Turkmenistan Journal November 2009 A Sense of the Place
Mary, Turkmenistan
Where I live, Kuweit, some people call a village. Probably it used to be a kilometer or so from the city of Mary, but now there are communities and businesses from here to there. It is a village in the sense that the only shops are small groceries and car repair shops. There are no doctors or pharmacies or fabric shops, no gift shops or shoe shops. Of course, the great Yarmarka Bazaar is just down the road, and there is every manner of shop there, but in the village sense, Yarmarka is worlds away.
Every house on this street, and every house on every street in Kuweit, is made of yellow brick. The houses are built almost on the street. A margin of about two yards separates the cars from the bedroom walls. In this margin, some people have trained up beautiful grape vines. Others have planted scrubby shrubs or fig trees. One house has tall pine trees that whistle strangely in the wind just like the pine trees in Colorado. One house is defaced by a flesh colored plaster, arched at the top. The craving for something different must have been intense.
Another architectural feature is punched and shaped tin ornamentation. I saw this often in Azerbaijan, but there it was confined mostly to roof lines and gutters. Here, it is used to decorate spouts and roof pipes and hung across the –what is that bit of the house between the flat ceiling line and the triangular roof line? – anyway, highly decorative tin is used to decorate the house in that space. Another method of decorating is to incise the bricks. A nearby house looks, at first glance, like a rough stone castle, but on inspection, it is just yellow bricks incised in about twenty different ways. Every house has a heavy steel gate and door, and except for brief moments or momentous occasions—weddings or funerals, the gates are closed.
When I see an open gate, I stare inside as hard as I can. I have been told that this is rude, but I want to see how people live. Behind the gates, I see dirt courtyards, clean or junky, but always the topchan located to catch the breeze. There are scruffy trees or beautiful rose gardens. There is usually lots of concrete. I have tried to figure how much concrete is right outside MY window—a driveway 50 paces long and about 10 paces wide, and the remaining three sides of the concrete courtyard that total probably 80 paces in length and about 8 paces wide. Lots of concrete. The garden is in the center… about 35 x 25 feet. There is no grass, just weeds and very poor trees.
To get to the Yarmarka Bazaar, I walk down the street and cross the creek over a bridge made of heavy sheets of iron welded together. This is where I do my main shopping once or twice a week. They are modernizing the bazaar by putting up white plastic clad aluminum shops. This bothers me. The bazaar is interesting because it is open and you can see seven tables of carrots or eggplants at once. You can see the whole row of kebab vendors. One man hangs a purple sunshade, and another hangs a yellow one and that makes the bazaar beautiful. The aluminum shops are all the same, but I suppose the vendors are happy to get in out of the weather though invariably these little shops are uncomfortably warm with poor, or no, air conditioning, or they are stiflingly hot in the winter from over heating.
All over the neighborhood are small groceries, medieval quick trips. I love them, and I can not resist going into each one to see if there might not be something different for sale. No. The contents are as uniform as if they were ordered by law. Some don’t even turn their lights on and you go into and shop with squinting eyes.
I often exercise at the new stadium built here in Kuweit. I am not allowed inside but run on the access road across the front. It is about three quarters of a mile from my house. I walk through my darkened neighborhood, cross a busy highway, and then walk through another darkened neighborhood. Small groups of teenaged boys are always hanging out, joking and playing with their cell phones. Sometimes after I am past them, I hear, “Hello, hello.” I pass another house where the street is always wet after the woman has done the laundry, by hand, at the faucet in front of the house. She has thrown pan after pan of water into the street which serves to wash the street also. The tandir oven is there, too, but in the evening the oven is long cold. There is the wife/mother doing the laundry and an old woman at this house. I passed one evening, in my modest exercise clothes, and gave the old woman a pleasant, “Salaam aleikum.” She gave me a look that would freeze paint. I tried again on another night but got the same response, so I leave her alone now.
I arrive at the stadium, and wave to the guards. Now that the weather is colder, I have to shed my coats and scarves as I run, and I hang them on the guard’s chair. Some evenings, young kids bring their huge dogs to run there, and that makes me very nervous, although I have not seen a dog seriously intimidate a human yet. Most of the street dogs are interested only in finding food and shelter, not biting people. I feel sorry for the guards. The job has got to be tedious because really, nothing is happening. What can someone do? Break into the stadium and unbolt a plastic seat?
Other nights I stay home and exercise in my yard. Last week there was a dust storm and the sky that night was a gray brown mauve. With the yellow glow of the street lights and the glow of the city, I felt I was in a bubble. Only the brightest stars were visible through the dark and the dust—the dramatic summer triangle of Deneb, Vega and Altair—shifting westward. Now, if you look up at about 9 o’clock, you will see the Great Square overhead. From the courtyard of my house, the lower constellations are not visible, but over the fall I have enjoyed watching the Swan move westward and have enjoyed seeing Cepheus again—a constellation I first learned in Mound City. Northward of the Great Square is Cassiopeia—the elongated ‘w’. Between the Square and Cassiopeia is the constellation Andromeda and, not visible to me, the Andromeda Nebula…just right over our heads these fall evenings. From the opposite corner where Andromeda is attached to the Square, you will find Pegasus, the winged horse. The Great Square is actually part of those constellations; divide it into two triangles and you will have the wing of Pegasus, and Andromeda’s head is the bright star at the opposite corner. Orion and Gemini will be appearing in the weeks to come. They are beautiful and easy to spot. The stars are a part of my life here. I warm up or exercise, hidden by the walls of my gated house, and I can look at the bricks, or I can look up to the heavens. The city lights block out the western constellations, but I am lucky the sky is dark and clear to the east.
I have to take taxis into town. If I had a bike, I could ride, but I don’t and I don’t know if I will get one. The taxis are never ending trials, occasionally funny and interesting, and occasionally irritating. One old Geezer in Ashgabat proposed to me before getting me to my hotel, but then complained loudly that I hadn’t paid him enough so I don’t think he was serious about marriage.
