Adventures with my Kyrgyz Family

July 24, 2009

Wow, it is really hot out. I went to the Uzgen bazaar today with my family, and we all came home and crashed on the floor in the (thankfully) cool living room. The electricity was out so we didn't even watch tv, we just laid there for a while until Apa provided me with motivation to get up by mentioning that there was cold orange juice in the refrigerator.

Last night, Apa asked me if I would have club this morning. I thought this was a strange question, as she knows my schedule pretty well and had just been included in a conversation with her sister-in-law who had asked the club schedule so that she could send her kids. I said yes, and she made a face like she wasn't happy about something and said, “ok, we'll talk tomorrow.” This morning, she asked me again if I was going to school. She said she was going to Uzgen, and I said that's fine, I have food to eat for lunch, I'll see you later. Then she basically ordered me not to go to club, and to change my clothes, because I am going with. I didn't really have a choice. We ended up leaving about the same time I usually leave for school. All the neighbor kids came running to walk with me, and my sister had to tell them that there is no club today. They all gave me sad faces, and I felt really bad, but I figured this trip to Uzgen must be pretty important to Apa.

I guess I was dragged along in order to be another pair of hands to carry bags. This is when I realize how wonderful the invention of the shopping cart is. A string bag full of potatoes and carrots is really heavy. Still, I can't complain, as I find bazaar shopping with Apa to be a fascinating experience.

A side note: ordering a dish that sounds familiar may not always yield familiar results. At a cafe for lunch, I asked Apa and my sister to pick out something new for me to try. Apa ordered three portions of what sounded to me like “beefstroganov.” “Oh, beef stroganov!” I said. “We have this in America. I like this food!” And then I tried to remember if I actually do like beef stroganov.

As it turns out, it didn't really matter if I like beef stroganov or not, since the plate I was given contained neither noodles nor (go figure) beef. Upon glancing at the menu again, I realized that I had heard wrong, and the dish that I was eating was actually written as Бистрогонов (bistroganov) although it was listed underneath Бифштекс(beefshtiks), a that actually is beef, and the closest you can get to a hamburger (albeit a bun-less hamburger) in this part of the oblast. And the beef is not in sticks (or shtiks): I guess it is just a russianization (or is the term “russification”? Probably) of the word “beef steak.” I'm not in love with beefshtiks, but I really just like saying it. Go on, try it: beefshtiks beefshtiks beefshtiks!

By the way, the first item on the menu was also familiar: gulash. Sometimes it is difficult to spot these familiar words through the Russian letters, but it is all the more gratifying once you decipher it. However, I am pretty sure I don't want to try the Kyrgyz version of gulash.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, it turns out that bistroganov was quite tasty. Basically it was some meat (sheep) in a tomato-y sauce, poured over some awesome steak fries.

Since I skipped club, I decided to also skip my Kyrgyz lesson, even though I was home in time. The lessons are good and helpful, but they fry my brain. It reminds me of training. My tutor is making me realize that I have severely underestimated the complexity of the Kyrgyz language. I really should stick to just learn the grammar that is needed for me to be understood on a basic level, but I find the really weird extra stuff so interesting. For example, I was practicing a sentence during my lesson, just using simple present tense and talking about the things I typically do in a day. My tutor interrupted me and said “Now, when you peel potatoes and carrots, do you do it by yourself or with your host mother or sister?” I thought he was prompting me for another sentence, but it turns out that the verb is conjugated differently depending on whether you are doing it by yourself or as a group. I think that is absolutely wild! But then, I am also obsessed with the word “beefshtiks.”

My tutor is doing an excellent job, and I am so fortunate to have him around. It is really nice to know that he is around and willing to help with a communication problem (every time I talk to him he asks me if I am “experiencing any defects with your new family?), especially because my counterpart (who is the person who is really supposed to be helping me out if I need it, the problem is that I have just as much difficulty communicating with her sometimes) is in Bishkek until mid August. No big deal for me because I don't see her very often anyway, but when she told me she was going I felt kind of ditched. Still, it is a great opportunity for her. She apparently won a contest put on by a new local tv station going in in the village, and she will be hosting some show part time. The training is in Bishkek, so that's where she is now.

Yesterday was an interesting day for me. Mostly interesting because it was remarkably uninteresting. The night before yesterday at around 9 I was just chilling in my room, reading a book, waiting to be summoned for supper, when Apa came in and told me to change my clothes because we were going to grandma's house (Kyrgyz people have their home clothes and their going somewhere clothes, a habit I quickly picked up on). I figured I was going to be in for a long night of guesting, but I was wrong. It was starting to get dark, so although the house isn't far (right across the street from my school, actually) the man who drives extended family around a lot (I haven't figured out the relationship with this guy actually. Is he like the chauffeur, or what?) drove us there. I got in the backseat and had to wait a few minutes for the rest of the family to come out. The driver is always really nice to me, but he doesn't talk a lot, which is fine with me. I offered my polite greeting routine and then we both sat in silence for a moment. The moment didn't last long, as I felt a strong kick in the back of my seat and heard a groan coming from the trunk. I gave a little yelp of surprise, and the driver glanced back at me through the rear-view mirror and said, “sheep.” Oh.

