So after being in Turkmenistan for a year I finally get to check something off of my list that I had been wanting to do since I found out I was going to be serving in this country. A group of us took an overnight camping trip out to the former town of Derweza, a name that literally means “Gate” in Turkmen, to the appropriately named “Gate of Hell.” The Gate of Hell is this large crater in the middle of the desert that is eternally lit on fire by natural gases that are burning from it. It is an ellipse with one diameter measuring about 80 yards and the other measuring about 40 yards, essentially it’s a huge flaming hole in the middle of the ground.
8 of us braved the freezing cold of the desert in the night to see this awesome site. While it is impressive during the day, you cannot get the true effect of the awesomeness unless you spend the night there. We all shelled out about $35 to a travel agency to make it happen. Unfortunately, this isn’t a trip you can make without the help of a travel agent because you need someone with off-road capabilities to access the site; it’s about 7km off the road into the desert. I must say just driving out to the crater was one of the highlights because you are literally driving off road over huge sand dunes. It was awesome! Anyways, side tracked… so 8 of us went, 4 from my region, Ahal, and 4 from the northern region Dashoguz. We decided to join our trips because it is about a halfway trip between Dashoguz City and Ashgabat, that and we never see anyone from Dashoguz because volunteers there have a hard time traveling to A-bat (and they are anti-social, just kidding!). So we, from Ahal, took two jeeps from the travel company to the turn off in the former town of Derweza (more on why I keep saying former to come) and literally stopped on the side of the road and waited for the group from Dashoguz to come down. This was actually kind of worrisome because there are no signs for Derweza and there is no cell phone reception in the desert. So before we left the city we called the D-gouz peeps and told them we will stop at the turn off and gave them a description of our jeeps. We literally then just had to pray we made it to Derweza before they did, otherwise they would have missed us. Fortunately God was with us and after an hour of waiting D-gouz showed up at our campsite and all was well. We ended up grilling Turkmen style shashlyk for dinner, which is basically shish-ca-bobs slowly grilled over hot coals (not over the large crater though unfortunately, we had to make our own mini version to cook). Then we spent the rest of the evening drinking and taking some fun pictures near the crater. It was actually kind of scary because you really had to be careful not to fall in; there was no railing around the edge. We had good times making poses around the crater and singing all of the songs about fire that we could think of, the top two being “Ring of Fire” by Jonny Cash and “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel. After playing around the fire we decided to try to sleep (emphasis on try), but we were very unsuccessful because our tent was freezing! Even after squeezing all of us, minus one, into a “2 person tent,” in our high quality sleeping bags we all still froze! I would guess it was probably around 40 degrees F, but with a wind chill that made it more like 25, when you are used to 80 degree weather and 75 degrees at night, that’s really cold! In the end though we all survived and nobody suffered from hypothermia or frostbite.
Now, there are many stories circulating around about how this large flaming crater was created. Some speculate that a team of ecologists doing some ecology excavations in the desert formed it. They found this natural gas and to save the people living in the village of Derweza from dying of gas poisoning they decided to light it on fire to burn all of the gases away. This is possible, but given T-stans history with oil and gas I kind of doubt it. Another story goes along the lines of there was a team of Russian oil drillers drilling for oil in the area. They had driller this large hole when all of a sudden their drill truck malfunctioned and fell off the cliff into the hole of gas causing an explosion, which is now the flaming pit. This is a more likely story, but given the size of the hole I don’t think its possible to create that big of a hole with a drill truck from the 1960s. The Turkmen position is that there was a large meteor shower that hit the area in the 1960s! A large meteor fell from the sky into the desert and it’s crash into the ground caused the flaming phenomenon! Again, I strong doubt this. My theory: during the 1960s the Russian were testing bombs, one good place to test bombs is in the middle of the desert with no people around. So they dropped a bomb over this area of gas and it burst into eternal flames. I guess we will never know though!
