So, summertime in Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan is camp time. Country wide, oblast by oblast, volunteers host a variety of summer-camps for local Kyrgyz school children. They come in different lengths and with different themes.
Currently, we have a “leadership” camp running here in Naryn city, hosted out of a local high school, where 40 kids come from 9 to 5, and do activities ranging from anti-smoking sessions, to dancing in the afternoon, to “English for Fun!” In the mornings, I lead a session on “critical thinking.”
What this means, really, is that for half an hour I encourage the kids to be creative, where they are given problems and every answer is correct. One day, the scenario was, “you have two stools, but three people, what do you do?” One group replied, “we’ll sell the two, and buy three cheaper stools,” another replied, “we’ll play Musical Chairs,” and another, “we’ll all just dance.”
For another situation, I asked the students to explain rather mundane occurrences, like, “the sun is not shining,” in both a realistic, and fantastical way. For this example, one group first replied, “because it is cloudy,” and second, “because the sun is offended.” Needless to say, this has been one of the high points of my work out here.
But along with our 40 students, we also have 10 some odd extra volunteers in town helping us run the camp. For the old volunteers, this means seeing those people who winter makes it so difficult to see, and for us new volunteers, this means meeting the old guard, and seeing how work gets done.
It also means after camp, we all get to hang out together. 10 twenty-somethings in an apartment together, cooking, playing cards, just generally being happy. It all reminds me that I joined the Peace Corps not only to do good work, but also because they work hard to build community among us, the volunteers, and remind you that as hard as it is to live so far away, and for so long, you always have good, familiar people close at hand.
So at 10:30 this evening, after stuffed peppers, whipped-cream pie and more Euchre than a person should play, I came home, ready for anything, and that’s just what I found.
Standing before the single hanging bare-bulb in the garage were three generations of thick Kyrgyz men, staring down the gutted carcasses of 7 cows and horses. The oldest of them was hacking apart a spine with an axe while the youngest was separating the rib cages, and throwing them onto a pile, with one of the hides protecting them from the concrete floor. Some of the carcasses, legs cut off at the knees, we just hanging on hooks on a rack. Like a scene from a horror film, whoever would have imagined that a boy from Chicago, hog butcher to the world, could be so fascinated by a room full of slaughtered cows.
Originally Written July 2nd, 2009
