Way Too Much Food

We went to a party for one of my friend's new born son yesterday. I guess the tradition is to have the party as a celebration after the first month (both mother and baby are required to stay inside... and something about not washing for the entire first month after birth, lest one of them get sick). So you can understand why they would want to celebrate with a party.
What always overwhelms me at these events is the amount of food that is both served and wasted. The waiters and waitress have to perform quite the balancing act. All of the food is placed in the center of the table on a lazy Susan. Starting with cold dishes and slowly adding more and more. The turn table is soon full, the dishes have to start being placed on top of/ supported by other ones. When one dish is empty etiquette demands they are to take it away, but it is often crucial in the holding up and supporting of a dish that just arrived. This dilemma throws the staff into a whirlwind and they quickly rearrange everything on the table. The most impressive part of this edible balancing act is that as they are preforming their magic of getting everything to fit we, the guest, are often still spinning the table and grabbing food the whole time.

I know that at least three more dishes arrived to our table after I had taken this picture.

Long Name No Can Say

A few weeks ago when I was buying airline tickets for one of my trips there was a Uyghur couple in line ahead of me. They were having troubles buying a flight for themselves. However, their problem had nothing to do with overbooked flights, conflicting time schedules, lack of cash or any of the other common problems one might anticipate when trying to fly somewhere. The problem started with the guy's name.

Names derived from the national language normally only take up an average of three spaces in the computer. In comparison a full Uyhgur name, (first name combined with the father's name acting as their last name) can be much longer. The computer system at the travel agent's office was equipped to enter a name up to 8 spaces long. This gentleman's name, however, was a whopping total of 10 spaces. The man behind the desk kept insisting he couldn't sell him a ticket. He was denied his right to fly based on the length of his name.

There is a saying here that literally means "there is no solution". Often people say it when a task seems a little difficult or the normal means won't work. Coming from a culture where I have been taught "where there is a will there is a way" or "if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". It is hard to hear over and over, "there is no solution". This seems like an excuse to me, like people are just to resigned to the system to try to figure out new and inventive ways to do things. The longer I live here, the more I hear these same words coming out of my mouth. But the other week I refused to believe their was no solution. The guy working at the office kept trying to dismiss his Uyhgur customer and motion me to the desk. I just sat back and said "Oh no, take your time and find a solution for him first. He is here trying to buy tickets".

Even after 45 minutes the Uyhgur guy left empty handed, cursing and saying he was going to buy a bus ticket (now he has a 24 hour trip instead of just 1h 30m). Poor guy, his name was just too long, he couldn't travel by air.

Stay Off the Grass

The other night after dinner at the hotel restaurant on campus, my friends and I decided to go outside and enjoy the nice spring night. The hotel has a small stretch of grass that forms their lawn situated off to the side. We all grabbed a piece of paper to put under our bums ( a very local thing, no one sits down on any outdoor surface without first making sure they are sitting on something. Sometimes the only clean paper they have is a receipt and hardly covers ones whole bottom, but they sit on it anyway) and plopped down. In my mind this is what a grassy lawn was made for. It was made to be enjoyed by people, as they spend their idle hours out running, sitting, picnicking, flying kites, chasing kids and enjoying nature.

That has not always been the view of grass in this country. In fact it is only in the last 10 or so years that they started to replant grass in the cities. It use to be considered an extravagant luxury that only those in the western world would waste land and energy to plant and maintain. I remember reading in a history book about how school children use to spend their study time pulling up the grass by hand in an attempt by the government to rid themselves of it. For years this place was nothing more than a concrete block. As green grass now finds its way into more corners of the city, its value on it is becoming more apparent. Grass is to look at…it is for decoration and to add to the beauty of the landscape…most definitely NOT TO BE walked on.

If these were lovely manicured thick green blankets of soft grass I could understand a little better, but most of the lawns are “butcher-cut”. My friend looked at it and remarked “…my father would have kicked my bottom if I would have cut our lawn like this and tried to sell it as a job finished!” It was uneven, patchy and dry, but despite that it seemed like a nice place for us to stop and rest.

We sat there on the lawn for a good fifteen or twenty minutes before we were discovered by the grass police swat team ( okay so it wasn't that bad). A young man dressed in his hotel suit was purposefully striding our way. He could have been out for a walk, or on his way to somewhere else but no, it was pretty obvious WE were the destination. He did not mince words, we were asked to get off the grass… it was not allowed for people to use this well established, butcher-cut strip of landscape to place their bottoms on!

Spring has sprung and we are enjoying it from a distance.

Your Asian Twin

I was back on the road again this week, to go and hear a speaker from a university in the States that had come out to Central Asia so lecture on issues relevant to life out here.

While travelling I ran into a girl I went to university with, well at least I ran into her Asian twin. I haven't seen or really even thought about Wendy in eight or nine years, but there she was standing in front of me. This girl looked just like Wendy except for her Asian features, the comparison came to mind immediately.