Some of my favorite people here are the Lada Lancers, or more appropriately, the Lada Geezers. Anyone here can drive a taxi. People stand in the road with their hand down and out and a car will stop. Maybe it is a taxi, maybe it is a young guy who needs to earn a manat or two. A lot of old men are behind the wheels of a lot of old Ladas. They must be great cars because the roads are full of them. The Geezers that drive the Ladas are old and their cars are old too. I once got into one and sunk to the floorboards. Sometimes they are so dirty I have to wave the Geezer on. The windshields are usually cracked, and they are never clean. The window cranks are always missing. Always. In Cairo I noticed this phenomenon also but if you asked the driver for the window crank, he would pass one back. Here, no. When the weather was blistering hot, I looked to see if the car had window cranks. If it didn’t, I didn’t get in. Another unusual feature is that about half these old Ladas reek of gasoline. I have had to get out long before arriving at my destination because the smell was overwhelming.
But beyond the personality of the car, is the personality of the driver. Today, I had to tell the driver I did not speak Russian or Turkmen but only English. “Engilische. Engilische.” He repeated “Engilishce” all the way home. A few days ago I told the Geezer I spoke English and he wanted to know where I was from. “America,” I said. Oh, he couldn’t have been happier if a giraffe had gotten into his taxi. I didn’t mind except that he kept turning completely around to smile at me and say, “Amerikanski,” and shake his head with wonder. I kept motioning toward the road, saying, “Shall we watch the road?” and he kept turning back to me smiling. I made his day, but I thought he was going to kill me. Another driver had to tell me he had been to America, Florida, in 1999. He repeated this about ten times—a peculiar habit of some people here, especially men. Anyway this Geezer kept taking both hands off the wheel, waving nine fingers, saying, “Nine, nine, nine, Florida, nine.” I think he was driving with his knees.
Everything is a little adventure, but frankly, I don’t want buying rice, like yesterday, to be an adventure. The Azeri word for rice is duyi. I went to the market looking for rice but didn’t see the 50 lb bag. I was asking for duyi, then saw a bag that I thought was rice. The girl said, “Duz.” Oh, I was thinking, that is strange. In Azeri, duz means salt and here it means rice. I got home and measured out my rice, but it didn’t look quite right, and that is because it was, after all, salt—the chunky, slightly brownish salt sold here. Ha. I looked in my Turkmen children’s picture dictionary for the word for rice: tuwi. Ha. I cursed the girl in the shop for not figuring out what I had wanted. I went back out but went to the closer shop. No problem. One kilo of tuwi. But the woman in the shop would not believe that I don’t speak Russian or Turkmen. I mean, she went on and on and on, and I said, “Dushenmok, dushenmok, dushenmok.” “I don’t understand, I don’t understand, I don’t understand.” And she went on and on and on with such a hopeful look that I wanted to whack her. I was quite ill with stomach upset and that is why I was needing rice and she was giving me a Turkmen as a Mystery Language lesson. You can see that adventure is literally just around the corner and maybe not always welcome. Of course, when I compare this woman with the paint freezing Geezerette down the street, I will take the talkative, senseless woman and hope for the best.
I hope all is well with everyone. Holiday season again. Holidays away from home are getting more melancholy, but I will have a brief holiday in Baku in January and our Fellow conference is in Cairo so I will trundle off to Egypt again in February. I have a few days holiday after that conference too. I may stay there for a camel trek…. or maybe go visit Lynne in India! Now that’s an adventure I can look forward to!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
April/May Turkmenistan Journal
Just in case this letter ends up on my Blog, I must say that the opinions expressed here are my own personal opinions and observations are my own observations made without benefit of knowing the language; the opinions and observations are not those of the program I work for, the English Language Fellow Program, nor of the State Department which sponsors my program.
Dear Family and Friends,
Another big night in Ashgabat. I’ve got the labels scraped off the jam jars, so I am ready for about anything that comes along. I’m not exactly optimistic but not totally pessimistic either—kinda neutral. Kinda tired. But today was a good day after the worst part—the morning—was over. Once in the office, I thought I’d take a quick minute to check my email, but had an email from my old job. My former employer did not receive the faxed copies of insurance and disclosure forms for my shipment of STUFF back to Kansas , and they were on the verge, the very edge of the verge, of putting the stuff in deep, deep storage. This is some kind of government storage for people like me who can’t do anything right. I would be late for conversation class, but I had to run back and forth, retrieving forms, resending as scanned emails, praying and sacrificing things, in order to get the paperwork in order. My internet once again is not working at home, and I won’t know until tomorrow morning if the documents arrived or if the shipment is deep sixed. On the bright side, I had an apple fritter and beet salad for lunch. (Later: YES, documents arrived!)
Classes today were heartening. The first class was pretty funny. As I have mentioned, I have two chicken experts in my first class. One is a vet specializing in chicken stress and the other is in the government health ministry. The vet says the funniest things quite by accident, but he loves chickens, and that says a lot for a man. Today I introduced summary writing. I asked, “What does summarize mean?” Again, not feeling optimistic, but you never know. T---murat responded, “Japanese military.” There was a quiet pause while the rest of us searched the etymology. I wrote ‘samurai’ on the board and mimed a samurai with his sword. T---murat was in an expansive mood today, and after a successful guess later in the class, announced “Chicken for everyone—future tense.” He has yet to come to grips with ‘will’ and in sentences about the future, he just gives the verb then adds ‘future tense.’ So, someday, our class eat future tense chicken. (Later: Actually, the chicken was only for me. On Thursday, he brought me a fresh frozen chicken)
My second class had planned a field trip (these are all adults—postgraduate students who receive a stipend while taking special classes). We went to an ancient site just a few miles from Ashgabat: Old Nissa. Very interesting. Nissa is a former capital city of the Parthians, whoever they are, dating from about 3rd century BC to 300 AD. It is another of the Silk Road cities and once was home to some of the great thinkers of those times. The setting is beautiful. It has rained about 7 feet in the last three weeks and the hills were covered in brilliant green with wild flowers scattered everywhere. Old Nissa is in the foothills of the Kopet Dag Mountains, and from the top of the old city walls—now converted into ‘hills’ themselves—we could see into the ruins of the ancient city, Nissa, into multiple excavations, and into a small village with cows and camels grazing. The setting was quiet and peaceful. After Nissa, my students took me to the trailhead of the Health Walk.
The Health Walk is a fantastic walk, almost 30 kilometers long, that wends its way along the peaks of the mountains that separate Turkmenistan from Iran (the mountain plus a few more kilometers), through the foothills, and down into the adjacent fields. The former president created this walkway. On International Health Day (“You know about this day, don’t you? It is international!”), April 7, government leaders meet at the trailhead for a longish walk. The Health Walk is next on my list of things to do right away. (Later: Went to health walk last Sunday; walked about 2 kilometers up the mountain.)
