Aug. 27, 2005 Ganja, First Month at Site
Chalk it up to culture, language mishaps whatever, but the miscommunication genie struck again
Monday, I am going to ask my tutor, just what is up with this. Here we go, today, Saturday, Aug. 27, I had made plans to get together with some other volunteers in my town for dinner at 7 p.m. and last night my host family had said they were going to a wedding in the afternoon, would I like to come. Sure, I said, but explained again a couple of times that I was supposed to meet my friends in a restaurant at 7 p.m. Ran this by my English-speaking host brother, reran it by the family. I heard them explain it in Azeri to the host brother. Looked like all was on track.
The wedding (or whatever it was) was already going when we got there at 2. Food was on the tables, about a 100 people were eating and drinking and the band was playing. It was the usual, dinghy gold-satin chaircovers and table skirts, bottles of coke, fanta, vodka, champagne, juice and wine lined up on each big square table for 10, paper napkins festively stuck in the juice glasses with the fork, big spoon for the rice. Men at their tables, women at theirs.
Four and a half hours later we are still sitting there. I couldn’t quite believe it, but at 6:40 my host brother and father got up and drove off. Ack, I am thinking, trapped again. My host sister looked at my face, and she called him on his cell phone, and he comes back about 15 minutes later and asks me if I need him for something. I said, no, actually, I just was supposed to meet my friends at 7 and I would take a taxi home.
. Pretty much everyone else had gone home, I don’t have the foggiest idea what was going on. By the time I got back to the house, changed and got back downtown via Marshrutka, it was 8, but it didn’t matter, cause I was stuffed from the wedding anyway.
Which by the way, I never did see anyone who looked like a bride or groom. I am going to check the word in the dictionary right this minute (toy) and make sure it only means wedding. Because there were two young boys who were sitting under the wedding band-shell thing and seemed to be the guests of honor and I am willing to bet anything they were not getting married. (Later I found out it was what is called a “balaja toy” which is really a circumcision party. the one boy – seven or so, was the one who was going to be circumcised – ouch, poor kid, and the older boy was his brother or cousin who was lending moral support. It’s a big deal) Another question for my wonderful sweet tutor, Saida, ever-patient, who functions as my guide to this culture as well as my language coach.
So I did get into town and meet with my friends and that was great, cool breeze sitting outside at the Turkish Restaurant. For you history buffs, I am thinking of my brother here, they just love Ataturk here, there are several walls with bas reliefs along Ataturk Prospect the street my office is on. And Azeri is actually Turkish. So there are always Turkish restaurants and the country has a deep and lasting love of Turkey and the Turkish people. And just so you know, turkeys, the thanksgiving kind, are called hindushkas. We only eat hindus here, not turks.
On my way home, (9:30, after dark) I got on a pretty delapidated marshrutka, though none of them are exactly spiffy and it just kind of conks out at the central square, which is on a one-way street with cars whizzing by, of course going just as fast as they can, and the four young guys in the van with me get out and push the van backward and into the traffic and across the four lane road, with the van lights off (and there are no street lights in town) and they push start the van going the wrong way on a one-way street. The driver then makes a u-turn and I’m on my way home. Wow!
As they say on TV, the perfect ending to the perfect day.
I did get up and dance at the not-wedding, totally by accident.
It is a strange thing, but people get up and give these interminable speeches and then their factions, or family members or something get up and dance the following song. It is sort of like a popularity contest. So my host father got up and gave the longest speech of all at the whole not-wedding, and while he was making the never-ending speech, he had his arm around this tiny little babushka lady and tiny little matching man, (and my host father comes up to my chin) I think they might have been his parents. In the meantime, I was in clueless mode and was thinking it was a good time to look for the bathroom and I got up and went toward the door, but then I thought oh, I should at least stand up there and clap with the music, and my host family was beaming with happiness that I got up to dance, so then I had to do the dance, which was okay, I didn’t look any worse than any one else.
I can’t describe the dance. I just tried to, but I backspaced the whole thing. What I can say is it kind of looks like a hula with high heels on or like someone waving in an airplane on a runway without those flag things. It’s all on video anyway. Thank God you won’t be able to see it. (I never did find the bathroom, and that just added something extra to the occasion.)
Right here, I just have to say something about the shoes. The guy shoes. If a guy is a real flashy dresser he has shoes with reallllly, reallly long toes. I mean so long that they actually kind of turn up on the ends, because when the person walks, their walking motion presses the front of the shoe forward and since there is no foot in that looooonnnnng toe, the shoe begins to arc up. If there was a tassel, voila, Genie shoes. Lots of guys have them in this cream color and even the little kids wear them. I just can’t get used to it. All guys wear a shorter version of these square-toed shoes, and they look strange enough.
I could write a book about the clothes. I have been wanting to keep a log of the combinations I see and the circumstances I see them in. For example, the other morning, “floor length, mauve lace swirl-cut skirt, mustard yellow and white ribbed polo top, black spike heels with ankle straps, going down the dirt and rock road that connects the two big one-way streets in Genja. If it starts to look normal, then I will be worried. (Okay, I am already worried, every woman’s favorite color here is lime green – enough said.)
Thank you for all the emails, it is fun to hear from everyone. I feel that in some ways each person is a compendium of all the people we know and care about. There are so many things every day that I take note of and think, oh, I wish so and so could see that, or so and so would really appreciate this.
It is so cool to think that I am carrying a bit of all of you around with me every day here and your eyes and view points are showing me things I never would have seen or noticed without you in my life. And if I have left some of your favorite things out, don’t worry, I’ll go there. I could write on and on, but I am afraid you will wear out the scroll buttons on your computer keyboards.