She is not the first person whose Asian twin I have met while walking down the street. Some times it is a person's clothing, walk, or mannerisms that remind of a friend from home. Sometimes it is their voice or personality that makes a comparison pop into mind. Sometimes it is immediate, like the Wendy look-a-like that I only saw for a second across a busy street, and sometimes it is after a long interaction with a person that I finally realise who they remind me of. I have found peoples twins in all the nationalities out here. Once on a bus there was a Tajik guy that looked just like my friend from New Zealand, as blond as the Kiwi guy was the Tajik guy had dark features, but other than that they were the spitting image of one another. I have found peoples twins among the Russians, Koreans, Chinese, Kazak, Uyghur, Tajik and more.

It's cool to look past the obvious differences in features and find home in the faces of the strangers around me.

Text Messaging

My new favourite form of communication is text messaging. Writing and sending short notes from my cell phone help modern communication makes one one step closer to being totally impersonal, and yet I love it. The other night one of my local friends and I sent texts back and forth for a good two hours. We could have made an actual phone call and have discussed everything we needed to say in five minutes, but this was more fun.

Since most students here have studied English it is normally our texting language of choice, which gives me the upper hand. Some of their text are so funny based on grammar mistakes or uncertain of what the phraseology means. For instance was when one of my guy friends wrote me a text apologizing for forgetting something the day before, he wrote "I am sorry for yesterday. Have I chance or not?" Which was so not his meaning and made we crack up. I tend to save funny ones like this, until I recently found out from one of my friends who doesn't speak English how cute and funny in an incorrect way, my texts I write in Uyghur are.

Okay here is one that will make you laugh. My friend is a teacher and she recently wrote one of her students that had been sick a quick "Feel better soon" text. The students friend responds by sending her this flower message:

"Just now you showed concern to Peter. So, such is life. What makes us happy is what we have now not what we don't have. We should never complain of life where we live. One's fate is in the charge of oneself; happiness comes from one's heart; only one oneself can makes all come true; so come towards the good not the bad. Now matter how salty the teas are, a smiling face can always make brilliance fly around one, and no matter how long the night is, the dawn can always break the dark. So we should cherish all around us and never lose hope. May you happy everyday, dear teacher"

Oh the joy of texting

What's Missing

Yes it was nice to be asked if I was Uyghur on my recent trip south. It proves that I am making strides in that direction, but it always proves I have a long way to go.

It is like language learning, you really only complement someones language if it is not that great. If you meet someone with an exceptionally high level of language skill, to the point that talking to them seems almost normal, then you would never think to comment on it. You take the fluidity for granted and enjoy the conversion.

The same is true for our appearance. There were thousands of Uyghur ladies walking down that same street, several who were much prettier than we were, but no one stopped to comment on them. In fact no one even blinked an eye or nodded a head in their direction, they were just there. We still stood out enough to make us a topic of conversation. They could tell we had tried, but obviously the difference was still enough to draw almost every one's attention and make us stick out like a couple of sour thumbs.

So I started a list:

What is missing from me looking totally Uyghur?

1. Makeup - Uyghur girls wear a lot of it. In fact one of my teachers had her eye shadow tattooed on to save time in the morning. I have never really bothered with it. I do however own a lip gloss

2. Loose the glasses - it is not that all Uyghurs have amazing eye sight, or even that they all choose contacts. It is just that most of them have never gone for an eye exam, and have instead learned to live with the impairment. My glasses are the first thing I put on in the morning, even before the light, and I take them off after my head is on the pillow.

3. Increase the sparkle and lace count - What we wear to dress up in NA is what a lot of Uyghur ladies wear on a daily basis, they are all about looking their best and that means glitter. I am at least trying in this regard, buying more of my clothing from the local market, instead of having it sent over from Old Navy

4. High Heels - no matter how impractical and uncomfortable, Uyghur women's shoes must be high and they must be pointy ( this is one I will just never conform to).

5. No Camera - we took our camera all around town last week to capture faces and places that would demonstrate the wonder of the city when posted on this blog. Local people don't all have cameras, much less walk around town take such mundane and daily shots of the bread seller or the fruit cart.

6. The speed at which we walked- I really believe that the high heels do a lot to slow the women down.

What Men Want

Some of you might remember the 2000 movie staring Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt entitled "What Women Want". I have to admit to never having seen it, but I am up enough of modern pop cultural references to know that the premise is about a guys who is able to hear what women are thinking. Last weekend when my roommate and I were visiting down south, we felt like we were given a similar power, a chance to hear what men are thinking. No fluke accident was involved in our obtaining of this power, just the gift of being foreigners, and able to understand the language.

