Omar, The Kyrgyz Star!!!

For the last week it has been overcast with light rains and dropping temperatures, for me it has been a nasty foreshadow of the long, cold winter to come. The winter has all of Kyrgyzstan in knots; at work we talk about how cold the office will be without electricity, many Kyrgyz schools are planning on extending winter holiday for a month because the classrooms get so cold, and at the American Corner, where I lead four of my English clubs, they talk about the promises that President Bakiv has made on public television which “guarantees” the elimination of power cuts during the winter. As a volunteer I have been praying for electricity and bundling up really well! I haven’t pulled out my thermal underwear yet, but I would say give it less than a month before those little butt-warmers become a crucial accessory to my outfit every day and every night.

Despite the approach of winter, life has gone on. I have started some outreach programs with American schools in attempts to exchange culture between students. The first one is World Wise Schools, where I have been matched up with a middle school teacher in Houston, TX and we have classroom exchanges. I have also started investigating a program called One World where I could collect 30 pieces of art that has been made by Kyrgyz school kids with national themes in it, mail it off to the states, and in return I would receive 30 different pieces of art that American students made with an American theme to it. I think that is a really fun and expressive way to exchange cultures.

Even with the establishment of routines and habits here, I still have to just sit back and laugh at some of the situations I find myself in. The most recent shenanigan I muddled into was last Thursday. After a long, cold walk home through the rain I received a phone call from one of the students from my English club. Confused, I picked up the phone and was informed by them that they had bought me a ticket to Omar’s (a Kyrgyz pop star) concert that was taking place in less than an hour. The water for my tea had just started to boil and as flattered as I was there was a significant part of me that just wanted to stay home and enjoy my tea rather than trek back through the gloomy day to go meet my students again. But I turned the gas off and left to go see Omar perform at the local theatre.
It turned out to be quite the event! Compliments to the lights swirling around and the disco balling reflecting little squares of color through out the theater I started having flash backs to my 8th grade dances as I walked in. But that stopped real fast when the performance opened with two Russian dancers jumping around on stage to 50 cent in Lakers’ jerseys. They were followed by a lip-synching Kyrgyz singer and an MC who was up on stage apparently telling joke after joke which I couldn’t understand for the life of me! Eventually Omar, the main guy, came on stage with a big pair of sunglasses on and sang three or four songs. He sang about half in Kyrgyz and then a couple in Russian and even one in English! I’m not going to lie; he even had me swooning with his English song! As he finished his last song the MC jumped back up on stage and continued with his antics, he had the whole crowd in stitches! Over the course of the next couple of hours several more Kyrgyz singers got up on stage and Omar returned to the stage for a couple more songs. While he was on stage, young women would walk up to him and hand him a bouquet of flowers or a little note on which they had confessed their undying love for him. He graciously took each bouquet of flowers and each note and gave each young woman a hug and peck on the cheek and then went right back to singing. It was quite a show and I was glad I attended. My students had been great and had walked me through the concert explaining what was going on and which song they loved the most!

I can only imagine what this week has in store for me! Tomorrow I am attending an Uzbek wedding, I’m really looking forward to the food, Uzbeks are said to be the best cooks in the country! Also this is election week so a bunch of the volunteers are going to the American Center in Osh and spending the night so we can watch the elections live! We’ll see if there is power to do that!

Party Party Party * I added pics to help illustrate*

It has only been two weeks since the English clubs have begun but I already feel like so much has happened. In every club the students are so curious as to what America is like, so I’m going with the flow and using the reoccurring theme of comparing Kyrgyz traditions with American lifestyle. For example one day we compared Kyrgyz wedding traditions to American wedding traditions and I gave them new vocabulary like “bride”, “groom” and “engagement”. These clubs have also been a great resource into the community for me; for example last Monday while we were describing our weekends I found out that the airport was a great place to go running- who would have thought! Also through these English clubs I have met some really awesome students including two young women who extended invitations to birthday parties and weddings to me. I gladly accepted both, so this last Tuesday I attended the 17th birthday of one young lady and the following day I attended the wedding of different young woman’s sister!

