August Ganja, 2005 – First Month at Site
Today, I want to write about electricity.
(Also the cops, the weather, safety and security and possibly chickens if I get to them.) [note from the author: due to the scrolly-read nature of these posts, it is perfectly permissible to skip past the bits you find boring, even advisable.] I am totally fascinated by how electricity is treated so casually here. Especially since the country operates on 220.
The other day, I was waiting outside the iron doors for my host mother to let me in the courtyard and I looked up at the electrical wires leading into the house. And there above me, were the live wires, insulated coating stripped off, and the ends wrapped around the pole wires (it looks just like the way picture wire looks at the back of a picture) and the wire draped over the wall into the courtyard. On the inside is a kind of fuse box. It consists of that wire from the pole going into this box and some electrical tape mating it to some other wires. No breakers, nothing, just an electric meter and one fuse for the whole house.
Twice, once here and once in my first house, the electrik uste, (master) came by to work on the electricity, they used a knife and a scissor, and did not turn off the current either time, wear any kind of safety gear and were working with lit cigarettes dangling. At the Genja mountain house they had a nifty little tool to see if the wires were live, it was a light bulb with two wires attached to it. They would touch the stripped ends of the wires to the ones they wanted to test, and if the bulb lit up, that meant the wire was live. The other day, I saw a man up on a ladder on the street here, working on the big electrical wires and he wasn’t wearing any safety gear and the ladder was a couple of two by fours with some pieces of wood nailed on for rungs.
This is the ladder I see everywhere, no matter how big the construction project. Mostly the workers are wearing rubber shower shoes. I am afraid to look. There is no such thing as health insurance here and hospitals are very expensive. People do a lot of home treatments.
At home, everyday, more than once, I would hear the sound of a siren, maybe police, or an ambulance or a firetruck. Every so often, I hear a noise like that, but it is coming from a car. Some guys install these wah-wah sirens in their cars and use them like a horn when they are passing. But there basically aren’t any fire-trucks, ambulances or emergency services of any kind.
This is a dangerous place, it hasn’t been all cleaned up and sanitized and safetyized like much of the U.S. And even the littlest kids know it. From birth they are trained to be careful and it is very odd to me to see what a different child this produces. Every day when I walk home from work, I see tiny little children outside their doors alone, (which wouldn’t be a big deal in America, but here the front door is just a sidewalk width from the street where the cars are all going just as fast as their drivers can make them). But these little kids are not running out in the street and they are not going to. The other day on the marshrutka the mini-van I ride back and forth to town on, a boy about two got on with his mother and a smaller baby. That little boy climbed on by himself, very carefully and then sat in his seat without moving, his little legs, straight-out in front of him on the seat, his big eyes staring, until he and his Mom got to their stop and then he very slowly and precisely climbed down the steep steps out of the van.
Lots of the kids are like this.
One of the things that they have here in the parks, are those awful motorized play cars. The parents pay for the kids to drive around in them and provide some loose guidance, but those little guys will run you down if you don’t watch out. (This is another kind of training, as you will see, if you keep on reading.)
These kids do play, they don’t really have toys, but I see them running around in groups in the evening, but they are not careless, like our kids are.
Their mothers are telling them, no “olmaz” that means forbidden, from birth. Everyone loves kids and they get affection, but they also get this training. The side effect to this training is that a lot of the young people are incurious and unadventurous, which hurts the country’s efforts to push ahead with modernization.
A lot of this country’s heritage is being conquered and occupied, which gives reality a different feel. I think you learn to keep your mouth shut, check things out and do things the way they were done before, to be on the safe side. And when you read the history of this part of the world, that’s probably a good strategy.
It gives me some insight into why everyone accepts the fact that you are in danger every time you cross the street. Little bent over grannies have to sprint for it when a car barrels down on them.
I believe the logic is something like this, the driver has a car, he is therefore a power to be reckoned with, the car is bigger and tougher than the pedestrian, therefore the driver rules. If the pedestrians all were armed with guns, we could even out this equation. Peace Corps doesn’t allow us volunteers to have either guns or cars.
