Him: How can America be strong when you let in Muslims? Aren't you worried that they'll betray you?
Me: Immigrants come to America because they want to be there, and because of that we become loyal to America. But American society also founded on the notion that all religions are equal within American society. We can be members of different religions and ethnic groups and full members of American society at the same time. My best friend was born in a muslim country, and our president's father was born in Kenya.
Him: We had a king once. He built a city, and brought in people from other countries to live in the city. Then there was a war. The other people opened the gates of the city and let in the enemy, and the king was killed.
Also-Bananas here cost 50 cents, and women's haircuts $2.50. Bananas in New York cost 25 cents and women's haircuts $50. Discuss.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
It's been awhile since I gave you something to step to...
I haven't had it in me to sit down at my laptop and write a coherent post. Here's some notes on village life while I'm at the I-Cafe.
My family has been harvesting hay for the winter, to feed their cows. My host brothers spend their days in the fields with scythes, getting sunburned. My uncle spends his days working on his Belorussian tractor. When the tractor is working and the hay has been scythed, he drives it around to the fields and bales it with a hay-baler-trailer. By the time I get home, there is a pile of hay bales in the backyard as tall as the house. I help my family lift them into the attic and the barn to store for the winter. "Thanks for helping us," they tell me. "Thanks for the yogurt and cheese," I tell them.
A blond young man, much too pale to be a villager, stopps me in the street. "Your teacher, she is Ms. L?" He asked me in English. Yes, she is. "What is her number?" Are you her friend? He cannot answer the question. "This is where she lives, yes?" She does live there. One of the other PCVs goes to get her. "Tell him I am not home. He likes me. I do not like him. We were in school together." she says. The young man parks the green car with two of his buddies in it in front of the house I'm in with some other PCVs. He comes in. "Where is she? What is her number?" She's not here, we tell him. Maybe she went to Hrazdan, a 40 minute drive away. He doesn't believe us. We don't have her number. "Maybe you do, you just don't want to tell me." Well, if you're going to lie, lie big. I directly confront him. She's not here, I tell him, and we don't have her number. Intimidating body language. Stand tall, cross arms. Wearing mirrored Sunglasses. No more friendliness, no clueless American abroad. Careful, measured, direct speech. Suddenly I'm glad I weigh so much more than everyone else, that I'm a head taller than him. "You do, you're just not saying," he says. But as he says it, he laughs, and looks away, and I've won. We don't have her number, She isn't here. Go home. Do you understand me? He's not going to go home right away, he doesn't want to lose face that much. But he stops bother us, sits in the car for 15 minutes while I watch him, then turns and drives the three hours back home.
Teaching model school in the village, we expected eight or ten kids to show. Instead we got fifty or sixty. One boy begins to disrupt the class. I pick up his chair to move him away from the disruptive group of boys and to a studious group of girls. "Ganatsi, Ganatsi," I tell him, using the imperative. He runs out of class. "What happened?" I ask my PC trainer, observing the class. "You told him to go. You meant to say, 'Ari,', come. Don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow."
In the city where I come to use the internet, I run into Mormons! They're wearing white shirts and silk ties from Hong Kong, carrying the book of Mormon in Armenian. One is from Utah, the other Washington. I'm surprisingly enthusiastic to meet them, trying to preempt the creepy friendliness of the missionary. But they've been in the country 6 months and are starting to stray. They thought they would be going to Latin America and learning Spanish. They've lost the enthusiasm for their work, and are just going through the motions. In a way, I'm dissapointed.
My family has been harvesting hay for the winter, to feed their cows. My host brothers spend their days in the fields with scythes, getting sunburned. My uncle spends his days working on his Belorussian tractor. When the tractor is working and the hay has been scythed, he drives it around to the fields and bales it with a hay-baler-trailer. By the time I get home, there is a pile of hay bales in the backyard as tall as the house. I help my family lift them into the attic and the barn to store for the winter. "Thanks for helping us," they tell me. "Thanks for the yogurt and cheese," I tell them.
A blond young man, much too pale to be a villager, stopps me in the street. "Your teacher, she is Ms. L?" He asked me in English. Yes, she is. "What is her number?" Are you her friend? He cannot answer the question. "This is where she lives, yes?" She does live there. One of the other PCVs goes to get her. "Tell him I am not home. He likes me. I do not like him. We were in school together." she says. The young man parks the green car with two of his buddies in it in front of the house I'm in with some other PCVs. He comes in. "Where is she? What is her number?" She's not here, we tell him. Maybe she went to Hrazdan, a 40 minute drive away. He doesn't believe us. We don't have her number. "Maybe you do, you just don't want to tell me." Well, if you're going to lie, lie big. I directly confront him. She's not here, I tell him, and we don't have her number. Intimidating body language. Stand tall, cross arms. Wearing mirrored Sunglasses. No more friendliness, no clueless American abroad. Careful, measured, direct speech. Suddenly I'm glad I weigh so much more than everyone else, that I'm a head taller than him. "You do, you're just not saying," he says. But as he says it, he laughs, and looks away, and I've won. We don't have her number, She isn't here. Go home. Do you understand me? He's not going to go home right away, he doesn't want to lose face that much. But he stops bother us, sits in the car for 15 minutes while I watch him, then turns and drives the three hours back home.
