Meetings with The Master

“new moon!as(by the miracle of your
sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some
dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen
illimitable secret of begin”

-ee cummings

I’ve decided to start this blog entry the same way I begin my day each morning, with a checklist:
I’m in Kyrgyzstan.
I teach English at a school.
I’ve been here since July 8th.
My name is Jonathan Peasley.

Okay, now we can get this post officially started. I’m going to call this part the prologue. Or maybe the preamble. I’m not schooled on the difference between the two, but I think I’ll go with preamble. And if this is the preamble, does that mean that right now I’m preambulating? I think so. The above quote by ee cummings bears no direct relevance to anything in this post, but it does carry great relevance to being alive, and therefore is indirectly related to this post since I am, in fact, alive (the fact which underlies my daily checklist). This is the end of the preamble.

If the preamble hasn’t caught your attention, then maybe this part (the introduction) will. I am no longer preambulating, but introducing. This introduction is not fancy, just a list of items that may or may not receive further attention in the remainder of the post:
#1 I have been stung by bees while #1 taking a shower #2 in the outhouse #3 eating borsch.
#2 I discovered and purchased beer scented shampoo.
#3 My name, according to some individuals, is Jonah.
#4 The Kyrgyz language was not designed for punctuality.
#5 The Russian word for walnut’s etymology involves the travels of Alexander the Great.
#6 I sang a Bruce Springsteen song a capella in front of all the teachers at my school.
#7 My host-family, for a brief period, thought I ate chicken feed for breakfast.
#8 I smell really bad as I write this.
#9 I shaved off my beard, but kept a mustache for 36 very tumultuous hours.
#10 I bought my first argyle sweater and a long, black, Soviet-style winter coat.
#11 Keaneu Reeves was out-acted in the Matrix Trilogy by a Russian dub-track.
#12 I was given a spatula as a birthday present.
#13 I danced with a 55 year old Kyrgyz woman.
#14 There is a man in the basement of my school whose only job is beating people at chess.
#15 Hiding a tied up goat in the trunk of a parked car is a splendid way to scare the socks off of passersby.

This is the end of the introduction.

So three weeks ago was the National Teachers’ Holiday in Kyrgyzstan. I’m sure we have a similar holiday in America, but it probably goes just as unnoticed as National Mental Health Awareness Month (which is June, I think). Anyways, this holiday meant that all the teachers from my school rented out a café from 3-9 on a Friday. But the name “café” doesn’t really fit. It was a huge ballroom/hall with two rows of long tables divided by two rows of large archaic-style columns. It was a very Soviet style building with all of its dilapidated elegance. They had a stage set up for a DJ, so there was music blasting during most of it. And it was really, really way too loud since it was just a big hall without carpet. No one seemed to care how loud it was, but I couldn’t help but wince from some of the synthesizer’s frequencies. So there are about 40 faculty members at my school, and we sat at two different tables. We ate appetizers first, and then the toasts started. Almost every member of the faculty got up and said a toast or sang a song. Suffice it to say it was a lot of toasts, which meant a lot of booze getting pushed at me by my counterpart and my school’s director sitting on both sides of me. As I was enjoying observing the comradery of the teachers at my school, I all of the sudden hear someone with the microphone talking about an American volunteer, and sure enough one of the male History teachers was summoning me up to the microphone to introduce myself, or so I thought. So I introduced myself in Kyrgyz and a little in Russian. After wishing all the teachers a happy holiday and getting ready to take my seat again, the history teacher came up and asked me in Russian which song I was going to sing and if I needed music or accompaniment. There wasn’t much time for hesitation since I was standing in front of all of my co-workers, so I ended up singing, start-to-finish, “Hungry Heart” by Bruce Springsteen, with only the accompaniment of the teachers clapping their hands to the beat.

After that I didn’t think it would get much wilder. But then the dancing circle started. Imagine about thirty 40-50 year olds hitting the floor to European club music. Then imagine me joining in (because there was no choice involved). Then, lastly, imagine me taking my mandatory turn of dancing in the middle of the circle with my counterpart, Satina, a very kind woman of the age of 55. End of holiday.

Now for a note on the Kyrgyz language. Sometimes time signifiers get a little tricky. The verb forms for the present simple tense is the same for the future simple, so therefore you need to mark the time if you want to talk about doing something in the future (tomorrow, next week, etc.) as opposed to something you do in general. This hasn’t caused too many problems, except for the fact that the Kyrgyz word for “now” (azyir) has a range of uses. For example: “azyir tsvet jok” means “right now there is no electricity.” However, when traveling for six hours on an overloaded mini-bus perhaps the driver will stop the bus for a bathroom break. When everyone is crowded back onto it, except for the driver (who is still standing and talking with other way-side drivers outside the bus windows), and someone asks him “when are we leaving?” his answer is “azyir” as he lights up a cigarette and continues his conversation. Perhaps if you’re waiting for the owner of a store to reopen after his lunch break, “azyir” also means “after I finish splitting this bottle of vodka with my friends.” After hearing this word used in even a couple other ways besides these, I’ve reached a definition of “azyir”: now, or any time in the future which seems reasonable given the situation, and considering the fact that you’re in Kyrgyzstan, not America. That is why when I am waiting for the shower’s water heater to warm up and I ask my host-father if it’s hot yet and his answer is “azyir,” I always check it myself before turning it on. This is to avoid the dangerous potential of stepping into an arctic blast.