As for the former town of Derweza, that is a different story! I actually know that one! Once word got around to travelers and travel agencies about this flaming enigma people traveling to t-stan wanted to make trips out to see it. So people living near Derweza decided to set up a tourist town basically that had shops and offered things like a yurt trip out to the crater. As I said before the site is also located about halfway between Dashoguz and Ashgabat, and there are no other towns until you are about 45mins outside of Ashgabat, so the town also served as a pit stop. Well, apparently in 2004 the government decided that the tourist area wasn’t boding well for the Turkmen culture and they successfully shut down all of the businesses. Now all you can see in the area is small mounds of dirt that used to be the remains of the old tourist trap, in my mind I imagine something like Wall Drug in the middle of the S. Dakota Badlands, I probably would have shut that down too. I don’t think these businesses made a lot of money though because I have not met a Turkmen who knows about this place. The only people who seem to go there are Russians, American Peace Corp Volunteers, and other random backpackers. I showed some of my picture (which you can find one facebook) to my Turkmen friends and family and they were really surprised that a place like this actually exists here, even some of the Peace Corps host country national staff had never heard of this place. Thus, I can see why the tourist town was deemed unsuccessful and closed down. Either way, I had an amazing time there. It was probably one of the coolest things I have done and seen in this country and I am really happy to cross this one off of my t-stan travel list! Maybe some day I’ll publish that travel list here, but for now I’ll just keep it to myself. I am very happy to say that I went to the Gate of Hell and came back alive!
Derweza “The Gate of Hell” October 31, 2009
Girls just want to have fun! October 27, 2009
Hey everyone! So I’ve had another few good weeks here in T-stan. We just wrapped up our first quarter of school so I am on a week long break which is very nice. Before the break though I actually got my volleyball club going and thought I would share with you all how that all is going!
It took me a few weeks to get my life organized again after coming back from America, but last week we finally got our volleyball club off the ground! A made a nice set of posters in Turkmen for my students to see and even though I spelled one word wrong (stupid vowel harmony… bane of my existence in writing in Turkmen) I had about 15 girls show up to my first volleyball club! At first the girls were a little apprehensive because we have to have the club in the school yard and there is always a group of boys around. After I started hitting the ball back and forth with one of them and shoeing the little boys away from the court (sorry boys this club is girls only) more and more girls came to hit with us. We never actually played anything and basically just hit a few balls back and forth to one another (by back and forth I mean they would hit the ball, the other girl would catch the ball, and then she would hit it back), but they were so super stoked about it. I think one of the biggest reasons why they were stoked about it was because girls never get to play sports here in this country. They want to play sports, but nobody ever gives them the opportunity to play. Now that they have a club that is just for them, playing a game they are actually interested in learning, without having to worry about playing with the boys they are super excited about it! They don’t really care if they actually learn the rules of the game; they just want to have fun hitting the ball back and forth and just spending time with me, their American body guard who chews out the boys for stealing the balls. It was a really fun first club and I look forward to more in the future, and hopefully one day the boys will leave us alone and go off to play football… I can only hope! Either way the song is absolutely right… “Girls just wanna have fun! That’s all they really want, some fun!”
Back in the T-Stan October 4, 2009
Hey all! So I am officially back in T-stan and in general it’s good to be back. The flights were interesting and long. I ended up having to have a day layover in Istanbul and was unable to save money by sleeping at the airport, which was my cheap idealistic dream. So I had to venture out into the city for the night and part of the day on Monday. It was a really nice morning in the city once I figured out where I was going and I ended up finding the Blue Mosque and a few other random mosques in the area. It was so crazy to be there though because Islam is really prevelent there. I mean there was literally a mosque on every corner so around 1pm during the afternoon call to prayer there was literally about 50 priests over loud speakers throughout the area calling everyone to prayer. It was kind of really beautiful as you could hear it progressing throughout the whole city. So anyways, I ended up having to spend a bit to get a hotel there, but all in all it was worth it to strech my legs a little bit.
As I said I am now back in T-stan and for the most part it has been a good week with one exception, which I will go into a little bit later. Let me first go into a bit of the good stuff! First off everyone at my school and in my community has been really supportive, I think many of them thought that since I went home I wouldn’t come back as they had a volunteer before who went home without much notice and did not return. So I was given a huge welcome by my school, family, and community in general for having returned. My teachers and students are also really excited to have me back in the classroom and working too which was a huge plus. I also want to give a little plug out to the student at New Lothrop High School as I had given a speech to some of the students there and they had written letters to my students here in Turkmenistan. I have had difficulty getting a lot of my students here interested in learning English, but when I told them that American students wanted to talk with them and wrote them letters they all became very excited about the letter project. So thank you Mrs. Thiel and Mrs. Czymbor’s classes for letting me come in and speak with you and for writing some wonderful letters. I hope to get some responses back to you guys soon!
