Hello. My fingers are stiff after watching clothes for 2.5 hours and hanging them to dry in this brisk and wintry temperature. The socks aggravated me much because they refused to be white again and just remained a dull gray. Later I watched my younger host sister wash her clothes, and she took less time to wash more clothes, and the clothes turned out cleaner. I asked her whether she was tired, and she said she wasn’t in a very believable upbeat tone. And she was just squatting too; I sat on a low stool.
My new host sister is not just awesome in washing clothes. She’s one of the most gentle, kind people I have ever met, in contrast to my current host sister who likes to sassily call me black or African just because I have tanned a bit. My new host sister, Annagozel, is 17 years old, and I like to tell her how my younger sister in the US is named Anna and is also 17 years old. Annagozel is a bit taller than me, I think, although I would like to believe that we are the same height, and she is also very skinny. (Actually the whole family is super skinny, although the dad is putting on some poundage around the waist: they call it the age belly.) She does a lot of the chores around the house, including washing and sweeping the floors, washing everyone’s clothes, and cooking. On top of that, Monday through Friday, she goes to a Turkish school for the best students and stays with her relative in the capital during the weekdays. She comes home for the weekend and doesn’t stop doing chores. I hope to relieve her of some of her duties when I move in permanently. In addition, her English is pretty amazing, and she wants to teach me Russian, Turkish, and Turkmen. In return, I will teach her English to help her get into a university. Overall, she is awesome.
My mother is also very kind and soft-spoken. She is a great cook (I am currently salivating to the smell of her cooking. When is dinner already?) and does many of the daily chores around the house, including milking the cow, which I saw today. I am actually very excited to try my hand at that, although I am scared of doing something wrong and startling the cow. Yes, the mother doesn’t ever stop working, and I hope to share some of her responsibilities in the near future. On top of that, she turned out to be this amazing teacher and youth motivator. First of all, she teaches health, biology, and chemistry at the school; I got very excited when I learned that since I like all those topics, and I am also a health teacher. When I learn more language, I want to talk to her about what she teaches the students and how I can supplement some of her teachings. Secondly, she is applying for a program that would allow her to study for a month in the US and give her some funding for certain projects in this community. I read about some of her past projects, and I was literally floored. She is considered to be a great teacher who works well with her students (her students give her lots of presents to show their respect and gratitude); she has given chickens to students to teach them how to maintain sustainable businesses; and she has applied for certain grants and worked with the community to supply the people with running water. I couldn’t believe how much she has done for her community, and it really inspired me to make her proud through my own projects.
In addition, I think my host mother is very “progressive” in a sense. (My fingers are finally thawing.) She got married when she was thirty (some people think that at 30, a woman is a spinster), and she didn’t want a big family. In addition, she pursued education extensively, and while others are watching TV, she would take out her books to prepare for her lessons and to read. And she told me that she didn’t prefer boys over girls (which is very prevalent in this patriarchal culture), and she named her last child “freedom,” and although my Turkmen language is limited, I think she said that the third child served as her freedom from having more kids. I thought it was hilarious at the time.
My father is a driver, I think, although I think they dumb down concepts so that I could understand. So maybe he’s not just a taxi driver. Nonetheless, he is very nice, and I think he has a jolly sense of humor. He jokes around with his kids and plays competitive games of checker with his sons. He looks Russian to me, although I don’t know why I say that, since I have seen more Turkmen people than Russians. Are all Russians blonde-ish?
I have two younger brothers. One is 13 years old, and the other is 15 years old. In this culture, I have been conditioned to not talk to the men or even look at them, out of propriety. However, the 13-year-old is so rambunctious, with such a contagious smile, and I can’t resist smiling back and agreeing to many consecutive games of checkers in which I never win. And they both try so hard to serve me so I don’t have to lift a finger. It’s kind of funny, to see them scrambling over themselves to pour me tea. Today, it was especially sweet. My mother came into my room and quietly let me know that my younger brother, the 13-year-old, was counting on his fingers the number of days before I move in permanently. He usually acts so macho and wears the could-care-less attitude typical of teens, but inside, he’s such a sweetheart. That really touched me. And he said that he would try to learn one English word per day. So far, he has “hello, good bye, I love you, thanks a lot” down pat, showing the influence of American television.
The family has already earned my respect and admiration. They are especially hard-working. Every morning at 5:30 AM, they wake up as a family to go to the warehouse where they keep their cows and herd them back. I think that’s it, although I don’t completely understand this. So while I sleep, they, including both of the boys, quietly leave the house and complete the morning house chores. I find it so strikingly different from the culture in the US. In the states, my family sleeps so much more, hitting the snooze button over and over again, and usually running late. Here in Turkmenistan, the work sounds louder than any alarm clock. And yesterday, I saw the younger brother untying our giant puppy (2-year-old) and taking it for a run, but not before he forced me to pet it. The dog probably weighs more than me and almost came up to my waist.
I had a long and pretty deep conversation with my sister last night (which I happily chalked up as a language milestone). We talked about her aspirations, what she does in school, and her chores around the house. Although she does practically everything in the house, she said that she doesn’t like milking the cow. She only does it when her mother is too busy, and then she needs her younger brother to grab onto the tail. She is a really petite girl, and it cracked me up, picturing her trying to milk the cow and her brother hanging onto the tail. “Otherwise, it would whack me across the face,” she laughingly explained and demonstrated, “And when I do it, the milk doesn’t come. I am not very good at that.” She’s so brave and sweet.
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