Starting to Come Together

6/20/2010 10:32 PM

Things are starting to come together.  Languages, relationships, perspectives.  I can now communicate my basic wants and desires, make simple declarative sentence about what I’m doing and where I’m going, and what I will do and where I will go.  Nouns and verbs come slowly.  Only after dozens of repetition will words stick, especially verbs that are always changing and conjugating.   The oddest words stick in my brain.  I remember Tzeetzernack, swallow (the bird), but not to drink; Tan, a yogurt drink, but not sandwich;  Chosel, to speak, but not to see.  I feel less and less like a baby in a man’s body and more like a pre-teen, just starting to explore the world and be trusted with responsibility.  I’ve written very little this week.  Here are some highlights.

-Technical training becomes more sophisticated. We ask Tatiks about their traditional remedies, and family members about their views of the health system.  We view a hospital and a health clinic.  On the wall of the hospital is a soviet era-poster of bespeckled doctor in a medical gown and white van Dyke beard showing which foods are nutritious and which are not.  Next to it is a USAID poster of a softly focused woman and her baby explaining that prenatal care and delivery are paid for by the state and international aid agencies and women should refuse to “tip” their doctors to ensure their baby is born healthy and cared for.

-Bringing out the first Frisbees in town.  At first, we play in the schoolyard, a good way to exercise during recess.  After school, I hike up to the hill where my host brother is herding the sheep.  Before I go, papa spots him through the soviet-era telescope, sitting on the hillside chewing a blade of grass.  He’s naturally very good at Frisbee, being both athletic and a top-notch physics student, and we play until it’s time to drive the sheep home.  Herding sheep is surprisingly entertaining.  The flock moves like one big plastic animal.  To get them to move faster, run and yell behind them and thwack some rumps with a stick.  Eventually they will get ahead of you, and come to a huddling stop and start eating grass.

-Going to Yerevan, passing a group of American tourists on the hill where Mother Armenia stands and telling my host brother to not speak English so I can overhear their conversations.  They turn out to be completely inane.  At a Yerevan street market, $35 buys a used guitar made in Leningrad.  The build quality of the guitar is terrible.  The top is unvarnished, the neck is held to the body with an exposed bolt, the strings haven’t been changed since before perestroika, but the sound is great, twangy and strong.  I call everyone I can at home and tell them how excited I am.