Now onto the low part of the week and a crushing blow. This week was supposed to be a joyous week as we were to welcome a new group of volunteers into Turkmenistan, the T-18s. We have been preparing and anticipating the arrival of new volunteers for basically the whole summer. Well, on Tuesday I recieved a call from our Program Training Officer telling me that the T-18 group would be delayed due to problems obtaining Visas to enter Turkmenistan. This was a little odd, and then on Wednesday I recieved a call from our Training Manager saying that the T-18s would not be arriving at all as they had been declined Visas. This was a huge surprise to our Peace Corps program here. I can’t really say why the Visas were denied because I can only give some sort of speculation, and I do not want to report anything without having facts. So thus I am going to leave it as that, the T-18s will not be coming to Turkmenistan, but the Turkmen Government did say that they would welcome 50 new volunteers in 2010.
This whole thing has been really hard for me to grasp because it’s just so surprising and just overall sad. I feel as though it is important for me to have that realization that new volunteers were arriving and become a veteran volunteer. I was excited to look over the hardships I had had over the past year and the positives that came out of it. I was excited to share the knowledge that I had about working here to a new volunteer and just help them through their struggles. My heart also really goes out to the T-18s that had sold their cars, quit their jobs, bought things specifically for service here, said goodbye to their friends and family, got on a plane, actually had their staging in Philadelpia, and be told that they would not be going to their country and would have to board a plane back home. My heart breaks for them and I cannot fathom what I would do if that happened to me.
So T-18s I want to let you all know that we here in Turkmenistan are devastated, not just the volunteers but even the Host Country Nationals. It was a huge shock to everyone and we are devastated. I wish you all the best in finding new placements. Please stay strong through this hardship and do not give up hope on Peace Corps. You will all make amazing volunteers someday.
Home September 21, 2009
Hey everyone! Once again I am slacking on updating this thing, but seeing as how it has been a whirlwind few weeks I am sure you all will forgive me. I am actually writing you all this email from my home here in Montrose, MI. Now before any flags go up in your heads just to let you know, no I have not left Peace Corps, I wasn’t kicked out, I’m not sick, and yes I am returning there. Last Sunday morning I got a call from my dad saying that my Grandmother had passed away. Knowing how important family was to Grandma P I knew I had to try to come home for the funeral. So Dad and I worked together to get me home all day on Sunday and I ended up boarding a plane that night to Istanbul. From Istanbul I flew to Amsterdam and eventually Detroit, I landed on Monday afternoon. Tim and Jess picked me up and we went off to Traverse City for the funeral.
Tuesday was visitation at the funeral home and the rosary prayer service then the funeral was on Wednesday. Grandma looked so peaceful and perfect, while I will miss her dearly I know she is at peace with her husband and her wonderful creator and she is in no more pain. The services were such a testament to just how loved Grandma was in her family and her community. Not only was I able to come home from Turkmenistan, but my cousin Zach was able to fly in from Chili and my step-cousin Ryan and his family came in from Texas to be there. All 15 kids and their spouses were there as were all 32 grandkids and 10 of the 12 great-grandkids (2 did not attend because they were too little) were there for the funeral. On top of my family the whole old country church that my mom’s family grew up in was filled to the brim for both the rosary service and the funeral service. I don’t think I have ever seen that church so full! I hugged a lot of people I didn’t know, but that’s ok, it was just a testament to how much Grandma loved her community and how much her community loved her.
The rest of the trip home has been spent spending time with Mom and Dad and just talking about Turkmenistan. I went to Dad’s school on Thursday and chatted with some of the teachers about T-stan. Then on Friday I visited my good ole McGeezers at the local McDonalds and chatted with them a bit. Saturday was CMU Day and I went up to Mt. P for the CMU home opener where I got to see Maryellen and Rachel from my old lifegroup and had a delicious dinner with Cathy and Kenny at the Cabin… man have I missed the Cabin’s “Big Blue…” Overall, a great CMU day! Then yesterday I had another nice day! I went to church with Mom and Dad and talked to tons of people from the church who have been praying for me. Then that afternoon Molly and Jason and my Aunt Kay and Uncle Steve came up to have a nice dinner at our place. It was so good to see all of them again and honestly it’s felt like I never left.
The rest of the home trip is going to be pretty relaxing I think. Seeing as how I am still and active PCV I am not able to drive anywhere (PC Policy). So I am pretty much stuck at home relaxing. I am open to visitors if anyone is in the Montrose area and has some free time, I’ld love to hang out with you! Thursday should be fun as I am going to go back to Dad’s school and give a few talks to some classrooms about Peace Corps and Turkmenistan. I’ve gotta fill that goal #3 while I have the opportunity! Then I will fly back to Turkmenistan on Saturday night and hopefully be back to work on Tuesday.
