Little things and differences in values

I would have to write a blog post everyday in order to fully describe my life here. And the honest truth is that I don’t have enough time each day to sit in front of my computer and write a recap of my day. This being said, I feel that lots of little things are being left out that I feel just as compelled to share as the big things. Sometimes the subtle details in my day are the most moving and have the biggest impact on my life.

There is one little boy in my sixth form class who is more interested in playing with his ruler than ever learning English. He fidgets and stares out the window until my counterpart yells at him or the other students call him “stupid” and “an animal.” This little guy would be a lost cause for most Turkmen teachers and would sit in the back of the class and never learn a word of English in ten years. When I am teaching, I consider all students equal no matter how the Turkmen teacher would treat them. I call on the students in the back and I immediately stop any snickering when the slower students stutter over new words. We were learning the days of the week and I throw a hack sack that I made to each student to drill them on the new vocabulary. I tell them to pay attention because it might come flying at them at any moment. Once again this particular student was giving all his attention to his ruler when I threw the hack sack at him and it slid onto his ruler in front of him. He looked up at me wide eyed like he was under the impression that nobody could see him. I asked him how to say “birinji gun” and after a brief pause he said “Monday.” Correct. So, he had been listening. I gave him a huge smile and said good job and he grinned back at me. Now, he had put down his ruler and was watching me. We played a memory game after this and he didn’t win. But he got second place and was so excited that he did a little dance in the aisle. This was a brief moment of celebration that I wish could have lasted longer; I was so proud.

My Turkmen tutor got married last month and she informed me ahead of time that she wanted me to make a toast. At Turkmen weddings the music and dancing are periodically interrupted by various family members and friends taking the microphone and making toasts. Ever since going to my first wedding back in training and being forced to say something in front of several hundred Turkmen, I promised myself that I would learn how to say an extraordinary toast that I could repeat at every wedding from there on out. But, I had failed to do this and still resorted to saying my toasts in English because I had yet to memorize anything past “congratulations…”

For Gowher’s wedding I sat down and actually memorized all of the toasts she had taught me six months earlier. At the wedding I was just asking my friend about how I would know when to go up there when the master of ceremonies announced that Gowher’s friend from America would come up to make a toast. Okay, so that is how I know when to toast. The wedding reception was in a large converted movie theater, and as I walked down the stairs to the stage in the front, my hands began to shake I was so nervous. Another English teacher from my school was making a toast after me, and a few of us lined up on the side of the stage. The cameraman stuck his camera 3 feet from my face and the bright light made me sweat even more than I already was from the nerves. I began my toast with the pedestrian line “congratulations on your wedding” but then continued in Turkmen with every congratulation that I still remembered. A few words into my second sentence, the English teacher behind me elbowed me in the ribs and hissed “In English, In English!” Through the entirety of my toast, she didn’t let up. I grabbed her arm and held it at bay so that I could continue until my final congratulation and wish for my friend.

Most people actually want me to toast in English at their weddings because they want me on film as proof that there was an actual real blooded American present, but Gowher had asked me to say it in Turkmen since she is the one who has taught me almost everything I know. The older women in Turkmenistan feel no shame in telling you what to do, and this 60-something year old teacher felt that it was completely acceptable to elbow me until I conceded. For me, this was an intrusion into my personal space and right to say what I want, but just like the babushkas in Russia, the older women here have been through enough, and have been around long enough, to have the authority to tell anyone what to do—even what language to speak, I guess.

Classes and cotton

The school year is off to a chaotic start. But I had expected this. The piles of handwritten documents, schedules, grade books and curricula have yet to be completed and everything is at a standstill until they are signed and stamped by the director. The Soviet system of "spravki" (paper documents) for everything from permissions to equipment requests is still very much alive. When I lived in Russia we spent a few months studying "spravki" in all its forms, and how to properly write them. After months of learning about "spravki" I never wanted to see one again, but they are asked for everywhere still in former Soviet countries. The schedule for all 10 grades had to be hand written. There are four groups of each form, so a total of 40 schedules were painstakingly written in cramped letters. With each change, a new schedule was written out. The schedule covered 12 pieces of 8" by 11" white paper. Of course it had the director’s stamp of approval as well. I too have gotten used to handwriting everything for classes because of a lack of a copier. If I don’t have time to individually handwrite all of the exercises or texts, I will write them out on the chalkboard and the students will copy them into their notebooks. My chalkboard doesn’t work very well and I must first wipe where I want to write with a wet cloth and then write. If I try to write on it dry, the words are barely visible. I appreciate the efficiency of technology and the convenience of whiteboards more and more.

