Three Months

November was a month full of events: the election, International Education Week, Thanksgiving, the President's visit (library closed), and Flag Day (concert beginning early Saturday morning and flags everywhere). The government blocked Facebook this past Monday (which made some American news sites; the article on RFE/RL includes a great picture of Zuckerburg (photoshopped?) which Tajiks have been sharing even though the site is still blocked).

In my third month, I have noticed things that I didn't notice before. If my first month was finding my way around and noticing everything new - more like travelling - and my second month settling in - becoming totally accustomed to plov and shashlik and the bazaar and questions about marriage - in my third month I started noticing the little things that I didn't have mental space to notice before, or didn't manage to see: that the nighttime lights on the main street are the colors of the Tajik flag (they are not constantly red and green for Christmas), that our apartment has one flight of 6 steps, then four flights of 9 steps; and that every woman wears a scarf differently.

A rumol is the headscarf that most Tajik women wear. I had noticed the general pattern before: that in the villages, every woman wears one of the headscarves, often brightly colored, tied not unlike a bandana, and that it is less common in the cities. It is not the same as hijab, since it does not cover all of your hair: not so much religious as cultural (and practical if cooking or picking cotton). But only now have I noticed how unique every woman's scarf-tying is: most tie a sort of knot around a bun at the back of the neck, some leaving the ends hanging down their back; some tie the ends back up around the head like a headband; some wrap the ends around their neck; some let the hair hang out the back like a ponytail. Then there are the Russian-style women who tie more like we would a bandana; then the look we associate more with the Middle East of a scarf wrapped over the head and around the shoulder (also associated with women in a convertible), then the old women who drape a large white shawl over their heads and fasten under the chin. Some women do wear hijab: also fastened in an endless variety of ways, but with the tight under-scarf cap that covers all the hair, and careful pins to keep the scarf secure. Their scarves are more often the silk (or fake-silk). Rumol are more often cotton or rougher material. I only started noticing the various permutations when I tried to wear a rumol for the first time. I wanted to wear something on my head, as it has gotten cold.

It is cold, but I am told that it is not yet winter; the wind has not come. Nonetheless, I am in boots every day - usually the black, heeled, fleece-lined boots I bought at Somon Bazaar (who would have thought that Tajikistan is where I would learn to wear heels?), sometimes the brown snow boots I brought from home. My coat is my constant companion, and I love its double layers dearly - though I am also beginning to admire the ankle-length, heavy coats that women here wear. A friend helped me buy a pair of leather gloves, since I forgot to pack something for my hands (50 c instead of 75 because he knew the salesperson). In our apartment we have two air heaters mounted on the walls, and Sarah and I have acquired two more oil heaters; we love them (as you can see in this picture that Sarah took of me the other day). Our beds are the warmest places. 

The American Corner is also warm; I enjoyed my presentations for various events this month, and I have come to love my TOEFL class. Not only my students, who are wonderful, but also figuring out how to teach the class. I felt more comfortable teaching, even as I also felt that at times I burrowed under my covers to sleep. There is always more to do. I think I will change my schedule again after the opportunity to talk to other ETAs in December. I look forward to a cold few months, but also the comfort of a home and increasingly meaningful relationships here. And before the real winter, an exciting December of travel, and the surprisingly strange feeling of leaving Tajikistan (and Khujand) for a little while to do so. 

Khujand Thanksgiving

I considered writing a play along the lines of the First Thanksgiving plays we make Elementary School children do; then I thought about writing a recipe for our Thanksgiving. Instead this blog post is going to end up one part teaching reflection, one part food blog, and one part social report. 

At the American Corner, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I used my regular Discussion Club to make everyone think about what they were thankful for. We also listened to part of a TED talk roughly about being thankful (or appreciative). 

Reading a First Thanksgiving play.