Now for a few thoughts on America after being away for a year (almost to the day which is kind of freaky). It honestly hasn’t felt like I have been gone for a year. Not too much has changed, yet a lot has changed at the same time. My friends and family are still here though most are in different parts of the country, but that’s to be expected when you graduate from college. I guess the weirdest thing is to see a lot of empty auto dealerships, which is probably one of the biggest differences I have noticed. I guess that to me is a true testament to the economic struggles our country is going through, especially the state of Michigan. It’s funny because when everyone hears about Turkmen life and just how different it is to life here in America everyone seems so shocked about little things like the food, the water, the toilet and bathing situations, but for me those aren’t the things that I miss most about American culture. For me I think I have really taken for granted the overall freedom we have here in America. In my mind there is no doubt that we live in the best country in the world. No it’s not a perfect country, we have our problems, but the freedom that we have is such a blessing. We truly take that for granted. Everything else in this country you can live without, but the freedom, that is precious.
First 2 weeks of School Goodness! September 12, 2009
Hey All! So school has officially started and in full swing and I must be honest it’s really great. I feel really good about this school year and the work that I am doing at my site. 2 weeks ago was the kick off to the school year and I have noticed that with all new things with Turkmen people they had a big community celebration for the 1st grade and 10th grade students. It was kinda special for me because my host sister, Merjen, just started the 10th grade this year and she was actually selected to participate in the ceremony as a flag holder. Basically, the ceremony consisted of the playing of the national anthem, speeches from various prominent community members (including one given by yours truly in English… I would have done it in Turkmen, but my Director didn’t give me any prior warning), the passing of the “school key” from the 10th grade to the 1st grade classes, and the ringing of the first school bell and the procession into the school. It was a nice and neatly run ceremony, all of the kids seemed excited to be back at school.
This year I have decided to teach a few of the younger levels. I teach now in the afternoons for the 4-7th graders, who are so much better than my 8-10th graders (not only behaviorally, but just in overall general interest). My counterparts are also more receptive this year and generally seem excited to work with me, which is a huge change. I’m a little apprehensive as to whether this is just a beginning of the year excitement thing or if they are just genuinely interested, but always the optimist I am going to say they are genuinely interested. I’ve also decided to take more of the control in the curriculum that we are teaching at my school. Instead of teaching from the textbooks provided we are going to do our own curriculum and see how that goes. Right now it’s kind of slow, but I think once the kids start to get the hang of it we’re going to go a lot faster. At least again that is my hope.
I’m also easing myself into the clubs one week at a time this year so as not to overload myself too quickly. This week I had my first lesson with my older student conversation club. I had 4 girls show up on the first night, which was perfect. Two of the girls were from my village and actively sought me out to teach them and the other two are my photo developers. Now that I have a camera again I get to take a lot of pictures at functions again, which is what it is, I’ve accepted it. Anyways, I was telling the two girls there about myself and they asked me if I could teach them English, which turns out I was just about to start this club! All of the girls are really great and between 19-22, and are unmarried just interested in learning English to learn about American culture. I’m really excited to work with them more because it gives me a chance to have Host Country National friends who are in my village, around my age, and unmarried. That totally rocks! I love that when I give them a homework assignment to write a conversation with anyone in the world they ask me if it’s ok that they write a conversation between them and Justin Timberlake. It’s stuff like that that makes it fun!
This week I am starting my student clubs and I think I have a good amount of kids interested in learning/playing games with me. We shall see. Next week I am officially opening my volleyball club with the equipment that we purchased and again I feel confident about students coming! Overall with everything I am feeling really good about service right now. I’ve got things happening and I am the busiest I have ever been at site, while still being able to watch reruns of my Law & Order SVU every morning before trekking off to my 8-hour school day! Exciting things to look forward to in the near future: getting my SPA funding to start buying English Resources for my school, starting my English Music Club, and of course the new T-18s coming in about 2 weeks! It’s hard to believe that my 1-year anniversary as a PCV is coming soon, but it is. It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long already, but it has. I can definitely say that I have had my struggles as a volunteer, but I think I am now reaping the rewards of my perseverance with all the exciting changes happening at my site. It’s going to be a good 15 months!