It is cotton season now in Turkmenistan. During the Soviet Union, the government basically drained the Aral Sea by diverting the two biggest rivers in the area, the Amu Derya and the Syr Derya, to make Central Asia fertile cotton country. The Syr Derya runs west through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan until it empties into the Aral Sea. The Amu Derya runs north-west from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan and also empties into the Sea. The fields around where I live are still watered by the Amu Derya. From about 1960 the Aral Sea’s water level was drastically reduced because of the diversion of water from the rivers for agricultural irrigation. The Soviet government converted large acreages of untilled land in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan into irrigated farmlands. By the 1980s, during the summer months, the two formerly great rivers dried up before even reaching the lake and the Aral Sea began to quickly shrink due to the evaporation of its unreplenished waters. The increased irrigation on the hot, dry regions around the Amu Derya has resulted in evaporation that has left salt deposits that make the soil infertile. Also, surface runoff has transported the salts to the river, increasing the salinity of the Amu Derya. The farms in my region water using a flood technique. They will open up the canals that come off of the Amu Derya and completely flood their fields. When the huge amount of excess water evaporates, there is a white blanket of salt on the surface. The water in the region north of Lebap, Dahoguz is too salty to drink and entire communities are suffering from health problems related to the salinity of the water. The salt is slowly leaching down to northern Lebap and I first noticed the salt left over after irrigation last fall when I was out on my usual running route. I run on the small dirt roads that weave through the fields, and with each step my shoes would break through a thick crust of salt that had formed after a routine flood irrigation. My town has been ripping up the streets to lay pipes for fresh drinking water, but the smaller villages have no such luxury. The Aral Sea is of great concern to environmental scientists, but the leeching of salt into the surface water in Turkmenistan has the potential to cause great health problems and is not being addressed. This entire environmental catastrophe began with the vision of creating a vast area of fertile cotton fields that would supply the Union with cotton enough for everyone. To this day, Turkmenistan is still very proud of their cotton. When the school children learn about the "riches of Turkmenistan," gas, oil and cotton are included. My sixth grade class learns the verb "to pick" before they learn the verb "to study." They learn the word "cotton" before they learn "family." The cotton season began last week and will continue for two months. There are some cotton-picking machines, but the majority is picked by hand, and not by choice. The teachers at my school are required to pick cotton each day after classes. Under the old president, children were allowed to skip school to go pick cotton, but this has since been prohibited. Still, I have seen a drop in student attendance in the last week (and this is even more true in the smaller villages that are still collective farms). At the end of a shift, they must weigh the cotton and fill out a "spravka" that states how much they picked. For each kilo they are given 1,000 manat (7 cents). My counterpart told me that she picks about 17 kilos in a four-hour afternoon shift (17,000 manat =$1.20). For those who don’t have time or don’t want to pick cotton, they pay someone to pick their quota of cotton. As long as the quota is met, it doesn’t matter who is actually out in the fields. No matter who collects the cotton, it is loaded onto huge trucks that take it to the cotton plant on the edge of town. The government owns the cotton. The entire cotton industry is government owned just like the gas and oil industries. Fittingly, it is called "Turkmen Cotton" and the green government trucks all share the same logo showing a cotton boll with white fluffy cotton fiber inside. For now, cotton picking is the priority and all of the fields must be emptied of "ak altyn" (white gold). During the Soviet Union the comrades were required to pick cotton as a collective, to gather it all together and to send it off somewhere. Now, the only difference is that they are paid a few cents for their work, but not much else has changed in the white gold industry.

"…and the only way to endure it all was the perfection of irony."

-Lenin’s Tomb, David Remnick

Although this quote refers to the tumultuous last years of the Soviet Union, it seems to somehow embody my life here. I wish that I could find all of the irony humorous, but sometimes it translates into frustration before I look back on it and see the actual absurdity of what happened. Sometimes I need to laugh at myself. Sometimes I need to turn my back and walk away to hide my laughter over situations that Turkmen find completely normal. Sometimes I laugh when everyone else does just because I have no idea what is really going on. Sometimes I laugh with my students about something that we know we couldn’t talk about anywhere else.