So my family (and the sheep) made our way up to my host dad's mother's house, a large compound where a ridiculous amount of aunts, uncles, and cousins live. Inside the main room of the house, which was at the moment devoid of all furniture, the old woman sad on a pile of cushions against the center of the wall opposite the door as if she was holding court over her offspring and their spouses who all stood awkwardly around her. I got in line with my family to give her the obligatory kisses on both cheeks.

She introduced herself to me one day at school when no one else was around. I was sitting on a bench outside, waiting for a teacher who was supposed to meet me, when I saw this old, hunched over woman hobbling over with the help of a cane. She called out out my name like a question (we hadn't seen each other before) so I hurried over to meet her. “Yes, I'm Audra,” I said, holding out my hand (hand shaking is really, really big here). To my surprise, she gripped my hand and yanked me in with amazing force for a smacking kiss on each cheek. “My daughter!” she said, “I am your Chong Ene!” (the southern Kyrgyz word for “grandmother.”) She is an awesome woman. I love her.

Anyway we were there so that the men could kill the sheep that was in the trunk in preparation for the next day, which was to be a joint celebration of the presidential election and the anniversary of the death of Chong Ene's husband. I made myself useful by babysitting inside the house, glad to be given a task and not the option of witnessing the slaughter of the animal that had been groaning in the trunk a few minutes earlier (what a horrible way to spend your last hour on earth).

We only ended up staying for about a little over an hour, and didn't eat, like I thought we would, except for the “osti,” which is the obligatory nibble of bread you must take when you visit someone's house. When we finally got home and ate dinner, it was past 11. I can't get used to this schedule.

The next morning, I got rolled out of bed to head back to Chong Ene's house, where I spent a very boring day. I wasn't really invited to be involved in either the prayer part of the day (I always want to call it a “death day party”) or the food preparation, so I just did the babysitting thing again, which was more difficult this time since the kids were just as bored as I was. It was too hot to play outside, even for the little kids, and all that was on tv was election stuff. I was glad that I had the foresight to stick my UNO game in my purse. I kind of wanted to know what was going on across the street at my school which was a voting station. There was a lot of loud music being played over there, so I wondered if there was a party of something, but I am technically supposed to avoid political stuff, and I wouldn't have wanted to check it out by myself anyway. Well, I got to eat a lot of good food, so I guess that's good.

(Later...)

I just got back into my room after supper (I helped Apa make stuffed sweet peppers, and it was amazing! It was similar to the rice and meat filling that is in Farah's dolmas, though not quite as flavorful.). I had turned out the lights in the big house before supper, and as it was now about 11 p.m., it was very dark in the house. Instead of turning on the light in the hall, I made my way through the dark entry way to get to my room. Every time I walk around the big old creaky house in the dark, I think about how this is the perfect setup for a horror movie. As I pushed aside the curtain that covered my doorway and reached around the corner to turn on the light, I heard a sniffle, and could kind of make out a person-sized shape standing up from crouching on the floor.

I freaked out a little bit. Okay, a lot, but only for a split second, because as soon as I switched the light on, there, sitting in the middle of the floor, his tail thumping on the carpet, was my host family's big lug of a dog, Churon. I have quickly become Churon's favorite person, as I have a tendency to not finish my plate of sheep fat and gristle, and I am the only person I have seen who pets him. Actually, I have only just now managed to remember his name (I don't know why it was so difficult, it seems like a simple name to me now) and had been calling him Marmaduke. Since I've gotten the name right, he loves me even more, and when he is not tied up, he follows me around everywhere. I wouldn't mind this in the least if he were an American dog, but he is not, and is probably infested with fleas and ticks. Yuck. He isn't even supposed to be in the house, but Apa and I have made an exception and allowed him to sleep in the entryway sometimes during the day. He is surprisingly obedient, but the temptation of doorways covered only with lace curtains must have gotten to him. He knew he was guilty, so he ran outside right away, and I didn't have to try to wrestle him out like I do sometimes. When he stands on all fours, his head comes up to my chest, and he probably weighs about as much as I do, so it is kind of tricky. I usually have to get some food for him. I am just so glad that he is a nice dog and not like my training family's three little terrors. I don't know why I was always so scared of little Rex, the smallest and most ferocious of the three. Churon could eat him in one bite.

August 2, 2009

I don't think I will ever be able to adapt to the Kyrgyz concept of time. I left home for Osh on Monday morning, expecting to be back home on Tuesday afternoon. It is now 6 o'clock on Sunday, and I just got home.

It would have been nice if my sister had warned me that we would be staying for a week, or maybe she just assumed I knew the typical Kyrgyz visiting policy. I had done my best to pack light, but light packing with one day in mind does not quite stretch for a week. This resulted in me wearing the same outfit all week and washing the shirt twice (it was a hot week) and being generally pissed that I didn't think to bring my dictionary or more money (I had to borrow from other volunteers. I hate borrowing).