What’s said in London is said in London??? August 26, 2009
Hey all! Well, as promised (a little late) I have updates about London. Overall the trip was great. I’m so glad that I got to see Mom for a week and it was great to spend it with Cheryl and Danielle. Although I knew from the get-go that I was going to be in charge of getting us around the city via the tube because immediately everyone was turned around in the airport trying to find the train outside of the airport. After about 20 minutes though we made it.
Anyways! The trip was fantastic and we saw literally every tourist thing that you could find. The first day there we took a double decker bus tour of the city so we had a general idea of where the places were in the city. Then the next few days we took tours of Buckingham Palace (saw the changing of the guards), Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Tower of London. We also saw Big Ben and Parliament, but didn’t take a tour there. It was so great to see such historical places. We also did a lot of shopping around the town and I’m sure we all spend more than intended (I know I did). Mom and I took one afternoon and went to go see the new Harry Potter movie (FINALLY) and it was so awesome because in the first scene they were right in the areas of London that we had just finished touring. It was fantastic and good to keep our little tradition of seeing the Harry Potter movies together. Then on Thursday we got out of London for the day on a day trip to go see Warrick Castle, Stratford Upon Avon (Shakespeare’s Birthplace), and Oxford (concluding the Harry Potter funness by seeing where part of the films were actually filmed… we got to see the original dinning hall). It was great to get out and see a bit of the countryside too, it was so green!!! Seeing as how Turkmenistan is a dessert I don’t get to see green very much, only about 2 months during the spring. So the green was awesome for me.
Other than touring and riding the tube not much can be said. Mainly because I made a promise to Mom that I wouldn’t share the hilarious conversations that we all had nightly at the pubs while eating fish and chips and drinking delicious beer. Let’s just say that it was funny. In the end I was glad to have a week outside of T-stan and even happier to have spent it with the Drumms and of course Mom.
Well, also as promised we have a guest blogger to update us all! Here is what my Mom said about the trip:
I’ve been to London to visit my Abby and on the way visited The Abbey, Big Ben, The Queen’s house, had dinner in Harry Potter’s dining hall in Oxford, walked through William Shakespeare’s bedroom, checked out the pubs and the brew. We had an awesome time visiting the area and reconnecting with each other. It was a fabulous week with Abby, my best friend Cheryl, and her daughter Danielle. The places we visited were amazing and the weather was beautiful. What I treasure most was having been blessed enough to be able to afford the opportunity to go and spend time again with my Abby-Girl. It was a special trip. She has so grown over the past year.
Busy August August 14, 2009
Hey all! Sorry I’ve been MIA for a while again… I’m alive, I swear, just busy. So anyways, I wanted to give a quick note about praying with expectance. So towards the end of July I came to the realization that I have been trying to do a lot of things by myself at site without the thought of God. Anyone who has done this knows that this is a very stupid idea because it doesn’t work. So I started to pray about students and my site and just a general interest in English at my site. I began praying with expectation of a number of students to get involved in English clubs at my school. Low and behold as soon as I started to pray about this I started to get people showing up at my school asking me to teach them English. The number of kids in my clubs has doubled sense then and I now have a group of older girls who want to learn a few nights a week. As soon as I started to pray God showed up! It’s been amazing! On top of that I started to pray more about my grants and then suddenly I got an email for an approval on one of my grants for volleyball equipment. So I now have some beginning equipment to start my girls volleyball club! God is good and life is great! Other than that I am working on doing my teacher trainings and getting ready for the school to start. Next year will be busy, but it will be a nice change from the slow and mundane.
Tomorrow will be a very exciting day as I actually get ready to leave Turkmenistan again to go to London for a week to see mom and the drumm girls (minus heather)! Overall I am excited, very excited! I still don’t believe it’s happening, but it totally is. Again look for an update next week with special guest bloggers!!! Cheers!!!
Since When was I Old Enough to be a Chaperone??? July 18, 2009
This week was a surprisingly satisfying and relaxing workweek, if those words can go together. I spent the week working with the IREX Organization and their Tech Age Girls conference. Tech Age Girls, or TAG, is a yearly conference/competition among girls in Turkmenistan. Every year 15 girls are chosen as finalists to come to Ashgabat and learn about technology, the Internet, professionalism, and leadership through a 10-day conference. PCVs are invited to stay at the hotel with the girls and lead sessions about leadership and team building and because I am good friends with the organizer, Ayna, I got to help out for 5 days. Because the girls were busy all day and my sessions were not until night it gave me time to hang out with the other PCVs who were there helping, Annie and Kim, and time to relax by the pool of the hotel. Then at night Annie, Kim, and I led some sessions and assisted with some other sessions. It was a really relaxing week and I really enjoyed spending time with and being a role model for the girls.
