My grandma used to say, “you might just as well laugh about it as to cry.” Volunteers here can either pull our hair out over how detrimental the books are to English education or we can laugh at the ridiculousness we find. Most of us have chosen the latter. I have taken to jotting down some favorite mistakes, propaganda and weirdnesses in my notebook. Here, some examples:
“The name of this part of the Ireland is England.”
“The souls of our ancestors have been absorbed into our flag.”
In a section of phrases students are supposed to memorize for going to the doctor: “I feel rather seedy.” and “no reading in bed.”
“A woman is a mother, wife, sister and daughter to us. The conditions of a Turkmen woman’s virtue is surfaced by her loyality [sic] to these four conditions.”
The biggest laugh getter among volunteers is the fact that Turkmen textbooks use the word ‘cock’ for ‘rooster’ and that in the 1st form textbook, you find the sentences “That is a big cock. I like the big cock.” Yes, we’re that juvenile.
New Adjustments
I have moved in with a new family. They don’t have a shower, just a tub, so I’m back to bucket baths. I’m okay with that, because in exchange for that I have freedom. I can come and go as I please and I can hang out in my room, working on lessons or reading without being interrupted. However, that’s not to say I haven’t had to adjust. Here’s the story of my first bucket bath at the house.
To get hot water, my mom has to light the pitch while the water is running. She told me not to turn the water off, which I thought meant, don’t turn it off til you’re done or else you can’t get hot water again. Wrong. I turned it off when I was done and because the pitch was still lit, it ended up making steam back up in the system or something and created this loud explosion that made my host mom shoo me and my host sister away from the bathroom door toward the front door as if we needed to evacuate. I started crying because I thought I broke their faucet. I didn’t, and host mom was cool about it. She explained to me that I should just leave the water running until the pitch is turned off. (At my old house, the shower worked like a U.S. one, you turn on the hot water faucet and hot water comes out, then you turn it off and it turns off). I felt really awful and when I got to Lindsay’s (we live on the same block now, she’s like two houses away) and told her about it I started crying again. Can you imagine causing a serious plumbing problem for your host family your first full day there? And I felt stupid because how dumb did I look, unable to work something as simple as basic plumbing? Oy. But my host mom was really nice; when I got back later that evening she joked about it.
I’m also farther away from work and I still walk. It’s about forty-five minutes now. Sometimes it’s a struggle when it’s early in the morning and it’s dark and cold and I’m carrying a bag of books. But except for one morning when it was raining, I always walk instead of taking a taxi. I’m committed to getting that exercise, since right now it’s about all I can do until the weather is nicer. Plus it’s free. And ecological. And safer.
We don’t have water all the time, just in the mornings and at night. And sometimes not at all. This is pretty typical in B-bat, it just means you have to plan ahead a little with water and sometimes you have to go a couple days without bathing. Sometimes we lose electricity (this is universal here). No worries; I have a flashlight.
My room is great. I have a bed now instead of a dushak (a thin mat) and a desk that’s big enough to hold my books and still offer a work area. Plus I can put things up on my wall. And I’m no longer living out of suitcases. My host family is pretty chill and lets me do my own thing but also takes me guesting sometimes. I have a mom, dad and 5 year old sister. I guess I have a brother too, but he’s in Moscow at university.
Anyway, my mood has improved exponentially since I’ve been able to have real alone time. I can plan for my clubs, write letters and blog posts (there’s a reason there’s been such a lull), and watch stuff I got from Andy like Top Chef and Community. I don’t care if I end up spending more money on food for meals or have less posh living conditions; I have freedom and that is priceless. Wow, I really am an American.