. I have to admit, I feel a little bad about this habit, given the insane schedule that Rakhat must keep. Not only does she work at the school, but she takes care of three children – including Nurel who is only 2.5, and she must do things like milk the cows and hand-wash the clothes. She is constantly on the go from before I wake up in the morning until around 11pm.

Rakhat, Nuraika, and Nurel

After my nap, I did some lesson planning for the following day, as well as outlining the general plan for the remaining fourteen days of my course. The London School had given me a laptop in order that I could record audio-files to accompany their Beginner 1, 2, and 3 level texts. The laptop also contained the outlines for their Beginner 1 and 2 texts (as yet unwritten, as far as I can tell) and the actual full electronic file for Beginner 3. I had hoped that I could use the outlines and the text from Beginner 3 in my classroom. Unfortunately, the text was just too Bishkek-centric. Talking about going to the cinema next to Ala-Too Square or dancing in a nightclub after dining in a café near Sovietskaya is great location-centric content for a school based in Bishkek. However, Bishkek might be the capital of Kyrgyzstan, but it is so vastly different from Toguz-Bulak that it might as well be in a different country. Toguz-Bulak doesn’t have any cafés or restaurants to speak of, much less any nightclubs! Additionally, the topics seem more appropriate for adults and university students (ie, discussing careers and university courses) which makes the content rather irrelevant to my 11 to 18 year old Toguz-Bulakian children. Not a problem: I’ll create my own content.

After lesson planning, I watched Rakhat milk the cows (from which she makes fresh kefir, as well as cow-milk kumys every night). Like I said, the amount of work this woman does in one day is simply incredible. I couldn’t do it.

Rakhat milks the cow while Altynbek looks on

Arrival in Toguz-Bulak

May 28, 2013

This morning I awoke quite early, as I had to be at the London School with all of my possessions (which have grown to include a computer, a shyrdak, and a bucket). The taxi driver who drove me to the London School wanted to know where I was from, how old I was, if I was married, if I was a lesbian, if I had a boyfriend, and if I was a virgin. In that order. Great. Welcome to Kyrgyzstan.

I met the London School’s director and her driver at the school and we set off for Toguz-Bulak. We only stopped once along the way, at the rest area at Kholodnie Vodi – not much there other than some kiosks selling snacks, and of course a cold water spring from whence the tiny village gets its name. There was also an incredibly sweet little black dog there. If I had been in my own transport (and going to my own home), I would have taken her with me. I felt pretty terrible leaving her behind.

When we arrived at the village of Toguz-Bulak, our first stop was the Myrzamambetov Public School, where my classes would be held. All of the school’s students and teachers – and apparently a couple of parents – had turned up to meet me and to listen to the London School’s director give a presentation on who I was and why I had come to their village. From the exterior, it was obvious that the school was of fairly new construction, but the interior was dimly lit and frigid, despite the warm, sunny day outside. I grew chilled as the director gave her presentation. Her presentation was entirely in Kyrgyz – a language in which I can only speak a few words – so I don’t know everything that was said. I do know that she included things like:

Don’t ask the American for money. Just because she is a foreigner does not mean that she is wealthy. She is a graduate school student and is poor.

Americans smile a lot. This does not mean that they are crazy or that they want to date you. This is just their way of being polite.

If you wish to do anything with the American, please schedule it with her in advance – don’t spring it on her at the last minute.

Please be punctual. Americans value punctuality.

(While no one asked me for money while I was in Toguz Bulak, I’m pretty sure most people didn’t pay any attention to any of the other ‘tips’ for dealing with The American.)

The Director of The London School gives her presentation
The person on the left is a Smiling American

By the time the presentation had finished, I was feeling thoroughly chilled inside the dark school-building, and was looking forward to returning to the warm outdoors. Alas: during the time of the presentation, the sky had clouded up, and the outdoors had grown rather chilly. I found myself thinking how glad I was that I’d brought fleece-lined leggings to accompany my sundresses!

We left the school and headed towards my host family’s house on the northern edge of the village. They live in a brand-new, two-story house (it was just completed this past November), yet as is true in many Kyrgyz villages, they had no indoor plumbing to speak of. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, a brand-new, two-story house with a pit squatter out back. And a yurt set up in the yard.

My home for the next month.

I met the family who were to be my hosts for the next month: Rakhat and her husband Altynbek, and their three children Nursultan (14), Nuraika (10) and Nurel (2.5). Rakhat teaches at the Myrzamambetov Public School as well – she is a teacher of chemistry and biology. Her husband is a farmer (they raise mostly sheep, but also some cattle, goats, and chickens) as well as the regional deputy who represents the three villages in the valley. We ate plov accompanied by boorsook and jam and copious quantities of tea, and then the London School’s director left.

The fried bread is called boorsook.
My room, complete with my shyrdak :-)

At that point I was feeling pretty exhausted and in need of a nap.

Two hours later, I awoke feeling refreshed and ready to explore my surroundings. I spent a little bit of time watching my hosts plow a small field, using a horse drawn plow. The horse was very compliant. I can just imagine the negative reaction if I attached a plow to the back of either of my horses in the US! They were plowing the field in preparation for planting wheat to feed their animals come wintertime.

Nursultan plows

After spending a little bit of time watching my hosts plow, I decided to go for a walk around the tiny and remote village. Toguz-Bulak is tiny – the size of many neighborhoods in the US – and very desolate: wide dirt streets, small cottages (many in various states of disrepair, although several even nicer than my hosts’ home, and all with pit toilets), livestock roaming free, and in the middle of a wide valley, lined on both the north and the south by tall mountains. From the western edge of the village, I could see two other villages of comparable size: Kul-Tor (where I was initially supposed to go) and one other village.

Main Street, Toguz Bulak
Nearly every village, no matter how small, has a monument to WWII. (The Soviet Union entered the war in 1941, thus the discrepancy with the starting date.)

Unfortunately, I managed to encounter not one but two Creepy Dudes, both in their forties, both quite drunk, and both way too interested in me. The second one actually followed me to my door. Unluckily for me, he turned out to be a childhood friend of Altynbek, and as such was invited in for tea. Aaaargh. Luckily, Rakhat and Altynbek only kept the drunk fellow around just long enough to be polite, then very forcefully sent him on his way. After he left, Rakhat said, “He’s actually a decent guy when he’s sober, but…” Yeah. I am all too familiar with that type, and let me tell you how not interested I am! I decided at that point to invent a fictional boyfriend to start telling people about. Toguz-Bulak is a small enough place that “fact” of whether or not I was single would probably spread very quickly.

After dinner, I sat down to plan my lesson for the following day. I knew that I would have three groups: high school, middle school, and elementary. What I didn’t know was what levels of English skills the students would have or whether or not any of them would speak Russian. I also didn’t know if the school had any materials available for me to use, or if the students even had textbooks. As such, I planned a lesson that was really simple: a personal introduction (including photos from home of my family, my house, and my pets), some basic vocabulary (translated into both Russian and Kyrgyz) and the song Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles. We’ll see how it goes!