Konye Urgench
T-Journal: On the road to Mary
But why am I prattling on about classes and health walks when I have been traveling for the past three weekends. Such a great job! My first road trip was to Mary. Mary, too, is an ancient center of life with the ancient capital of Merv just outside the city and Gonur Depe just a couple of hours north. Bronze Age sites just out your back door. Of course, I worked on these jaunts. Fridays were for teacher workshops and maybe student classes…just whatever could be gotten together. Saturday and Sundays were for touring.
I flew to Mary along with my director and his wife. The trip is 40 minutes and we were in the waiting room at the airport for longer than the length of the trip. We arrived in Mary, a town of about 120,000, and when we got off the plane, we were left to stroll over to the terminal building. Just a bunch of lemmings. The baggage carousel was cute—about half the size of a typical carousel—about 6 feet long. I watched the blue dump truck bringing the baggage and backing up to the carousel. What with all the old grannies going to and from villages, a lot of food is transported and my little plum colored suitcase rolled out under what I think was a bag of defrosting chickens. This past weekend I returned from Turkmenabat, and I am sure my suitcase had been next to green beans—smelled just like DelMonte’s.
We made our way to the hotel, a very nice, new one, and my companions left for the carpet shop while I drank eight cups of coffee. While having my coffee, the clerk approached with a man and said, “This man is Mr. Mohammed and he wants to ask you some questions. He is from the government.” “I don’t speak Russian or Turkmen,” I said, and the clerk translated. Basically it was all about “When, for how long, with whom, with whose permission, to where, why, and where are the papers?” My boss had the papers. I had nothing. A few minutes passed this way. I smiled a lot. Another, younger man approached. The first man said, “This is Murat. He will take you where you want and will help you all day.” Then he pointed to another man near the doors. “Do you see that man? He will also help you all day. He will take care of any problems.” Ha! The only problem I had was sitting there talking to me. Then he said, “We can take you to where you need to go.” It was early, but I didn’t know how to disagree. And then I started thinking about which of my friends could pay the ransom if any were needed. Ha! No one! The three men would eventually grow weary of my nagging and would release me, so I wasn’t worried.
I named my “helpers” Pete and Repeat and the three of us arrived to a class of about 65 students who asked me questions for about twenty minutes, and then my director arrived and gave his encouraging speech, and then it was time to begin the workshop. We were going to discuss a topic and begin writing, and I divided the kids into small groups and each group had a question to discuss. I had just gotten all the groups going when an official came to say they needed that classroom and we were finished.
We were wiling away the time in a teachers’ room, when suddenly someone came in and my director said, “Let’s go. They found a class for us.” So I taught a class—had a nice little exercise writing about people in photographs—then we had more tea with the teachers, and when it came time for the teacher workshop, the teachers said, “Can we just have a conversation with you? We never get to practice with a native speaker.” And that is what we did. Pete and Repeat sat through the whole thing. Ha ha ha.
Mary
The highlight of the Mary trip was the excursion to Gonur Depe (Deh-peh). I have some very nice photos if I can ever get them uploaded. Gonur Depe, also called Margush or Margiana, is a Bronze Age site. It was a walled city, and within the city, the king or khan, lived within another walled area. This city is possibly the birthplace of Zoroastrianism. In Gonur Depe, the ovens are two-chambered, and the conclusion is that the fire was built in one chamber and the meat placed in the second chamber because in Zoroastrianism, fire should not touch the meat. The city was small; very important and very small. It is difficult to imagine how such a small place could have been so important.
Gonur Depe
Ashgabat is a quiet city of about 800,000 people; Mary has about 120,000 people and is much, much quieter. On Saturday evening, I walked up and down the empty streets and when I found myself window shopping in a plumbing supply store, I realized that life in Mary might be a bit TOO quiet.
My next trip was to Turkmenabat—another wide open city of low architecture and dust. It is in eastern Turkmenistan and is quite near Uzbekistan . Again, I worked on Friday, and on Saturday I spent several hours at the Dunya Bazaar accompanied by the Uzbek taxi driver who took me there. The Dunya Bazaar is great—a huge area of open air shops and covered markets. I bought a charm that is protection against the evil eye. Turkmenabat has few attractions and nothing near the city. It is the base for travel to the Kugitang Nature Reserve which I had planned to go to but learned too late that Kugitang was a six hour car ride one way.
Turkmenabat
My final outing was to Dashoguz in the north. Again, near Uzbekistan , and in fact, the region and its counterpart in Uzbekistan are the same culture artificially divided at some point in recent history. I am not sure of the politics, but everyone has to have special permission to travel to Dashoguz. Once free of official paperwork, the city is like Mary and Turkmenabat—wide open, huge areas of untended parks, large city parks with lots of concrete and statues…a feeling that you are on the edge of the earth.
I gave a workshop for students at an institute in Dashoguz. The Director said that if I had time, there was a school program I could attend…but only if I had time and felt like going. I asked the translator if we should stay, and she said whatever I wanted. I agreed to attend the program and was surprised to discover that the program was for ME alone. The Director, my translator and I were the only audience! I was very, very glad that I had agreed to watch the program. The program was really quite bizarre but very touching. The students—the ones I had just had in my workshop—dressed up in animal costumes and sang about a dozen animal songs including “Mary had a little lamb,” “Old MacDonald” and a number of other songs I had long ago forgotten. They concluded the program with “It’s a Small World.” I don’t want to describe my feelings…I mean, I do, but I can’t, because if this ends up on my Blog, feelings could get complicated. The visit to the institute ended with photographs. I was the star! And there was a great deal of manipulating as to who got to sit beside me: director, translator, average teacher, any student, weak student, better teacher, best student, translator, director…It was musical chairs with only one chair. I have learned in these situations just to patiently wait while the culture works its own solution.
In Dashoguz, I stayed in a very odd hotel. The bottom floor of the building is a print shop and the owner turned the second floor into six hotel rooms. That is OK, but I was the only occupant. During my teacher training session on Friday, the hotel owner called my translator and asked what I wanted for breakfast on Saturday, because he would be making it himself! He closed his print shop at noon on Saturday and gave me a set of keys to the building, and it was extremely eerie to return there in the evening, let myself in, and roam the hall and kitchen alone. I was not afraid, but it was just so peculiar.