On the day itself, I gave a presentation that went through the basic historical facts, and then I made them read through a simple Thanksgiving play. This is a real American Cultural experience, because it really is what all American schoolchildren do. It was an interesting decision of how much to include, and to look at different websites that advise teachers. I think that public history is fascinating and important, so I started with the basic story: which, again, is what Americans get, and even if you learn more later, it is the narrative that we are celebrating as a country. Every country shapes its own story of itself - Tajikistan very obviously at the moment with Somoni - and the idea of the Pilgrims is an important part of our identity. I also mentioned the Virginia Company, and how it was different; and that things weren't always so happy at Plymouth - you know when the kid in the play says he's hungry, Mom? That's because half of them died that winter. And, right, all of the killing and deaths. But because I wanted to talk about the holiday today in America, I moved on fairly quickly. I talked about food, football, and in my family, the Alexandria Turkey Trot. I served Pumpkin pie.

Cutting the pie while they fill in Thanksgiving crosswords.

Then I ran home, where I was in the middle of cooking a turkey. I was very proud of this turkey, given my lack of experience with meat as a vegetarian for six years. We were very excited to find frozen turkeys; my friend came upon them and seized them both, since they are rare birds. We cut off the necks together in the morning, and she cooked one while I did the other. I was thankful throughout to my boss at the Embassy. She gave us the cookbook that she and her husband wrote in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, which has helpful things like how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey in a finicky oven and without access to fancy ingredients.

This is where the blog will take a turn towards photos of the cooking:

The beginning of the pumpkins.

The night before, making many pumpkin pies.

To make more pie pans I had to take apart frying pans.

Note the tupperware full of roasted pumpkin seeds.

Apple pie beginning in the morning.

The final pie display.

I didn't take photos of the turkey because my hands were too covered in raw meat juice. 

Running back and forth with pies and turkey all day was good exercise for my biceps. At the end of the cooking, we ended up piling into a taxi to take it to the home of the dinner. 

Serving myself from our buffet.

Finishing the gravy in the other kitchen.

Our meal included mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (imported from America via a Canadian living in Bishkek's boyfriend), salads, mulled wine, and Canadian Beaver Tails along with the pies for dessert. Our feast fed fifteen people: 5 Brits, 4 Americans, 2 Canadians, 2 Tajiks, 1 Austrian and 1 German. Sara was particularly excited that one of the Canadians was a real Mountie. I inflicted the non-Americans with a dramatic re-telling of the Thanksgiving story (though they were lucky, because Sarah and I considered making them do a play). We went home at the end of the night exceedingly thankful, and happy to have celebrated in style.

Giving Thanks

This year, as every year, I am thankful for many things: my family, my friends, my health. I am thankful that I have internet access to be able to keep in touch with my family and friends. I am thankful for the new friends - the family - I have made here. I am thankful for the Fulbright Program, and the many people at the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe who are so supportive.  I am thankful that I can mostly do what I want. I am thankful for the opportunity to be in Tajikistan.

Being here also reminds me to be thankful for many things that I take for granted in the United States:  an education system that teaches to standards and requires hard work; a democracy that holds contested elections, as ours reminded me; and cultural structures that value women as equals to men. Today I want to dwell on how thankful I am for my rights as a woman.

I am thankful that my parents always encouraged me. In everything. I am thankful that they expected me to go to school and to go to college. I am thankful that my teachers and community encouraged me to play sports and participate in every activity as well as my male peers. I am thankful that I still have my parents' support as I figure out what is next.

"When do you plan to get married?" a Tajik male asked me. I have no plan, I told him. It depends on when I meet someone who I think I want to marry. "When do your parents want you to get married?" he persisted. My parents have almost no say in the matter, I told him, to his surprise. I am so thankful that my husband will be my choice: both who and when. 

When and if I marry, I am thankful that my husband and I will not have to live with his family if we do not want to. I am thankful that we will share cooking and cleaning duties. I am thankful that I will not ask my husband permission to travel, and that he will be supportive of me working. I am thankful that I have the education to understand my legal rights should he not treat me well. I am thankful that my family would not be disappointed if I gave birth to a daughter.