There is irony in my everyday life. I believe that it happens because of the incongruity between how I am as an American, how I want to be seen in my community, and how Turkmen actually see me. Also, the irony stems from my expectations and pre-assumptions as an American and the way things actually work here. I think that the best way to illustrate the irony that often escalates to ridiculousness in my life is by example:

"Get out the doctor’s alcohol."

One is often pressured into drinking shots of vodka while guesting but when the vodka runs out you can always have "doctor’s alcohol." There is already a room full of drunk Turkmen, one slightly displaced and confused American and no more alcohol. Oh, wait, there is some more! Get the wife to fetch the rubbing alcohol and continue toasting. See, there was never any problem to begin with. The gamble here: do you drink and wake up blind the next morning or do you not drink and hope that nobody remembers in the morning?

"Permissions"

I changed houses. It has already been two months. I got permission from Peace Corps, the local police did a background check on the family to make sure there weren’t any suspicious characters, and I got the approval to move. Within three days of moving, I need to notify immigration of my new address. In my policy and procedure book the explanation of this process spans a few sentences. In reality, two months later, and four trips to the immigration office, it has not been successful. First, I had to track down my counterpart who has no cell phone and no house. She lives in the back of this farmer’s bank in the village and it took me a week to just find this random building. Turns out she had gone to the city with her family, so there was no way to contact her. I waited and waited. She turned up at school and I explained that I needed this registration similar to what we did when I first arrived. Easy enough, right? Wrong. We drafted a letter to the immigration. First trip—the address for the immigration office was wrong and they needed a new letter. Second trip—they need a copy of my host mother’s passport and a copy of the host family contract. Third trip—the letter doesn’t have the director’s signature or stamp. My counterpart tried to ask the director to sign the letter, but he refused because I did not ask his permission to move. I had told him about moving, but I didn’t think to ask his permission because since when does one ask permission from their boss to move? Even Turkmen teachers wouldn’t ask the director for permission. It all culminated at the local education ministry in a meeting with me, my counterpart, the director, the Etrap methodologist and the Etrap head of education. I tried to stand up for myself, but in the end the director refused to sign, stating that I needed to ask his permission before I moved and that I shouldn’t have moved. The conversation was in such fast Turkmen and I tried to keep up but ended up just going home and crying by myself. Fourth trip—the immigration guy said that the letter still needs the director’s signature since he is my supervisor. When my counterpart said that the director refused to sign, the immigration guy, who gave all of the new volunteers such trouble with the initial registration back in December, said, "why does he refuse when she has the right to move?" Even this guy supports me! Why is nothing as easy to accomplish as stated on paper? Two months of trying to deal with this and it has all ended with no registration and the director now not even acknowledging my "hellos" or basic existence at school.

"A PCV on vacation"

You can take the PCV out of Turkmenistan, but you can’t take Turkmenistan out of the PCV. We would like to think that we can still go back to the developed world and abide by the social norms, but when one PCV’s family had to extract her from the produce aisle after she had spent copious amounts of time fondling all the vegetable and voicing her great affection for the wild berries, this assumption turned out to be incorrect. We spend large amounts of time thinking about what we miss from home, mostly food and decent alcohol, and then when we come face to face with our fantasized Guinness beer or dark chocolate bar, we tend to overreact. This starts a cycle of wondering about exactly where we belong. Most people at home haven’t even heard of Turkmenistan, but they wonder exactly what goes on there when they see the weird habits we brought back. Don’t you tap the bubbles in your tea on your forehead for good luck? Don’t you spit several times into your shirt after something scares you? Right, that is in Turkmenistan. We go on vacation, but we have to stay on the middle of the bridge, not totally reintegrating at home in order to make returning to Turkmenistan easier. We want to throw ourselves into western culture, but only this is when we realize just how "Turkmen" we have become.

"Back from vacation"

One PCV told me that there is nobody who needs a vacation more than a PCV who just came back from vacation. Sadly, this is true. Coming back from vacation is a practice of difficult reintegration and a personal struggle with how badly you actually want to be here. The PCV boards the plane from London, Delhi, Bangkok, Istanbul and wonders if anybody has ever not returned from vacation and just gone home. Getting back to site is like dipping your toe in a hot bath—you can’t just get in all at once. The PCV tells and retells about the fabulous time "across the border," but also tries to forget how nice it was to have a shower and sharp cheddar cheese. Now we feel like we have a long ways to come back to our simple life in the village. After feeling worn out, tired and frustrated at site, we have spent the vacation trying to get a break from Turkmenistan, and once back it feels like that respite hasn’t made anything easier.

