Donkeys, Puppies, and Vodka

November 19, 2007

6:15 AM


My walk outside to the outhouse this morning brought about a moment of great epiphany. Before heading outside I stopped by the kitchen area to drop off the French-press (I usually clean it up when I come back from my morning duty). Waiting for me on the floor of the kitchen was all of the garbage that usually stays inside of the garbage. Starring at me in the kitchen was our new cat assassin (more on her later). I looked at the cat and told her, “you better hope a monster rat did this; something so big that in your best efforts to protect the kitchen from it, you still couldn’t fend it off.” Thus my morning began sweeping up garbage.

Following the clean-up, I went back to my routine and headed for the door. Stepping outside (I love everything about mountain mornings) my eyes were quickly drawn to the sky. There was not a cloud in the sky. Every star that has shined since the dawn of humanity was putting on a show this morning. I walked a few feet staring and lost in the sky and only stopped when I realized I was walking like a drunk. (The combination of my aging bones that take a little while get into working order and me walking starring straight into the sky produced a sweeping wobble.)

On my way to the outhouse I was greeted by my friend the turkey. For some reason this weirdo sleeps perched up on a giant metal contraption (the frame to some long lost truck). He is there every morning; and he doesn’t sit, he stands like Mufasa observing the pridelands. Upon close inspection I have discovered that he digs his head into his chest catches some shut eye. The intrigue of sleeping like this struck me one morning. I was still really tired and didn’t feel like being away. I tried sleeping with him like this, once. It wasn’t meant to be. Combine the fact that I get talkative in the morning with my body’s center of gravity and the result was no sleep and a pissed off turkey. He’s not much of a talker (ever, but especially in the mornings) and got mad that every time I’d dose off would I keep tipping over.
Good ol’ turkey, he’s a grouch; I had no desire to join him this morning, so I just smiled at him (I did try to give him a high five, but he wasn’t feeling it this morning). Passing him I had nothing on my mind but the toilet. Obviously, we had too many animals here to make anything a simple task. A few seconds after being shut down by the turkey I was startled by our new donkey. Apparently, my host brother traded his bicycle and some flour for a baby donkey (kind of makes pogs or baseball cards seem like chump-change). We have had our new donkey for only a few days now, so I am not used to him chomping away in our yard.

For some reason he loves the grass leading up the outhouse (don’t ask). This is fine, except for the fact that he scares the bowk out of me every time I go to the bathroom. It is worse in the evenings or early mornings. Naturally, being a donkey, his fur is a sexy shade of old-asphalt-grey (new color coming to Crayola soon). With this camouflage, he waits hidden among the weeds pretending to be a blob. Then, as I come walking by, he pops his head up to say “Boo!” (Donkey ‘Boos’ sound kind of like a deafening scream of HEHAWHEHAWHEHAW!) He sucks; he should just stick to mowing our lawn and let me go to the bathroom in peace. I hissed at the donkey this morning and made some snide remark about him being a herbivore.

After completing my morning outhouse trip I took another look to the heavens. From the sky in the north as shooting star dropped behind the mountains (and crashed into Almaty, adding more lights to the already overly lit city). I had to smile. The sky was overwhelmingly beautiful and there was not a noise to be heard. I took a last glance to the sky before heading inside. I decided on a play I was going to write once I got inside: The Greeks and Romans - “They Were Always This Stiff.”

Now, onto our new cat; we have a cat and she is no regular cat. She is a Kyrgyz cat, which inherently means she loves bread and has the waking hours of a bartender. I’ve seen her do nothing for an entire day but sit in the kitchen staring at me (I once spent an entire day in the kitchen just to have a starring contest with her; she won). Usually in the mornings I rise to see remnants of mice she captured in the night. Which is a good thing, since that was precisely why we grabbed her from Apa’s (the grandmother of the family) house. Apa can’t hear or see much anymore, let alone mice, so I believe it is justified that we stole her cat.

