12.8.2008 (Monday): The first official day with my permanent host family

Time had flown by. I find myself standing in front of two severed cow heads. The limbo is decidedly over. My new and permanent host family had slaughtered two cows and three goats in honor of my arrival. I am here to stay. Well, they had slaughtered half their livestock also partly because the upcoming holiday season. Tomorrow is the start of the 3-day Gurban celebration, where we will all swing on huge swings to dispel our sins. I wonder: if I swing on the swings long enough, would I be able to erase all my mistakes and start over?

I officially moved in and settled in my permanent host family yesterday afternoon. Only my two brothers were home, and my host father, mother, and sister had gone into the city, specifically the huge Sunday bazaar. It took me a while to understand that. I didn’t know what happened, but I found myself at a loss of comprehension and speech. All the Turkmen language I had learned in two months was replaced by blank stares. My brothers showed me my room: newly painted walls and floor and a desk. Coming from the warmth of my old room in my training site, the starkness and the paint smell overwhelmed me, but I lugged the luggage into the room nonetheless. For the next two years, I would reside here.

After that and a brief tea-drinking session, I caved to my mental and physical exhaustion and took a 5-hour nap. It was restless and unfulfilling. I had slept in my clothes because it was cold. The pillow was really hard.

Then the rest of my family came home, bearing huge items from the bazaar. I had imagined this moment several times, and this time fell unimaginably short. I was groggy from my nap, and I shook all their hands hello, but it was damnably hard to shape my lips into a smile. They stepped back, and I nodded. Then they showed me what they had shopped 8 hours for: a humongous carpet, a huge water gas heater, a welcome mat, and a clothes stand. They were all for my room. I was taken aback. How had they managed to lift all this stuff? And it was incredibly extravagant. I had totally expected to sleep on the cold floor. Everything looked too new, deeply contrasting with the worn and used items in their rooms. It didn’t seem right, and as a result, I wasn’t able to convey my gratitude sufficiently, so they just went about to decorate my room for me. I stood by, dumbfounded. Could I justifiably accept all these items? Peace Corps had given me some money to buy some settling-in items. Would I be a good volunteer if I don’t rough it?

When they plugged the new heater into the outlet, all the lights in the house went out. We opted for the lights to eat dinner, so it was decided that I should sleep in a warmer room inside the house (my room is actually outside, next to the kitchen). Dinner was tough. I enjoy most Turkmen meals, but last night is not something I could go through again. My mother had boiled cow organs, intestines, and fat in lots of oil. The cow heart and liver were reserved for me, the guest. I had to eat it. My brother wanted to eat it, picked it up, and got yelled at. So I closed my eyes, held my breath, and ate it with bread. I wanted to eat lots of bread to fill my stomach, but it was so damnably hard I could only rip off small bits. The first bite of cow heart with bread was chewed, but all the subsequent bites were swallowed whole. I didn’t like the chewy texture, and there was a funky taste to it, and although I am not a vegetarian, I remember these two baby cows grazing peacefully a mere three weeks ago.

The meal, like many others, was eaten with our hands. I looked at my hands after the meal, and my fingernails and fingers were coated with a thick white layer of lard. My sister then accidentally dropped a droplet of oil onto my hand, and it immediately solidified into fat. It unsettled me to think how much fat I had consumed.

I also remember thinking during the meal: Are they testing me? But when I saw how much they relished eating the different organs, I recognized the gulf of cultural difference separating me and them. That compelled me to pick up a white squishy blob and swallow that. I sincerely admire the Turkmen people for wasting very little. Almost every part of the cow was used, even its hair, although I asked why the hair was white. That conversation calls for further investigation. At the end of the meal, I was naturally traumatized, but even more so, I realized how resourceful my family was and how much more “toughness” I needed to eat to be less spoiled and more acclimated.