Not everything is perfect for women in America; we have plenty of recent news and politics to show us that. More subtly, our assumptions are not always so different from those here. Americans also obsess over dating and marriage. The time scale is different - "If he hasn't been married by 45, something must be wrong with him," an American acquaintance remarked the other day - but people still think you should marry. And there are spheres that are almost exclusively male. "Even in America it is not common for women to be boxers?" a Tajik friend asked, surprised, when borrowing Million Dollar Baby. No, I said, not at all; it is a men's world. [A Tajik woman won a bronze medal in boxing in the Olympics this summer. This fall she got married and announced that she is taking a year off from the sport.]

But though not all is equal in America, there are people trying to change that. In Congress or on the editorial pages of newspapers, there are many people defending a woman's right to participate in sports, or to stay single, or to do anything else. I am thankful that I was born in a time and a place where I was told that women can and should expect rights equal to men's, and that if it is not the case, then I should fight for those rights.

Of course there are people fighting for those rights here, and many women have seized them for themselves. I have met women who are lucky to have support from their parents in their job, or in choosing their husbands (which is more common now). I have met women who are do not feel constrained by some of the things I would find constraining. I am thankful for the chance to learn from many different opinions on these issues, from students and friends, male and female.

I am thankful for all of the opportunities I have been given without regard to my gender, and thankful that I have the time here to realize that. 

Coming soon: The Story of Tajik Thanksgiving. Featuring: Turkey! Pies! More Thanks!

Зарбулмасал. Proverbs.

I have my Tajik lessons twice a week at 9 am. I am often running late from finishing my homework after waking up in the morning, but I really like my teacher. She is a Fulbright FLTA alumna, and after her year teaching in the U.S. has returned in the summers to teach at one of few universities where Americans can learn Tajik. 

She has mostly given me short fables to read (some titles to pique your interest: "Father's Treasure," "The Most Important Riches," "The Monkey Teaches the Cats a Lesson"). My homework is usually to write sentences with the new words I have learned, as well as a paragraph summarizing the tale, or discussing the traits of the characters. In class I must come up with Tajik clues to new vocabulary so that she can guess which word I am defining - and vice versa. I have even had two quizzes. 

One day early on she decided I  would learn some Tajik proverbs. It was a good exercise for me to understand the literal meaning, then the 'aha' moment of the message of the proverb, and then wonder how it compares to proverbs I heard growing up. I liked them enough to share: each one in Tajik, Latin transliteration, and simple translation.

A page from my Tajik notebook, with the proverbs and other vocab on the left and my homework listed on the right.
(On the bottom right I was showing Sarah what "zabon doni jahon doni" looks like in Farsi.)

Олими беамал - занбури беасал

Olimi be-amal  - zanburi be-asal

A scientist without action is a bee without honey

Аббал андиша баьд гуфтор

Avval andisha ba'd guftor

First think then talk

Забон дони - ҷаҳон дони

Zabon doni - jahon doni

To know a language is to know the world

[I hear this one all the time]

Офтобро бо доман пушида намешавад

Oftob-ro bo doman pushida nameshavad

The sun cannot be covered with a skirt

Бо моҳ шини моҳ шави

Бо дег шини сиeҳ шави

Bo moh shini - moh shavi

Bo deg shini - siyoh shavi

If you sit with the moon you become the moon

If you sit in a deg* you become black

*Deg is the pot/wok/cauldron they use to cook plov, the national dish. 

фол. Fortune.

This woman sits near Panjshanbe Bazaar on busy days calling out that she has fortunes. I was curious about her and her bird, but I did not stop until I was showing visiting friends around the city.