I decided throughout the week that these girls really need good positive women role models in their lives. They need someone to teach them how to be feminine and strong women without being over sexified (yes I realize that isn’t a word, but you know what I’m talking about). I feel like this is a problem among for a lot of young girls, the only real “role models” they have are those women they see on TV in music videos and the like. I came to this decision just by the way some of the girls talked and danced when we had a dance party, it was just sad. So I’m hoping to be working as a role model for the girls in my village, to show them they don’t need to be super sexy to be a strong woman. I think that I can and am making a real difference in the lives of those girls.
I also spent the end of my week working with another organization’s camp in the town next to my village. Here I got to teach again about leadership, team building, and volunteering. I again really enjoyed working with these kids and teaching them new skills. It was so fun for me to watch them try to use their critical thinking skills because that concept is so foreign for them. One day we did a team building exercise called “the magic carpet” where they must stand on a sheet and as a team to flip it to the other side. It was hilarious to watch them try to figure it out, get frustrated, but then come together as a team to actually succeed. I could tell they really had to think in different ways. Overall I really enjoyed the week teaching leadership instead of just English for a change.
I did have a bit of a realization this week though. I realized just how much older I am. I was talking with Kim one day and we were discussing how we remembered going to camps in high school and the rules the chaperones made, we decided that at that age we never thought we would be chaperones, but here we are 10 years later, being chaperones for a group of Turkmen kids. It’s kind of a scary thought to think just how fast time goes.
Grant Writing, 4th of July Embassy Party, and Staff Changes July 14, 2009
Hello again everyone! Hope this blog is finding everyone well! A lot has been happening since my blog, but not a lot of time for me to sit and type this out for you guys. So I’ll do a little highlight of everything for you guys!
After the frustration of the camp I have been working a lot on writing my grants, that has basically consumed my work. I finished one grant to get volleyball equipment so I can have a volleyball club for my girls. The grant is basically for just some volleyballs and 2 nets for the school. I’m hoping it passes because I have a few girls who really want to play, which would be awesome because it would give them something to do. The 2nd grant is my big grant for English resources which includes books, a cd player, a guitar, and a dutar which will be used in the fall music club. I actually am in the process of finishing that one and should hear about approval by the end of August. Overall, I think I’ve got some good things happening for the fall and I am thoroughly excited for the fall to actually start a school year at my site. I think starting a new school year will be so much better than coming in at the middle of the year, I can start setting down the ground rules from day one and stay firm with these rules.
Also had the opportunity to celebrate the 4th of July with all of the volunteers and Embassy workers at my first US Embassy party. It was a really fancy party with amazing food and an open bar (not a very good idea for PCVs, but I think we handled ourselves ok). Anyways the party was really cool the US Ambassador gave a speech, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to hear it because there was a problem with the microphone. From what I hear though he said something about Turkmenistan relying on the youth that study abroad to be the leaders of industries and the country in general. The party was also a bit of a goodbye party too because we lost 4 PCVs and our Training Officer. The PCVs were ending their service while the Training Officer left to go be the Training Officer in Romania, all of them are missed, but we all hope they are doing amazing things. The 4th party was technically celebrated on the 2nd, leaving us PCVs around Ashgabat for the next few days to catch up and hang out which was a ton of fun. On Friday we actually played a game of softball, T-16s VS T-17s, to celebrate just being American. Ended up that my team the T-17s was slaughtered by the T-16s, but we all had fun nonetheless (although we decided that next year we will play kickball instead of softball). Overall, it was a great way to celebrate Independence Day.
As I kind of mentioned, Peace Corps Turkmenistan has been going through some staff changes. Our old PTO, Betsy, left us to go to Romania so we now have a new PTO, Melody. Our Health Program Manager, Jannet, will be leaving at the end of July to go study in Amsterdam leaving no one in the health position. Our Training Manager, Mahri, who has worked for Peace Corps Turkmenistan for 14 years, is leaving to get her masters in Costa Rica, again leaving her position open. Finally, just the other day our Country Director, Stephen, announced that he too was being transferred to be the new Country Director in Macedonia. All of these staff changes have taken me by surprise. I know that as with most government agencies Peace Corps does a usual 2 year rotation with staff, but I didn’t expect it all to come at the same time. I will deeply miss the old staff as they have been so supportive to me and just a consistent positive force in my life here. That’s not to say that the new replacements will not be the same supportive force, but it’s just dealing with changes again. I guess change is a part of life though, which is a lesson that I am constantly learning here.