Since the winter has been increasingly approaching, so have the mice. I have a few new friends in my room. I call them friends, but they really aren’t friendly at all. (I am trying to nice when describing my enemies, part of my reconciliation project with rodents.) I’ve tried to make peace (leaving cookie crumbs out or a mousetrap with wonderful bread), but they seem to prefer sneaking over talking with me. I’ve tried a civil approach to our Chavez vs. Spain style friendship: I put some cookies in a box and laid the box down. The hope was they would appreciate the gifts of the cookies and not worry that I was going to try and catch them in the box and then give the box to the cat.

Suffice to say, my box trick didn’t work. My most recent attempt at making our friendship work was putting a mousetrap in the corner of the room. Taking a note from US diplomacy, I decided snapping their necks would be easier than talking to them. I tried briefly talking to them (I even brought in an unbiased third party: the Blair Witch Cat), but they were just not willing to talk. (Read: Our brief talks consisted of me threatening sanctions such as turning off my room heater or sweeping the floor daily so as to give them no crumbs to pick up in the night.) I have no time to study the facts about these little creatures. I’ve got more pressing issues in my life. They are all the same anyways. When our peace talks failed, I moved into action.

With my Freedom Alliance in tact (the Cat and I), the hope is in due time we will be able to liberate these mice from the pains of being alive. Life is better on the other side anyways (over there they know difference between piety and heathenism). In the mean time (before my proselytizing has an effect on them), I will just have to deal with the reality that these creatures share my living space. Maybe I’ll build a wall along the borders of my bedroom; that will teach those mice from trying to find food in a cold and hungry world.

Oh, yeah, my epiphany. I realized this morning that my emotional instability is now my ally against all the evils in the world (evils = mice, uncooked lentils beans, and inconsistent cell phone service in the mountains of a developing nation). I am beginning to embrace it; soon we (my emotional instability and I) will be very good friends; a force to be reckoned with. When that happens, the voices in my head will inform you all.



November 19, 2007

6:15 PM

My two hour break today between English classes and English club became an “only in Kyrgyzstan” lunch. On the walk home from school the desire to have scrambled eggs and potatoes hit me. Knowing I had six eggs left in the fridge and a ton of potatoes, this desire became a real possibility for my afternoon meal.

Some where in the thought process of deciding if I needed the eggs for anything coming up (if I need more eggs for anything, it is a near impossibility to get them in the village). The thought crossed my mind that I really wanted to have some fruit breads available for my breakfast meals, and I need eggs for those (I have run out of peanuts—and all else that could be considered breakfast food). Preferring to eat in the mornings, I decided that I kind of had to make bread.

By the time I had completed the ten minute walk from school to my house, I had decided that in the two hour break before club I was going to make eggs, scalloped potatoes, and an apple bread. I had two hours; this seemed like plenty of time.

About an hour into my cooking session, my host father came over to the kitchen to say hi and shoot the shit. I love this guy. Usually he comes over to rag on me about being skinny or asks me about what news I have from America. Now that Amy is gone he likes to joke about my lack ability to live without my love. Whatever we talks about, he always makes me smile and I welcome his random jaunts over to my part of the house.

At the time he had come over to talk, the potatoes were finished and I was putting the eggs onto my plate. While talking to him I slid the apple bread into the oven and walked over to the table to eat. After he was done making fun of me for eating on a plastic plate (Kyrgyz people, according to him, only eat on porcelain plates) I asked him if he had seen Kanopka lately. I usually call her in the house for food every other day (I am trying to train her to become a Kyrgyz dog and fend for her own food on the days in between food from me). I called her when I got back from school, but she was no where to be found.

My host father got really worried that I had not seen her (he honestly cares about the things I care about and will go out of his way to take care of them for me). He was worried that either 1) she had been run over in the road by the crazy drivers of our village or 2) she was having her babies (oh, did I forget to mention that Kanopka is pregnant?). He promptly called my host brother and the two of them scoured the yard and street for any sign of my cute little wannabe cat of a dog. I wasn’t worried much, she is a tough dog; I was sure she was somewhere just cheering on the big dogs of our house while they protected her from every encroaching animal.

Approximately seventeen seconds after I had finished my lunch (and was about to go get ready to leave for club, which started in twenty minutes), my host brother came barging in the kitchen with the statement, “I found her, she is hiding under the wood. She gave birth to her puppies!”

