Remnants of the Soviet Era

There are so many things here that are different from the U.S., and it’s hard to relate them all. I’m getting used to my new life here, and so I sometimes forget that everything was so strange to me a month ago. I’ve been making notes of the differences to write about and I’ll keep trying to do that.

First of all, many people are still in the Soviet mindset. The LCF (Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator) in the neighboring village is a prime example. If the trainees ask her something she’s already said, she gets mad. I guess its not efficient to repeat yourself. Of course we’ll repeat questions; language is a hard thing to learn. We can’t remember everything the first time we hear it. Also, everyone has the same items in their homes. Everyone’s dishes are the same. The same baby carriages. And everyone wears almost exactly the same clothes. Its like a government issued way of living.

The Kyrgyz people seem to have liked the Soviet Union. They didn’t have it as hard as some people, and I think a lot of extra things were given out. When the government fell, people lost jobs, farm machinery, and lots of other things. So it went from everyone having their own tractor, to maybe one friend of a distant cousin having one. I think they miss the government help. And one of the major issues is getting people to organize themselves to make things happen, rather than relying on the government to do things for them. That will probably be my job for the next 2 years – helping people to function in a business. I haven’t thoroughly investigated the sentiments toward the Soviet Union yet; my language needs to be a little better first.

The cartoon shows on television here are great. They’re very simple and innocent. I think they’re at the same level as what would have been playing in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s. They’re fantastic. Yesterday I watched Cinderella in Russian. I’ve seen it so many times that I know almost the entire script. I actually didn’t mind that it wasn’t in English. Sitcoms are dubbed in Russian, but you can still here the English. That’s annoying, because I’m constantly trying to here the English.

The Russians have redone a few American shows. ‘The Nanny’ is done in Russian. They use almost the exact same cartoon beginning, the same song, the same characters, and house setup. I wonder if the Kyrgyz here know its an American show. The same is done for ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ and ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ The Russian Wheel of Fortune is crazy and I haven’t figured it out yet. For some reason the contestants will put random things like wine, kumus (fermented mare’s milk – an alcoholic beverage), musical instruments, etc. up on the wheel. I don’t know what happens to the stuff either. I haven’t paid too much attention, because its not fun to watch when you can’t guess the phrase.

The babies in the villages are CHUBBY. All of them. They don’t have necks. Their arms and legs consist of rolls and their heads are huge. Its hard to imagine them ever being small enough to fit inside a mama. They lose the weight as they start running around, but they hurt you’re arms to hold when they’re babies.

My host nephew is a little devil. He doesn’t listen to a single person and does whatever he wants. He’s 4 years old and no one has control over him. Sometimes there will be 7 adults trying to tell him to behave, and he still doesn’t listen. When he was 2 he drank vinegar. In Kyrgyzstan, the vinegar is between 75% and 100%. If its on your hands it will burn you, and if an adult male drinks one cup he could die. So this child drank it and burned up his insides. He was in the hospital for 8 months and had stitches in his stomach, throat and ears. He’s fine now, but they let him run rampant because they’re so happy he’s alive. Now that he’s become a monster, there’s no turning back.