Archive for May, 2009

Quilt of Language

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on May 12, 2009

So my dear friends, I’ve realized from your responses that I’ve done a great job of painting a picture of my daily life, all the while giving you all very little context for what I’m actually doing out here.

Right now I’m living in the small town of Ivanovka doing little more than studying the Kyrgyz language. My weeks consist of for or five days of intensive language training, combined with cultural adjustment training, and technical community development skills. Of the overall experience, Language Trumps All.

Right now, five weeks of total immersion training under my belt, my language is still a patchwork quilt of words, phrases, and half understood grammar. For instance, I know two phrases for trying to get my way.

The first is “Come on, please?” This is, in Kyrgyz, is a very polite way to ask a shopkeeper to give in on a price, for instance. The second is “Do you want to eat a baseball bat?” This is the Kyrgyz equivalent to offering a knuckle sandwich. Now, imagine that my brother is being coy about passing the sugar at the dinner table, which would you say?

This kind of partial language leads conversations with my family to be somehow dreamlike. We always seem to come away knowing things, but are never really sure how it is that we know them, and in the morning are never really sure if we know anything at all. On a recent trip into the mountains, my brother-in-law asked me if I was having fun about ten times – and I must have responded in a new and creative, grammatically incorrect fashion on every occasion.

Learning a new language is truly a humbling experience.

The cultural training is also very curious and informative. For instance, bread in this culture is a truly sacred thing. The traditional homemade bread kind of looks like an oversized bialy, with a thick outer ring and a thin, flat section in the middle. There is a story here of some volunteers once who tossed some of this bread around like a Frisbee and were excommunicated from their village on account of it. Even today, joking about such a thing causes people to shudder. You also shouldn’t shake hands over a doorstep or whistle in the house. And instead of waving, men will put their right hand on their heart and nod their heads.

The technical training is valuable as well. The most stressed element of it all is how much time things will take around here. Our presenters always stress that this isn’t America, and the concept of time as a resource isn’t necessarily one people believe in. To think we’re gonna just show up and get things a’changin’ really isn’t going to be the case. Things will take time. Getting to know our communities, learning their language, and building a rapport with their leaders may be as important as anything else we do. Valuable life skills, I’d say, all around.

Anyway, aside from all the silliness I’ve been regaling you with these past few weeks, those are the real nuts and bolts of my life out here.

Thanks for reading again folks! Here’s Kyrgy Carl, signing off!

Originally Written May 12th, 2009

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Great Sites on a Map of Chalk

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on May 7, 2009

So today, during the middle of week five, we all, the 60 current Peace Corps Trainees learned where we’d be spending the next two years of our lives.

This information had, previous to today, been a closely guarded secret. While, truth be told, they were still tinkering with their final decisions, the real reason for keeping us in the dark was to build a pungent anticipation for the announcement.

The ceremony revolved around us running to our announced locations on a gigantic chalk map of Kyrgyzstan’s 5 oblasts, or states, etched in the parking lot of the orphanage where we rent space to conduct our meetings. We all stood around the map, like the gallery of the Globe Theatre, to wait for our names, and applaud with abandon for our friends.

From this position, we ogled our fellow compatriots, picked out who to visit and when. The atmosphere was festive, jovial, missing only colorful tents and jugglers. Current volunteers came to great us, take pictures, share stories.

As I had hoped, I was placed in Naryn City, a place that will, in all honesty, feel like it is two stops past Siberia. Naryn sits at over 6,500 feet, nestled high in the Tian Shan Mountain range. Winters routinely reach forty below zero. The city is 99% ethnic Kyrgyz. Diet in the summer will be fruits and vegetables from the south, and in the winter is said to consist almost entirely of meat, bread and cabbage.

I didn’t enter the Peace Corps for an easy experience – and it doesn’t look like I’ll be getting one – in short, so far it’s everything I’ve dreamed of.

This news, naturally, put a positive spin on the whole rest of my day. I got ice cream with my teacher in Kant City on the way home. I was in a vest and a button-down, sleeves rolled up, perfect weather to see the fresh snow on the mountains. People often mistake me for one of the many fair skinned ethnic Russians, and today was no different. Every day I feel more like that last puzzle piece finally finding its home.

When I got to my house, the newborn puppies that live under our deck came out for the first time. Grandma, “Great Mother,” was outside tending to some toddlers, and my sister-in-law was slowly boiling a vast field of dumplings.

The night even ended with a surprise, mid-week banya! I stepped out into the cool night, freshly sweated clean, and whistled loud, knowing only that I wanted to interact with my world. My sister came out into the cold, to see only me, no late-night visitor. She laughed at me and went back inside.

I will tell you folks, the most amazing part of this entire experience thus far has been how similar everything is. I lay in my bed at night, thinking of how I could be sleeping anywhere. My family is a family like any other. We work to get along, to have fun with what we’ve got., and who we’ve got around us Its beautiful, and simple, and perfect. So much so far has been both profoundly grandiose and powerfully grounding. People are people, it seems, no matter where they are.

Originally Written April 28th, 2009

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Finally! A Food I don’t Like!

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on May 1, 2009

Never, in all my traveling, have I had something I couldn’t swallow. Testicles, intestines, little baby birds, dog, yak Momos (complete with bone chips,) rancid Yak Butter Tea and its consistency of hot snot – most of these things, in fact, I’ve rather liked.

To be perfectly honest, the intestines were kinda like calamari, the testicles were flavorless, the little baby birds were pleasantly crunchy, the dog was incredibly well seasoned (and called “steak”), the Momos were so thick and hearty it felt good just knowing you were eating them (despite having to spit out the bones,) and I’m sure the Yak Butter Tea I had was only the sissy foreigner’s version.
See, the thing I’ve found traveling is that your experience with food can be telltale to the depth of your experience in general. In the country I’ve spent longest, China, It took months before I got some really bad Chinese food. But here in Kyrgyzstan I’ve had the great fortune of being offered food I don’t like after only 3 weeks!

But let’s take a step back for a minute. There are plenty of foods in the States I don’t like. I’m sure there are for all of us. But if you were just coming to America for a visit, you’d probably only stop at nice restaurants, and only at people’s houses who would feed you well. On such a visit, you’d be experiencing, by choice, a Disneyland of America, one that catered to your desires.
But that’s not really what I look for here in Kyrgyzstan, and that’s why yesterday was so wonderful.

So my little sister came home with a 2-inch piece of thick white sidewalk chalk. But it wasn’t chalk, you see, it was some sort of candy. I’d seen neighborhood kids eating it before; a treat they sell at my family’s little corner store. They’d break off little pieces of it and pop them while playing in the street.

This time my sister still had some when she got home, and offered me a bit. As soon as this thing entered my mouth, it was sensory overload. I imagine it is some sort of dairy product – it had the texture of wet chalk, and tasted like sweat. I coughed and gagged and my eyes started to water; my sister giggled, and feigned distress. As a courtesy, I hid the thing under my tongue while she inspected my mouth. Then we chased each other around the yard until we were both tired, when I snuck off somewhere quietly to spit the stuff out.

The fact that I have now had some food that really challenges my senses signifies to me that my Kyrgyzstan amusement park may be beginning to end. It tells me the people are connecting with me, trusting me, showing me their more curious delights. At this point, it isn’t about the flavor of the food, it’s about the flavor of the people – and it is with that flavor that I am agreeing quite well.

Originally Written April 22nd, 2009

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