Balykchy & MTV VMAs - Good Times

This blog entry is partly taken from my journal so it’ll go back over the last few weeks. Most of the good stuff is already written there, anyhow.

9/22/05
For technical training, the business volunteers travel to Ivanovka every Tuesday. This morning on the way to training we saw a small green car driving with the back seat full of apples. And I mean FULL. They weren’t in crates and they were up to the top of the car and pressed against the windows. There must have been a divider between the front and back seats b/c they didn’t seem to be falling on the driver. After that we stopped ata bazaar where I picked up a few things and found a COLD orange Fanta. In Kyrgyzstan they don’t drink anything cold and they don’t even have drinks with every meal. This is actually a very superstitious culture and one of the beliefs is that cold things make you sick. For example, if a woman sits on concrete (summer or winter) they say your ovaries will freeze and will insist you sit on a blanket. Another is if someone has a fever they want to give them hot (caffeinated) tea. Room temperature water is considered cold as well. I attribute this superstition to the insanely cold weather they get in the winter. My family doesn’t get upset when I do things wrong like some other host families – thank goodness.

I also did laundry for the first time since coming to Kyrgyzstan. We do it by hand without a washboard. Just a bucket, water and soap. They have Barf soap, which I’ve heard is a Tide brand but I have yet to investigate that. Anyhow, I thought I had done a superb job, but I was wrong. I didn’t rinse the clothes enough, so they still had soap in them. While I was hanging it up, I asked ВеНЕРА if it was good but she just laughed. And then АЗИЗ laughed too. I felt a little foolish, but you really can’t be a PCV and get embarrassed about many things.

10/03/05
This morning as I was leaving the house, my Ata chased me down on the road. I thought I had forgotten something. He came to give me the pen I had left on the outside table last night. And it wasn’t even mine. It made me snap back from my whiny, homesick selfishness. I guess the thought didn’t cross his mind that I have more than one pen. They value everything more than we do, even a pen.

On Saturday, it was Kanykei’s birthday (my teacher). We got her a cake and went to her house to surprise her. She already knew about it, but that didn’t matter. All the Apas found out about the birthday, so they got a cake as well. Then her husband and kids came with a third cake. We all ate, drank tea and danced on the patio. Another volunteer’s Apa has decided we should get married and wants to buy me for him. I told her I didn’t want to marry him, but I wouldn’t settle for less than 20 horses. In this culture, a few cows are appropriate. But 20 horses is equivalent to $20,000 and is an outrageous sum for a bride price. That was my point because I would never consider this Andrew character. Another Apa wants me to be her daughter-in-law too. I guess that’s what they tell you when they like you. Lucky me.

10/06/05
I went to Balykchy to visit current PC volunteers. All of the trainees got to go to various areas around the country. Balykchy is the first city on Lake Issyk-Kul when you’re coming from Bishkek. It was an industrial city during the Soviet era, but when the Soviet Union collapsed it became a bit of a ghost town. All of the factories have shut down but there’s still smog lingering over the city. Everywhere you look is rocks and falling down buildings. Its windy, dusty and not pleasant. Regardless, we had a great time. The volunteers we visited are awesome and it was great to have some autonomy.

One of the volunteers took me to a public БАНЯ (bathhouse). Its intimidating to think about stripping naked and walking in front of other women, but its not. Its surprisingly liberating. The women (and men) in this country are so comfortable with seeing the naked body that it didn’t even phase me. In the U.S., women always tend to judge each other, though we try not to. But this experience really helped me to appreciate the female body. I left there feeling awesome because I was clean and had confronted one of my big inhibitions.

In the last few days quite a few people have asked if I’m Indian and one asked if I’m Arab. I can’t figure out if they mean Native American (one girl said my eyes made me look Indian) or India (because of my nose ring and jewelry). The Kyrgyz people don’t have much experience with other ethnicities, so I’m guessing they’ve thought I was both.

10/08/05
Today Salbina (my new Turkish friend) was teaching me how to knit Turkish socks. I’m going to attempt to make a pair of my own before I move out of this town. That would be pretty cool if I could learn how to knit like she does. When I came home from her house my host family was making manty (similar to periogies or potstickers). I jumped in the assembly line with them and told them I’m turning into a Kyrgyz girl (I was also wearing a scarf on my head). They all got a good chuckle out of that. I asked if they were having a party because that is a time consuming dish to make, and they told me it was a celebration of me coming home from Balykchy. They’re quite the schmoozers cause I ate it up.

After we finished making manty I cleaned my room. When I moved in, Apa had given me flowers and they were still in my room. I brought them out to the burn pile because they were dead. I came back to the kitchen a few minutes later and Apa had cut fresh flowers from the garden and refilled my vase. She’s so sweet. There’s not many flowers left as its getting colder. I got some of the few that are left.

10/09/05
The MTV Video Music Awards were the big event at my house tonight. Its amazing how I’ll sit and happily watch American garbage just because I’m starved for anything familiar. I was glad that I only knew a few songs though, because I thought most of it was crap. Pepsi had an insanely cheesy commercial on – I’m talking Mentos happy, you know people happy on their cell phones, happy walking down the street, happy frolicking in a field of poppies – and it lasted for at least a minute. Air time is so much cheaper here and that’s honestly the first commercial I’ve seen since I arrived. Every other advertisement has been run across the bottom of the screen, like a storm warning.