The Amazing Adventures of Kyrgyzstan and Col

Chapter Seven: Red Afternoon

Late October and Early November 2006

So maybe it was the line in Love Actually when the wife of the guy who was having a pseudo-affair said that Joni Mitchell was the woman who taught “his cold-hearted British wife to feel,” but lately, I’ve been craving me some “Case of You.” This admitted, on the phone the other night, I asked my dad to send me her Blue album in the mail. He called this morning to double-check that he got the right one.

Dad: “Col, you wanted Carole King, right?”
Me: “What? No. I told you Joni Mitchell. Her Blue, B-L-U-E album.”
Dad: “Oh, well I guess I’m out 24 bucks then. Just ignore the contents of this next package. I mailed it yesterday. Oddly though, I’m sort of relieved. I was wondering what the heck you wanted with that Carole King crap.”
Me: “Well, thanks anyway.”
Dad: “Yeah, well now you got every one of Carole King’s Greatest Hits if you ever feel the need to listen to them.”

I can hardly wait.

In the last two weeks I got to speak to my grandparents, my older brother, four close friends and my parents on the phone. I also got confirmation that the parental units as well as my little sister will be meeting me in Bangkok, Thailand, in early January. Of course this is pending Kyrgyz Concepts can successfully scrounge up a roundtrip ticket from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to the Land of the Thai. Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I read somewhere that the ending stan really just means land. So Kyrgyzstan? You guessed it, “The Land of the Kyrgyz.” I’m oozing knowledge.

On Halloween I patiently tried to teach my 7th graders the concept of dressing up in costumes. When I taught them the grammar point for the day and told them to complete the sentence, “My costume is a _____,” the girls all drew prom dresses and the boys drew three-piece suits. When I asked one of the boys if that was his Halloween costume he said, “Yes, I am George Bush. I have a costume.” That’s when I remembered that the word in Russian for suit is costume. Basically, I told the kids that on the 31st, little children in America dress up in formal wear, and go house to house asking for candy. I feel a little silly. Oops.

On the 4th, my first (second if you count PST) host family invited 80 relatives over for my host sister’s wedding reception party, lasting an entire 24 hours. Twenty-four hours of dancing to Kyrgyz-techno, drinking black tea, taking shots of vodka and eating freshly backyard slaughtered cow meat soaked in soggy noodles. Mmmm. Jealous yet? All joking aside, it was great to see my host sister again. I guess if I have to compare the experience to something back home, it was almost like I was the Maid of Honor. I’m sure it has something to do with my being American and all, but people were making a big deal about me. But most of the evening and into the morning, I was just paranoid that my sub-par language level would be found out, and I’d be shunned. That never happened. If anything, the toast I gave, followed my serenade of Aladdin’s "A Whole New World" was a welcomed surprise. I can hardly believe it myself, but when the overly friendly and touchy-feely uncle told me that the meal couldn’t end without me singing to Aidena, I felt compelled to sing the first song that came to mind. I realize it’s a little pathetic that the first song I could think of was a Disney classic, but at least it’s a good one, no? I think it’s safe to say the fact that I was the only one who understood what I was saying was a plus. Because, as any one of my friends are all to aware, I can’t carry a tune, let alone one without music in the background to drown out my voice. Towards the end, the lyrics got a little fuzzy, so when I couldn’t remember anymore versus, I slowly faded out, they applauded politely and then thanked me for the effort. Maybe next time I’ll sing something from Beauty and the Beast.

I also got the finger from a five-year-old. But not because of my song choice. I’m still not really sure why he flipped me off. I like to tell myself that he was just a little cranky. Or hungry.

At about 4:00 PM the following afternoon, the family decided to say their goodbyes and pack the truck up with all their new gifts. It’s a Kyrgyz custom for the wife’s family to fully furnish the newlyweds home as best they can, and then send it all away with the new couple after the reception. And I must say, it all was a bit impressive. My Apa and Ata were saving since March to provide carpets, trunks, pillows, blankets and sofas for the newlyweds, Rustam and Aidena. Tushucks galore. Ever since I laid eyes on the national carpet, shurdock, I’ve wanted to purchase one for myself. And with all this wedding furniture hoopla, I felt the spirit move me, so placed an order with another volunteer’s handicraft NGO. It should be finished and ready for pickup come December, so maybe I’ll drag it to Thailand with me and make Papa Marshall bring the goods back to the States. Sounds like a plan.

With Halloween and the wedding celebration behind me, I now find myself saying goodbye to a lot of my friends. The K-12 group (Kyrgyzstan’s 12th group of volunteers) is leaving, returning home or traveling the world before new obligations call and they are summoned back and have to move on with their lives, find a job, a school or a love. I’m really going to miss them. Good, good people. And to think, a year ago, I had no idea any of them existed. They helped change my life in some of the smallest ways. Ways I’m sure I’m not even aware of yet.

Volunteers are funny people. I have a feeling not all of us are like the crowd that signed up in the 1960s after President Kennedy’s call. A few of us idealists, of course. Some of us wanderers, escapists, enthusiasts. Some of us don’t really know what we want from life, some of us are driven with the utmost passion to succeed. Befriending people, people that I probably might never have been drawn to without the convenience that the Peace Corps experience provides, has been a good thing. I suppose I’d like to think that what I’m doing now isn’t because I’m running away or existing apart from any sort of reality, but is rather a stage in my life, simply preparing me for my next step. If any of us are lucky, maybe we’ll find someone who’d want to go and do it all with us.

And just because...

Tori Amos, Silent All These Years

For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
M. Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was— I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the wood of the old hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
J. Kerouac, On the Road

Rilo Kiley, Spectacular Views

posted by C @ 4:03 PM