I woke up today with my cold worse than ever. I had to breathe through my mouth, and the million stupid damnable flies had buzzed around my head the entire night. They would land on my nose, my forehead, my eyelashes, and after the umpteenth time, I would finally awake, annoyed beyond belief. Half the night, I slept with the covers over my head. It was overall a horrible night. I was shivering most of the time, and I blame it entirely on myself. I had insisted to sleep in my own room because I wanted some more privacy, but even though there is a heater in my room, the room hasn’t sufficiently warmed up enough yet. So I had folded my blanket in half to make it thicker, but I would wake up because either my front or my back would be exposed to the cold. Then there is that stupid hard, flat pillow. I have the worst crick in my neck and shoulders. I really need a back or neck massage. So this morning, I finally got fed up, put on a really thick robe, and naturally went on a rampage to kill every single damned fly in my new room. I am usually not a morning person, but at the end of an hour, the windows, the walls, the door, and my notebook were all smeared with the bloody remnants of my battle. My enemies lay in whimpering, twitching droves on the floor.
With a new host family, I have to start all over again, to start at square one and work to integrate into the family, once again. I guess I come more prepared this time around, and I guess I did a good job the first time around, as I am going back tomorrow to celebrate one day of the holidays with my first host family. They had called to confirm, and my neighbors had also called. It is indeed not fair that I spend two months with them and then leave for the holidays, a time that symbolizes so much for them for everyone to be together. It’s going to be interesting tomorrow, when my new host family meets the old. Anyhow, with my permanent family, I have to again intake copious cups of green and black tea, the only two types of tea that I have ever drank in Turkmenistan, and just basically sit with my family, sometimes glancing at the omnipresent Russian soap opera, sometimes trying to decipher what my family is saying to each other, and other times just daydreaming and planning for upcoming work days. Sometimes, mutely sitting there, partaking in the family dynamics, can become painful. I could be more productive in so many other ways: I could write more letters, work on my Turkmen book, and it would be more comfortable and significantly less awkward just being by myself in my room. It’s so tempting to excuse myself, and yet it’s so dangerous to fall into that habit and become the American guest, rather than the new daughter and sister. That’s why I force myself to sit there; being the quietly observing statue bodes better than the absent foreigner.
And with the new family comes the physical facilities. Even though the houses in Turkmenistan look similar, the layout of the houses varies, especially the bathrooms and the outhouses, the two facilities that I frequent the most, although the garden patches and livestock are fascinating too. I had just adjusted to adeptly using and growing to like the facilities in my old host family, and now this. The current situation needs some getting use to. The outhouse is tiny, and it just fits one person, and the walls almost brush against my shoulders, and when I am having stomach problems, the walls can be suffocating. And the smell contained within these four slabs of wall can also be scary and dreaded. I guess I wouldn’t mind this situation very much if I didn’t have to wear the floor-length, full-body dresses that all girls and women have to wear in this society. I was all ready to rough it and adapt to different situations, but every time my dress brushes against the floor, especially that spot when someone misses the hole, all I can see is the hand washing of this dress. Wait, that’s after I take the dress off, lifting it over my head and accidentally getting a whiff of the feces on the edge of my dress. I asked for my dresses to be made shorter, but apparently Turkmen women wear their dresses long and almost dragging on the floor. And I so desire to fit in and also be a good Turkmen girl. Yes, that was my little vent on one of the many cultural differences that exist. As for the bathroom, I don’t mind bucket showers so much, and I have grown to not mind shivering during my shower. I have come to realize that during the initial adjusting phase, every action is preceded by extra thinking and is succeeded by extra work. For example, I have learned to plan in advance every action I need to take in the bathroom, but sometimes certain steps are thwarted by unexpected conditions, and it usually turns out that I don’t have enough water to finish the shower, or enough hot water, or I would need to hand wash more clothes because they dragged on the floor. I have grown to so dread the hand washing. It’s taken on the proportions of being my mortal enemy, and usually I cower in the face of its inevitability. Every damned Sunday morning.
This week has been tough, harder than I had imagined. I have been unceremoniously dropped off with all my luggage, and the two years stretch ahead of me. What am I supposed to do? For the next two years? Can I be productive? What am I supposed to do tomorrow? I have never been so lost and overwhelmed at the same time. There’s an obscure, largely undefined cloud or shadow hanging over me. It’s what I am supposed to do, but I can’t really see it, but having it hang over me is really worrisome, because I don’t think I am doing the right things or going down the right paths. I used to have other volunteers alongside me, and I used to have a Turkmen language teacher, but now I am alone, and the having the guidance abruptly snatched from me has left this void in my side. And even typing in English has gotten harder, along with everything else, because I can feel myself losing my English skills, perhaps one word for each new Turkmen word I learn. I find myself drifting and drowning at sea; before I was furiously paddling and treading water to combat the tides of indifference and to craft my direction, but at times like this, it’s so easy to just float whichever way the tide carries me.