Some where deep inside of me my motherly instincts kicked in when I heard this. I quickly moved to the door, slipped on my clogs, and ran after my host brother to the wood pile in our back yard. When we got the pile he just pointed to a deep hole in the pile and said, “There. She is there.”

I folded myself into the best yoga pose I could manage and dipped my head under the wood. There she was, as he said. Deep under the pile I could see Kanopka curled up in a ball. Her tail wagged when she saw me. She shifted a little bit to look at me better and that is when I saw them, her puppies!

By now the entire host family was outside to check on Jason and his Americanized puppy (well, I guess if she has puppies now I have to officially call her a dog; she grew up so fast). After a brief discussion with my host father and mother, we decided that leaving them outside under the wood pile would probably kill either the puppies or Kanopka; or worse, all of them. It is fairly warm here during the daytime; but once that sun sets, shit freezes here faster than an international bank account from North Korea.

After a collective decision that all must be moved, I quickly realized that I was going to have to be doing the duties of retrieving Kanopka and her puppies from the abyss they were snuggled in. After a few dozen failed attempts at getting Kanopka to either walk out or allow herself to be dragged out, my host brother suggested another strategy: if we can grab the puppies out, she would obviously follow them out; especially if she heard their crying. Mean and twisted as it sounded, it was a brilliant plan.

So reached carefully under Kanopka’s belly and slowly grabbed the first puppy and handed it to my host brother who was holding a towel. I then reached for the second puppy and as I was slowly lifting it out of the hole my hand bumped into the third and final puppy. The response from the third puppy was unsettled. I quickly realized the I had fear coming over to the wood pile was realized: the third puppy was dead. I successfully retrieved the second puppy and then told my host brother to go stand a good distance away so as to draw Kanopka out of the hole. He looked at me with a “what about the other puppy” look. Without saying anything to him, he understood.

The next scene was one of the saddest things I have ever seen in my life. Kanopka was listening to her crying puppies on the other side of the yard but she couldn’t go to them. She refused to leave the last puppy. I tried to nudge her out and she refused. I slowly tried to grab the last puppy and she very patiently grabbed the puppy’s neck and dragged it back down into the hole. I had tears beginning to swell up. The decision to me seems obvious now; who needs her more, her two living puppies or her dead puppy? But that is just not life; no matter what the obvious may be, the obvious decisions aren’t always the easiest to make. I had visions of so many bad things while watching this scene. After few minutes passed, Kanopka made the tough decision to part with her final puppy and head off to attend to her two healthy ones.

Most host brother carried the puppies into the garage and Kanopka followed him. He placed the puppies on a little stack of old clothes and Kanopka went right to them. After he had put all the dogs in the garage, my host brother came back to where the last puppy was. Without talking, he grabbed a shovel and I placed the puppy wrapped up in sheet on to the shovel. He then carried the puppy to the back yard and set it into a resting place in the backyard weeds. It just crossed my mind as to whether or not I should bury the puppy. If it is still in the back of the yard tomorrow, I will bury it.

By the time all of this was over, I had two minutes to get to school for club. I ran and grabbed my stuff and hurried to school. Awaiting me at school were my girls. They would undoubtedly rag on me for breaking the only rule we have for club, which is to not be late. Nonetheless, on my hurried walk to school I wasn’t thinking about being late; I had a very really sense of pride and happiness hovering over me. My dog had puppies! She was sitting quietly in the garage with her newborns. I felt like a proud father who’s daughter just had a kid.

Club went well. (Mondays are our Discussion Club. The theme today, as a suggestion from Amy, was a talk about the best and worst thing to ever happen to us in each our lives—this Discussion Club is done in a mix of Kyrgyz and English). After a really good hour and half session, we all parted and I made my way home to my awaiting dog and her new puppies.