When you stop, she asks your name, and whispers it to the bird. She recites something as she holds the bird over the bundle of fortunes and it picks at a couple before choosing one for you. The bird chose several for me; the woman told me that was lucky. One somoni per fortune. I demurred and took only one.

I went back later to ask if I could take her picture, now that I am slightly less shy of my camera.  Of course I got another fortune. I asked her bird's name and she smiled.

My fortune:
Бахт шарику хамрохи шумост. Дар тичоратмуваффак мешавед. Корхои шахсиатон барор мегирад.

Шумо мехохед оиладор гардед, бахтатонро бо дустоштаатон бинед маданиятатонро аз даст надихед. Накшахоятон амали мегардад. хушбахт мешавед.

Luck is your partner. You will succeed in trade/commerce.  You will be successful in your personal work. 

You want to get married, You will see your luck with your love. Do not lose your culture. You will be lucky. 

She is far from the first person here to tell me that I want to get married, but is the first to mention going into business. With my experience driving the Astro van I think I could become a great mashrutkeh driver....


[N.B. a 'mashrutkeh' is public transportation: these vans have routes in the city and serve as taxi/bus. Usually 1 somoni per ride, or more depending on the distance. People often get packed in as tight as they can fit.]

Patriotism

"If there is any valuable difference between a monarchist and an American, it lies in the theory that the American can decide for himself what is patriotic and what isn't. I claim that difference. I am the only person in the 60 millions that is privileged to dictate my patriotism." 

- Mark Twain, via my mother forwarding Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" on Election Day

I have never felt so patriotic and so American as I did in Khujand, Tajikistan on November 6 and 7, 2012, as I waited and watched for news of the Presidential election. I did not expect to care so much; I did not watch any of the debates, and was grateful to avoid the bitterness of negative campaigning. But as Election Day approached I was entirely in the U.S.A. in mind and spirit.

I got to choose my own patriotism: I posted photos of the State Department election teaching materials on Facebook, and liked every status that had to do with voting. I went to bed, and woke up at 8 a.m. to find that America had started counting. I drank Nescafe and ate a piece of cake with my eyes glued to the Washington Post's webpage - unless I changed to Facebook.  I felt sudden tears when I saw the call. I remembered that NPR is station 20 on our European satellite TV. I listened while making chocolate chip cookies to take into the American Corner for our election celebration. I listened to Romney's speech, and waited for Obama's as I began to plan how, exactly, I would share this with my Tajik students. My internet constantly paused Obama to buffer the video and I gave up and printed the transcript an hour later. I admit to a moment when I felt the urge to sing "Proud to Be An American."

When I finally went to the American Corner, I wore my Tajik-American dual-flag lapel pin on my sweater, an "I Voted!" sticker and an Obama/Biden sticker left by a visiting English Language Specialist. I brought ridiculously American, 4th-of-July-type napkins and tablecloth left by the same teacher. I beamed. My TOEFL class, which is learning strategies for the Listening section of that test, got to listen to Obama's victory speech. They learned the words "concession" and "acceptance."The Election Celebration included a re-cap of the electoral college system, which meant mock elections among the United Three States of the American Corner in Khujand as we chose between Chocolate Chip Cookies and Cake (Cake won, winning the electoral vote 4:1 and the popular vote 10:5). We colored in the map. I brought copies of the cookie recipe. During my Music Club, we listened and looked at the words to Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" (which Obama walked out onstage to before his speech) and Ben Harper's "Better Way"(Obama's theme song earlier in the race). I felt unabashed about my showy Americanism.

It is not that I can hide being American here; I work in the American Corner for goodness' sake. But I chose and owned that role in the run-up to the election, grateful to for the chance to re-learn as I taught. I feel more acutely American while abroad, given the chance with distance to look again at the country.

And I remember how much I am shaped by American history and how much I love beautiful American words: I am so excited to teach the "I Have a Dream" speech. I love if a student asks, "So, there was a war between North and South?" I am beside myself as I plan to teach the Gettysburg Address this month. (Lincoln delivered the speech on November 19, 1863.)

