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.