Once I returned home, I helped my host brother clean up the very messy garage and then I decided that I couldn’t just leave Kanopka and her puppies on a pile of clothes. So naturally, I made her a doghouse in the garage. I grabbed an extra pillow from my room and a few sheets that doubled as rags. I cushioned up the bed and then made a wall of clothes and sheets around the bed to warm it up at bit. I then built a wall around the bed with a bunch of extra bricks we have all over the yard. Across the top of the wall I placed to wood planks, and on top of those I placed some left over carpet from the garage and then a blanket I had stolen from Lufthansa (thank you Lufthansa; you are aiding in the process of keeping my puppy warm). With that the doghouse was finished. This was obviously was going to be much warmer than the hole under the wood pile; my host parents were right.

After everything was completed my host father came over to check it out and approved. Anything I do to take care of Kanopka is an act of sheer amusement to him. He loves watching the care I put into taking car of my dog. After checking the doghouse’s structure and nodding with approval, he then turned and looked at me with a smirk. “So, who’s the father?” slid out of his mouth. I smiled at him and responded on cue with, “I will find him. And he owes my dog child support.”

So goes an “only in Kyrgyzstan” day.

(See photo site for shots of all of this.)



November 21, 2007

3:30 PM


Based on twenty-four and a half years of observation, I’ve come to following conclusions:

A) We all need to take a deep breath.
B) Kids know more about bliss than adults ever will.
C) We are all wrong.
D) Coffee is a food group.
E) Faith is.
F) Love will always be.


David Sedaris’ description of American life:

“Insane optimism coupled with [the] naive popular belief that a few hours of therapy can cure everything from chronic obesity to a lifetime of poverty.”



November 23, 2007

6:15 AM

“While mortals slept the angels came.”


Lord Krishna Speaks:

Contacts with matter make us feel
heat and cold, pleasure and pain.
Arjuna, you must learn to endure
fleeting things—they come and go!

When these cannot torment a man,
when suffering and joy are equal
for him and he has courage,
he is fit for immortality.

Nothing of nonbeing comes to be.
nor does being cease to exist;
the boundary between these two
is seen by men who see reality.



November 28, 2007

11:30

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”
- Moulin Rouge



November 30, 2007

8:55 AM

Yesterday I observed one of the most inspiring aspects to my village, combined with a large dose of reality. While wandering the halls in between classes, I was very unexpectedly invited to attend a seminar happening at my school. I had not heard there was a seminar happening; so it is safe to also say I had no idea what I was being invited to.

One of the teachers saw me in the hallway and simply asked, in a very Kyrgyz manner, “Are you not going to the seminar.” I smiled and in my head thought, “Well, I guess if knew there was a seminar I would consider going.” I replied as I do for most of these questions, “Yeah, I am going there now!”

Walking into the activity room I was greeted to a full room. Most of the teachers were in there along with a few of the older classes (10th and 11th grades). Along with the regular school audience, most of the village elders and government officials were there. On the wall were a bunch of posters, charts, and pictures discussing health. I found the main poster in the middle of the madness and realized that this was going to be a seminar presented by the A.D.K. (Ayildyk Den Solook Komitey) or the Village Health Committee.

This committee is one of the aspects to my life here that gives me hope for my village and the people of Kyrgyzstan. The committee is a group (95% women) who meet once a week to discuss the problems of the village, usually sticking to the topic of health. But since the health of villagers usually ties into many other problems in the village, they are forced to branch out and discuss many of the larger issues. (For example, if clean and safe drinking water affects the health of the village, then the source of the water—canals, streams, water pumps—are issues they discuss). This group works both with the local government of my village along with similar groups in villages throughout the oblast (state). The best part about this group: they are all volunteers and work for free. They work because they know things need to change and someone has to act for changes to occur.

The seminar they were presenting yesterday was to attack three major things: 1) The cigarette and vodka problem in the village, 2) Safety against the flu, and 3) Safe drinking water issues. By and large, the best part of the seminar (for me) was the discussion about cigarettes and vodka. A.D.K. had invited oblast health officials along with A.D.K. members from our two neighboring villages to this seminar to drum up support for everything they were going to discuss. The cigarettes and vodka discussion was surely one that needed their support.

