Robin is continuing her work as a Public Health Prevention Service (PHPS) Fellow for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). PHPS is a three year public health program management fellowship consisting of two six-month rotations at the CDC followed by a two year field assignment at a state or local health department in the US. Robin started off 2011 working at the CDC in Atlanta revising a course in emergency preparedness for environmental health workers. In April, she started her second six-month rotation at the National Center for HIV/AIDs, Viral Hepatitis, STD and Tuberculosis Prevention. She worked with a dedicated group of CDC staff to draft a grant announcement for health departments in the Pacific Islands. The new grant announcement turns separate grant applications into one combined application. This will make it easier for the Pacific Islands jurisdictions to apply for and manage grants. It also will allow for programs that have overlap to bring prevention programs together. When Robin left on maternity leave in September, work was continuing on this project.

On September 3, 2011, Brooke Wilson Goodson arrived in this world healthy and happy. She has been an amazing addition to the Wilson Goodson team. We are enjoying the challenges and joys of parenthood. You can see pictures of Brooke at here.

In October we moved from Atlanta, Georgia to Fairfax, Virginia for Robin’s two year field assignment for the CDC fellowship. Fairfax is in Northern Virginia just outside of Washington DC. Robin works at the Fairfax County Health Department in the planning division. She is assisting in the coordination of the Partnership for a Healthier Fairfax, a community coalition that aims to improve community health. The Partnership has assessed the health of their community and is beginning to come up with a plan to address the problems they see. You can read more about it here. Robin has been busy at work so far and enjoys her new coworkers.

Gary worked hard in the spring and summer to finish a Master’s of Science in Library Science from the University of North Texas. He graduated in August 2011. He is now taking care of Brooke and looking for a job in the area. He started volunteering at a local library in January 2012. He has also found a playgroup for dads in the DC area.

We want to thank everyone who sent good wishes or packages our way for the arrival of Brooke. Robin would especially like to thank the PHPS fellows in her cohort who threw her a baby shower and brought dinner for us the month after Brooke was born. You guys are awesome! We really appreciate the support of friends and family.

Looking toward 2012, we will be in Fairfax for the entire year, no moves! In fact, we will be here until October 2013. After that, we don’t know; it depends on where we can find jobs. We hope to see you before then and introduce you to Brooke.

Robin, Gary, & Brooke

Peace

We’ve made some changes as you can see.  We’ve moved the blog and have a new pictures archive; you can be sure that a lot more pictures of Turkmenistan will be going up, not to mention more reflections on the place we called home for the past two years.

Leaving was bittersweet; we were anxious to get home but made good friends with both locals and the volunteers we served with.  We visited many of our local friends’ homes for plenty of good food and questionably safe vodka.  Gary’s work threw him a going away party complete with slide show.  This hospitality in saying goodbye helped Robin and Gary realize the impact that they had in their community.

Now we’re back and doing our best to adjust to an America that has changed quite a bit since we left: Obama, smart phones, lower gas prices, economic crisis, and the phenomenon known as twitter.  Not to mention the overall culture shock of it all: a plethora of choices, information beaming in from everywhere, customer service, anonymity, etc. and etc.  It is all a bit overwhelming and sometimes I find myself standing in complete awe of it all and greatly surprised that I lived for two years without.

We’ll be busy visiting friends and family over the next couple of months. Now that we have regular internet access look for more pictures from Turkmenistan, further stories, and updates on what we are up to now.

Looking forward to catching up with you all!

Robin & Gary

Swimming in the Canal

Originally uploaded by Robin and Gary.

Sometime in the spring it dawned on me that I was no longer angry, frustrated, suffering from dislocation and culture shock, or sad. I had found in the course of one and half years of living and working in Turkmenistan a mild acceptance. I am not sure how long I possessed this acceptance before the realization, but the realization was accompanied by a profound calm: I’d made it past the hump. On a deeper level I’d grown into Turkmenistan, enough that the daily difficulties had become part of life: brushing your teeth, taking a shower, paying a “little extra” for a train ticket, waiting for the electricity to come back on. It’s not something that comes easy and I’m often amazed at the Turkmen people’s resilience. After all, I leave in four months; they have to stick around and affect change.

It’s been a hot summer. A friend said his thermometer hit 150 in the sun (112 in the shade). The summer in Turkmenistan means gazly suw (flavored carbonated water), kwas (essentially sweet fermented non-alcoholic bready drink), melons, ice cream, swimming in the canals, sweating, and for some of us, baseball at seven in the morning. Any later and you’re liable to die of heat stroke.

