by Ellie Shirly
I'm finally here in an Internet cafe in Tashkent having searched for several hours on Saturday and an hour today for an open computer that actually connects. Among the six Internet cafes I visited on Saturday, three were filled with boys playing video games and the other three mysteriously did not connect to the Internet at all.
I'm now officially a member of the Mirakmedov family of Durmen, Uzbekistan (a small town about a 20 minute bus ride from Tashkent). I live with a father and mother in their mid-30's, an 8 year-old girl named Iroda, a 5 year-old girl named Zioda, a 3 year-old boy named Murakbar, and the grandfather who we all call Bobo ('grandpa' in Uzbek). In addition, we have about 7 cows (all of whom I've nicknamed 'Hamburger'), 2 sheep who were chased out of the garden last week when Bobo started yelling and throwing rocks, several chickens, and 2 cats with fleas. The house itself is built in an L-shape, with each room opening onto a courtyard garden in the middle. We eat all of our meals outside in the courtyard on a raised platform that contains a long, low table we all sit around on soft blankets.
The meals are truly a family event, everyone eating out of one huge plate in the middle with our individual spoons. Its kind of makes me feel like part of a team - if I don't eat the stuff nearest my side of the plate, everyone yells 'Oling, oling!', which means, 'Take it, take it!', and they watch as I shovel another spoonful down my throat. Hospitality is taken very seriously here. If I don't gain at least 10 pounds, I think my family will feel like they failed me.
All in all, family life has been pretty blissful in Durmen. When I get home tonight, I'll do my Uzbek language homework while Iroda does her English language homework, Zioda looks through my copy of Glamour magazine for the hundredth time (always giggling at the page where there is a lotion advertisement showing a naked butt), and Murakbar listens to Micheal Jackson on my CD player and dances around the room. Later, I will inevitably play UNO with the kids and my host mom - we have a running total starting last week of how many games each person has won. I'm sure i'll give the kids my UNO deck as a going-away present when I leave because I definitely will never want to play UNO again.
At 9 tonight, I'll be dragged into the TV room to watch 'Esmeralda', a Spanish soap opera to which everyone in Uzbekistan is inexplicably addicted. I don't even think you are allowed to live in this country if you don't watch 'Esmerelda'. Naturally, it has Uzbek voice-overs, so I won't understand anything and after a few minutes I'll claim I'm tired and go to my room.
As far as host families go, I think mine is pretty much the best. We can't talk much to each other, but we play a lot of charades, and we smile and laugh awkwardly and then move on when something just can't be communicated. Last Saturday, my first full day in my new family, they treated me to a real cultural experience by taking me next door- to a circumcision party! I'm always up for a circumcision party (who isn't?), and here in Uzbekistan, circumcision and marriage are the two biggest events in a person's life, each requiring a gigantic party. The live band (made up of many shrill horns and drums) started playing for the party at 4:30 a.m. last Saturday. I know this because I was attempting to sleep next door. Parties here sometimes last several days and occur in various shifts of separate men's and women's events. So after the males had their rice-eating gathering from 4:30 to about 8 in the morning, everyone took a break before the main event began around 11am.
Four young boys were celebrating their circumcisions together. Each was dressed in a blue-velvet and gold-embroidered Turkish-looking outfit, complete with hat and jacket. Two boys at a time were led into the house from the street riding on a horse, which was draped in colorful fabrics and skittered nervously through the narrow paths surrounding the courtyard of the house. All of this ritualized parading took about an hour. Then, I was ushered home to eat for a while before returning for the women's party that afternoon. (Note: I don't think the actual circumcisions were part of the party events, though I cannot be certain as I was gone for over an hour.)
About 75 women of all ages sat together on one side of the courtyard at long picnic tables that were literally overflowing with food. Every time I thought we must be done eating, more food suddenly appeared. The women were looking their best for the party: many had painted their eyebrows into one long, black line (they are horrified that Americans prefer to have two distinct eyebrows- uni-brows are a sign of beauty here), their gold teeth were glittering (gold teeth signify wealth, and most women over 40 have accumulated an entire row of gold teeth), and they were wearing the large, shapeless mumu-like dresses that are the uniform here. A small dance area had been cleared in front of the tables, and so we alternately ate and danced, with our arms twirling above us, for a couple of hours. The whole experience was really enjoyable, and I couldn't have asked for a more interesting way to be introduced to my neighborhood.
On November 1st, I will be officially sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer and begin teaching English in Gulistan City. (That didn't mean anything to me at first either, but it is about two hours from Tashkent by bus, and is a mid-sized city, meaning that it might not have the conveniences of Tashkent but will have many things a tiny village would not such as hot water...maybe.) Until then, I am teaching two classes of 13 year-olds on Monday and Thursday at a local school in Durmen, for practice. Teaching is hard work, but it's also fun, especially when I try to ask the kids about their families and go over some vocabulary, and they say to me, "So, do you like the Backstreet Boys?"