"2 years"

It seems like a long time. It felt daunting when I left, but now I have already been here for almost a year and I am starting to feel like I don’t have enough time to accomplish everything that I would like. I know that a year is still a decent amount of time, but when I look at it in terms of vacations (since that is a PCV way of telling time) I only have 2 vacations left. The new group is coming and the old group is headed out and I feel like I am still just getting to know them. I am in a mid-service crisis and I want some project to work on other than my clubs. But staying true to the grassroots philosophy, I am still trying to do community assessment to create the best project for them. Really, I just want to start something…but then I would feel like a Peace Corps traitor. Two years in grassroots time is enough to sit down and drink some tea. I have time, but things do seem more pressing than 8 months ago when I felt like I had all the time in the world.

"Intravenous drip"

I was over at my friend’s house and we were hanging out and talking when the nurse came over. It was time for my friend to be hooked up to an IV for her saline drip. Her mom got out the T shaped mop handle, used a scarf to tie it to a chair, and the nurse hung the IV on the mop. As I watched around the door as all of this happened in less than five minutes, everybody forgot I was there or didn’t know what to do with me and considered ignoring me the best option. The nurse asked for vodka and cleaned my friend’s arm. Then I watched as she inserted the needle and started fiddling with the IV drip to make it work. I don’t know if it ever started working because I went over and told my friend that I was leaving and the nurse gave me a look of surprise like I had jumped out of nowhere. It was another moment where I was watching all of this and analyzing from an American point of view, finding it all a bit strange and then realizing that it was all completely normal for them and that I was the most out of place thing in the room.

My English Summer Camp

Last week was the long planned summer camp that I had been stressed out about for the past month. It wasn’t so much the work that had to be put into the camp that was stressing me out, but it was the possibility that the director or anyone else could suddenly tell me I couldn’t have it and that would be the end of it. I had been promising my students that I would try my best to have this camp, and I know that they were rooting for me to get permission. I think that their undying support did help me gain permission in the first place. All the way back in the end of May I advertised for the camp at my school and had any interested students come take a test. They all thought that they had to get a certain score to get into the camp, but little did they know that the test was merely a tool for me to see how many students I should expect. Because the last volunteer at my site four years ago ran into problems from the director when she applied for a grant to cover the cost of a summer camp, I decided to avoid money all together and used some supplies sent to me by family friends and then got creative with everything else.

The camp was six days long and split into two groups of three days each. For the first three days we had 4th-6th graders and for the second part we had 7th-10th graders. I had three Turkmen teachers assisting me and another PCV from the neighboring etrap came to help, too. We had more than enough help, but the younger kids still exhausted us by the end! Each day of camp started with “Morning Assembly” that consisted of trying to wrangle all the students and then sing a few songs. I taught them “Boom Chicka Boom” and once they had learned it, we sang it different ways. I think they found my sobbing version of “Boom Chicka Boom” with my flamboyant fake crying and wailing the most hilarious. They don’t often see adults acting as silly as that, but putting myself on the extreme end of things allowed them to act goofy as well. Following the songs, we did group games and team activities. The girls turned out to be extremely skilled at carrying a ball on a spoon. My theory is that they have carried so many hot bowls of soup in their lives, that they know how to keep their hands steady while walking. They struggled to work together on the 3-legged race and got extremely competitive at the relay races. On the last day we filled up water balloons and did a balloon toss outside. Several students got wet eventually, but the balloons weren’t breaking very easily. One girl got completely soaked by a balloon and she was a good sport about it and just laughed at herself. With the older kids we had pairs of students make shapes with their bodies while having their eyes closed. The older students displayed excellent teamwork and communicated very well even when I had them blindfolded or not allowed to speak. I was impressed by how well they worked together even when given the difficult tasks that I had set (like the trust fall or leading your partner blindfolded through a course). Overall I think that we did lots of games with the students that they had never done before, using objects that they all have around the house. I was happy that I could do something new and creative with the students that challenged them to step outside their comfort zone and try something different.

