Author: Luther

Most of the world doesn’t understand “9-5”

I recently saw an article floating around my facebook newsfeed disparaging America for refrigerating eggs. People were like, “What the hell, America?! You are so stupid!” And I was like, if we have resorted to criticizing America for refrigerating eggs, that is actually proof of how great America is. “Oh, no civil war? No mass starvation? People aren’t fleeing the country by the millions? Ok, well I guess everything is going pretty—REFRIGERATED EGGS!! OH MY GOD! ALERT THE PRESSES!”

Just imagine: a country so incredible its affluence permits people to spend hours arguing in weblog comment feeds about the proper temperatures for eggs. Few places on this globe allow for such luxury.

What about turkey eggs?

It’s now after fall break at my village school, and our recently settled schedule has been messed up again. An outbreak of hep A has obliged our director to ban unnecessary movement throughout the school and keep classes in students’ own homerooms. I suspect at least a few of the absentees are cases of great acting rather than a crippling month long illness. “I can’t go to school, mom. I’ve got that thing, I think, that people are talking about, you know, the one where people get to—I mean—have to stay home from school…”

In one particularly bad day of student attendance last spring, I talked my counterpart into taking a little visit together to the “troubled” students’ houses to talk with the parents. While several of them were supportive and said they would do a better job encouraging, what one mother said caught me off-guard. I asked if school was important and she said yes, but that her son was needed to do the farm work so the family could have food.

I know not everyone in America has it altogether easier, and most people work very hard. But if I had to put a number on the average work schedule here, 5am-9pm would be a little more accurate. People work really, really hard, and especially the women since the lack of running water and consistent electricity tends to hit the domestic chores the hardest.

It’s not always the same kind of work we’re used to in the states, assisted by all our time-savers. But people are doing what they need to do in the moment to secure a future. That means when the coal truck comes to town, you stop what you’re doing, go home, negotiate a price, and then spend the next couple hours shoveling it into your shed. Staying warm is kind of a priority in Kyrgyzstan. Yet this disrupts my neat little 9-5 schedule I have all written out for myself, like I thought I was still in the states or something.

We get up, we brush our teeth, we hit the office, take an hour off for lunch, put in a few more hours and then go home to an evening full of whatever we want to do. We press a button and the dishes are magically polished. We flip a switch and are kissed by warm air. Our biggest complaints are re-matching socks from the dryer or that minute rice actually takes five. Now I scrub my clothes with a bar of soap and that’s after hauling the water from a pump down the street. I never realized what a precious gift I was being handed – that precious gift called time.

Time gives us so many opportunities. We can get a second job, help our kids with their homework, volunteer at a food bank, or even surf the web for articles on eggs. Let’s just not forget what grace a 9-5 affords.

How to slaughter a sheep

I was hanging out, having a cup of tea with my neighbor when he pointed at my leg and said, “That’s horse blood.”

I said, “Yeah, you’re right – I helped kill a horse this morning. How did you know?”

“Every animal’s blood is a little different color. You can tell the difference between sheep, horse and cow blood stains quite easily.”

I thought about that exchange this afternoon as I looked down at my pant cuff, freshly spattered with the blood of my own first sheep. I had helped with half a dozen sheep slaughters before, but this one I had bought at the market, tied down, slit the throat and cut up into its 12 ustukans for serving guests, mostly on my own. I wondered if my neighbor could match this color of red correctly.

I had the help of my landlord, Bolot-baike, only a couple years older than me, but still old enough to receive that respectful brother-title baike. I was adamant on doing each step on my own, with directions only. I may speak Kyrgyz like a 7-year-old, I may even look funny, but with two days shy of 30 years under my belt, there are a few things I’ve learned to do. Like which end of a knife to hold.

“You hold it like this, Baatyrbek,” Bolot-baike showed me, using my Kyrgyz name.

“Oooohhhh, thanks Bolot-Baike!” I answered enthusiastically, “I thought I was supposed to hold it with my butt. So, I learned something today.”

Truth be told, I did learn a little more than that. Like how to find the cartilage between vertebrae under half an inch of meat. Or how to rip out the hip sinew with my teeth. And I did make a few errant cuts; the guests may grumble a bit about that hunk missing from the side of the spine. But then again they’re my guests, and they would be grumbling about the host.

imageHow to slaughter a pumpkin (not quite as bloody)

Turning 30 is a bit of a milestone. Every year is I suppose, but I’ve spent so long defining myself as a “twenty-something” that I’m not sure how this fourth decade is going to go. The thirties are a whole new ballgame. Or, slaughter, or whatever.

It felt almost like a rite of passage. Like I had been turned loose in the jungle with nothing but a loincloth and a stick and I had come back with a tiger. Except I was standing outside my front door, wearing a jacket and holding a knife over a tied up sheep. Sheep are quite possibly the lamest adversaries in the entire animal kingdom. You really get the sense that God was not giving us a compliment when he had Jesus continually refer to us as such.

So my sheep laid down its life for our little bit of humanity, my friends, my neighbors, the people I’ve grown so much to love over this past year. Plus now if I’m ever lost in the woods and a sheep walks by, I know I’ll be ok.

Keep a camera on ya

I’ve been noticing a strange little lilt to my gait. It’s been veering right ever so slightly. I’d blame the new winter weather, but it was there before the snow began to fall. It started shortly after that lump showed up on my right thigh. Ah – my pocket camera.