The Search for Oatmeal: Part 1
The nice thing about being at my permanent site is that I get a full Peace Corps-issued stipend, whereas during PST the money for food and housing was given straight to my host family. Now I am able to buy my own food, so I usually eat breakfast and lunch on my own and eat dinner with my host family. When I first got to site I went for a grocery run at the bazaar, but beforehand I showed my host-mom my shopping list so that she could tell me average prices and I wouldn’t get ripped off. She, however, didn’t know the word I had copied from my English to Russian dictionary that supposedly meant oatmeal. So I broke out the Kyrgyz dictionary and found a different word for oatmeal, “talkan.” I told her that that’s what I wanted to find and she asked what for. I, of course, explained that that’s what I eat for breakfast every day. So she shrugged her shoulders and sent me on my happy little way. While at the bazaar I asked around and finally found where they sold “talkan,” which, strangely at the time, was in a completely separate corner of the bazaar from the rest of the food. Sure enough I found the so-desired item, and it turns out that it was coarsely ground corn, meant for feeding chickens and other livestock. And every time I tried using the Russian word, “ovcyanka,” I only received blank stares. No oatmeal this time.

The Search for Oatmeal: Part 2
Perhaps a week after getting to permanent site I was at a kiosk in the bazaar buying cheese, and when I turned to my right I saw on a shelf a large stack of half-kilo bags of oats. I’m not sure the woman selling the cheese understood why I asked “what’s this called” with so much furious enthusiasm. Her answer is still just as baffling as it was then: “Gyerkules.”

(Now for a brief note on the Russian alphabet. They don’t have a letter “h” like we do. They have more of a back-of-the-throat “h,” not our nice, breathy, soft “h” sound in English. Therefore for some reason, any word from English that the Russians borrow in which there is a letter “h,” the “h” gets turned into a “g.” This means that you can go to a restaurant and eat a gamburger. Maybe after that you’ll go to the theatre and see a production of Shakespeare’s “Gamlet,” and so on…)

What all this alphabet business means is…well, replace the ‘G’ in “Gyerkules” and you, of course get “Hyerkules,” or, as we spell it in English – Hercules. So once I get home from my bizarre bazaar run, I whip out my dictionary, open it to the Russian to English section, and under "геркулес" I find: “Hercules; rolled oats.” (Professor Crnkovic, if you’re reading this, I sure could use an explanation.) Perhaps rolling oats was a 13th labor of his, erased from human memory in the burning of the library at Alexandria. We just don’t know. Anywhoo, nowadays I go to the bazaar and ask for other Greek gods and heroes in the hope that Athena means bacon, Hera means pork sausage, Jason and the Argonauts means biscuits and gravy and Hades means a Cajun skillet. It hasn’t really worked out so far.

Now that I’ve mentioned several phenomenal breakfast dishes which I dearly miss, I can’t stop thinking about them, and therefore need to take this moment to lodge a brief complaint against the Kyrgyz culture, which is not actually a complaint at all, but rather a purely ethnocentric comment. If, during the Soviet period, Kyrgyz people, who are all Muslims, made smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol an acceptable part of their culture to the extremes that I’ve seen while being here, why could they not, therefore, make one more exception to their religious code just to give me what I want really bad right now: pork. A couple strips of bacon. A Wisconsin-made cheddarwurst. A chop, a loin, anything – It’s nowhere to be found around here, and this severely harshes my realm of breakfast and dinner possibilities. Now I must stop talking about food, or this post will become even more excessively long as it already is.

My favorite class to teach right now is my fifth grade Russian speaking class. They’re still young enough that they are very respectful (respect is a pretty big thing in Kyrgyz culture) and a lot more excited to learn English than some of my other classes. That, and because they are hilarious. On my first day of classes my counterpart, Satina, introduced me as John since, as she insists, Jonathan is just too unwieldy for Kyrgyz people. There’s no “th” in their language, and, with the next closest aspirated letter in their language being “f” or “ph,” I decided John was better than being called Jonaphan. However, because John is spelled with an “o,” even though we pronounce it like an “a,” John quickly begins to sound more like Joan. I’m used to this now, but…

(now for a note on the morphology of Russian declensions. The endings of nouns and adjectives in Russian change depending on how the words are grammatically situated in a given sentence. For example, “doma” means “at home,” whereas “domoi” means “homeward.” Now, for animate masculine nouns, which end in a consonant, they are given the suffix “-a” to denote that they are a direct object of a verb. Since John is masculine (indubitably so in Russian grammar, though sometimes doubtful when he’s caught enjoying the music of Dido) and, contrary to what you may think, also animate (though some days more than others), John becomes Johna when it’s the direct object of a verb)

Because my counterpart will often settle these riley 5th graders by telling them, in Russian, to listen to me, they are most accustomed to hearing my name in the sentence “ ’chas poslushaitye Johna” (“Listen to John now!”). But, these kids are young and some of the points of Russian grammar haven’t entirely sunk in, as it is their second language, and so the whole matter of “-a” being simply a case ending in that particular sentence is lost on them. That is why many of my 5th grade students call me Jonah. And I can’t correct them because, well, it’s just too cute.

