Wanderlustress

In the Field

Just so we don't end the week on a negative note, here is a picture of me smiling in one of the villages where we work. Around me are my director, program coordinator, school director, teachers, and a nurse...taken back in March on my first visit to villages in the Andijon Region.

Shoveling Shit

Prior to joining the Peace Corps, I sought a lot of advice about development work and the one line that I remember from a beleaguered aid worker in Africa said, “Its like shoveling shit upstream!” I always keep this in mind so I can only blame myself for knowing exactly what I was getting into. I don’t think I’ve even begun to scoop an ounce of it yet, but it sure is proving to be very frustrating work.

Earlier this year, just two months into our training as NGO development volunteers, we received news that the Uzbek government had tightened controls over all NGO activities in the country – including those of international NGO’s: this involved re-registering with the Ministry of Justice (with some NGOs’ bank accounts frozen until approval), new legislation that required all international donor transactions to local NGO’s be conducted via bank transfers, making cash transactions illegal, as well as re-issuing all foreign national visas. Some believe that the revolutionary events in Georgia, which occurred around the same time, triggered this reaction by the Uzbek government.

The fall-out from all of this is that some NGO’s did not get re-registered so are no longer able to operate in this country, particularly those suspected of conducting activities which undermine the national interest. (See Soros Article) Some did receive re-registration, but with certain restrictive terms, details of which I am not aware. This move is not only discouraging for all other international NGO’s working in Uzbekistan, but it is especially disheartening for struggling local NGO’s to watch their once supportive and rich funding source get royally kicked out of the country. The national leader even went as far as appearing on national television to say that Uzbekistan does not need the services of NGO’s anyway. (So then I wonder why this government invited Peace Corps volunteers into the country because we wouldn’t be here without their formal request.)

Through all of this I have remained quiet – outraged, but quietly hoping the knee-jerk reaction of a paranoid government would end – until now. It is coming on three weeks since my NGO’s bank accounts have been frozen, for no explainable reason except that the government is in the process of forming an NGO grants oversight committee. We are given no answers, or timeframes for how long this will last and we have been asked to submit details of every single one of our programs to the bank, whom I believe is just a go-between for the government. Other NGO’s may not be in such a tight predicament if they have been taking their grants in cash from donors. Recent actions by the government seem to encourage these now illegal transactions.

But the NGO where I work has done all the right things and they follow all the arcane rules. Our work in the rural communities throughout the Andijon boarder region with Kyrgyztan have produced great results. We have received grants from major donors like the World Bank and other major partners, and are determined to carry out our projects. However, with frozen bank accounts and increasingly disparaging sentiments from the government, we are locked in inaction.

Who benefits from all of this is unclear to me at this point, but it is clear who loses – all the people whom we endeavor to help who are caught within the spiral of political paranoia that is clearly upstream from where we sit.

Makings of a T'oy - Part 4

Upon our arrival back in Andijon, after the first t’oy in Ferghana (the keilin’s hometown), the streets of our neighborhood were lined with neighbors, kids, and everyone who just happened to hear that a t’oy was in the works. Elbowing my way through the crowd to have the most advantageous access to the arriving bride and groom, my host family repeatedly tried to shove me out of the thronging crowds’ way – much to my resistance – and boy did I quickly learn why…

Surrounded and jostled, the groom extracts the bride (who’s head and upper torso are wrapped in a white shawl) from the car, throws her over his shoulders and rushes her into the house, while his male friends race after them and tear a part of the wrap-cloth from him – symbolizing some brutish, archaic practice of stealing women for wives. I could barely get a couple of snaps off without getting trampled by the excited crowd.

From this point of the two day affair, details are more of the same as the first wedding that day – groom and keilin parade through the crowd to sit at a head table set up in a giant tent in front of the groom’s house; hundreds of people come throughout the night to eat, make toasts, and dance, while family members cycle through plate after plate of food – clearing, filling, washing. Those seconded to the kitchen or washing station never even see beyond the front gate, only the empty plates that are brought back to be refilled. I can’t remember when it was I was able to escape to my locked room to finally sleep. All I know is it must have been after they carved up the prized lamb torso that they had stowed away in my room to keep out of the greedy hands of guests. This was reserved for the groom as he prepared for his first wedding night. And as far as I know, this was done behind closed doors with an entourage of this close friends to whom we brought a tray of cigarettes and vodka. The bride was accompanied into her room with three of her best friends. What ritual takes place beyond this went well past my long-awaited rest – alone, locked in my room…with the lingering smell of lamp shank.

I awoke later that night to find people sleeping wherever they can find space – on various cots around the garden, on our outdoor sitting area, in the kitchen. After the throng earlier that day, the solitude and quite seemed voluminous under the constellations above.