I carry way too much stuff, and even when I go without a backpack my pockets are stuffed with a notebook, a cell phone, a pen, a back-up pen, a camera, a wallet with built in coin purse and sometimes an iPod and earbuds. I have to get a workout in somehow to keep the pudge off the middle.

imageIt finally paid off

The addition I never regret is the camera. As a visual learner, I find that it spills over into the recall part of my brain as well; one look at a snapshot from a decade ago can spark all kinds of memories surrounding that scene – what else was going on that day, what a friend in the picture had said, how I felt.

I want to remember those things, I want to remember in vivid detail the when, how and why of life, the dots that when connected reveal the shape of where I’ve been. And I find that people along the way don’t mind sharing that with you, or maybe more accurately, don’t mind photobombing your memories.

“Who was that guy with his arm around you?”

“I don’t know, but he seems like he knows me.”

“C’mon, think – you must be repressing some kind of memory.”

“Seriously, I have no idea who that is.”

When the camera comes out here, so do the line-ups for deadpan poses. I think it’s a product of the Soviet days. Or maybe it’s just a Russian smile. It’s funny to see a group of American volunteers posing with local friends; the Americans are splayed with the widest, shit-faced grins, while most Kyrgyz look like they’re posing for a line up. (It was the other guy.) Our inclination to flash the pearly whites has been seared in since childhood. “Ok, we’re having fun here, everyone smile…I said smile!…SMILE DAMMIT OR YOU’RE NOT GETTING YOUR BIRTHDAY CAKE!!!”

And when the photo is taken, and each person has had proper time to approve of their mugshot, the reminders for their own printed copies fall clattering about your ears.

The money spent on photos is always worth it. And so is the uneven wear on the back and the shoes. When I do finally slow down and look back, I will be so grateful for those little sparks to the memory.

Beef jerky and vodka do not make a good meal

Look. I’ve been there. And now my stomach is telling me where I’ve been. That place where the world tells you no matter how tight you tie the tourniquet, you can’t stop the bleeding.

It’s rough. It’s not just rough on your body. It’s rough on your soul. Where you wonder from where the strength for the last 9 months will come. Where you wonder if you should just extend indefinitely and save this world. Where you wonder why you thought beef jerky and vodka for a meal would help you in your pursuit.

Things are going so well. I have nothing to complain about. I’m an extremely lucky person. I just don’t know yet how to use that luck to my advantage rather than my detriment. I’m all soft in the middle. I said it. Pudgy.

The pursuit. Out among these lonely hills, living like we’re in grade school, living with parents of kindergarten-aged kids, living with no car, nowhere to go after dark, no one to hold as you slip off into another day. No one to tell you beef jerky and vodka for dinner is not a good idea.

Where do we find our salvation? How do we stay? When we could be on a plane tomorrow back home and just leave it all behind. It’s almost like survivor’s guilt. I can leave. Leave that family in the midst of their struggle; leave those friends to shorten the guest list by one; leave those students to work on their Halloween party alone. And they could, and they’d survive, and the world would continue to spin in God’s hands, the world over which Jesus looked and wept.

It’s preposterous. Preposterous to think that I’m in a position to save. Be? Yes. Exist? I can continue to do that, but not on a diet of beef jerky and vodka.

I’m here. I’m still here. Maybe that’s the success. Maybe that’s the hill I’ve conquered. Planted my flag. Watched it flap and flail in the wind. Stood looking up and seeing only sky, sky behind that flag, sky behind the colors I have fought so hard to preserve—the color of human.

Own the fight

Something happened this early September that I’m not allowed to talk about here. At least not in the way I’d like to, heavily laden with expletives and a sprinkle of incitation likely to attract an enemy or two. I was going to keep quiet, and for the first 29 years of my life I’ve done just that. Not anymore.

A particular injustice was committed against dear friends of mine, and it made me very angry; the kind of angry that burns like a buried coal, slowly cooking any who dare linger by the surface. That anger ignited me as well, branded me with outrage, and finally lit the wick on that missile called action.

It’s not Kyrgyzstan that forced my hand. There are things about every country that must change. But it was the nature of the injustice, committed against my dear friends that made me start flipping tables. There is a kind of righteous rage, and I will not stand idly by as injustice continues to flourish.

A volunteer friend of mine told me I need to pick my battles. That I’ll go crazy trying to fix everything. I can’t fix everything. I know that. I can only do the work of one person and yet—that person is I—and I will be responsible for every moment of time that I can control and use to steer towards a freer and just world.

There is a fine line in Peace Corps service when it comes to expressing opinions about a host country. How do you pay well-deserved respect to a wonderful culture and turn the screw on the wrongs at the same time? How do you not come across as offensive or disparaging? In my so far brief state of incensed fury I haven’t fully arrived at an answer. But I do know that it party lies in owning the fight. I can fight for America because she is my home, my motherland, because at her breast I was nourished and weaned. But how do I do that for Kyrgyzstan? Ah—Kyrgyzstan is my home too. This is my village, my school, these are my students, my friends, my conspirators, my fellow survivors in the wake of what we call life, plowing its way through our valley.

I do a disservice to anyone I tell that everything is fine, that the nature is beautiful, the food is good and people are generous. Those things may all be very true, but we wouldn’t be here as Peace Corps Volunteers unless there were things that needed to change. Who can deny that corruption ravages a nation? That ignorance is a turn back to the dark ages? That poverty saps the health and joy of a man? These were things I knew existed, but they floated over me like a cloud, just out of reach. Yet no cloud of oppression is innocuous but spreads and seeps quietly until all are caught in its disastrous roar. Unfortunately I didn’t see it until it had settled about me, until it was my lungs filled with its poisonous air.

So I will fight. I will take whatever near or distant hill the limits of my body and circumstances will allow. The battle has always been there, but now—it’s mine.