After the games we split into groups and did different activities with the smaller groups. Despite the extreme weather, the first day we had a dance session. To see a group of Turkmen teenagers doing the Chattahoochee like they are in small-town Kentucky was incredible! Turkmen love to dance and although some of the younger kids had a problem keeping rhythm they were tapping, shuffling, turning and Macarena hand jiving away no matter if they were way off beat. In addition to the dance, one of the Turkmen teachers taught them origami and they made flapping birds and little dogs. The second day of camp was Christmas themed and we watched Mr.Bean’s Christmas with the younger kids and Elf with the older kids, made Christmas boxes out of origami and I taught a Christmas English lesson. The camp was conducted all in English and this lesson was the only official lesson, but of course it was fun. In addition to vocabulary and a reading activity, I taught them Jingle Bells and we played “pin the star on the Christmas tree.” For the third day we had a Halloween theme. The younger students made scary Halloween masks and went trick-o-treating through the classrooms. Definitely the highlight of the last day was the puppet show. With the first group I gave them printed dialogues with cats, bats, witches, ghosts and monsters. They made a puppet according to their dialogue, practices with their partner and performed behind a makeshift puppet stage for the class. With the older students I gave them freedom to write a dialogue themselves about anything they wanted. We had a Frankenstein monster and his love interest, Indians, rabbits, witches and one character called “Bad Boy.” Some of my more advanced students came up with witty and entertaining puppet shows that had us all laughing and enthusiastically applauding at the end. Because of the low English ability of the younger students, I was more limited with what I could do, but the older kids impressed me with their creativity and ease performing in front of their peers. The camp ended on a high-note after the puppet show as we tried to squish ourselves together to get one last memory, a group photo.

At the end of the camp I talked on the phone to my Turkmen friend with whom I went to college. During her childhood she attended PCV camps and looks back on them as some of her fondest memories. As I expressed that I wish that I could so something more for these kids, she reminded me that my little camp could be the most exciting thing that they do all summer, or that the “camper of the day” certificates could be their biggest achievement. Sometimes I forget to put my work here into perspective and that even the small projects I organize and the small changes I see in my kids are little victories I must not overlook.

Can Peace Corps Volunteers go on rescue missions?

When I get a chance to look at the news headlines each week I usually see a story about the war in Afghanistan. Since I arrived in Turkmenistan I have been scanning over these headlines, yet not often clicking on them to read the full story. Frequently stories of success are tainted by the overwhelming majority of stories about death and bombings. Sadly, these stories about soldiers and combatants who have perished during the war are so common that they have become trite. I do want to stay informed about what is happening in Afghanistan, and recently I read the story about American troops pulling out of towns and cities and I have been keeping up to date on the situation in Basra after the “changing of the knights.” Although Turkmenistan and Afghanistan border, one may live in Turkmenistan without even knowing that there is a war to the south. Life here seems so far from the turmoil across the border; the only evidence of the war is the refugee camp in southern Mary Welayat filled with mostly Afghan refugees. When my parents called me last week and told me that a guy who I have known since I was little had been taken hostage by the Taliban, I was shocked. This news made the headline I later saw on Al Jazeera (my English language news channel) of personal concern, and I would have probably barely noticed it otherwise.

All of a sudden, I felt so far away from home. And all of a sudden I realized that each soldier mentioned in those headlines means the world to their family and friends back at home. Here I am so close to Afghanistan and I thought about what my parents would do if they got news that I was in danger over here. I think about my safety constantly, and so does Peace Corps. Because of the government’s control, this country is extremely safe and despite my previous concern about the close proximity to Afghanistan, I have never felt in danger here. My heart goes out to Bowe and all of his family and friends back in Idaho. We all think about our family and friends back in America so often and find comfort in the memories and photos that we bring along with us. It is difficult enough being so far away from all of your loved ones, and I can not even imagine how much courage it takes to make it through the day in Bowe’s situation.

The second goal of the Peace Corps is to teach host-country nationals about American culture and traditions. The third goal is to educate Americans about the country where you are doing/did your service. After my primary work as a teacher, my job is to build an understanding between cultures. With so much resentment, anger and frustration across the border, Turkmenistan is next door to a country where America is viewed more as an invader than as an ally. I want to be a part of the process to build awareness about cultural differences and to educate about tolerance and appreciation of foreign cultures. I am not talking only about teaching Turkmen about America, but I believe that Americans also have a lot to learn about the world at large.

Did you know exactly where Turkmenistan was before you saw the little map on my blog?

Do you know that there are an estimated 2 million ethnic Turkmen living in Afghanistan?