Bright and early the next day, the keilin’s family from Ferghana came to sit with her in her clothes-strewn sitting room. Lots of food was served of course, and I helped out where I can while still capturing moments with my camera. One of these moments was during the ceremony of accepting the new keilin into the household. Kneeling with her head covered behind a white cloth in front of her new mother and father, she receives handfuls of flour and “osh” (traditional rice dish) from her new parents. This act symbolizes the wishes for her to always have good food to make and to eat as she is welcomed into their home.

The rest of that afternoon was full of guesting with the keilin’s relatives. For forty days after the wedding, she is to receive guests in this manner. Everyone related in one way or another to the family will come to the house, sit, eat, view the keilin’s new clothes, bid her good wishes, and leave. Family members endeavor to uphold this tradition with a backbreaking pace of cooking, cleaning, serving, washing – for forty days…

…and as we await the end of this grueling cycle, I am experiencing the process of a new keilin’s assimilation into the Uzbek home. For better or for worse, she appears to represent a new generation of keilins, who doesn’t just have a mind of her own, but a mind that is breaking away from the traditional expectations of who she should be. Having lived with two other keilins in my previous host-families, I have learned what these strict, traditional, protocols are, and so far, this new keilin is breaking all of them!

This ends the “Makings of a T’oy” series.

Tri-lingual Toungue Twisters

Although I have made some progress in learning Uzbek – at first from Peace Corps training, and now in self-study, along with speaking it morning, noon, and night at work and at home – I am now embarking on learning Russian. Russian is used to conduct most businesses in Uzbekistan and is also the lingua-franca between people from other Central Asian countries. It is the predominant language in my office, and in the NGO world a lot of donors operate in Russian.

So these days, I patch whatever I know together and use all three (Uzbek-Russian-English) languages in one sentence! And if I still can’t make myself understood, then at least I have given the people of Uzbekistan a good laugh.

Makings of a To’y – Part 3

I turned out to be the only one with a camera at the wedding, and therefore, became the unofficial photographer – for both sides of the family. It made me happy that I had brought my SLR kit with the opportunity now to capture this important event for my host-family. These images will make a lasting gift for years to come, and even though they seem to prize more highly the video-recording that they hired, I am certain they will appreciate the prints over the years to come – after I am long gone from Uzbekistan.

Lucky for me, the camera gave me privileged entry to front and center view of everything – from gaining access to the male-only guest seating area, to the closed-door introduction of the bride and groom prior to the wedding (it was their second meeting ever!), and to other ceremonies which even my host-sisters have never before witnessed.

On the first day of the wedding, as guests continued to stream through the groom’s house starting at dawn, a group of family members, including the groom, left around noon to go to ‘pick up’ the bride from her home in nearby Ferghana City. Me in my traditional “atlas” (traditional silk material) Uzbek dress and “dopa” (traditional Uzbek hat), looked completely Uzbek – except for the huge Nikon hung around my neck. Turned out, I was the only one in traditional dress, making the whole experience feel imbalanced and ironic. Several times, a guest would ask my host-sister, whom I was standing next to, “So where is your American guest?”

Not only did we pick up the bride in Ferghana, but to my surprise, we actually went to a wedding there that was hosted by the bride’s family! Yes, I was really confused thinking the wedding was going to be back at the house in Andijon (which will take place later), but I just went with the flow and snapped away as the bride and groom entered the large hall where a few hundred of the bride’s relatives received them. After four hours at this huge banquet where nothing ceremonious occurred, except for a lot of toasts and dancing by guests. The bride (in her fluffy western white wedding dress) and groom merely sat at their head table the entire time, except to occasionally come down to the dance floor to offer the dancing guests money. Other guests did this, too, but strangely enough, all the money that anyone who danced collected, was promptly given to the band, hmmmm…I know, I’m still confused, too. If I could have kept the money handed to me, it would have made up for the embarrassment of being called up to make a toast in front of all those people and then to have to dance, too – there was nothing worse that day than looking Uzbek, but dancing like an American!

After the banguet, the bride headed back to her house where she changed into travel clothes, parted with her family by kneeling with her mother in front of a family elder who said a prayer. After the prayer was recited, everyone with their cupped hands, did the traditional “oman” (motion of hands in front of the face as if splashing water on it). Uzbeks also do the oman before getting up from a meal, and every time they pass a cemetery as well. I’ve often been caught off guard while riding a “marachuka” (taxi van) and all of a sudden, everyone will raise their hands and do the oman while I just sit there, dumbfounded.

