July 4, 2012

I could pinch myself every morning as I can barely believe that I have a chance to spend eight days surrounded by the highest mountains in Central Asia while doing something I love doing: teaching English. My morning started with my usual cup of coffee, catching up with my emails and Facebook posting, ironing my kurta outfit and then walking to the school where Matluda waited for me with a bowl of rice pudding that neither enough sugar nor salt. The school principal came by to open her office so we could have access to her computer and printer neither one of which she knew how to  use. The computer had version 5 of the PDF program and would not open mine. When I tried to open the Internet to download a newer version, the principal had no idea what to do and said we needed to call the IT person in another district to come by. Then the power went out and we waited all morning for it to come back in vain.

The students completed the “Give an Example” worksheet with much difficulty as their vocabulary level is pretty low and they didn’t seem to be used to working in groups to share their answers. I asked Matluva to take over for the rest of the session and she had them put cut up pictures in sequential order and the complete the story at the bottom of the page, but she herself didn’t know the proper vocabulary such “go grocery shopping” or “go to work out/exercise at the gym’ and I had to chime in repeatedly.

Since it was the Fourth of July in the States, Tamriz had asked the kitchen to prepare plov for us in addition to soup, salad and lots of just-picked cherries. Everything was delicious this time around and I back to my room to take a short nap and promising I’d be back at 4:00 when a group of musicians were going to perform and some of the students would participate in the entertainment forum. I saw the musicians unloading their equipment, but there was no power and hadn’t been any since early in the morning. No local people had been invited to the event, so the students started out by singing and dancing traditional Tajik or Pamiri songs and dances and a few recited poems. This group is decidedly shyer and less used to perform in public than the one in Istaravshan/Shahriston. The power came back at the right time and the band kicked in allowing the girls to show their moves while the boys sat looking on. The music was too slow for me, but I had to join in any way to please the students.

We played a game of “Can you help me?, and the three students who tied for first place had to try and inflate a balloon with their hands tied. The girl outdid the two boys and won the round, and then the power went out again. The acoustic guitar player and the drummer then decided to play slow songs, mostly for the benefit of the girls, and we listened to them until it got relatively late and dark.

A local young man approached me speaking English in an Indian-inflected accent and told me he studying to become an officer at the military academy. When I asked him why he wanted to become a professional soldier, he responded he wanted to protect his country. “From what”, I inquired, “Who are your enemies?” He was taken aback and couldn’t say anything, but managed to say, very softly, “Well, Uzbekistan is killing some of our people.” We got into an energetic discussion about the waste of money and human potential that an army normally entailed and how it was usually mobilized to suppress the local population while creating phantom enemies to fool the public.

I can’t remember what was served for dinner, probably another insipid bowl of soup, but do recall seen a brand-new refrigerator being unloaded and brought into the school’s kitchen. It’d be the first time they have had refrigeration. We can call it “seeing our hard earned tax money at work” in a remote village of Khorog.