The summer is also full of weddings. When a couple is married, before they go to the reception, they ride around in a parade of cars all over town honking their horns in a nonstop cacophony of celebration. We live near a busy traffic circle and often hear the horns.

I recently went to a sunnet toý (circumcision party) in a village. It was a loud and raucous street party; the whole village was invited. I found myself, along with other volunteers, in the middle of a large crowd of a few hundred people. We were dancing; the rest were watching us. This happens often when we go to parties and weddings. What amazes me sometimes is how much the community is involved in each others’ lives and how people help each other out. When someone asks for money, it is given, no questions asked and the money is not asked to be given back, ever. They just wait. I receive looks of profound surprise and a little consternation when I explain I wouldn’t even ask my mother for money, that I would refuse my mother’s money when offered, at least a few times, and that even if I borrow a few dollars for lunch from a friend, it would be bad taste to not to attempt to pay it back within a few days.

Besides loaning money, here are a few other differences between Turkmen and Americans cultural beliefs:

Turkmen may tell you that the heat causes high blood pressure, but they can’t sit in the AC or drink cold beverages (including ice cream) because they’ll catch a cold. Many things cause high blood pressure and many things cause colds. Bread is sacred and never thrown in the trash. Cut hair must be buried to avoid being stolen by birds.

When a friend arrives at midnight unannounced they get the full spread of food, candy, and tea, no questions asked. If one is out of food, ask a neighbor. We have not taken advantage of this hospitality; our American sensibilities are too restricting. Again, surprise and consternation when I say my friend better have an emergency or he may be turned away.

In a week and a half we will know the date of our departure from Turkmenistan and while I ache for a Papa John’s pepperoni and jalapeño pizza complimented by a Shiner Bock, I look around sometimes and feel a quiet subtle comfort.

The second instance concerned another issue that sadly continues to ignite heated debate in America: creationism vs. evolution.  I didn’t want a debate with my club, merely a discussion and I was doing it partly in recognition of
Darwin’s 200^th birthday (also, coincidently
Lincoln’s 200^th).  Again, my discussion was frustrated and was not as controversial as I expected.  After an initial introduction of what Natural Selection was and how it worked I wanted a discussion on what they thought of the theory and how it related to their religious beliefs.  The discussion ended rather quickly as everyone said that they accepted evolution and it didn’t conflict with their religious beliefs.  Actually, this doesn’t relate quite accurately what happened in class: the students didn’t seem aware that there should be a conflict.  I, again, had to explain how BIG of a conflict this was in
America and they seemed rather surprised.  I congratulated them on their reasonable views and moved on to another topic to try and fill the rest of the hour.

What these discussions highlight for me is that the help that Turkmen need is not always the obvious ones, perhaps not even the reasons that we are supposedly here.  Peace Corps has three goals, and many times volunteers lament that the first one, about meeting the needs of the host country, are sometimes difficult to meet.  I mentioned this in another post but it is a continuing concern as volunteers try to come to terms with their purpose in country.  The second two goals are basically cultural exchange which I honestly took for granted.  They sound campy and obvious; sometimes they feel like fall-backs, there to rely on when our attempts at goal one are falling short.  However, the other night when Robin and I were guesting at a student’s house, his grandfather cried when he saw us because we were the first Americans he had ever seen.  It is impossible to relate what I felt.   We sometimes feel like we are not treated like people when people on the street expect us to speak English like wind up toys, when we are asked for favors like visas, or when we are paraded around as the American friend.  However, when this old Turkmen man cried in front of us, I think, for the first time, I realized that we represented something a little more.  An ideal?  A myth?  Does it matter?  I am uncomfortable representing an intangible concept, especially one I didn’t choose and I don’t want to take responsibility for the signified: America.  I have to in someway, as a volunteer, but I am not sure what I have to offer or if I can meet whatever expectations there may be.  This old man’s tears: I can’t really know what this man was thinking, but it seemed that goals number two and three were being met in an unexpected way. 

As Turkmenistan goes through its growing pains, and there are many, goal one may be absolutely irrelevant.  It may not matter how many students we teach English to or how successful our preventive health classes are; Turkmen have the knowledge, intelligence and motivation to improve their country without us attempting to supplement those efforts, as my continued discussions in my clubs demonstrate.  It may only matter that
America is here; representing an intangible ideal and standing next to the Turkmen people on their journey.