Six hours after leaving for Ferghana, I found myself exhausted at the end a full day that began at 4.30am after very little sleep. As we headed back to Andijon to produce yet another to’y that will last late into the night, I took the opportunity to snuggle up to my camera bag and take a much needed snooze…

Makings of a To’y – Part 2

Its only May and already I cannot escape the heat. Indeed, during the madness of the wedding that lasted two days this week, I escaped the bustle and the heat by hiding out in the “padval” (a kind of basement pantry where food is kept cool). The family’s nine year old niece and I decided to shirk our assigned task of running plates of food back and forth to the hundreds of streaming guests. Instead, we stole a few of the juiciest and sweetest tomatoes I’ve ever eaten, and sat squatting in the padval peeking through the small window to watch frantic pacing feet. Occasionally, someone would come in to fetch more food and we’d hide the tomatoes underneath our dresses! This was my favorite memory from the momentous event.

An Uzbek “to’y” (wedding) begins in the early morning. A band of traditional trumpets and drums arrived at the groom’s house around 4.30am. The women in my family hardly slept for more than one or two hours the night before as they were chopping mounds of meat, carrots, onions, and cleaning sacks of rice and other grains – enough to feed a few hundred people. All this food was to be served to the guests who began to arrive in the early morning. Only men come at this time, wearing white shirts and “dopa” (traditional Uzbek men’s hat). After washing their hands from the offered urns, they sit at one of the many tables that have been set beneath a large tent in the street in front of the house. On the tables are plates of nuts, raisins, candies, strawberries, “non” (traditional Uzbek bread) and “choi” (tea). As they arrive, bowls of “shavla” (a kind of soup) are served. They eat, make toasts, talk amongst each other, and then leave to go about their day.

Later that morning, a truck arrives with the “keilin’s” (bride’s) dowry, which consisted of a pile of “korpachas” (sitting mats), furniture, and two huge trunks full of new clothes. The korpachas are promptly piled along the back of the keilin’s sitting room, from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The floor around the room is then set with some of these korpachas to form a long rectangular sitting area backed by lush pillows against the walls. The center is again set with a cornucopia of food awaiting female guests. The keilin’s new clothes has a significant role in the series of ceremonies that I don’t yet understand. From her trunks, the clothes are hung around the walls of this sitting room, displayed above the array of guests as they sit, eat and talk among them as if dining inside a huge closet. From what I am told, the clothes remain like that for up to one month, during which time, guests can call upon the family to meet the kailin in this room and admire all of her new clothes.

It was a colorful, hectic, hot, exotic and interesting morning…and there was still a day and a half left to go…

Process of Assimilation

I’ve been told quite often that I look Uzbek when I’m introduced to people as an American, but what happened earlier today topped all of those previous compliments…the Damas (little mini-van taxi) driver looked in his rearview mirror at me as I was talking to a fellow PCV and said in Uzbek, “Why do you speak English so well?!” Afterwards, he was even more perplexed when I responded to him in my smoothest Uzbek, “I’m not Uzbek. I’m American. Of course I speak English well!!!”

Yesterday, I was given a traditional Uzbek dress to wear to my host-brother’s wedding. It is made of the native “Atlas” material and sewn by my talented host-cousin. It fit so perfectly that no alterations are needed. “Great! I’ll really blend in with all the other Uzbek women,” I thought…only to learn that no one else in my family is wearing an Atlas. They all had luxurious, modern gowns made for themselves. Oh.

Yes, there is inflation in the bazaars these days. Its called “here comes a foreigner with a big ‘S’ for sucker written all over her”! Last week, I bought a kilo of strawberries for 2,000 cyms ($2). This week, my host-brother bought a kilo of strawberries for 200 cyms (.20). Granted strawberries come down in price by the day as the season peaks, but I got suckered by at least 50 times the going price!!!

…its ironic and sometimes confusing how my ethnic and cultural identity works (or doesn’t) for me here in Uzbekistan. Tomorrow will be another baffling day I’m sure. Upside to that is there’s never a dull moment.

99 weeks…and counting

Good: neighborhood kids stopped throwing stones at me everyday
Bad: still getting hushed cat-calls along the streets
Ugly: bank claims they can’t give me any money because some system is down
Positive: rain has cooled things down a bit
Negative: 99 weeks to go
Optimism: I WILL do this
Pessimism: WHY am I doing this?
Hope: I CAN do this
Have: lots of time
Need: rigorous cardio workout
Want: less carbs
Do: yoga twice a day
Feel: challenged
Think: its all worthwhile
Believe: there’s a reason for everything

Makings of a To’y – Part 1

I was told that there are three significant events in an Uzbek person’s life: when one is born, when one is married, and when one bears children. Luckily, I will be able to witness first hand, an Uzbek wedding – from the inside. My host-brother’s “to’y” (wedding) will take place next Tuesday. Preparations have already been proceeding apace, and I will be part of the whirlwind of activities leading up to, and after the big event.