Now before the conclusion to this post arrives, I’d like to get you blog-readers brainstorming with me. While being in this country I’ve seen a good share of unexplainable phenomena. And though I’ve been able to figure some of them out, there are a couple that I thought I’d share in case you might be able to come up with some answers.

Case #1: Why were there two wild dogs running down the road with their tails tied together? How many people would it take to accomplish this, and why was it worth their efforts?

Case #2: If you were to buy a sheep at the market to take home for food, and this live sheep was in the trunk of your car, would you A) go straight home with it, or B) leave your car parked on the side of a main street while you grabbed a bite to eat, meanwhile the goat is intermittently thrashing around, kicking, and scaring those walking by who assume that most parked cars do not have live animals in their trunks? If B is your answer, please explain why you are not in a hurry.

Case #3: There are many birds which are native to Kyrgyzstan and other countries near the Tian Shen mountain range, but nowhere to be found in other parts of the world. One bird which is not native to this region is the peacock. Why, then, is there a peacock always standing on the corner near Joe’s house?

Fourth and final case: Perhaps you are on your way home and you get a phone call from a friend. You can either A) keep walking and talking at the same time, B) stop on the side of the road, have a rest and continue your conversation while leaning against a 3 foot tall brick wall built around a sewer manhole, or C) take the time and effort to climb into the manhole so that just the top of your hat is still visible above the wall for passersby in the street. For some reason C) was the most reasonable choice for someone I saw (or at least whose hat I saw) earlier this week. Under what conditions would C) be your choice?

Thank you for your help.

Now, on to the conclusion of this post. The conclusion actually brings it all back to the title of this post, the meaning of which I’m sure you’ve felt was lacking up to this point. Well. A week or two ago, on a Thursday, I was heading home in the late morning from school when one of the teachers at my school asked if I played chess. I said yes, and he invited me to play the next day after lessons. So on this particular Friday I found him after I was done teaching and he told me to meet him in ten minutes in the school’s gymnasium. I thought this a strange place to play chess, but when I met him there he led me down the hallway to another room. Upon opening the door there was a wafting of stale smoke, and I entered into a room that would work well for an interrogation scene in a movie: a broken sink hanging in the corner, a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling, a small window with bars across it, a small bookshelf with a box of garbage sitting on it, and of course a small desk, at which was seated a man who I had definitely not met before. It was odd to meet him for the first time after having been working there for a full month (my school is not that big). But, the oddest part was that the teacher who had initially invited me to play chess simply dropped me off and left me to play chess with this Kyrgyz fellow who was in his early-60’s, wearing a leather shepherd-style cap and a black leather jacket, setting up the chessboard while a cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth which wobbled as we exchanged names and he asked me if I knew the rules. I said yes, and we began…

Eight moves later I was defeated. And, within 30 seconds of when I was checkmated, the other teacher returned to the room and asked me, “he’s really good, isn’t he?” I said yes, and after quickly putting the board away the master said his goodbyes and left. Where to? – that’s the question.

I didn’t feel like asking who this guy is. I rather he remain as enigmatic as my first meeting with him. I thought for a while that he just came to play chess every once in a while, maybe he’s a retired teacher from the school, but I tend to see him at unexplainable times. The other day I was playing basketball in our school’s gymnasium late after school, and this man came in, gave me a salutary nod, lit up a cigarette and watched me shoot hoops for 10 minutes before silently leaving again.

This man is quite beyond my comprehension, but in this case I’m quite alright with that (hence why I didn’t include it in the brainstorming section above). For some reason the strangeness of that game of chess seems to exemplify the feeling that I have realized I carry about me much of the time, which is that I usually only understand 15% of what goes on around me every day while living here. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the master is not just this one guy who beat me at chess and haphazardly appears at my school from time to time. The master is the pervasive reminder of how far away from Morgan Avenue I actually am. That’s why it’s good to prepare a checklist, a validation list (if you will), for oneself after meeting this master. Mine goes something like this:
I’m in Kyrgyzstan.
I teach English at a school.
I’ve been here since July 8th.
My name is Jonathan Peasley.

“new moon!as(by the miracle of your
sweet innocence refuted)clumsy some
dull cowardice called a world vanishes,

teach disappearing also me the keen
illimitable secret of begin”

-ee cummings

A Couple Pictures from my Birthday