The day of the birthday party I jumped onto the marshuka after work with the birthday girl’s sister and went to their apartment. The prior week she had mentioned that she had never tried pizza and she asked if I could make it for her someday (I get the impression that the Kyrgyz view hamburgers and pizza as America’s national dishes) so I decided a homemade pizza would be an awesome birthday present! When we arrived, the sister and I went straight to work. I began making the pizza dough and she started preparing the rest of the dinner. I always get nervous when I prepare food for people because I know -a little too well- how quickly a meal can go downhill, but when I pulled the pizza out of the oven I was happy to find the cheese had melted beautifully and the crust didn’t have a single burnt spot on it. Also in my favor, since these girls had never had pizza before there was no benchmark to meet. It went over pretty well too; the birthday girl went back for seconds and thirds. With the pizza they also served their national dish; plov (which is fried rice with vegetables), fresh salads, fruit and cake. As dinner continued a few more of her friends came by, and her older brother also joined in with his young family. It was so flattering to be invited into someone house to share a celebration with them.
The following day was the wedding, so I left work a little early and took a taxi to a little village about 40 minutes out of the city where the wedding was. When I arrived my friend was still running around the house catering to guests so I was ushered into the house by her family and told to sit at a the foot of the feast and to eat. For special occasions, like a wedding, the Kyrgyz will set up a meal on a beautifully embroidered sheet on the floor, all the guests will sit on long cushions and enjoy the meal cross-legged without chairs or tables. They are also very hospitable in the sense that they won't let their guest leave hungry so through out your stay in a Kyrgyz household they will insist that you should eat. Its pretty funny, I could have a mouth full of food or bringing a fork to my mouth and the Kyrgyz will still be telling me to eat as if I hadn’t taken a bite of food all day!

For most of the morning guests were just eating and chatting waiting for the groom’s arrival and eventually, a little past noon, the groom and his party made their grand entrance. You could hear them before they had even turned onto the street because they were honking their horns announcing their arrival. When they pulled up to the gates the first person to jump out of the car was the wedding singer with his accordion who was singing Kyrgyz songs at the top of his lungs. The rest of the party was right behind him and jumped out of the car already dancing and singing along. They were greeted with trays of bread, candy and vodka and then ushered into a yurt that had been build especially for this wedding where there was a feast awaiting them. After they had eaten, it was time to retrieve the bride from the house but in order to do this the whole groom party had to enter the home singing and dancing. The bride this whole time had been waiting patiently in the house dressed in her beautiful white gown, comparable to a western wedding dress, with her brides maid at her side the whole day. After quite the serenade, the groom finally made it into the house and was able to kiss his new wife. Afterwards the family said prayers and gave the new couple their blessings and began feasting again. While enjoying probably their third or fourth meal of the day (it was only 2 pm) the groom and his party were presented with baskets of food, drink and a freshly slaughtered sheep that he was required to buy, the two parties squabbled and bargained over prices but eventually the groom paid for the food.

But the party was still not over, before going to the café where the wedding would continue the whole party jumped into their cars and drove to a local monument where they all had their pictures taken with the newly married couple. Finally we all arrived at the restaurant where we were presented with more food, music and dancing. I swear I have never seen so much hip swinging, pelvis thrusting or arm flailing in my life; the dancing was phenomenal!!! By the time it was all said and done I had been at the wedding for almost 14 hours, I was exhausted!!!

For the rest of the week I kept a low profile and continued with the English clubs and working around Jalal Abad until Friday when I went down to Osh for a Halloween party that a local club was putting together. Almost twenty other volunteers attended as well, all in costume, and for the last time that week I danced the night away!

Wedding Season

Oodles of drinking, eating and dancing; that is really the best way to describe the wedding. All Thursday, Friday and Saturday there was a constant flow of people through the doors of our house where they would be greeted by the bride, sit, eat and toast to the expanding family. As far as I can tell there was no actual ceremony per say, it was more of a three day celebration…I think, even after three days of witnessing this event I am still confused because my language skills are not far along enough to decipher the elaborate traditions of a Kyrgyz wedding. But fortunately for me this is wedding season and I have been invited to another Kyrgyz wedding next week by a young woman who has beautiful English. This time around I’m attending just one day of the ceremony rather than the celebration marathon that I just finished! Hopefully after my third wedding in country I will finally start to understand what the hell is going on.