And after that it will be Thanksgiving, but already, at the beginning of the month, I feel so thankful. I felt thankful as I explained our term limits. As I explained, last week, to different classes, how we didn't know who was going to win. I am thankful I could chose to wear stickers, and when and where to wave the flag. I am thankful that I could manage to vote from Tajikistan! (I think; I don't know if my ballot actually made it....) I am thankful, as Twain reminded me, that I could chose to dance around my kitchen with instant coffee and the internet, and then teach with cookies and speeches, all as my expression of love of country.

Two Months

October has come and gone, marked by visitors and cooling weather, and now I'm left wondering how two months could have passed already, since I think I wrote that it was one month only yesterday, and so how it could possibly be November.

The weather patterns are changing; it rained for the first time last week, and again on Sunday. I can tell that the air is more humid. When I was in Shahristan (high up in the mountains) two weeks ago the leaves were beginning to turn; when Sarah was there one week ago it snowed. Now in Khujand (in the valley) the leaves have fallen in droves. But it is still autumn: cold two weeks ago, and pleasantly warmer last week - a slight reprieve from the fall towards winter.

Our apartment is colder inside than the street outside in the sun. We have experimented with our heating systems: two wall-mounted AC/heating units we turn on in the evenings when we get home, an oil-filled radiator in the kitchen, and sweaters inside. We sleep under all of our blankets. I am taking inventory of what we should buy before winter truly sets in: more blankets, another space heater, another sweater, gloves.

I have added scarves to my daily wardrobe. I still wear sandals sometimes - but with socks. That is a perfectly acceptable fashion trend here. My flats are not much warmer, and I don't want to break out the boots yet, because I know I will be wearing them all winter.

In the bazaar, tomatoes that were 80 dirham or 1 somoni per kilo now cost 8 somoni. Apples and persimmons are the 1.5-2 somoni seasonal fruits. (I had never had a persimmon before, to the shock of some friends when they offered me a khorma. I didn't even know what the English word for it was, until I came home and asked Sarah, who grew up eating the fruit in the South.)

And in the midst of the changing seasons, there was some living. I was sick with a cold, and read A Song of Ice and Fire in bed. I cooked more. My Tajik is (hopefully) improving (very slowly). I have been teaching my classes at the American Corner, and am somewhat better at planning for them. I have gotten to know the American Corner coordinator better, and have been glad to have the chance to talk to her outside of work hours.

We had visitors. ETAs/Embassy friends from the south came for the first six days of the month. We got to play host, and show off our apartment, our work places and our city. We had three (or four) people sleeping in our beds and on the floor, and dinners and movies or parties in the apartment every night. After our friends came two different official embassy visitors, the Regional English Language Officer and an English Language Specialist. With each of them we went out to dinner and spent a lot of time talking about what it means to be an ETA/ELF. Two other visits from Embassy staff not directly related to our work said hello and brought gifts from Dushanbe and took us out to dinner.

And then there have been many dinners with other Khujand expats; some at the pizza restaurant and some in people's homes. There are a few new faces since September. Some short-term volunteers have come and already gone.

Almost every week I have travelled somewhere in Sugd: to Kairakkum and Istaravshan to help interview students for new English Access Programs, to Istaravshan for a concert sponsored by the Embassy, to Ghonchi and Shahristan with the English Language Specialist to help with teacher training (by teaching the students). When I went to Shahristan I spent the night with one of the Access Program teachers and got to meet her family, eat all of the many salads she prepared for me, and hear her very interesting life story. I hope to do more of this.

October brought news - a new tunnel opened that will make it faster to get to Dushanbe! - and so will November: the President will visit for an important anniversary. In the U.S., the election will come and go and then Thanksgiving. I will celebrate both by teaching about them, and hoping that when November has gone, I will feel that I have spent the time well.