There is a fantastic bazaar in Dashoguz: the Bai Bazaar. It was about 1½ miles from my hotel, so I walked there and spent hours and hours walking around. No one speaks English in these places so I am glad to have the numbers I learned in Azerbaijan which are the same here. Have I mentioned that bread in these regions, and in Azerbaijan , is treated with great respect? It is sacred, in a way, because it is life. My first experience with this was in Baku . I was walking with my friend, Kamran, eating a sandwich and tossed the last bite of bread into the grass. He stopped, picked it up, and carefully placed it under a bush, and then gave me a very important lesson in culture. Always treat bread with respect. Never throw it down thoughtlessly. Never throw it into the trash. Never place it upside down. Never even SAY anything bad about bread. Last summer, a cookie (it is made from flour and therefore worthy of respect) fell off a shop counter. A man picked it up and moved it to his forehead and eyes and repeated the motion. Then he put it into his pocket to respectfully dispose of later. Anyway, in the Bai Bazaar, they were making fantastic bread made with butter or oil, and the edges are very flaky but tough. Delicious. I bought one and was eating it as I walked through the bazaar. A vendor called out and when I looked at her, she pointed down to the ground behind me. I looked and saw a flake of bread, half the size of my thumb, had fallen off. I was glad I knew what to do. I picked up the flake and carefully put it into a piece of folded paper in my hand. One day I bought a round of bread at a shop and when I went to get my money out, I laid the bread upside down on the counter. I knew better but forgot. The clerk let out a squawk. I grabbed the bread and turned it over apologizing to the woman. On my way to classes, I have twice seen young men pick up scraps of bread off the road and place them on a ledge or respectfully place them where birds might eat them. In fact, they were probably dropped by the crows that live here. Very interesting. There are pictures from the Bai Bazaar including a series of bread being made, but not the bread of this story.
Dear Family and Friends,
Another big night in Ashgabat. I’ve got the labels scraped off the jam jars, so I am ready for about anything that comes along. I’m not exactly optimistic but not totally pessimistic either—kinda neutral. Kinda tired. But today was a good day after the worst part—the morning—was over. Once in the office, I thought I’d take a quick minute to check my email, but had an email from my old job. My former employer did not receive the faxed copies of insurance and disclosure forms for my shipment of STUFF back to Kansas , and they were on the verge, the very edge of the verge, of putting the stuff in deep, deep storage. This is some kind of government storage for people like me who can’t do anything right. I would be late for conversation class, but I had to run back and forth, retrieving forms, resending as scanned emails, praying and sacrificing things, in order to get the paperwork in order. My internet once again is not working at home, and I won’t know until tomorrow morning if the documents arrived or if the shipment is deep sixed. On the bright side, I had an apple fritter and beet salad for lunch. (Later: YES, documents arrived!)
Classes today were heartening. The first class was pretty funny. As I have mentioned, I have two chicken experts in my first class. One is a vet specializing in chicken stress and the other is in the government health ministry. The vet says the funniest things quite by accident, but he loves chickens, and that says a lot for a man. Today I introduced summary writing. I asked, “What does summarize mean?” Again, not feeling optimistic, but you never know. T---murat responded, “Japanese military.” There was a quiet pause while the rest of us searched the etymology. I wrote ‘samurai’ on the board and mimed a samurai with his sword. T---murat was in an expansive mood today, and after a successful guess later in the class, announced “Chicken for everyone—future tense.” He has yet to come to grips with ‘will’ and in sentences about the future, he just gives the verb then adds ‘future tense.’ So, someday, our class eat future tense chicken. (Later: Actually, the chicken was only for me. On Thursday, he brought me a fresh frozen chicken)
My second class had planned a field trip (these are all adults—postgraduate students who receive a stipend while taking special classes). We went to an ancient site just a few miles from Ashgabat: Old Nissa. Very interesting. Nissa is a former capital city of the Parthians, whoever they are, dating from about 3rd century BC to 300 AD. It is another of the Silk Road cities and once was home to some of the great thinkers of those times. The setting is beautiful. It has rained about 7 feet in the last three weeks and the hills were covered in brilliant green with wild flowers scattered everywhere. Old Nissa is in the foothills of the Kopet Dag Mountains, and from the top of the old city walls—now converted into ‘hills’ themselves—we could see into the ruins of the ancient city, Nissa, into multiple excavations, and into a small village with cows and camels grazing. The setting was quiet and peaceful. After Nissa, my students took me to the trailhead of the Health Walk.
The Health Walk is a fantastic walk, almost 30 kilometers long, that wends its way along the peaks of the mountains that separate Turkmenistan from Iran (the mountain plus a few more kilometers), through the foothills, and down into the adjacent fields. The former president created this walkway. On International Health Day (“You know about this day, don’t you? It is international!”), April 7, government leaders meet at the trailhead for a longish walk. The Health Walk is next on my list of things to do right away. (Later: Went to health walk last Sunday; walked about 2 kilometers up the mountain.)
Konye Urgench
T-Journal: On the road to Mary
But why am I prattling on about classes and health walks when I have been traveling for the past three weekends. Such a great job! My first road trip was to Mary. Mary, too, is an ancient center of life with the ancient capital of Merv just outside the city and Gonur Depe just a couple of hours north. Bronze Age sites just out your back door. Of course, I worked on these jaunts. Fridays were for teacher workshops and maybe student classes…just whatever could be gotten together. Saturday and Sundays were for touring.
I flew to Mary along with my director and his wife. The trip is 40 minutes and we were in the waiting room at the airport for longer than the length of the trip. We arrived in Mary, a town of about 120,000, and when we got off the plane, we were left to stroll over to the terminal building. Just a bunch of lemmings. The baggage carousel was cute—about half the size of a typical carousel—about 6 feet long. I watched the blue dump truck bringing the baggage and backing up to the carousel. What with all the old grannies going to and from villages, a lot of food is transported and my little plum colored suitcase rolled out under what I think was a bag of defrosting chickens. This past weekend I returned from Turkmenabat, and I am sure my suitcase had been next to green beans—smelled just like DelMonte’s.