But apparently, if a driver hits something or someone, really bad things happen, like police and jail and giant fines. So it is all like a scary game, where we all play and mostly no one gets hurt.
About the police, we are never supposed to call on them for help. Peace Corps has instructed us to call our own safety and security guy, Emil, who is a character, he used to work for the American Embassy. He also has a lot of connections with the local police and the ex-KGB guys who are now the country’s intelligence agency. He is kind of square-shaped, always smiley and talks like a Saturday Night Live skit, is very funny and promises if any one bothers us, he will make sure they don’t walk too good for a while. I believe him.
We had a very funny briefing, during our training, from the head of security at the American Embassy, some kind of ex-spook guy, who spoke in this sing-song, whispery hypnotic drawl and looked like Jeff Bridges. One of our more intellectual volunteers asked should we resist if we were attacked here and this guy just reared back in disbelief. “Are you gonna let the bad guys take you down?” he asked. And then when on to tell us his theory of weapon escalation, whatever the bad guy has, you get a bigger and better one. Well, you gotta know, that this is not a room full of ex-navy seals he’s talking to, but the cream of the crop of American geeks known as Peace Corps volunteers. Seriously, collectively, we probably couldn’t have taken this one guy down and there were 38 of us.
I did see a police incident this Friday at the Mosque, as I was walking home. A cop had this guy by his underwear, he was kind of puppet-walking him from behind by giving him a wedgie, and
there was a small crowd yelling and gesticulating, and who knows what was going on. I just kept going.
I think taking a guy down with a wedgie might be just my speed, Mr. Embassy Security, no need for guns, lead pipe, or what have you. Unless the guy is not wearing underwear.
The weather has been especially nice this past week, a week ago on Sunday a cold front literally blew in. Huge blasts of wind drove dust through the city and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees the next day and stayed cool through Wednesday.
There was a mini one of those today (Friday) while I was eating lunch with my tutor at the outdoor part of the Turkish Restaurant. One of the umbrellas blew off and was heading toward the street and a waiter chased after it and made the save. (Now doesn’t this sound just too, too roughing it.) I really do have it good, this is a cushy Peace Corps assignment.
Quick note on the chickens, this is especially for Michael. Chickens are everywhere. Right now some are squawking and clucking in the yard behind the wall next door. We have about five laying hens who live in the yard and have a little fenced home in the very back. There was an especially annoying rooster in the neighbor’s yard when I first got here, and every morning I fantasized about ways to kill it, don’t worry, I won’t go into details. Anyway, I think he landed in the cook pot, because I haven’t heard his obnoxious good morning in a week.
For those of you who thought chicken was a superior meat, I want to tell you that chickens will eat anything, they are even cannibals. I have seen a chicken eat chicken meat, and like it. On my way through the dump in Davachi out to my friend Mary’s house, I saw lots of chickens foraging around. Yum.
I see people carrying chickens, by their feet, upside down, all the time. This tranquilizes the chicken or else they are so stupid they don’t know they are upside down and being delivered to their deaths.
When I first got here I had asked my host brother, University student, city-dweller, works at a micro-credit non-profit, to show me how to get to town. I was meeting some other volunteers. Well, it was time for me to go and I went out to look where he was, and there was Elshad, in the yard with a knife, a chicken and a bowl. Needless to say, I went right back in the house and decided to eat lunch out.
More confusion, of course, everyone is going to a wedding this afternoon, and the whole family is here, the married daughter her baby and husband, everyone has been in the shower, including me. I am not sure if I am going or not. I know I have been invited, but I am supposed to meet three other volunteers for dinner in town at 7 and I can’t figure out if I successfully communicated that to my host family. I think I did. And I think they said I could come back whenever I wanted to. But, there is many a gap in my comprehension.
More later… I might have a wedding story to tell.
Carol