But outside of weddings, life has begun to feel normal here! It’s hard to believe that I have already completed my first whole month of service. I started Russian lessons and English clubs this week so it seems overnight my schedule has began to fill up. My NGO found a Russian tutor who sits with me one-on-one and works through grammar and vocabulary for an hour and a half every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday morning. My instructor is this tall, bleach blonde Russian woman in her mid-fifties. The first thing I noticed about her was her attention to diction, when she speaks every syllable and letter is pronounced perfectly at quite a loud volume to make sure that I don’t miss a single sound that comes out of her mouth. In addition to her perfect pronunciation she is also very animated and will get up and start acting out a verb if I don’t know what she is say (she doesn’t speak English) or she will hold my hand as she talks to me. Its kinda funny picturing myself in a small classroom with this large Russian woman holding my hands as she shouts Russian grammar rules at me!

So I start my day with these intensive Russian lessons and end it with an English club. The first couple of club were dedicated to getting to know each other. We also made lists of topics that we could use as a theme to each meeting. By the end of the week we started choosing some of the topics the students had expressed interest in and ended up having some fairly intense clubs. The university group wanted to talk about youth and deviance so we spent about 45 minutes defining deviance and giving examples of youth deviance, we then ended the club with a 15 minute debate on types of punishment for youth who break the law. The high school students that I am working with spent time coming up with ideas to promote an anti-violence awareness campaign that my NGO is hosting events for.

In addition to my work picking up, things at home are getting easier too since I’m starting to feel like I have a handle on cooking in a Kyrgyz kitchen. The other day I bought a giant pumpkin at the bazaar and made copious amounts pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup! To my surprise it actually turned out really well! I will say this, cooking with canned pumpkin was much much much faster!

Its only Wednesday?

Beginning with the earthquake that struck Sunday night, these last couples of days have been a bit chaotic! Over 70 people died in the earthquake on the southeast Kyrgyz and Chinese border. Although I am living in the southwest region, that evening even I felt the earthquake. To be honest I had been running around the house and didn’t actually feel the ground shaking, rather I saw a light hanging from my ceiling swaying violently. According to reports the earthquake had a magnitude of 6.6 which is the largest earthquake in the region since 2003. For me this earthquake was a big reminder that those beautiful hills and mountains are still growing. It’s intimidating feeling the earth reshape itself under your feet.

After the initial shock and discussions of where people were and what they were doing when the quake struck, life seemed to continue on in Jalal Abad. My house has a constant buzz of excitement as the wedding approaches. During the day the whole family is busy repainting the house, repairing cracks in the walls, weeding the garden and cooking. My God, there is so much cooking going on right now! I can hardly step into the kitchen to make breakfast without feeling like I am disrupting this intricate system of preparation! At night is when friends and family start arriving to celebrate the upcoming wedding. They stream in through the gates with bags of deserts, fruit and vodka. Last night I was pulled in to celebrate with shots of vodka after I had eaten dinner. Toast after toast, the guest gave speeches to celebrate the new couple, wish them many children and to rejoice in the growing family. Interestingly enough, for all this celebration the new wife was nowhere to be seen because she busy working in the kitchen and cleaning up after all the feast preparation. There is still two days before the wedding begins, which will be a three day celebration, and I cannot even fathom what I am in for!

On the other side of town I have experienced a quicken of pace at my NGO. Yesterday eight highschool students came by and took a language evaluation that I created so I could place them in an English Club (with an underlying theme of human rights, volunteering, and community service) which I will be hosting on behalf of the NGO. The evaluation consisted of four questions; tell me about yourself, who do you admire and consider your hero, what do you want to do in the next ten years, why do you want to join this English club? There was a wide variety of answers, in the self description section they all described how much they liked music and hanging out with their friends (not so different than American teenagers) and one young woman stated her horoscope sign and proceeded to describe the characteristics of an Aries (horoscopes are followed very dutifully here!) As for what they want to do in ten years only half claimed they wanted to travel to Europe and America but they all described how they wanted to find the love of their life and live happily ever after! All the young women of the group but one young woman described their mothers or sisters as their hero. The exception in the group described her respect for the courage, strength and loyalty of Harry Potter!

