I miss interaction with men. Aside from when I get together with PCVs, I don’t really get much testosterone in my day. Turkmen always separate by gender and I must remain with the women who talk about clothes and gossip worse than American women. Maybe Turkmen men aren’t any better in their conversational topics. I suspect that’s the case since Turkmen in general are not into reading or keeping up on world events or other things that would lend themselves to good convo starters. Still, I look back with fondness at my days at Dayton High School when I could gather with a mixed gender group and have a good talk. I am afraid when I know the language better, I will find I have nothing to say to them. “So, how about those Lions?” won’t cut it here. (No professional sports, unless they catch soccer on Russian television.) We are advised by PC not to talk about politics. So much of their information is censored anyway.
Disordered Eating
I recently told a fellow PCV that if I get out of this country without having some kind of eating disorder, it will be a miracle. Food is a daily struggle for me. Every day I have to negotiate my way around eating super oily, fatty food or copious amounts of food. My favorite and most used phrase is “yok, sag bol, men doydum- no, thanks, I’m full.” This causes my host mom and any other female relative who happens to be around to worry about me. They are afraid I will become “hor” (thin). I explain to them that being thin is good in America (I don’t have the language to explain body mass index and that medically being thin is healthier). They want me to gain weight. And always, always, push food on me. It irritates me and is another aspect of life here that I find exhausting.
I find myself sometimes eating a Snickers bar for lunch because it is a healthier alternative to most Turkmen cooking. 1) There’s no risk for salmonella, e. coli or tapeworm, etc. and 2) there are nuts. I’m not even trying to be funny here. Turkmen thaw their meat by leaving it on the counter. They will cook a meal and leave it out for hours before eating it. At New Year’s they laid out a spread and it remained laid out for six or seven hours. I took my life in my hands by eating a mayonnaise based salad from New Year’s the next day.
Also, because Turkmen don’t get the concept of personal possessions, any food I buy is fair game if I leave it in the kitchen. I bought a jar of mushrooms intending to make pasta sauce and they were laid out for New Year’s, gone in a day. So, I squirrel away food in my room. Obviously it’s snacks that require no refrigeration or prep. I am troubled by being secretive about food because it is an indicator of an eating disorder, in the States. Here, it is necessary for survival, especially if I ever get peanut butter sent to me because if someone ate my pb, I think I’d kill them. I’m just worried that my behavior here will become habit that carries over when I get back to the States.
In America, I never thought I would one day look upon preservatives as a good thing, but here, I love finding food that is processed and has preservatives, like packaged yogurt or packaged anything really. Because, again, I know it won’t give me food poisoning. Believe me, after two weeks of diarrhea, you’d feel the same way. (I also never thought I would find myself celebrating solid bowel movements; I literally gave a quiet cheer the other day.)
I anticipate the day I try to explain to my family that a salad, when properly done, constitutes a meal. I have started to cook some of my own food and even when I do that, they will sometimes try to get me to eat their meal as well. Food is one of two factors that may motivate my decision to move into my own place if I can.
To be fair, there have been positive aspects to the food situation here. I eat and enjoy food I didn’t back in the States. Mostly produce. Partly because I am so desperate to eat something that has vitamins and isn’t a giant plate of fatty meat cooked in oil (I can’t really exaggerate the amount of oil used in Turkmen cooking and it’s not good oil like olive, it’s cottonseed) and partly because the produce is harvested when ripe and not genetically modified. Pomegranate here is actually tasty, not bitter. I’ll eat beets and eggplant and raw tomatoes and they’re delicious.