We made our way to the hotel, a very nice, new one, and my companions left for the carpet shop while I drank eight cups of coffee. While having my coffee, the clerk approached with a man and said, “This man is Mr. Mohammed and he wants to ask you some questions. He is from the government.” “I don’t speak Russian or Turkmen,” I said, and the clerk translated. Basically it was all about “When, for how long, with whom, with whose permission, to where, why, and where are the papers?” My boss had the papers. I had nothing. A few minutes passed this way. I smiled a lot. Another, younger man approached. The first man said, “This is Murat. He will take you where you want and will help you all day.” Then he pointed to another man near the doors. “Do you see that man? He will also help you all day. He will take care of any problems.” Ha! The only problem I had was sitting there talking to me. Then he said, “We can take you to where you need to go.” It was early, but I didn’t know how to disagree. And then I started thinking about which of my friends could pay the ransom if any were needed. Ha! No one! The three men would eventually grow weary of my nagging and would release me, so I wasn’t worried.
I named my “helpers” Pete and Repeat and the three of us arrived to a class of about 65 students who asked me questions for about twenty minutes, and then my director arrived and gave his encouraging speech, and then it was time to begin the workshop. We were going to discuss a topic and begin writing, and I divided the kids into small groups and each group had a question to discuss. I had just gotten all the groups going when an official came to say they needed that classroom and we were finished.
We were wiling away the time in a teachers’ room, when suddenly someone came in and my director said, “Let’s go. They found a class for us.” So I taught a class—had a nice little exercise writing about people in photographs—then we had more tea with the teachers, and when it came time for the teacher workshop, the teachers said, “Can we just have a conversation with you? We never get to practice with a native speaker.” And that is what we did. Pete and Repeat sat through the whole thing. Ha ha ha.
Mary
The highlight of the Mary trip was the excursion to Gonur Depe (Deh-peh). I have some very nice photos if I can ever get them uploaded. Gonur Depe, also called Margush or Margiana, is a Bronze Age site. It was a walled city, and within the city, the king or khan, lived within another walled area. This city is possibly the birthplace of Zoroastrianism. In Gonur Depe, the ovens are two-chambered, and the conclusion is that the fire was built in one chamber and the meat placed in the second chamber because in Zoroastrianism, fire should not touch the meat. The city was small; very important and very small. It is difficult to imagine how such a small place could have been so important.
Gonur Depe
Ashgabat is a quiet city of about 800,000 people; Mary has about 120,000 people and is much, much quieter. On Saturday evening, I walked up and down the empty streets and when I found myself window shopping in a plumbing supply store, I realized that life in Mary might be a bit TOO quiet.
My next trip was to Turkmenabat—another wide open city of low architecture and dust. It is in eastern Turkmenistan and is quite near Uzbekistan . Again, I worked on Friday, and on Saturday I spent several hours at the Dunya Bazaar accompanied by the Uzbek taxi driver who took me there. The Dunya Bazaar is great—a huge area of open air shops and covered markets. I bought a charm that is protection against the evil eye. Turkmenabat has few attractions and nothing near the city. It is the base for travel to the Kugitang Nature Reserve which I had planned to go to but learned too late that Kugitang was a six hour car ride one way.
Turkmenabat
My final outing was to Dashoguz in the north. Again, near Uzbekistan , and in fact, the region and its counterpart in Uzbekistan are the same culture artificially divided at some point in recent history. I am not sure of the politics, but everyone has to have special permission to travel to Dashoguz. Once free of official paperwork, the city is like Mary and Turkmenabat—wide open, huge areas of untended parks, large city parks with lots of concrete and statues…a feeling that you are on the edge of the earth.
I gave a workshop for students at an institute in Dashoguz. The Director said that if I had time, there was a school program I could attend…but only if I had time and felt like going. I asked the translator if we should stay, and she said whatever I wanted. I agreed to attend the program and was surprised to discover that the program was for ME alone. The Director, my translator and I were the only audience! I was very, very glad that I had agreed to watch the program. The program was really quite bizarre but very touching. The students—the ones I had just had in my workshop—dressed up in animal costumes and sang about a dozen animal songs including “Mary had a little lamb,” “Old MacDonald” and a number of other songs I had long ago forgotten. They concluded the program with “It’s a Small World.” I don’t want to describe my feelings…I mean, I do, but I can’t, because if this ends up on my Blog, feelings could get complicated. The visit to the institute ended with photographs. I was the star! And there was a great deal of manipulating as to who got to sit beside me: director, translator, average teacher, any student, weak student, better teacher, best student, translator, director…It was musical chairs with only one chair. I have learned in these situations just to patiently wait while the culture works its own solution.
In Dashoguz, I stayed in a very odd hotel. The bottom floor of the building is a print shop and the owner turned the second floor into six hotel rooms. That is OK, but I was the only occupant. During my teacher training session on Friday, the hotel owner called my translator and asked what I wanted for breakfast on Saturday, because he would be making it himself! He closed his print shop at noon on Saturday and gave me a set of keys to the building, and it was extremely eerie to return there in the evening, let myself in, and roam the hall and kitchen alone. I was not afraid, but it was just so peculiar.
There is a fantastic bazaar in Dashoguz: the Bai Bazaar. It was about 1½ miles from my hotel, so I walked there and spent hours and hours walking around. No one speaks English in these places so I am glad to have the numbers I learned in Azerbaijan which are the same here. Have I mentioned that bread in these regions, and in Azerbaijan , is treated with great respect? It is sacred, in a way, because it is life. My first experience with this was in Baku . I was walking with my friend, Kamran, eating a sandwich and tossed the last bite of bread into the grass. He stopped, picked it up, and carefully placed it under a bush, and then gave me a very important lesson in culture. Always treat bread with respect. Never throw it down thoughtlessly. Never throw it into the trash. Never place it upside down. Never even SAY anything bad about bread. Last summer, a cookie (it is made from flour and therefore worthy of respect) fell off a shop counter. A man picked it up and moved it to his forehead and eyes and repeated the motion. Then he put it into his pocket to respectfully dispose of later. Anyway, in the Bai Bazaar, they were making fantastic bread made with butter or oil, and the edges are very flaky but tough. Delicious. I bought one and was eating it as I walked through the bazaar. A vendor called out and when I looked at her, she pointed down to the ground behind me. I looked and saw a flake of bread, half the size of my thumb, had fallen off. I was glad I knew what to do. I picked up the flake and carefully put it into a piece of folded paper in my hand. One day I bought a round of bread at a shop and when I went to get my money out, I laid the bread upside down on the counter. I knew better but forgot. The clerk let out a squawk. I grabbed the bread and turned it over apologizing to the woman. On my way to classes, I have twice seen young men pick up scraps of bread off the road and place them on a ledge or respectfully place them where birds might eat them. In fact, they were probably dropped by the crows that live here. Very interesting. There are pictures from the Bai Bazaar including a series of bread being made, but not the bread of this story.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
DISCLAIMER
I teach English as a Foreign Language. Sometimes I am hired directly by a university or program. Currently, I am a grant recipient--an English Language Fellow. This is a program of the Educational and Cultural Affairs Division of the State Department. In this blog, I have not mentioned my ELF program but I did mention it in other blogs. Currently, all Fellows who blog are requested to post the following disclaimer:
"This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the English Language Fellows' own and do not represent the English Language Fellow Program or the U.S. Department of State."