The Turkmen volunteers have a self-published zine that we circulate amongst ourselves that we use to write humorously of our time here in Turkmenistan; nothing too distasteful, though.  I have been submitting a serial story about a Turkmen mutt that I have decided to post here.  I hope that you find it amusing.  Here is a teaser, follow the link to find the rest of the story:

Call me Bezzat.  Those are the syllables I hear, at least, when my deranged master screams her bloody head off whenever she feels I am not acting like a human.  Which you’d think she’d understand, since I am in fact a dog, and those chickens were asking for it anyways.  I’m large and black and white.  I have no ears, no tails, and no spirit, all taken from me when I was a pup still suckling off of my mother.  In fact, that was when I was taken from my mother.  I think I may have met her again later in a casual encounter, if you know what I mean, but there was really no way of knowing.  We didn’t talk, just went through the motions, which is sometimes all you can do.  This is after all not a dog friendly world…

Continue Reading…

Seldom does one have a full impression of the impact one has on the lives around them until they leave.  This is perhaps explicit for the Peace Corps volunteer in Turkmenistan where work and progress may seem non-existent and the people sometimes ambivalent to volunteers’ efforts.  Yet, by merely being here as an American, exotic if not romanticized, we are changing people’s lives, and this became evident as we performed the sad duty of sending off those volunteers who have finished their service.  One instance in particular was of a party a host family gave to their departing volunteer.

The volunteer lived in an oba, or village, about a two hour taxi ride down a narrow highway from the large city where Robin and I live.  Most volunteers live in these obas that until recently had no cell phone coverage and still do not have the most reliable water, gas, and electricity.  Most homes are part of a large compound composed of two or three buildings serving as bedrooms and living spaces, surrounded by a large brick or wooden fence.  Several smaller buildings comprise the banya, or bathhouse, kitchen, and stables.  The kitchen is sometimes outside under a porch.  The outhouse, more often than not a hole in the ground covered by wooden planks or metal siding, rests on the opposite side of the compound.  The oba and the city are different in many respects, mostly in way of creature comforts.  However, I have found from the numerous stories of volunteers who live in the obas that they are far more integrated into their communities than city volunteers.  City volunteers experience a form of anonymity, even if everyone knows you’re the American you know no one, that is found in all urban centers, while in the oba volunteers often know everyone in their small village and thus are invited to all community events and parties.  Perhaps this leads to their impact being not from the work they do but from the people they encounter.

The volunteer leaving lived in such an oba in a typical compound.  We arrived at the party after it was already well underway and upon entering the compound I knew that the volunteer would be missed.  Nearly two hundred people crowded around the numerous tables eating, drinking, and talking on a large covered porch.  Later in the evening, the children, certainly many of them were the volunteer’s students, would crowd around the entrance to the compound to observe the party and dancing.

The party itself was a typical Turkmen affair.  Turkmen parties have a pretty standard formula.  In accordance with Turkmen guesting culture, an overabundance of food, including salads, shashlik (shish-kabob), fruits, nuts, candies, soup, palow (rice, carrots, and meat), etc., is served to avoid the embarrassment of not providing for one’s guests.  Copious amounts of vodka are also made available for the never ending series of toasts that will be made throughout the night.  Other beverages include juice and cola, the amount of money spent on the occasion indicated by whether Coca-Cola or a Turkmen derivative is served.  A DJ is always present playing an assortment of Uzbek, Turkmen, American, and co-opted American with Turkmen lyrics music.  Usually conversation is impossible due to stratospheric decibels.  There is dancing and eating punctuated by toasts made on a mike.

This party was no different and after we had our fill of food an MC began to call various members of the community up to give long toasts in honor of their American volunteer.  It was sad, but also uplifting to think that despite the difficulties of working in Turkmenistan, a volunteer was able to touch the lives of so many people.  After the Turkmen had their say, next were us Americans, rumored to have traveled all the way from America for this party, and we did nothing to assuage these rumors.  Departing volunteers had much to say and share on their part having spent the last two years in service together, and we continuing volunteers related the vacuum that would be made when these volunteers left.  After toasts: dancing.

Turkmen dancing is characterized by a slow rhythmic shuffle, with hands in the air snapping or twisting in time with the music.  Those in the center of the dancing, usually in pairs, lean into and out from each other shaking their shoulders.  It is a very peculiar dance, and like the preparation for the party, hardly ever improvised upon.  Yet, there were Americans who requested American music and our random gyrations and flailing limbs were equally looked upon with curiosity and wonder.  If anything highlights the difference in cultures so acutely it may be dancing: the homogeneous communal dancing that gives alternate attention to individuals of the Turkmen contrasted with the nonchalant highly individualistic dancing of the Americans.