In addition to the earthquake, wedding and English evaluation, this week I stopped by the American Corner at the University of Jalal Abad which is a resource center sponsored by the American Embassy where students can borrow English books, movies and practice their English. With the intentions of introducing myself and seeing if they wanted any help from me, I was suprised with their immediate assumption that I was there to serve! The moment I walked in I was welcomed and informed that they had been waiting for me despite the fact that I had made no appointments to come by! Within the hour I had agreed to help with three English clubs (a beginner, intermediate and a conversational club.) I also initiated a movie club where every Thursday we would watch a movie in English, discuss it and answer any questions about it. It was decided that I would start next week! As I was leaving the American corner the director asked me to come by the following day so he could introduce me to the Vice Director of the University. The next day after work, I returned to the University and met with the Vice Director of the school. He was a middle aged Kyrgyz man who didn’t speak English so the director of the American Corner translated for us. We discussed how I liked Kyrgyzstan, what I had been doing before the Peace Corps, what I wanted to do with my life after Kyrgyzstan, my family and basically everything else under the sun! Towards the end of the meeting he purposed that I start an English-Business Club for the business school where students could talk about western business practices, I nearly fell out of my chair when he said that! I have been itching for an opportunity to put my finance degree to use and this looks like the perfect opportunity!

A lot of community development volunteers have been hesitant to host English clubs because they feel teaching English is not their role in the Peace Corps but I’m totally pumped up about my five clubs!!! For me, these clubs have the potential to be my entry into the community, a great way to explore the Kyrgyz culture and finally there is obviously a huge demand for English practice here. I can only hope that projects that are requested by the community and are sustainable will turn out to be successful projects!

Busy busy me!

So since I've been in Jalal Abad I have hardly had a chance to work!!! The previous weekend was spent in Osh at a women's leadership conference that was organized by a volunteer. The whole conference was in Russian so I didn't attend the sessions but there were 40 young Kyrgyz women that did. From what I could tell, the conference went really well. There were some really interesting topics covered including; women in government positions, business women, human trafficking, bride kidnapping and HIV. That is really just the tip of the iceberg too, it was a four day conference so these young women walked away with a lot of information.

Initially being in Osh was so shocking because almost everyone I was in contact with spoke English and in Jalal Abad I have yet to find a large population of English speakers. Most of these English speakers were young women who were attending the conference. They were all so energized, motivated and excited about learning English that I was asked multiple times if I was available to meet with them regularly so they could work on their conversational skills. I was amazed at their eagerness and readiness to learn!

Eventually Sunday came around and the conference ended. After I helped put together the last coffee break and watched the closing ceromony I packed up my rice bag and by four o'clock I was at the marshuka stand. There was already a bus waiting to fill up so I paid the fare (just under $3) and waited for the bus to pull out. That took significantly longer than I expected and I was actually sitting on the bus for over an hour before we finally embarked for Jalal Abad. While I was waiting I watched life at the bus station slowly go by; there were numerous stands selling juice and snacks to travelers, drivers sitting around gossiping as they wathced their rides fill up, people jumping on and off buses with their plastic bags filled to the brim with god knows what!

Slowly seats began to fill , and as I continued to wait I was entertained by the sellers and hagglers that would jump on the bus to get money out of the travelers. The first peddler that came a long was a woman who just poked her head into the bus trying to sell apples, then came the Imam (a muslim priest). As soon as he stepped onto the bus people started rummaging through their bags for change and after he collected money from everyone on the bus he said a prayer for safe traveling. Before he jumped off the bus he looked down and gave me a toothless smile, I felt blessed.