I believe that this disclaimer may add weight to my blog which it otherwise would not have. Nevertheless, as you read my blogs, it will be obvious that the opinions and observations are my own.
"This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website. The views and information presented are the English Language Fellows' own and do not represent the English Language Fellow Program or the U.S. Department of State."
I believe that this disclaimer may add weight to my blog which it otherwise would not have. Nevertheless, as you read my blogs, it will be obvious that the opinions and observations are my own.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Ashgabat: Day 42
Dearest family and friends, February 26, 2009
Well, goodness. Here I am in Turkmenistan. How did this happen? And what a strange place! The bread is good, Jonathan, but fortunately, not as good as in Azerbaijan, AND difficult to find it hot…all kinds of state run bakeries churning out thousands of loaves that are distributed to state shops, and other shops, all over the city. Within a block of my apartment, there are, I would say, 15 shops, most the equivalent of small Quick Stops. Some are the size of a large closet. Some have no walls; the vendor sets out bags of potatoes, carrots and onions. An old woman huddles with recycled Coke bottles of fresh milk, and another commands a rickety platform stacked with eggs. To get cheese, fruit and fresh greens, you must go to the big bazaars, the nearest to me, the Teke Bazaar, being about a mile away, and the Russian Bazaar, maybe 1 ½ miles away. I love the walk but don’t like the carrying home part. I could take a taxi but am reluctant to try. Taxis are unmarked here—just guys driving around without the hassle and expense of licenses. To flag a taxi is easy: stand in the road and hold your hand down and slightly out with palm side in. But then you have to give the name of your street, and that is where my confidence fails. Tomorrow.
A new culture to discover. Working within another culture requires an intricate flexibility. That is an understatement. Working within another culture makes me very quietly happy at times and makes me want to scream at other times. Of course, I can’t scream and that makes me want to scream even more. Time is fluid. Time is a puddle. Rules are stretched and bent and tied into knots. My most recent assignment was to oversee the intake of students for a new English program for gap year students—students between high school and compulsory military service. One newspaper did not list the time. One newspaper did not run the advertisement. The sign posted on the building gave the wrong hours. The teachers drifted in like plastic bottles on waves…almost here, then disappearing only to reappear two hours later. I answered one hundred questions with, “I don’t know,” and my boss told me that was the right answer. We envisioned a program for 1200 students and imagined that at the peak on sign up day we would be turning away hundreds of students. Despite the visions, we had present only seven teachers with ink pens. To my surprise, only fourteen students applied Friday, seven of whom may be ineligible. But this is typical apparently, and I must be flexible. Flexibility means a lot of things, and it never means what you think will be required of you in the new job site. Flexibility in other cultures really means that on Day 1 you know nothing, you are a baby, and God willing, you won’t be run over before you understand that the cars drive very quickly.
There are some perks here, though. One night as I walked around the neighborhood, I saw three women come out of a building. They were each carrying a mountainous cake. I made a sharp left into the building and discovered the Shirin Sha—a tea and cake shop. There were scores of cakes, some 8-10 inches high, multi-layers held together by rich looking butter cream frostings, covered in flowers and French lace, crushed walnuts and pistachios. I could order a pot of tea and a piece of cake, or take a piece home—carry out cake! And I do. Cake is the key to flexibility. I work, I walk home, I eat cake, drink tea, eat lunch and I am flexible again.
As to the city, Ashgabat, the city of love, I am still discovering it. Sunday I walked to the bus station near the bazaar, chose a bus at random, and rode its route, to the southern edge of the city as it turned out. Ashgabat is bordered on the south and southwest by the Kopet Dag Mountains which run along the border with Iran. I can’t tell you anything about the mountains yet except that they make a beautiful backdrop to any walk. The scene I was most interested in was the new architecture. There are two things to know about Ashgabat’s architecture: first, the city was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1948; second, the former President (the first president after independence from the Soviet Union, and who died about two years ago) undertook a modernization program that, among other things, clears out entire neighborhoods and erects relatively narrow12-14 story buildings that, by law, must be covered in 14cm by 28 cm rectangles of white marble. In neighborhoods of single story houses, or four and five story Russian style apartment buildings, these white monoliths pop up like weeds that got all the fertilizer. Ashgabat has fewer than one million people, and Shanghai has 16 or 18 million, but I am reminded of the eerie quality of the neighborhood of skyscrapers in PuDong, the sci fi set of Shanghai’s new business center east of the river. Older government buildings are also being remodeled and covered in these white marble rectangles. And there are many, many government buildings. State architecture. Not stately.
Turkmenistan shares some cultural features with Azerbaijan—both Silk Road destinations, both peopled by some of the same mixes of people, so I can’t help but draw parallels, and I compare the capital cities. Often while walking in Baku, I observed evidence of the lack of the most basic state or civic responsibility: a school yard filled with broken glass and trash. Here, I pass by several school yards on my routes to classes and the bazaars and the grounds and buildings are charming. Bright pictures painted on the covered areas, yards full of trees and flowers, interesting wooden shelters open on one side where kids can play out of the rain. On the other hand, I see evidence of a control that is disturbing. One morning I noticed a strip of the road had been torn up. Next day, the chunks of asphalt were gone. Next day, new asphalt was laid. This efficiency is not normal, though it is something I longed for in Baku: can’t someone just FIX this? I know this seems silly to be distrustful of a government that performs efficiently. And Ashgabat is clean. Garbage is in the garbage bins, and a small army of women constantly sweep the streets and sidewalks. The streets are tree lined, and the trees are clean. Really! Walking to work one morning, I saw three men walking along the street, followed by a water truck, manning a heavy water hose washing the dust and dead needles out of the pine trees. That is a sight I will remember.
