Good Grief

The Kaz 19’s had their Mid Service Training last week, which was a good time to catch up and give each other inspiration and encouragement for our last year here. I returned home to find that in my short time gone, my host grandmother had passed away.

Her death should not have been such a shock to me. She’d been increasingly ill since the summer, and for the past month, my host mother and her relatives had been trading off sleeping with her at night.

In the days that followed my return, my host brothers were more subdued (no wrestling matches, no dance parties), and one of them took to sleeping during the day and staying awake all night. He said he couldn’t explain why, he just couldn’t sleep at night. So we continued with our routine, hoping for something to shake us out of our drone-like state.

Before I’d learned of her death, I got home to an empty house. I found that the cat had pooped in a corner of my room. Now, you’re probably going to judge me a bit, and I’m going to have to deal with that, but I didn’t clean that poop for a couple days. Why? Because a) I don’t know where they keep the cleaning stuff. Every time I ask “where is the soap for _____?” as long as it isn’t laundry detergent, my host parents make my brothers clean it. b) I didn’t want to make anyone clean that while they were mourning their grandmother. So I kept silent. But after the second night, my younger brother came into my room and saw that Ricky (the cat) had left me a “present”. He thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He ran to tell Maksat, who also laughed, and for the first time in a few days, we all laughed together. It’s nice to get a bit of the joy back. Then he cleaned it up. I tried to say, if they’d just show me what I should use I could do it…

They kept telling me it’s because “we’re without mother” so the cat was left inside. She hadn’t been home at all, mourning rituals require that she stay at her mother’s all week. “Without mother” nothing happens smoothly. “Without mother” we didn’t light the pichka the way we should. “Without mother” we forgot to eat meals. “Without mother… things are bad.” And it became our little joke, that without our mother at home we were just going to have to accept that our life would be sub-par.

She returned for one night to see us, and she sat down and told me the details of her mother’s passing. She explained that apa had died in the first day of Eid-al-Adha, which many people said was a blessed day to die. She seemed to have aged 10 years in one week. I didn’t realize how much energy it would take out of her. Her eyes were tired, and her voice frail. She told me that for the next 40 days, she would be gone a lot. “I will be preparing her house, taking care of things. Remembering her… Mourning her… Without mother… things are bad.” And then she began to cry.

I’ve had the misfortune to be abroad when some important people in my life have died, and I didn’t realize until that moment that I hadn’t really grieved those deaths as freely as I might have liked. When you’re on the other side of the world, and you start crying because your grandmother is dying; there is no one else around you who knows her, no one else to sympathize. A girl in my gym class in Belgium told me “Yeah, well. That’s life.” And it’s true, but that wasn’t exactly what I needed to hear. And when you have no visual proof that the person is gone, you can sort of push it aside in your head. Not denial, really, just forgetting. And now here I am, in a foreign country where I don’t know the rituals, I don’t know how to console someone. But all the evidence is there. There is a really nice old woman who let me drink chai with her and use her banya, and I will never get to listen to her give me advice again. There is a family that I live with in a pain I’ve never experienced with my real family because I’ve been absent for it. And although she wasn’t my real grandmother and I only knew her a year, I get to grieve in a way that helps me remember and grieve all those I’ve not been able to. Although it is sad, I am grateful I got to be here for this time.

And so we cried a bit, knowing that pain crosses all cultural boundaries, death affects everyone, and that without that person you’ve lost, your life is going to be sub-par. For a while, at least, without them… things are bad.

Little Piggies, a discussion with my 7a class

Miss Jessica! What year were you born in?

Yes, but what year? Cow? Mouse? Dog?

Pig?! PIG!! WE are too! We are all pigs! Pigs! Pigs! Pigs!

I don't think they've been more excited about anything else I've ever told them.

The Legend of Zelda and other embarrassing things

It turns out we do get a lot of free time in the Peace Corps, especially on school breaks. So Volunteers wind up doing really stupid things to keep themselves entertained. What sort of things you ask? Like, watching special features on dvds, including the second disk that comes with the new version of Aladdin. And I mean all of it, the music videos for "Proud of your boy" with Clay Aiken and "A whole new world" The versions by the original R&B singers and the more recent version by Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson. So yeah, just really embarrassing things.