Because I am cut off from most news sources here, I have been religiously reading any magazine (Economist and National Geographic have been my favorites) that I can get my hands on. Because of my lack of news, I am making a huge effort to try to stay informed, and the result has been me staying more informed that I often was in the U.S. I never thought that this would be the case. It is not easy to stay up to date, but with some effort (and everything takes a bit more effort here) it is entirely possible and necessary. I may live in an isolated country, but I do not want to feel isolated myself. I have spent this past week thinking a lot about my family and about the people I care the most about. I will be honest and say that it was not the easiest week for me, and it was probably the most homesick that I have been so far. Yet even when I miss all my loved ones so much, I know that I don’t really want to leave. I am so lucky to have so many people who are supporting me and encouraging me through all the hard times. In less than one week my feet will be on British soil and I will be gorging myself with avocados and digestive cookies, freezing my butt off in the 26-degree weather and catching up on the last 10 months with some good mother-daughter time.

Recently I have become addicted to watching Top Chef and I have almost blown through a whole season in a week. I basically sit in front of my computer and squeal about all the good food that I can’t have. The losing dish on each episode looks great to me. I have already started my list of “foods I must eat in England” and I want to write to Top Chef and recommend they do a Peace Corps volunteer quickfire challenge where the contestants have the rudimentary cooking facilities, supplies and equipment of a PCV. Let’s see just how good they are when they have cotton seed oil, rice, moldy carrots, onion, one pan, one gas burner that barely works and a knife that barely cuts garlic (those are the only ingredients my first host-family had available at one point last winter)!

Watching The News With My Host Family

On Wednesday I spent about 15 minutes scrolling through the one thousand plus television channels that my new host family has. Each Turkmen house, no matter how small, is towered over by a large satellite that picks up everything from Russian to Chinese to Arabic channels. At my former host family I was never able to have the television to myself, and very rarely watched TV at all. When my new host brother handed me the remote because he had to go out and kill a chicken for dinner, I relished in opportunity to look for news channels broadcast in English. Eight hundred channels later, I found Aljazeera in English and plopped myself on the floor in front of the television. The big story on the news was the unrest in Urumqi in western China. I was previously aware of the tension between the Han Chinese and the Muslim minority in the region, the Uighur [weegher]. Interestingly enough, this is something I didn’t know until I got to Turkmenistan, the Uighur speak a language very similar to Uzbek (See Uighur women in first photo and an Uzbek woman in the second photo). The region where the Uighurs live used to be in Turkestan and they speak a Turkic language. One of my friends here just went on vacation to China and she searched for a Uighur restaurant where she could show off her Turkmen language skills. She tracked down a restaurant, ordered entirely in Turkmen and ate a meal that is standard in Lebap—palow, yoghurt and naan. On Monday I had just talked with her about the Uighurs and we weren’t aware of what was going on in XinJiang. As I was watching this story on Aljazeera, my host family came in with lunch and we kept the television on as we ate. Although there were no sound bites of the Uighurs speaking, my host family drew the conclusion that they were Uzbek because of their clothing. My host family is educated and pretty aware of world events, but the resemblance was so uncanny that I understood their confusion. The materials, dress styles and hats are almost identical to those in Uzbekistan. The women on the television were wearing traditional knee length shirts, loose pants and square hats, similar to those worn by many women in my town. It took me several minutes to explain to my host family that these people they were seeing on the television were Chinese and not Turkmen or Uzbek. I don’t know if they actually ended up believing me, but I told them the story of my friend in China and my host mom’s response was, “mmm…maybe,” still pondering whether of not I was trying to trick her. “No, really, she spoke to them all in Turkmen and they understood,” I declared. Again, “mmm…maybe” was the response I got. I understood their incredulity because even for me it was unreal to see shots of demonstrations in what looked like my town on the international news. It reminded me of how recently Central Asia was full of nomadic tribes and how cultures and languages moved fluidly across non-existent borders. Now with immigration laws, and tight border control, Central Asian people are not able to wander like they did less than 100 years ago. Forced to settle in countries not necessarily split along already pre-established tribal borders, they have now taken up the identity of their country rather than as a more broader Turkic peoples who spread across former Turkestan.

"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."