Not that it wasn't a good week. It was a really good bonding experience for me and my sister, and it was nice to get away from the village for a bit. We really spent most of our time either at the pool down the road from the apartment we were staying at, or just sprawling on the floor watching American and Russian music videos, sappy Uzbek romance movies, and way too many episodes of this really bad Brazilian soap opera dubbed in Russian. It was probably the first time in my life where I just sat around doing nothing for an entire week and didn't feel guilty about it. Our lovely hostess, who I guess is my host sister's cousin's new wife, is a university student so she has the summer off. She is definitely a no-fuss housewife who made ramen noodles instead of complicated Kyrgyz dishes and spent the rest of her time laying around with us, even skipping the trips to the pool to watch more tv and sleep.

On Wednesday it was cloudy and breezy, so we climbed Suiliman Too (Soloman's Mountain), Osh's pride and joy and a very popular pilgrimage site for Musilms. To be honest, I am kind of getting sick of hearing about it, and I am mostly glad that I went to see it so that I don't have to hear the gasps of horror when I tell people that I have visited Osh several times without climbing the mountain. Maybe I have to be Muslim or really spiritual or something to really appreciate the mountain like Oshians do, but at least I could admire the view of the city from the top. And the museum was interesting, if a little sad and worn.

I spent Friday with some volunteers, came back yesterday to meet my sister and hoped to go home with her, but no luck there. We went for a long walk around the neighborhood with some new friends we met at the pool one day and they invited us for a tour of the city on Monday or Tuesday. I said I didn't think we would stay that long, but to my horror, my sister agreed. Turns out, she was just being Kyrgyz—they don't like to turn down invitations on the spot, so they agree and then make an excuse later. I think it is very annoying, and even more so that I have found myself doing it lately. Turns out Kyrgyz people don't like to hear other people turn down their invitations either, and often the invitations are empty anyway and they expect you to refuse later. What a joke.

Anyway, the apartment was really nice, even though the only furniture they had was a tv stand and a table. Kyrgyz people seem to have something of an aversion to furniture. Even when they have it, they hardly ever use it. The outside was a little dreary. If you walk for a ways down the road, there is a nice little park-type area with some nice and expensive-looking restaurants (one was called “Manhattan” and I wondered if they had American food. They don't.) and a small bazaar that was so convenient (shopping for anything requires such planning in the village). Even more convenient was that women would walk around in between apartment buildings yelling (in Kyrgyz) “peaches!”, “milk!”, “manti!” or whatever they were selling out of their baskets tied up in tablecloths that they were lugging around. I love this about city living! But I have to say that walking around in between the buildings was a tad depressing. It was just too many identical square, gray, Soviet buildings for one area. In the middle of the cluster of buildings there is the rusty remains of a playground, but it is the typical kind that I have seen all over Kyrgyzstan in various levels of disrepair. I would like to know what the Soviets expected kids to do on these playgrounds. Pull-ups during recess, perhaps?

Speaking of strange Soviet things (the country is full of them) I saw an interesting news segment the other day. It was in Russian, but I think I got the gist. The reporter was on a tour of an old Soviet fallout shelter somewhere in Central Asia. The segment was lighthearted, with the reporter laughing as she tried on old gas masks and such, but I don't know why she wasn't terrified. The whole place looked like something from a nightmare. Not only that, but the place was huge! I wish I could have understood what they were saying, but I was at least able to see that there were definitely intentions to accommodate a lot of people for a really long time. The scariest part was the tour of the shelter's weight room and a firing range. The lighting and the whole look of the place was so eerie I thought I might have nightmares. Even though there were several Kyrgyz people in the room, no one but me seemed to be paying attention, and when I asked if someone could translate what they were saying into Kyrgyz so I could understand, they were like, “this isn't interesting,” and changed the channel.

When we first got to Osh, we went guesting at the home of my host dad's sister, only about a 20 minute walk from our apartment and, ironically, just off Karl Marx street. The place was a mansion! I throw around that word a lot in jest because so many Kyrgyz homes are very large and are often made of many separate houses in one complex. But this was a mansion by American standards. The main house was very much a tv show house setup, and the decorating scheme was a very Western matchy-matchy beige and light green job, not at all what I have seen in most houses with mismatched rugs, wall hangings, and curtains. There was a big screened tv in the living room and I could hear another tv going in a bedroom upstairs. They had a piano in the dining room, the first piano I have seen in a house in country.

While we were eating lunch, the mother called her son on the phone, scolded him for still sleeping, and told him to come meet the American girl and speak English to her. Since she used the phone to call him, I thought he must live somewhere else, but he was just in another part of the house. Yeah, its that big. He conveniently stumbled in without a shirt, probably expecting to show off for an American girl cut more from the Jessica Alba mold. Too bad. He gave me a tour of the house, which included a bigger living room with another big screen tv, a small collection of antique brass ware, and a kangaroo pelt draped over the couch. There was also a pet eagle tied up in the front yard, and really expensive-looking SUV in the garage belonging to the father (my guide was quick to tell me that his own car—a Mercedes—was being borrowed by his father that day). The craziest part was the last stop on the tour. It was a separate building containing, get this: an indoor pool! And a sauna and a shower. I know, right? In Kyrgyzstan! I wasn't able to understand what the dad does for a living. Probably he's a drug lord or something. Just kidding. But really....