So I've been playing the Legend of Zelda. And I got all the pendants, and I got to the bad guy’s layer and then he made Princess Zelda disappear before my very eyes. Does that mean I lost? He disappeared too. I've been wondering since the beginning if I am actually the "Chosen one" anyway. Maybe I really did fail her. I know that these are problems a 12 year old should muddle over, but I never had Super Nintendo, so now at the tender age of 25 I am worrying about Princess Zelda. Is she still alive? Do I go after her? Where do I go? These are the embarrassing worries I have.

Numbers

The Kaz-19 group is about to celebrate its first year anniversary as being official (sworn-in) volunteers and I can’t think of a better way to commemorate it than by giving some cold hard facts. We all had to fill out these forms at the end of last year giving numbers of students we taught, the number of kids in our clubs and so forth. Instead of those numbers, here are some that seem more significant to me.

Sheep Heads I’ve helped eat – 4
Pigs I’ve seen slaughtered – 1 (I was visiting a Russian village, this would not be a sight to see in my town)
Children I’ve made stand in a corner – 1
Showers taken (since November 9th, 2007) – less than 20 (most of those were during my trip to America)
Banyas taken – less than 50 (If I smell, I don’t notice it)
Books read cover to cover – 36 (That is probably more than I actually read cover to cover in college, sad, but true)
Times I’ve moved – 3
Marriage proposals – 1 (serious one)
Times I’ve watched Arrested Development, the entire series – 4
Fan-mail letters I’ve written only to find that celebrities don’t put their addresses on the internet for the world to see* - 2
Russian grammar books I’ve used – 3
Time it takes to get to the outhouse from the front door – 20 seconds
That wouldn’t be that big a deal if it weren’t for…
The coldest it’s been so far - -48 Degrees Celsius
Haircuts received – 2
Haircuts given – 4

In addition to these numbers, I present to you a mood graph I made during my first six months at site. Peace Corps told us that we would go through a “rollercoaster of emotions” so I made my rollercoaster as scientific as possible. Every night before I went to sleep I rated my day on a scale of 0-10. There are a couple days where I cheated and put in a “range” for that day, but for the most part, it is accurate and may give you some insight into how I felt from November 2007 – May 2008.

My mood was rated on the following scale:

10 – So good!
9 – Wow!
8 – Good day and food!
7 – Good day, bad food…
6 – Bad day, but good food.
5 – I don’t even know how I feel about today (avoided this one)
4 – Tomorrow will be better?
3 – At least my mother still loves me/ I cry over stupid things
2 – I really messed that one up/ This sucks
1 – Wow, that was bad.
0 – So bad. The worst day of my life.


On the side of this was written “Remember! Complete honesty = a must!” So this is a very honest graph.











I think it’s good to note that I stayed mostly in the positive area and never did I have a “zero” day. I realize that this sort of project makes me seem a little crazy, but I’m a happy crazy, see?


*anyone with any idea as to how to get my fan mail to any celebrity and not just to some service that would send me back a picture with their signature on it, let me know. I have written some really heartfelt (creepy?) things to my favorite actresses and actors and they will never know how I feel about them.

Still learning

For about three weeks one of my counterparts had been gone sick, so I took over her classes myself which was difficult, but I started thinking about a year ago when I first came here and had to teach a ton of classes on my own and how stressed out I was then compared to now… It just seemed more normal this time. Sure, I got mad at kids and gave out some bad grades, but the stress wasn’t nearly as crushing as it was when I first got to site. The work didn’t change, just the environment. It also helps that I can give threats in Russian now.

My counterpart finally returned this week and I am really glad she’s back, but it was good to find that I’m capable of handling them on my own.

I’ve also started teaching about 10 hours of primary classes, and those teachers aren’t the best at arriving at class on time… So I’d start the class. The thing about primary language teaching is I need a translator. Especially since all but one of those classes are Kazakh classes. But one of the teachers came in as I was saying “Have you got a mother? Have you got a father?” and then translating into Kazakh. She was really impressed. “Oh! Jess! You don’t even need me! You know the Kazakh!” Uhhhh, yeah, I need you, but I’m flattered anyway.

I can teach in elementary Kazakh!