Teaching model school in the village, we expected eight or ten kids to show. Instead we got fifty or sixty. One boy begins to disrupt the class. I pick up his chair to move him away from the disruptive group of boys and to a studious group of girls. "Ganatsi, Ganatsi," I tell him, using the imperative. He runs out of class. "What happened?" I ask my PC trainer, observing the class. "You told him to go. You meant to say, 'Ari,', come. Don't worry, he'll be back tomorrow."
In the city where I come to use the internet, I run into Mormons! They're wearing white shirts and silk ties from Hong Kong, carrying the book of Mormon in Armenian. One is from Utah, the other Washington. I'm surprisingly enthusiastic to meet them, trying to preempt the creepy friendliness of the missionary. But they've been in the country 6 months and are starting to stray. They thought they would be going to Latin America and learning Spanish. They've lost the enthusiasm for their work, and are just going through the motions. In a way, I'm dissapointed.
Monday, July 5, 2010
I walked through stinging nettles two hours ago and my legs are still tingling...
Here's a little game that Peace Corps likes to play with new volunteers. First, they tell them to plan and implement a community project by their fourth week in country. The new volunteers will be given no financial resources, except for a lesson on Community Organizing tools like, "find out when everyone's schedule is, so that you won't be weeding fields in the middle of the winter" and "Make a map of your community so you'll know where things should go" and "figure out what your communities highest priorities are by making a neat little matrix." They'll tell the volunteers to make sure that our projects meet the community's wants and needs and have a sustainable impact. The volunteers will be encouraged to meet the mayor and plenty of other strangers and to ask their help in designing and implementing a project. Because they've only been studying the language for a month, they're not going to be able to say much, but some major points will get across. Some mayors will ask the Americans to repair the roads, others will ask for a new irrigation system. Ours encouraged us to teach the children English and said that she really loved sports, so maybe we could do something with that.
So we planned a sports day, and put up a sign at the school inviting the children of the town to the football field, where we'd repainted the goalposts a brilliant white, the sustainable part of our project. We painted a map of town on the sheet, and had the kids sign it and mark the locations of their home as a gift to the town. Some of us played football with the kids, always a winner, and some of us taught Yoga, which was a surprise hit, even with the 14-year old boys. I got ambitious and set up an orienteering course, drew a map, translated "Orienteering" into "Depee" which literally means "Towards," gave a quick lesson on English words for cardinal directions, gave them some compasses to use and pointed out the first flag, at the top of a hill. The kids were superexcited to find a flag, but had no idea how to use a compass or find the next flag. So I ran up to the top of the hill, and yelled for them to go West. They had completely forgotten the lesson on directions. "Aravmooq!" I yelled, and pointed to the west. They ran west, and found the next flag. I led them around the course, and they had a great time. Three more times, with three groups of kids, I ran up the hill, pointed them towards flags, then ran them down. At the end of the day, we played a 30-person football match with all the kids in town that remained. With no language skills and only a few dollars out of our pocket, we had a pretty good community project. By the time it was presented in Powerpoint to the other volunteers, it was a pretty great community project.
Peace Corps will then play the second round in the game. They'll tell the volunteers to host a July 4th party for their families. They'll tell them to share their American culture. The volunteers will get excited. Burgers! Hot Dogs! Fireworks! They'll think of all the things they love from home. They'll think of beers by the grill, watermelon seeds and water balloon fights. Here, Peace Corps will say, is all the money you need to make this happen. Don't buy booze with it, but spend it however you see fit. Go for it, have a blast.
But here the difficulties will start. Where to have the party? 50 people is a big crowd. There's no public space in a small village to accomadate that many people. One of the families agrees to let us use their storage room on the 1st floor. A little carpentry on some tables, and appropriation of furniture, and there is enough space for everyone. We hunt around the main town for food and supplies. The butcher provides ground beef for the burger. We find watermelon, we find Cokes and ice cream for floats, we find water balloons and sparklers.