Once again I am in the midst of ‘redenomination’ of the currency. I experienced this in Baku also, and it is very confusing for everyone. Previously, the largest note ( I think this is correct) was 10,000 manat. That is about 67 cents. To make a major purchase required sacks of money. That note has now become 2 manat: divide by 5 and drop three zeros. In a way it is a relief not to pay 40,000 manat for a litre of milk. Shopkeepers are still confused and I had to show one man my conversion chart to convince him that I had paid enough for the potholders. And speaking of changing money, someone took me to exchange $200. We were standing in line at a little plastic building for a minute when a woman approached us. “How much did we want to exchange?” $ 200. “Ok, come with me.” My helper and I went with the woman who stopped at her late model car and opened the back door. The back seat and floor boards were covered in sacks of money. She grabbed a bundle and counted out two million eight hundred fifty thousand manat. I felt rich. Really. But it was funny…standing on the street counting millions of manat—a transaction that began with two $100 bills. For one day I kept track of expenses: 60,000 water; 75,000 bread, pasta and tomato paste; 51,000 salt (1 kilo), sugar (1 kilo) and 250 grams of kielbasa; 57,000 for two pieces of cake; and 17,000 for a box of 25 Lipton tea bags.
My greatest pleasure so far has been to come upon a wedding. I was searching for a small tandir bread bakery—of course. Everything hinges on food. Anyway, I heard music so I traced it to a house with people standing in the driveway and decorated cars crowding the road. As in Azerbaijan, most houses are behind walls and heavy gates. After some time, the gates opened and the musicians came out. Women milled around and guys hung out in the street. The musicians got into a car and dashed off to the wedding palace, I suppose. Finally, the groom came out, hopped into a car then everyone piled into cars and took off. In Azerbaijan, the man and his family go take the woman from her home, and everyone goes to the wedding palace for hours and hours of feasting and music. I should also say that in the rural areas of Azerbaijan, the man’s wedding celebration is usually separate from the woman’s wedding celebration, though in Baku, they often have just one together. I don’t know the details for Turkmenistan, but I have a feeling they are similar. I will find out. But I was so very happy to hear the music and get some photographs. Photographs come later. I have no good way to arrange them for email right now.
This has been a strange five weeks. My original posting was to be in Mary, Turkmenistan, but the Fellow in Ashgabat had to return to the states to care for her husband. Just days before arriving, I learned that I would be staying in the capital. I arrived on January 16, and on January 23rd, returned to Cairo for the Fellows conference. I was there 9 days, and though it was exhausting, I got to see Emily and Jill and Tariq again though I could never make connections with Ahmed, my Yemeni student. Back to work in Ashgabat, then came Flag Day, and I had a five day weekend, so I made a short trip to Baku to stay with Kamran’s family. To eat Talysh food again! To have hot tandir bread! To drink a Guinness at Finnegan’s! That was very, very nice. Now I am back to work, and no more long weekends for the duration.
I am good. I teach five groups of mostly adults. Two groups are older post graduate students working on advanced degrees that require an English course. These students are doctors and lawyers, teachers and researchers, economists and linguists, one ethnomusicologist, and one veterinarian who specializes in poultry stress: nervous chickens, I say. Teaching adults is new for me and I enjoy it. I will also get to travel to the regions to hold teacher training workshops.
My apartment is comfortable, and the only shortcoming is that it is on the second floor and I have no access to the outdoors. I shop at the bazaars which I love. I can walk to each of my job sites and that makes me happy. My contract here runs to the end of July. At this point, I don’t know if it will be renewed, or if I would renew if offered. Internet service is limited and international calls are expensive. I don’t rely on those two things to be at peace, but I do need some connections to other worlds. I can not encourage anyone to visit: attractions are modest and distances are great.
I hope everyone is well. God bless you all in the here and now.
Love to all,
Janet
Well, goodness. Here I am in Turkmenistan. How did this happen? And what a strange place! The bread is good, Jonathan, but fortunately, not as good as in Azerbaijan, AND difficult to find it hot…all kinds of state run bakeries churning out thousands of loaves that are distributed to state shops, and other shops, all over the city. Within a block of my apartment, there are, I would say, 15 shops, most the equivalent of small Quick Stops. Some are the size of a large closet. Some have no walls; the vendor sets out bags of potatoes, carrots and onions. An old woman huddles with recycled Coke bottles of fresh milk, and another commands a rickety platform stacked with eggs. To get cheese, fruit and fresh greens, you must go to the big bazaars, the nearest to me, the Teke Bazaar, being about a mile away, and the Russian Bazaar, maybe 1 ½ miles away. I love the walk but don’t like the carrying home part. I could take a taxi but am reluctant to try. Taxis are unmarked here—just guys driving around without the hassle and expense of licenses. To flag a taxi is easy: stand in the road and hold your hand down and slightly out with palm side in. But then you have to give the name of your street, and that is where my confidence fails. Tomorrow.
A new culture to discover. Working within another culture requires an intricate flexibility. That is an understatement. Working within another culture makes me very quietly happy at times and makes me want to scream at other times. Of course, I can’t scream and that makes me want to scream even more. Time is fluid. Time is a puddle. Rules are stretched and bent and tied into knots. My most recent assignment was to oversee the intake of students for a new English program for gap year students—students between high school and compulsory military service. One newspaper did not list the time. One newspaper did not run the advertisement. The sign posted on the building gave the wrong hours. The teachers drifted in like plastic bottles on waves…almost here, then disappearing only to reappear two hours later. I answered one hundred questions with, “I don’t know,” and my boss told me that was the right answer. We envisioned a program for 1200 students and imagined that at the peak on sign up day we would be turning away hundreds of students. Despite the visions, we had present only seven teachers with ink pens. To my surprise, only fourteen students applied Friday, seven of whom may be ineligible. But this is typical apparently, and I must be flexible. Flexibility means a lot of things, and it never means what you think will be required of you in the new job site. Flexibility in other cultures really means that on Day 1 you know nothing, you are a baby, and God willing, you won’t be run over before you understand that the cars drive very quickly.
There are some perks here, though. One night as I walked around the neighborhood, I saw three women come out of a building. They were each carrying a mountainous cake. I made a sharp left into the building and discovered the Shirin Sha—a tea and cake shop. There were scores of cakes, some 8-10 inches high, multi-layers held together by rich looking butter cream frostings, covered in flowers and French lace, crushed walnuts and pistachios. I could order a pot of tea and a piece of cake, or take a piece home—carry out cake! And I do. Cake is the key to flexibility. I work, I walk home, I eat cake, drink tea, eat lunch and I am flexible again.