The party lasted until quiet time, around eleven, at which point the remaining crowd, mostly children, sauntered home.

This week the last of the T-15s, the fifteenth group of volunteers to Turkmenistan, head home or on to further adventures.  During this time of readjustment we T-16s, as we wait for the T-17s, are somewhat prematurely looking at the impact of our own service.  Sometimes it is hard to gauge your impact and sometimes we are skeptical of our purpose here.  Yet, there are moments when cultural boundaries seem to melt into each other and connections made.  Like most of human experience, our feelings are concealed from view until those emotionally intense moments draw back the curtain of our inhibitions and allow us to view the full truth of our relationships.  At the party, in the moment when the American volunteer was saying goodbye to Turkmen hosts, our purpose here in Turkmenistan was vindicated: Friendship.  We are looking forward to sharing many more parties with our Turkmen hosts.

Since our last post: We have experienced the Turkmen heat.  Luckily, we skipped town to London and missed the 125 degree day.  However, there were plenty of 110 degree days to go around.  The summer was full of English clubs and health teaching.  We moved into a new apartment and are now on our own.  Living on your own is not like living on your own in
America.  We actually have to cook.  We actually have to buy all the ingredients separately, figure out how to throw them together, and then not burn them.  It takes up to two hours to cook dinner, prep time before you actually heat everything.  I have new appreciation for the bygone era before microwaves, ready-made-meals, and fast-food.  We have excellent neighbors up stairs who help teach us the finer aspects of food preparation.  They were even so kind as to show us how to can fruits and pickles.  At the moment we have cherries and apricots waiting in jars.  We also have pickled cucumbers, but we are a little unsure about whether those are good.  We have to wait, because jarred food stocks are for the winter, when food becomes scarce and harder to find (really, just certain kinds of food, like fruits, are harder to find and in general food becomes more expensive).

In mid July we headed for Great Britain for a two week vacation. We saw friends we met in Japan and stayed with them in and around London and Cardiff. Two friends got married at the Royal Horseguards Hotel in London where we saw even more people we know from Japan. We went on a bus tour and sawStonehenge, Salisbury Cathedral, and a Roman bath. We visited Shakespeare’s Globe Theater where we saw King Lear, the Tate Modern, Art Museum, British History Museum, and the Natural History Museum. We stormed Cardiff castle, saw a real football match and the Atlantic Ocean, and ate some fantastic Japanese food. Being in the UK reminded us of things we miss like Guinness, cheese that melts, supermarkets, and entertainment. It also reminded us of things we didn’t miss like the week of 130 degree temps here in Turkmenistan.

In a previous post we mentioned that drinking tea, or chai, in the summer is a must.  Here we expand a little on that cultural theme. Chai is an essential part of life here, serving as a means of hydration and more importantly as a way to show hospitality, friendship, and discuss serious matters. I have found that chai is seldom refused since the desire to tend a relationship is more important than any deadline or daily chore. All that’s needed are a kettle, boiled water, black or green tea leaves, perhaps sugar, and milk if you live in a part of Turkmenistan where the water is really salty. Compliments to chai are usually hard candies and cookies. I often enjoy chai with my neighbors or coworkers. The longest I have spent drinking chai is over 3 hours, but I think it could go on for days. Try it some time- have a few friends over and just sit and drink tea. Then tell me what you think.

Speaking of tea, if I haven’t already recommended books, here are two about this corner of the world: Three Cups of Tea and Lenin’s Tomb. Authors escape me at the moment.

The days are finally getting cooler and when we get up in the morning it is cool enough to throw on a light sweater.  The summer is so hot that it is easy to forget that Turkmenistan is at the same latitude as Washington and that last winter the temperature was -5 F. At the moment we are excited about new volunteers. In a couple of weeks a fresh batch of PC volunteers will arrive in Turkmenistan. It is hard to believe that we have been in Turkmenistan for a year already. Next year is sure to go a lot faster. For now, we are looking forward to introducing Turkmenistan to the new volunteers.

