July 16,2005
Well, it is hard to know just where to begin, things were poking along during my training and I just couldn’t seem to get what I needed to write a real blog entry. Plus, I needed to pull my blog off the web and make it for friends and family only.
Peace Corps is very worried about the effect our writing and opinions have on the host country. There were some volunteers who wrote stuff about the cleaniness of their host families and assorted other nonsense, which probably shouldn’t have meant much, but did.
Devechi, a small and dusty town. High unemployment so there are scads of men, standing around on street corners and sitting in the chaikhanas, (tea houses – dirty little three or four table cafes, with table covered with faded vinyl print squares and plastic patio chairs) ,smoking, drinking tea, beer or vodka, playing chess or backgammon or checkers, always wearing a crisp, pressed short-sleeved shirt and a pair of pleated dress pants with belt and pointy, squared-toed shoes.
Women carry their bags down the streets, recycled plastic merchandise bags from the U.S. filled with tomatoes and cucumbers, eggplants and onions. Usually they are wearing a filmy-chiffony skirt paired with some completely unmatching top, or a rayon print dress and with everything, high-heels or wedge slip-ons. Every day, I see women who would not look out of place at a cocktail party just walking down a potholed, rocky, dirt road on their way to or from the market.
It is a walled town, each house behind its own wall, sometimes I see little children peeking out from the two little doors set into the bigger metal doors that open into each courtyard. Doors are usually grey or blue. Occasionally somebody breaks out and there is a maverick purple or pea green. I think those are the results of a bargain paint buy, not any particular desire for that color. Most all houses and walls are white with natural wooden window frames. There is one little child on my block, can’t be more than two, who sits outside his or her gate on a big stone some days, not moving, or trying to run away, just solemnly staring. This is a great country for staring. People just stare endlessly.
When I am in the internet café, there are people staring at me, staring at my email, which they can’t read, when I walk down the streets all the people in the tiny little shops are staring (which is about all they have to do most of the time, business is not brisk.)
My little town has a corner store on every corner and some in the middle. Every store sells just about exactly the same thing. Tea, several varieties of vodka, the same wine and champagne, it looks ages old, tomato paste, eggs, lots of yag, which is an all purpose word for fat, could be it is butter or margarine, or whatever, cookies, plastic bottles of gasli su, which is fizzy water, they love it here, fanta, coke (it’s everywhere, everywhere) cookies and candy, sugar cubes (people eat sugar here like you would not believe.) All of us in the business training group can’t figure out why they all want to sell the exact same product. In the bazar, more of the same. All the produce sellers have tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, etc. I have gone past little outposts on the way to other cities where 10 or more people have set up stands all selling watermelons and orange melons. One after another. I guess that is why we are here.
In that vein, the fruits and vegetables are really good. Tomatoes are all ripe and all grown locally, that is one reason for the lack of variety. You eat whatever is in season.