-Peace Corps, 1992

In the past week I moved in with a new host family and went to Ashgabat for two days to attend the July 4th party. It seems like so much has happened in the last 7 days, that I almost feel like I have entered into a new period of my Peace Corps service. On July 1st I had been in Turkmenistan for 9 months. A friend of mine, a fellow PCV, sent me a text message that read, "If you had gotten pregnant on the day we arrived, you would be in labor right now—happy 9 months!" Thankfully this isn’t the case, but I have been here three-quarters of a year and I have indeed seen more babies born than I ever have in my entire life. I had previously decided to move host families and found a great family that lives close to school. My new host-mom, Maya is a gynecologist and my host dad, Genji works at a company in Turkmenabat. I have two younger host-brothers. Aziz is in the 8th grade and is rarely at the house, but out in the village where all of his cousins live. Azad is going to be a sophomore at a university in Ukraine and is home for the summer vacation. At my new house I have my own separate side of the house that consists of my room and a kitchen. I have my own entrance to my room and this gives me more privacy and more freedom to come and go as I please. Before I moved in, I discussed the food situation at my previous host-family and expressed my concern about the nutrition of my food. I had been cooking almost all of my meals myself at my previous host-family and I was spending too much of my money to try to compensate for the lack of nutritious food that they had available. Maya asked me specifically what I would like to eat and today she bought everything I mentioned and had placed it in my kitchen for me. We have an outside kitchen and an inside kitchen, and she has given me the inside kitchen until it gets too cold to cook outside. My host-mom lived in Cyprus for a year and she is so fascinating to talk to. We speak all in Russian together and last night we spent two hours together sharing photographs and talking about our pasts. I never spent that much time with my last host-family and I already feel more comfortable here than at my previous residence. It is common for PCVs to switch host-families and usually the families that the volunteers find themselves work out better than the Peace Corps selected families. Since I have been at my site for over six months, I have many connections and I was able to search for a family with certain characteristics that I had decided were important to me. Mostly I was looking for a family where I could have more privacy and where I felt more comfortable with the host-parents. Americans’ desire to spend much time alone is weird to most Turkmen because they are very communal people, but there are many times when I am so exhausted by the time that I come home that I just want to relax and feel like I came back to a place I feel comfortable. It was difficult explaining why I was leaving to my host-family and I know that they took it personally. I still hope that I see my host-sisters in my yoga club and I will see all of them in the cafeteria every day once school begins. I am sure that I will encounter challenges with my new host-family, but I am already much happier at my home and I know that this will positively effect my overall experience here.

It was a whirl-wind of a trip, but the majority of Turkmenistan PCVs went to Ashgabat for the July 4th US Embassy party. It was also our chance to say goodbye to our Programming and Training Officer who is leaving to work in the Peace Corps Romania program. She was one of the first people who greeted us at the airport when we arrived 9 months ago, and I am sad that I won’t be able to finish my service with her still here. She supported me greatly over the past months, especially in the beginning and I think that our new PTO has big shoes to fill. In addition to saying goodbye to our PTO, we said a really sad goodbye to four PCVs who are leaving this weekend to go home. It came as a shock that four are leaving at one time and we will miss them all greatly. Everyone deals with it differently, but I was extremely upset when I found out because I am especially close to one of them and Turkmenistan will never be as quirky and interesting without him (especially the dance moves at the Ak Altyn disco). Over the course of nine months we have had a total of seven T-17s leave. This most recent batch to leave was definitely the hardest because we have all grown so tight as a group. It shows how much we depend on each other and how much we have bonded as a group. I came here with 43 strangers and I was met by another group of 35 T-16s. Even if I have just met a new PCV, which did happen at the July 4th party, we fall into conversation like we have know each other for years. We are all so connected by this unique experience, that we will forever share a huge part of our lives together. As four of my friends depart Turkmenistan, it leaves me to think about my desire to be here and to analyze my experience so far. I have realized since being back from vacation that even on the most frustrating days, I can still say that I truly want to be here. I believe that everything happens for a reason and I am happy here in a way that sometimes I can’t explain. I found the quote at the beginning of my blog entry today in a teaching article I was reading and I know that the author was referring to changing our actions and the way that we do things to work with what we cannot control, but I also think that this quote can relate to emotions and the necessity to having a go with the flow attitude. My mom sent me a postcard that has a picture of roller skates and printed below, "just roll with it." She is right to say that this must be how I approach things in Turkmenistan. There are events, like losing 4 of my fellow PCVs, that I cannot change, but I must adjust my own sails and keep on going wherever the wind sends me.