Cigarettes (for men) and vodka have become very intertwined in the Kyrgyz culture. Most Kyrgyz men smoke, even some of the most pious men. Cigarettes are cheap here, and there is little, if no, rules against who can and cannot buy them. Cigarettes are pretty much only smoked by men in the village (the cities are a different story). Smoking is a sign of age, respect, and manhood in Kyrgyzstan. If you are a man, you smoke (kind of like how the American Cowboy was cleverly transformed into the symbol for smoking. Cowboys are traditional viewed as the most rugged and manly of men—which is why ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was such a great movie, questioning the American image of the “man;” but that is a different discussion).

The women of this seminar came right out and questioned the purpose behind smoking. Their approach was first asking if all of the men in the room knew the negative effects of smoking. Most of the men in the room nodded yes. They then asked why, if they knew they were bad for health, why they were teaching their children to smoke. Genius. They knew they were going to have a difficult time trying to convince men to stop smoking, so they then went after their pride (having children is a source of pride and joy for anyone of any culture or country). They basically asked the men then why are you teaching your children how to die. (One woman actually asked them, “Do you want your children do die early?”)

After filling their minds with thoughts of protecting the futures of their children, they then went after the giant: Vodka. They took the same approach, but this time directed their message to every adult in the room. Now it must be stated here how integrated vodka is with the Kyrgyz culture. Sure, people drink alcohol all over the world; but vodka here is literally an integral part of the culture. It is how you treat your guests and is part of the very traditional Kyrgyz toast. Vodka is a means to celebrate, a means to pay respect, and sadly, the least recognized, the path to alcoholism for many people in this country. (I am very grateful that “alcoholism” is a cognate, it made understanding what was happening yesterday much easier.)

A.D.K. went right after the cultural aspect to vodka and questioned whether it was even Kyrgyz. They asked the adults in the room if vodka was the only way to show respect to guests. Most people nodded no. This lead to a discussion about how vodka is rarely taken in moderation at celebrations, often times leading to alcoholism (there are a lot of celebrations in the Kyrgyz culture). They then asked if toasts must always be given with vodka. Most people didn’t know how to respond to this. How do you do a toast without vodka to toast with? This question would be turned against the committee once the seminar was completed.

The seminar completed and I was able to meet some of the guests who had come from around the oblast. Most of them had heard of or worked with Peace Corps and were very interested to talk with me about my village. We even made plans to see about the possibility of getting a health volunteer for my village. After talking for a little while, we then were all ushered to a house where lunch would commence (Free Lunch!).

We stuffed forty-plus people into a room and then went through the traditional process of tea, salads, and bread and then moving on to the main course of plov (rice, carrots, and beef or chicken). Usually around the time plov is finishing up, the traditional vodka toasts begin. To my surprise and delight, vodka was no where to be found. There was plenty of great discussion about our village’s problems that then moved into some of the major national issues for Kyrgyzstan. I was sitting there and kept thinking how great this was to finally see; very open and straight-forward dialogue. They discussed corruption, the economy, the fading of cultural elements (the horse!), and voting discrepancies. All of the guests were talking freely with many of the locals I have become friends with. It was wonderful so see such free movement of dialogue. From dialogue comes action, and I was glad to see the roots of action and change being sprouted.

Eventually, all the guests rose to head back to their respective homes. All of the local villagers and I walked them out to their cars to see them off. We then returned to the house for a few more glasses of tea and to discuss future plans for meetings (they invited me to a few of the upcoming meeting). I was also able to make plans with the director of A.D.K in our village to discuss the possibility of getting a future volunteer. After about five minutes of tea, not unexpectedly, but to my surprise, a few bottles of vodka appeared on the table. I politely refused a glass while making eye contact with the director. After overhearing her tell the some of the remaining locals they had to wait until their guests left before they brought the vodka out, she turned to me.

She looked at me and said, “We can’t help it; it’s part of our culture. We know it’s not good, but how can you toast a successful seminar without vodka to toast with? We can call these toast our experiment for the negative effect of vodka.” From there she led into the first toast of four given.

I sat back and smiled. That was all I could really do. Fixing problems and discussing ways to solve others is the easy beginning. Questioning and altering a cultural element is an entirely different story. Welcome to every problem from the East to the West, North to South; from AIDS to corruption, genocide to human trafficking. Culture can be a very powerful enhancer, but also an overwhelming inhibitor.

Thus is life.