Wanderlustress

Sunday Thoughts

The cow next door sounds like its trying to deliver a calf. Its been in agony since early this morning. Chasing mosquitoes at 4am is not fun, but that is the coolest time of day. By nine am, my walking path is a snake-like meandering along patches of shade on the road. I don’t break into a sweat if I keep my snail’s pace.

Last month, Adijon’s old Hakim (Governor) got booted by the President for charges of corruption (how ironic), so now we have a new Hakim for the Andijon oblast (state). All of sudden there is money now for general public spending – like cleaning up the old city around the bazaar and improving the public transportation system. I did notice when I first moved here three months ago that there are no, or very few, buses in Andijon, but I didn’t really question it since there are flocks of little Damas (tiny taxi mini-vans made by Daewoo in Asaka, right outside of Andijon) and marachukas (larger taxi vans) along every main road. There are so many that sometimes you don’t know which one to stop in fear of having all of them run you over as they jostle one another – its pure road rally sometimes. Anyway, when I wandered out yesterday, I noticed that signs in the Damas lowered their price by a third of the previous price. Hmm – I wondered? So I wandered up to a group of idle drivers and asked – Why? Apparently, the new Hakim will be buying brand new Mercedes buses for the major routes throughout the city. Hurrah – should I think? But what will happen to all the Damas and marachuka drivers, who have now become my friends, a welcome familiar face? They are probably still trying to pay-off the purchase of their vehicles. My host sisters think they will just become drivers for the new buses, or they will maintain their routes and take passengers who demand more expediency than lumbering buses. Then I’m reminded that Tashkent operates similarly and think that buses will be good for the city. Job loss is the number one problem here, especially since Daewoo stopped production on their Tico line. Personally, I don’t want to have more unemployed, restless young Uzbek men hanging around street corners harassing me out of boredom and frustration.

Managed just now to successfully cook a pot of fluffy white rice, yeah! What it took was buying “California” brand rice from the U.S. that is distributed by a company in New Jersey. I tried to ask the store merchant yesterday why he has a burlap bag of American rice to which he only replied with a coy smile. I just hope it hadn’t been diverted from food relief programs across the boarder or anything like that.

Now that I’m cooking on my own again, I’m starting to get a feel for what I really want: olive oil, tuna fish, parmesan cheese, Chili powder, Italian herbs, and pesto will start my list. Friday night I cooked for twelve PCV’s whom I invited over from around the Ferghana Valley region. They took advantage of the refuge from their kishlocks (villages), their host-families, or their no gas/no water apartments. We chatted away the night while cooking together, doing their laundry in the full-cycle washing machine, and taking showers and baths. Some clothes I haven’t washed since arriving in Uzbekistan six months ago, like my corduroys and jeans.

Will have another gathering for the 4th of July – wish I had requested sparklers and bottle rockets in advance. Oh well – we’ll just have to make our own fireworks – the Uzbek way!!!

House Sitting

For the first time in over six months, I am truly alone. Having a house to myself has been a completely new experience for me in Uzbekistan…

The house is wonderful – enclosed from the outside world by a main gate, there is a small courtyard where I can sit and enjoy the coolness of the evenings watching swallows change shifts with bats as the sun sets and the front light castes its nightly shadows. There are roses, fruit trees of sorts I don’t recognize, grape vines, and a large fir tree which I imagine the family uses for their Christmas celebration. The house itself is enclosed in one building, unlike the typical Uzbek house – compound-style series of unconnected buildings. It’s a nice change to be able to amble out of my bedroom and into the kitchen and bathroom without having to go outside. Yes, there is a ‘normal’ bathroom, with toilet, sink, and tub. Previously, I used a pit toilet, washed my face under the garden spout, and took bucket baths in a huge tiled room with a drain in floor – this change is pure luxury, especially for the spa queen I can’t quite shake from my core, not even in Peace Corps.

While the house is a welcome joy, solitude has been an ironic collusion of liberation and entrapment. Away from other volunteers, colleagues, family – from everyone, I’m only now able to truly relax for long stretches of time, without thought as to what I will have to do next, whom I have to see, where I have to be, and especially which annoying visitor I must hide from. Over the weekend, my days were mine – pure liberty. Yet, that void practically trapped me inside myself to face the surge of old fears, current concerns and future projections. As if all those things were not magnified enough during normal busy self-analytical (crucifying) days, over this past weekend alone in this house they weighed a ton. Its taken me a few days to get out from under it and I’m fine now.