Trip Around the World With Abby Teacher Heartbreak June 27, 2009
It’s been a challenging week here in Turkmenistan, but all things considered I am doing well. I had been planning this summer camp for kids at my school for about 3 weeks on and off and it was supposed to be this week. I did a bit of publicity for it at school before the year ended and when I had free time went around the village to tell all of the kids about it to come. Overall, I had gotten a pretty good response from the kids about it and expected somewhere between 15-20 kids to show up (a big response rate for my school as you will see). The camp was called “5 Days Around the World with Abby Teacher” with the general plan of visiting 5 different cultures and transforming our classroom into a cool cultural trip with the culmination being a Mexican Fiesta complete with a homemade Piñata (that I spent the better part of 3 days designing and making). So I was really pumped up for a good week when Monday rolled around and all of my plans and ideas came crashing down. On Monday I had 4 kids and one older student that I recruited to help me show up and those 4 kids weren’t really too interested in doing much of anything. We tried to do the activities that I had planned for Chinese New Year, but they were just overall not really interested. I tried playing some games with them outside, but again it was like they just didn’t care about anything. After a very frustrating Monday, Tuesday was even more of a crushing day when just 1 student showed up to learn about Australia. Not really being prepared for just one student I basically told him a little bit about Australia and then we watched Finding Nemo (as it’s based in Australia). Wait let me back up a bit and say this camp was designed for 4th-8th graders.
Being completely heartbroken about the lack of attendance I decided to talk with one of the programming managers at Peace Corps to figure out just what I should do about this dilemma of complete apathy and attendance on the part of my village. She listened to my story and thought about all of the advertizing I had done and was able to see that I really made a good effort to make this week a success. She ended up coming out to my school to talk with me and some of the teachers at my school (not English teachers mind you) about the lack of students. Well, I was under the assumption that the students had just forgotten, but that wasn’t the case. It turns out that parents had actually told their children they couldn’t go to the camp for one of two reasons: 1) they thought it was too hot and didn’t want their kids outside and 2) the parents didn’t want their kids learning from the American (though they see me in the community all of the time and I always make an effort to be friendly and talk to them). This was totally crushing to me. To hear that students wanted to go, but that their parents had actually said they didn’t want their kids spending time with me because I was American! It was totally heart breaking and I had serious considerations of just saying forget it, I’m going home, nobody wants me here anyways.
Fortunately, the other teachers were able to see just how frustrating and upsetting that was for me and they told me that I could work with a first grade camp that was going in and help the teacher with games (which basically meant Abby makes futile attempts to teach basic English to 35 screaming 1st graders while the other teacher goes to the store, another teachers house, and eventually home without so much as consulting or considering helping me wrangle the kids). So I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out how to teach to 35 screaming 1st graders that barely understand Turkmen let alone English, but I gave it my best effort. Today, Friday, was my last day working with the 1st graders for the week and now I can take some time to actually design some sort of age appropriate lesson plans before I have to go back next week (I’m only going to teach on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays though). Today was kind of fun though because I let the first graders attack the piñata, unfortunately I forgot my camera at home. They thought it was a ton of fun and only 2 kids almost lost their heads by the wielding of the bat (just kidding! No children were injured during the piñata game Thank God!).
So after the heartbreaking beginning of the week I realized a few things about my community, again. First off, I need to keep reminding myself that I am the first volunteer at my site, thus Americans are not trusted in the community and I probably won’t be until I am about to pack my bags and leave. Again the work I am doing is to set up the next volunteer to be a bit more successful in my village, I sure hope they appreciate it. Second, the teachers at my school really have no idea what to do with me and are really surprised that I am intent on working during the summer (hello it’s my job), but they’re letting me work with the first graders so I’ll take it I guess. Finally, I need to continue to invest in those students that do want to learn English, particularly the older girl that showed up every day faithfully to help me with the kids. If I can work with her and my host sister and help them achieve their goals then I can say I was a successful volunteer, even through all of the hardship (which honestly is a lot).