As to the city, Ashgabat, the city of love, I am still discovering it. Sunday I walked to the bus station near the bazaar, chose a bus at random, and rode its route, to the southern edge of the city as it turned out. Ashgabat is bordered on the south and southwest by the Kopet Dag Mountains which run along the border with Iran. I can’t tell you anything about the mountains yet except that they make a beautiful backdrop to any walk. The scene I was most interested in was the new architecture. There are two things to know about Ashgabat’s architecture: first, the city was almost totally destroyed by an earthquake in 1948; second, the former President (the first president after independence from the Soviet Union, and who died about two years ago) undertook a modernization program that, among other things, clears out entire neighborhoods and erects relatively narrow12-14 story buildings that, by law, must be covered in 14cm by 28 cm rectangles of white marble. In neighborhoods of single story houses, or four and five story Russian style apartment buildings, these white monoliths pop up like weeds that got all the fertilizer. Ashgabat has fewer than one million people, and Shanghai has 16 or 18 million, but I am reminded of the eerie quality of the neighborhood of skyscrapers in PuDong, the sci fi set of Shanghai’s new business center east of the river. Older government buildings are also being remodeled and covered in these white marble rectangles. And there are many, many government buildings. State architecture. Not stately.
Turkmenistan shares some cultural features with Azerbaijan—both Silk Road destinations, both peopled by some of the same mixes of people, so I can’t help but draw parallels, and I compare the capital cities. Often while walking in Baku, I observed evidence of the lack of the most basic state or civic responsibility: a school yard filled with broken glass and trash. Here, I pass by several school yards on my routes to classes and the bazaars and the grounds and buildings are charming. Bright pictures painted on the covered areas, yards full of trees and flowers, interesting wooden shelters open on one side where kids can play out of the rain. On the other hand, I see evidence of a control that is disturbing. One morning I noticed a strip of the road had been torn up. Next day, the chunks of asphalt were gone. Next day, new asphalt was laid. This efficiency is not normal, though it is something I longed for in Baku: can’t someone just FIX this? I know this seems silly to be distrustful of a government that performs efficiently. And Ashgabat is clean. Garbage is in the garbage bins, and a small army of women constantly sweep the streets and sidewalks. The streets are tree lined, and the trees are clean. Really! Walking to work one morning, I saw three men walking along the street, followed by a water truck, manning a heavy water hose washing the dust and dead needles out of the pine trees. That is a sight I will remember.
Once again I am in the midst of ‘redenomination’ of the currency. I experienced this in Baku also, and it is very confusing for everyone. Previously, the largest note ( I think this is correct) was 10,000 manat. That is about 67 cents. To make a major purchase required sacks of money. That note has now become 2 manat: divide by 5 and drop three zeros. In a way it is a relief not to pay 40,000 manat for a litre of milk. Shopkeepers are still confused and I had to show one man my conversion chart to convince him that I had paid enough for the potholders. And speaking of changing money, someone took me to exchange $200. We were standing in line at a little plastic building for a minute when a woman approached us. “How much did we want to exchange?” $ 200. “Ok, come with me.” My helper and I went with the woman who stopped at her late model car and opened the back door. The back seat and floor boards were covered in sacks of money. She grabbed a bundle and counted out two million eight hundred fifty thousand manat. I felt rich. Really. But it was funny…standing on the street counting millions of manat—a transaction that began with two $100 bills. For one day I kept track of expenses: 60,000 water; 75,000 bread, pasta and tomato paste; 51,000 salt (1 kilo), sugar (1 kilo) and 250 grams of kielbasa; 57,000 for two pieces of cake; and 17,000 for a box of 25 Lipton tea bags.
My greatest pleasure so far has been to come upon a wedding. I was searching for a small tandir bread bakery—of course. Everything hinges on food. Anyway, I heard music so I traced it to a house with people standing in the driveway and decorated cars crowding the road. As in Azerbaijan, most houses are behind walls and heavy gates. After some time, the gates opened and the musicians came out. Women milled around and guys hung out in the street. The musicians got into a car and dashed off to the wedding palace, I suppose. Finally, the groom came out, hopped into a car then everyone piled into cars and took off. In Azerbaijan, the man and his family go take the woman from her home, and everyone goes to the wedding palace for hours and hours of feasting and music. I should also say that in the rural areas of Azerbaijan, the man’s wedding celebration is usually separate from the woman’s wedding celebration, though in Baku, they often have just one together. I don’t know the details for Turkmenistan, but I have a feeling they are similar. I will find out. But I was so very happy to hear the music and get some photographs. Photographs come later. I have no good way to arrange them for email right now.
This has been a strange five weeks. My original posting was to be in Mary, Turkmenistan, but the Fellow in Ashgabat had to return to the states to care for her husband. Just days before arriving, I learned that I would be staying in the capital. I arrived on January 16, and on January 23rd, returned to Cairo for the Fellows conference. I was there 9 days, and though it was exhausting, I got to see Emily and Jill and Tariq again though I could never make connections with Ahmed, my Yemeni student. Back to work in Ashgabat, then came Flag Day, and I had a five day weekend, so I made a short trip to Baku to stay with Kamran’s family. To eat Talysh food again! To have hot tandir bread! To drink a Guinness at Finnegan’s! That was very, very nice. Now I am back to work, and no more long weekends for the duration.
I am good. I teach five groups of mostly adults. Two groups are older post graduate students working on advanced degrees that require an English course. These students are doctors and lawyers, teachers and researchers, economists and linguists, one ethnomusicologist, and one veterinarian who specializes in poultry stress: nervous chickens, I say. Teaching adults is new for me and I enjoy it. I will also get to travel to the regions to hold teacher training workshops.
My apartment is comfortable, and the only shortcoming is that it is on the second floor and I have no access to the outdoors. I shop at the bazaars which I love. I can walk to each of my job sites and that makes me happy. My contract here runs to the end of July. At this point, I don’t know if it will be renewed, or if I would renew if offered. Internet service is limited and international calls are expensive. I don’t rely on those two things to be at peace, but I do need some connections to other worlds. I can not encourage anyone to visit: attractions are modest and distances are great.
I hope everyone is well. God bless you all in the here and now.
Love to all,
Janet
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