Through it all, I have tried to laugh at myself, in between the nonsensical tears. Where my previous host-families pandered to every single one of my needs, I am stumped by certain mundane things here – like what to do with the garbage. Its not like a garbage truck comes by every week to pick up green and yellow bins that I’m used to back home. What I’ve noticed in my host-family’s house is that all the compost is given to the neighbor’s cows and goats, and everything else gets incinerated, including used toilet paper. So how am I supposed to get rid of everything AND the growing bin sitting beside my toilet?!? (No, we don’t flush toilet paper here; the plumbing can’t handle it.) So I should find the nearest cow, and learn to incinerate without burning down the house.

Cooking has been a challenge, too. I never realized how much I depend on olive oil to make everything taste good. Rice is very different here from my native long-grain-Thai-jasmine-rice – here, the rice is so starchy it turns into porridge no matter how many times I rinse it, and I refuse to cook it in a vat of oil like Uzbeks do. Buying meat is an endeavor I can’t get myself to take on quite yet. No, meat does not come neatly packaged in plastic wrap in the refrigerated section. An entire leg of a cow is hanging in an un-refrigerated storefront and I must face up to this hulking chunk to point out the section I want to buy. Can’t quite face at close range the raw realities of a dead animal just yet. It is amazing how these details are bypassed when everything is wrapped in a nice, neat package. I think I’ll go buy beans instead.

Being on my own has been nice…so maybe I will look for my own apartment after all…

A Thousand To One

It has been a hectic two weeks, on every front.

At home…

The transition of the new keilinchak (daughter-in-law) into the household has been nothing less than disastrous. There is a lot of fighting, crying, complaining, pleeding, followed by quiet resignation – on the part of everyone in the family, including me. On top of the personal trauma, the entire house is being painted. Unfortunately, the sought after rejuvenation of the house is masked by rapid decay of the peace and tranquility I once enjoyed. And previously manageable little annoyances like flies, mosquitoes, loud radios, the pit (still not used to it), and drunk uncles, contribute to an irrepressible urge to get the %@$! out of there.

…and my prayers have been answered. For a month starting this Friday, I have been asked to house-sit for the director of an American NGO here in Andijon. He and his family are escaping the 95+ summer scorch and going back to the states for vacation. So between house-sitting, more training in Tashkent in mid-July, and working at a summer camp with my NGO in Kyrgyztan in early August, I will be out of the fray for seven weeks! Thanks to that guardian angle who always comes to my rescue.

At work…

Work has really picked up, starting with two trips out to the field last week. First trip was to assess the community’s need and desire to continue the cross-boarder sports programs and tournaments. It was great to receive such energy and enthusiasm from the people, particular from the women who want to expand their volleyball league into other communities. We will be working with our funder to procure equipment and possibly money from major corporations like Nike. The second trip was with the director of USAID for Central Asia to review our community programs. As it always is with high-level delegations, the visit was punchy, to the point, and too brief for the locals to understand why Americans don’t even have ten minutes to sit down for a plate of Osh that took them half a day to prepare. I wondered that myself and decided that I do not aspire to such a high position.

Great news is our bank accounts are now open so all programs will proceed apace, starting with our camp. Next, we will be filming of a documentary about children with disabilities in Andijon to be aired on local television on 1st September. It will be part of a public awareness campaign as well as a fundraising effort for the children’s homes and schools. Concurrently, we will also be conducting leadership training seminars for women around the region. Out of the training we will designate community leaders throughout the 14 districts of Andijon who can coordinate community programs for us in the future.

I am also working on creating a guide to resources for NGOs in Uzbekistan. There is a lot of information out there that is useful but it is often difficult to unravel the who’s who throughout the global funding community. I am working with a local Uzbek volunteer to create this and she will help to the transfer knowledge to my co-workers so that they can learn how to conduct research for funding on the internet, etc., and also have a resource they can use after I’m gone. The bigger idea is to, hopefully, take this to other NGOs so it can help them as well.

I also managed to get a TEFL Peace Corps volunteer to come and teach English to my colleagues twice a week. This will help to build their capacity to work with foreign donors, share ideas, write proposals, find funding, etc. Big goals and we’re starting small, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

Personal…

I have been doing really well, despite the day-to-day hassles of Uzbek living. Got to spend time with a good friend/fellow PCV who was in town training election observers, been receiving generous packages, still doing yoga twice a day…its all good, although I did get attacked by a Rottweiler and managed to escape with only superficial scrape wounds. (Don’t worry, Mom!)

I’m mostly bogged down with ideas of things that I want to do in my service that can help the people – from looking in to solar power and green houses for farmers, to designing a fly-cover for food as a possible cottage industry for rural villagers to make, to outlining a talk for kids about volunteerism, NGOs, and their role in society. The latest idea has to do with making ping pong tables which I won’t get into now. And as silly or far fetched as some of these ideas may be…I’m willing to come up with a thousand bad ideas in order to make just one good one happen.

Until next time…peace.