What surprised me about this wedding is that I had not even heard about him getting married until about two weeks ago, when my host-sisters kept mentioning “huddo hollassa” (god willing) we will have a wedding for my brother in two weeks. I thought, hmmmm, I must be translating incorrectly or they must be joking – he doesn’t even have a girlfriend. Well, I guess I wasn’t listening attentively enough during cultural training when they told us that most marriages in Uzbekistan are arranged. Apparently, my host-parents had arranged with the bride-to-be’s parents that she and my host-brother will get married some time in May. Back in March, my host-brother had gone to Ferghana to meet his proposed future-wife for the first time, after which he consented to the wishes of his parents and agreed to marry her. He won’t even get to see her again until their wedding day. He is 27 and she is 18.

Uzbek women are expected to get married around the age of 18 or 19. If she is 20 years or older and not married, there is a lot of social pressure on her and the family. The neighbors will “mish-mish” (gossip) about how ‘old’ she is getting and why her parents haven’t married her off yet. Girls begin to get proposals from boys’ families at 18, and if she refuses too many boys, then they will stop calling on her and she is less likely to get married at all. At some point, the parents will pressure and force a marriage on a girl who is getting too ‘old’. And right after they are married, the girl is expected to conceive the first born within a year!

Once married, tradition dictates that the “keilin” (sister/daughter-in-law; wife) goes to live with the husband’s family. The keilin is typically the wife of the eldest son, as younger boys move out of the house with their wives. From my observation in two previous host-families, the keilin essentially becomes the house-slave. She is expected to do everything – before anyone has to ask for it to be done. Sisters will sometimes help, but the pressure is on her to perform and the responsibility is hers no matter who else is around to lend a hand. Most keilins are not allowed to continue with their studies, or to work. The two keilins in my old host-families rarely left the house. The mother-in-law is often the one that goes to market, and the husband or father-in-law takes care of whatever else is needed outside of the home. The keilin is always “oi-da” (at home).

Of course, as Uzbekistan modernizes there are exceptions to what I have just described above. As a matter of fact, there have always been exceptions to this among the Russians in Uzbekistan, for reasons of their differences in religious and ethic heritage, in addition to their more ‘westernized’ culture. However, this tradition is still very prominent among the majority of the population and poses a huge chasm between modern Uzbek girls and their families today. I assume that most of them concede due to familial and societal pressure, and that some of them adjust, take root as their mothers had done in their new lives. But I get the feeling that some girls are beginning to assert themselves, say ‘no’, continue their education, go out to work, and pave the way for their daughters to never have to do the same. Indeed, I have been able to observe this rift with tradition first hand – having been a sympathetic ear to several keilins, a confidant to a girl who only wants to marry for love, a colleague to strong, independent women at my NGO, and a tutor to a thirteen year old girl who wants to conquer the world. I’m proud to have known all of them for their strength, courage and determination, and look forward to the difference they will make in the lives of the next generation of Uzbek women.

Hard Work and Hospitality

Women in Uzbekistan work from morning until night. In my household – and I’ve lived in three of them now – the women are the first to wake up, usually around 5.30am or 6.30am, sometimes before. They put on tea and prepare the breakfast table for when others wake up; they are forever sweeping, wiping down steps, taking out the trash or burning it; then they clean the house from floor to ceiling with a wet cloth, do the laundry – which means scrubbing until their hands are raw and wringing out large items like bed sheets until their arms are sore – then they cook everything from baking sweets and fresh bread, to preparing fresh pasta, to chopping up salads into miniscule little pieces, grinding meat, and preparing every single meal; and then they wash all the pots and dishes, before even more sweeping and various cleaning prior to going to bed – long after I’ve retired to my room to write this post. This routine occurs, unrelentingly, every single day.

And this is a typical day when there are no guests (“mahkmons”), who can, and do, drop in at any time. No notice needed. When they do, boy is it a production! – there’s endless tea, non, plates of raisins, fresh jam, nuts, and whatever is in the house for hot meals will be served or prepared on the spot. Uzbeks pride themselves in how well they receive their guests. To be a mahkmon puts you in the highest status possible in a household, and even in an entire community. They will stuff you fuller than you’ve ever been before. They will never leave you to sit alone. And they will honor you to the point where you actually do feel important. I’ve had a bottle of scotch that had been reserved for thirteen years opened on my account…and it was the first time I had ever even met my hosts! Over the past three months, I have witnessed Uzbeks bestow more hospitality to strangers than I, or anyone I know, have ever attempted to do the same with people we know and love.

Indeed, Uzbek households are hard work – a result of pride, tradition, and probably the unrelenting dust. Through my observations, I feel it is the women of Uzbekistan that deserve to be honored. They make Uzbekistan a welcoming and livable place. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no rest for the weary.