Then came the middle aged woman selling newspapers, she patiently stood at the front of the bus with a newspaper and read out a couple of the headlines in attempts to spark the attention of her audience, no buyers. As she got off a young man poked his head in the bus and wave some dill around, when he saw he had no buyers he continued to the next bus. Then right before we left an older lady got on the bus and walked through the middle isle of the marshuka begging for extra change, eventually she wondered off and almost immediatly we pulled out of the bus station on our way to Jalal Abad.

The drive that evening was beautiful, the sun was setting behind us and the hills and mountails were golden with the light hitting the dry grassy hills. More than once we had to slow down and maneuver through heards of cows and sheep who were followed by shepards on their hourses. It was a beautiful way to end an awesome weekend!

The following Monday I was hoping to pick up work again and really start getting things accomplished, but I had not got two days of work in before the end of Ramadan rolled around, so I was granted another day off! I never thought I would say it but I just want to get to work! Oh well!

My Service begins

Well I made it through swearing in, at one point the group was asked to sing a Kyrgyz national song and I was quite convinced that not only would we be rejected from the Peace Corps but that we would be deported immediatly! It was pretty bad, we butchered the beautiful Kergyz Jeri song! Despite that though, after the swearing in ceremony all the new volunteers were invited to the ambassadors house to celebrate! It was pretty exciting, we were served microwave pizza, chips, salsa and diet pepsi. After only two months in this country I have an appreciation for junk food that I never knew I had.

Eventually we headed back to the hotel and had long night of goodbyes with other volunteers, it was really hard saying goodbye since I had become so close with so many volunteers over these last 11 weeks. I wish them nothing but exciting adventures and a successfull two years of service. The next morning I left the hotel very early to get to the airport. Checking baggage was a mess, I just had so much stuff! The Peace Corps had giving everyone a water distiller, a giant electric heater and a medical kit that I needed to carry to Jalal abad along with literally over 100 lbs of my own crap!!! I'm still not at the point where I can look back and laugh at the situation, maybe in two years I'll see the humour in it. By the time it was all said and done I was 43 kg over the weight limit. Thank God the Peace Corps takes care of overweight baggage!

But here I am at my permantent site! The weather has started to cool down quite a bit already, I comforted by the fact that the Kyrgyz seem to be even more terrified of the cold than I am, I figure if they can survive the winter,so can I!!! One of the first things that I did when I arrived was go to the bazaar, I was hoping to buy a jacket for the winter but I didn't get around to it. The bazaars can just be so over whelming! Every time I go into one I have to tune out 95% of my senses. A typical walk throught the market consists of sellers shouting prices, people asking what you want to buy, shoppers bumping past you, carts flying between and through stands where there are piles and piles of fruits, vegetables, soap, electronics, clothes, doo dads and trinkets! Really if you want something, you can find it at the bazaar- it'll take a long time but you can find it! At one point during the three hours I was there, I was looking for lemons so I could make baba ganaush. For the life of me I couldn't find it but I kept asking merchants and each one continued to maze me through the intricit bazaar untill I found them in the very heart it!!! I was exhausted by the end of it all and just went back to my host family's house and fell asleep! When I woke up my host family was in the midsts of repainting their whole house. Their only son is getting married in less than a month so the whole house must be looking its best for the wedding, I'm really excited to see a Kyrgyz wedding. The wedding is constantly a topic of conversation, more than once my host mother has run her finger across her throat as she explains that a sheep, cow and horse will be sacrificed at the wedding. Its going to be a big party!

As for work, yesterday was my first day at the office. I first went to my host mother's office, she is a director for an NGO that works with local orphans and has a small office not far from my NGO. While I was there she introduced me to a dozen people, many who seemed to be government officials which I am glad to know for future references during my two years here. I was so flattered, as she introduced me and explained what I was doing in Kyrgyzstan she would call me her new daughter!

After we had lunch I went to my NGO's office and talked about what I will be doing for the next couple of weeks. My first project is to creat an English club where young adults can practice their english by exploring issues that the organization is involved in such as human and women rights, anti human trafficking along with less heavy topics like movies, life in America and so on. I'm actually really excited, I think it will be a great way for me to get to know the community!