The time of most Turkmen is full of cooking, cleaning, hosting, school, or babysitting if you’re female, and working in the yard or school if you are a male.  The free time that Turkmen enjoy is spent watching TV if at home, or guesting, visiting a friend or family home for food and socializing.  Extracurricular activities are nearly non-existent for both students and adults.  There are parks and some empty sports fields.  While the parks are usually modestly filled with families the sports field seem underused.  There are no movie theaters, bowling alleys, sports bar, family restaurants (in the spirit of chucky-cheese), arcades, or any of the other activities that Americans take for granted.  Many of my students claim studying English as their hobby, which means they spend most of their time at my language center.

When I arrived in Turkmenistan I had heard of the baseball games that had happened and was looking forward to getting to my site and starting a team.  I also found out that the Arizona Diamondbacks, upon hearing about the interest in baseball in
Turkmenistan, had donated equipment to
Turkmenistan.  With their donation there would be enough equipment to support teams in each of the veleyats (states).  I was unaware of how much of a craving there was for something like a baseball team.

Teaching baseball from scratch is not easy.  Baseball is a complex game in which the method of scoring is not intuitive and the rules sometimes seem obscure and selectively administered (after all, how do you explain infield fly, balking, tagging up, and when exactly a foul ball is a foul ball?).  Add to this a group of people who have only a vague idea of what baseball is and you have a recipe for adventures in coaching.  Many in America grow up learning the game, and even if you don’t, you have a basic American instinct for throwing a baseball and swinging a bat.  I had decided for the safety of players and to insure that they wouldn’t get frustrated with the game that I wouldn’t teach them the rules of the game or even let them play a game until they had somewhat grown accustomed to throwing, catching, fielding, and batting.  This of course was met with great confusion—when are we going to play?  what are we doing?  why are we doing this?  The day that all these elements came together and I eventually let them play a game, one player told me afterwards that he now understands why we did all that stuff before.  Until then it was drills drills drills.  We practiced on a small dirt soccer field filled with rocks and glass.  The left field is depressingly shallow, about thirty feet from a little league distanced third base, and bordered by tall grass in which balls lost themselves.  Right field went on forever.  It was the middle of the summer and the temperature was well over a hundred by nine in the morning.  We started at seven-thirty.   I found myself going from player to player and adjusting arms, yelling to use two hands, and trying to figure out why they threw the ball straight up in the air instead of at a lower arc.  But they came.  Slowly I increased the intensity of drills and increased the number of practices, and they still came.  When Robin and I left and the other volunteer took over, he introduced harsher repercussions for not adhering to protocol and still they came.  By the end of the summer the team was starting warm up on their own, teaching new players, and looking fluid enough in some of their fielding and batting plays to pass for someone who had played ball for longer than three months.  It was awesome to see.

Baseball in one sense had become a large part of their life.  They referred to us as coaches even off the field.  Many claimed baseball as their favorite sport and a couple expressed an interest in playing professional ball in the states and given time and opportunity I believe they could.  Some of the boys displayed more respect and discipline as a result of being on the team and the girls grew more confident in leadership skills and self-confidence in sports.  They didn’t want to stop playing.  Soon, though we were in Ashgabat, the capitol, going head-to-head with teams from other parts of the country.

There were the usual passionate coaches, arguments with the umps (which were the coaches), bad calls, and bad plays.  Yet, what was really fascinating was that thousands of miles from Cooper’s Town, in the middle of the desert, at the edges of the global community, children were playing baseball and loving it.  The transplanting of baseball is not new, after all some of the best MLB players come from Latin American and Japan.  Yet, those countries have a history of cultural exchange with America, and one could almost say that their adoption of baseball was inevitable.  In essence, baseball has no history in Turkmenistan, but these kids played like they had grown up with the game.  Their skill was left wanting, after all they had only been playing for the most a year or so, but their intuition about the game was spot on.  From the impromptu hot box at home plate to tagging up on a pop fly and racing home, they played like they loved the game.  After a still-life demonstration of sliding (us coaches were not brave enough to really slide into the base and scratch up our knees) the players slid into the bases on close plays like it was second nature.  Perhaps these are the first steps towards a long history of baseball in Turkmenistan.

After the tournament in Ashgabat my players continue to practice.  We are having a game with a team from another veleyat at the end of the month, and that is when I plan to end the “season” to coordinate nicely with the ending of the MLB regular season.  The players will not be happy, but hopefully I can explain that baseball just isn’t a winter sport, and that they should rest up for spring training.  If I have my way, there will not just be one team in my region next year, but a whole league.  Of course, they’ll have to want it, but with the interest I’ve seen this year, I don’t think I’ll have any problems rounding up enough players for next year.