The 4th finds us missing a few essential resources. There's no grill to be had, so we put the patties on a chickenwire fence laid over wood that has been burned down to coals. The water's off in most of town, so Kathryn and I walk to the other end of town to a house with water to fill the waterballoons, then carefully lug the bucket back. The grills not quite ready yet, so we play waterballoon toss with the kids, a big but quick succcess. We notice that mostly women and children have come, and few men. The ones that have come seem to be searching around for something. One of them finds a bottle of beer someone has brought. Aha! He says, and cracks it, pouring a round. But it is just one bottle of beer, and it's not a drinking kind of party. Dissapointed, they retreat upstairs to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. We cut the burgers into sliders, because Armenians are usually wary of new foods. They politely try them, then eagerly devour the Chicken Khorovats in an American Glaze that we've also made. We've made a few side dishes, but nothing like the decadent spread of yogurts, salads, breads, and cakes at a typical Khorovats. There's little time for us to sit and enjoy the meal. We're running around bringing in different foods and shooing the chickens away from our grill. At the end of the feast, we wash 50 sets of dishes in a bucket-assembly line. By the end of it, we're exhausted, our host families have tried a bit of hamburger, listened to American music (we dance with the kids to Elvis and the Beach Boys) and watched their kids run around with sparklers. They politely thank us and head home.
Here's the lesson Peace Corps likes to teach with this little game. If you come into the country, listen to their needs and give them what they want and what you can offer, things will be surprisingly easy for you and they'll appreciate it. If you come into the country with plenty of money and give them what you want, with resources they don't have, you'll end up stressed and exhausted and they'll politely thank you and head home.
So we planned a sports day, and put up a sign at the school inviting the children of the town to the football field, where we'd repainted the goalposts a brilliant white, the sustainable part of our project. We painted a map of town on the sheet, and had the kids sign it and mark the locations of their home as a gift to the town. Some of us played football with the kids, always a winner, and some of us taught Yoga, which was a surprise hit, even with the 14-year old boys. I got ambitious and set up an orienteering course, drew a map, translated "Orienteering" into "Depee" which literally means "Towards," gave a quick lesson on English words for cardinal directions, gave them some compasses to use and pointed out the first flag, at the top of a hill. The kids were superexcited to find a flag, but had no idea how to use a compass or find the next flag. So I ran up to the top of the hill, and yelled for them to go West. They had completely forgotten the lesson on directions. "Aravmooq!" I yelled, and pointed to the west. They ran west, and found the next flag. I led them around the course, and they had a great time. Three more times, with three groups of kids, I ran up the hill, pointed them towards flags, then ran them down. At the end of the day, we played a 30-person football match with all the kids in town that remained. With no language skills and only a few dollars out of our pocket, we had a pretty good community project. By the time it was presented in Powerpoint to the other volunteers, it was a pretty great community project.
Peace Corps will then play the second round in the game. They'll tell the volunteers to host a July 4th party for their families. They'll tell them to share their American culture. The volunteers will get excited. Burgers! Hot Dogs! Fireworks! They'll think of all the things they love from home. They'll think of beers by the grill, watermelon seeds and water balloon fights. Here, Peace Corps will say, is all the money you need to make this happen. Don't buy booze with it, but spend it however you see fit. Go for it, have a blast.
But here the difficulties will start. Where to have the party? 50 people is a big crowd. There's no public space in a small village to accomadate that many people. One of the families agrees to let us use their storage room on the 1st floor. A little carpentry on some tables, and appropriation of furniture, and there is enough space for everyone. We hunt around the main town for food and supplies. The butcher provides ground beef for the burger. We find watermelon, we find Cokes and ice cream for floats, we find water balloons and sparklers.
The 4th finds us missing a few essential resources. There's no grill to be had, so we put the patties on a chickenwire fence laid over wood that has been burned down to coals. The water's off in most of town, so Kathryn and I walk to the other end of town to a house with water to fill the waterballoons, then carefully lug the bucket back. The grills not quite ready yet, so we play waterballoon toss with the kids, a big but quick succcess. We notice that mostly women and children have come, and few men. The ones that have come seem to be searching around for something. One of them finds a bottle of beer someone has brought. Aha! He says, and cracks it, pouring a round. But it is just one bottle of beer, and it's not a drinking kind of party. Dissapointed, they retreat upstairs to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. We cut the burgers into sliders, because Armenians are usually wary of new foods. They politely try them, then eagerly devour the Chicken Khorovats in an American Glaze that we've also made. We've made a few side dishes, but nothing like the decadent spread of yogurts, salads, breads, and cakes at a typical Khorovats. There's little time for us to sit and enjoy the meal. We're running around bringing in different foods and shooing the chickens away from our grill. At the end of the feast, we wash 50 sets of dishes in a bucket-assembly line. By the end of it, we're exhausted, our host families have tried a bit of hamburger, listened to American music (we dance with the kids to Elvis and the Beach Boys) and watched their kids run around with sparklers. They politely thank us and head home.
Here's the lesson Peace Corps likes to teach with this little game. If you come into the country, listen to their needs and give them what they want and what you can offer, things will be surprisingly easy for you and they'll appreciate it. If you come into the country with plenty of money and give them what you want, with resources they don't have, you'll end up stressed and exhausted and they'll politely thank you and head home.
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