As for today, it has already been an eventfull one! Apparently it is some type of national holiday- which one, I don't know- but right outside of the park was a stage set up where people were performing traditional kyrgyz dances, childeren were singing and many people were wearing traditional Kyrgyz hats and dresses. After my host mother and I had been watching for a few minutes she took me around and started introducing me to people. Its amazing, the woman knows everyone! Anyway the last person that she introduced me to was a news man who was filming the event...so yes I was asked to speak into the camera and say "Hello Kyrgyzstan, I love you Kyrgyzstan!" in Kyrgyz...I speak Russian...well at least all of Jalalabad will have a good laugh tonight! Damn!

I can only hope that tomorrow will be just as exciting! I will be going down to Osh City where there is a Women's Leadership Conference being put on by one of the volunteers who has already been serving for one year. It will be all in Russian but I think that it is an excellent opportunity to see what other volunteers are doing during their service here and hopefully I will be inspired and find some opportunities for my own secondary projects. I wish me luck as I muddle through another day!!!

NGO

In eight days Pre-Service Training will be over and I will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I will pack my suitcases, say goodbye to my training host family and the next day I will be on a plane heading towards my permanent site and only then will my two years of service will begin. Training has been hard and very trying, but I have learned a lot and am better prepared to work with my NGO and within the community thanks to it. Although I will miss having all the volunteers within a twenty minute marshuka ride and I will hate saying goodbye to my first host family, I have a beautiful city that I will be moving to and a NGO which I am really excited to be working with.

Just last week I had the opportunity to spend a day working with them, it was an interesting, inspiring and motivating day all at once. It began when my director picked me up that morning, she pulled up in her sedan with her youngest son in the back who needed to be dropped off at school, the radio was blaring Russian pop music and as soon as I sat down we sped off to the office. The office is actually an apartment where the NGO is based, there are three computers, a television and internet (when there is electricity.) From what I have heard, this is a pretty badass set up for a local NGO! The first thing that I did when I arrived was flip through a photo album that was filled with pictures of previous events and seminars, as I flipped through the book I had another woman sitting next to me explaining all the pictures to me in Russian, she spoke really quickly and every now and then I would catch what she was trying to get across to me, regardless I smiled and nodded as we looked through the pictures. After lunch a translator was brought in, it was a young woman in her twenties who spoke beautiful English. Her husband was at the dentist and she had not been able to find a babysitter in time so she brought her new baby with her. As she translated what the organization was about and what my role would be, she juggled her baby who was bored and starting to get testy. At one point she pulled her shirt up and started nursing the baby but did not miss a beat and continued translating! As the initial shock wore off I had to smile, this scenario would never happen in America!

Regardless of the unintential flashing, thanks to her I learned that the organization had three main categories of work; shaping and guiding women leaders, domestic violence and human trafficking. They have initiated many seminars and events in the community and throughout Kyrgyzstan. One of the projects they would like me to start with is working with a group of school girls in a after school English club, she talked about how her long term goal with this project is to inspire these young women to volunteer and work with the community so one day they will be able to fill their roles.

Another very difficult subject that the organization does some work with is bride kidnapping. This is a Kyrgyz tradition where a man who wants to get married will kidnap a young woman who he believes will make a good wife. Sometimes he will know her and sometimes he won’t. These kidnappings have been divided into two categories; consensual and non consensual. Consensual kidnapping is when the man and women discuss and agree that he will kidnap her. Couples will do this to avoid dowry expenses or if one of the families doesn’t approve of the marriage, by kidnapping her they are avoiding some barriers that they would face otherwise. But the non consensual kidnapping is exactly what it sounds like. After he kidnaps this girl he brings her back to his parents house and the family must try to convince the girl to stay by telling her what a great guy the kidnapper is and how if she were to go back to her family now it would be shameful for both her and her family because everyone would assume that she is no longer a virgin. If she stays, which she usually will because she doesn’t want to embarrass her family, then she lives there for forty days till the wedding. Of course not all marriages happen like this, but it does happen and is very present in Kyrgyz culture

Right now it is illegal and it is very negatively viewed. I am hoping that through this NGO I will learn more about it and have opportunities to work on educating men and women about alternative options to bride kidnapping. Here's hoping for a great experience in Jalal Abad!