As we walked down the street guys would look right at us and say things like "Foreigner" "Wow they look Uyghur" or my personal favourite that we heard more than once "beautiful". None of these men had any idea that we could understand a word of what they were saying, they thought the comments were just falling on deaf ears, so we decided to have a little fun and thanked them for telling us we looked Uyghur. It was a compliment considering that we had tried and were dressed very local.
One husband and wife were having an argument in their carpet shop as to whether or not we really were Uyghur. The bus driver hated the fact that we were sitting near the back and he couldn't clearly hear our story, so he started to make up his own version of who we were and why we had come. According to him, and now what everyone who sat near the front of the bus firmly believes, I am Uyghur but my parents immigrated to Canada before I was born (which is why I look foreign and my skin is so white), but I have come back to work here and have great Uyghur because it is in my blood.

The Miracle of Air Travel.

This past weekend my roommate and I took a trip down south to check out a job opportunity for me. I have been to this city numerous times, but I have always travelled by train or sleeper bus, this time since we only had three days we decided to fly. What is normally a twenty four hour trip by land, only took us an hour and a half in the air... and the price wasn't that bad either. Our plane tickets probably cost us an extra $20 CAN, well worth it considering round trip we saved ourselves about 44 hours of travel. I think this is a turning point for me, a conversion to the miracle of air travel.

The trip itself was great. I was really impressed with the company, its office, and employees. They have an extra apartment that I will be able to rent. It is about the same size as I have now, but because of the cities remote location the price is half of what I pay now. Anyway here are some shots from around town.

A picture of the Old city as taken from the town ferris wheel

Motor bikes, the best way to get around town

New Friends

Great Architecture

Faces around town

Stop me!

I recently found a blog kept by another foreigner living in the same city that I do. I don't know the guy from a hole in the wall, but his opinion of this place has become unceasingly apparent through his writing and I quote:

This is foul, disgusting, backwards, dirty, horrible, filthy, unhygienic, irresponsible behaviour, and I cannot see why it is happening in a major city, in a region which borders so many other countries. What the hell kind of impression do you get of Central Asia if THIS is the first place you see, and THESE are the people who live here? I could understand if it was a village maybe, but a fairly developed city of 2 to 3 million people with cars and Internet, chain stores, internationally sourced goods?

Can you imagine Birmingham, Nice, or Dusseldorf with people like this? This place needs a kick up the arse .

I remember reading this and thinking... "do we were really live in the same city? Is this guy walking down the same streets and taking in the same sights that I am?" I love this place, these people the sights the sounds and the smells as I walk down the street.

And then I re-read my blog from yesterday complaining about the cold and coal dust, and I realised how easy it is to compare life here with the comforts of home and find it lacking. Maybe because the memory of home is viewed through rose coloured glasses, or maybe in the culture stress of not fitting in. But when I started with my blog a few years ago I did so with the purpose statement to others "Join with me as I discover the wonder of this created world and the diversity of its people" A constant digression into the small inconveniences of life hardly fulfills that goal. So please promise me, if I ever start sounding as disgruntled or unhappy with my life here like this fellow blogger is, please, please please STOP ME!!!!

Cold

April 15th is the magic day when the heat all over the city is turned off. It is a sign to all that spring has sprung, and that we have finally turned the corner out of our dismally dark winter. The air quickly clears out the remaining coal dust, and the mountains can be seen once again highlighting the bright blue skies.

That is until the temperatures drop and my first floor apartment gets so cold. When it is damp and cold outside there is no way to heat our apartments, it is like I go around with popcicles as figures for the last two weeks of April. I have to wear three layers in the house, but some days can strip down to short sleeves when I go outside. I miss the days when every house has its own thermostat and temperature control. Oh to be warm again.

Milestone

I noticed that my last post pushed me over another big blogging marker as it was post number 200 (sadly the topic of baby urine was not the most monumental way to celebrate such an accomplishment). On the KSA Daily's 100th birthday I asked people to leave comments indicating whether or not it was still worth my time and energy to record my insights and experiences in this fashion. After such a blatant plea for feedback and encouragement, I was sadly left with only four comments. Only four people took the time to respond, only four people asked that I continue. And so for those four people I have doubled my efforts and written another one hundred posts. But I must admit it is sometimes hard to keep going when I hear back more often from almost complete strangers, than I do from friends and family.

Recently one of my blogging friends asked her reading audience:

Is what I write about really that boring, or do you just have nothing to say???

You can be completely honest with me. Why doesn’t the majority of my readers leave a comment (that’s you if you’re reading this)???? I am just curious.

Lucky Me

Today while I was over at my tutor's house I received what is considered a blessing in this culture. Our teacher had to leave the room for just a minute to grab the dictionary, and she handed me her few month old baby to hold. As I was cooing away at the cute little bundle in my arms, I started to feel a warm wetness in my lap. When it comes to babies some things are not culturally different, which made it pretty easy to guess what my problem was. However, when my teacher returned to the room instead of apologizing ( like a good Canadian would), she exclaimed about how lucky I was. I guess in her culture, being peed on by a baby is considered good fortune, I however, just considered it being wet. As soon as my teacher was settled I did quickly return him to his mom, before he could bestow on me a 'second blessing'.

Rainy Days

It is normally really dry around here since we are close to a desert, but rainy days bring out one of my all time favourite sights. I wish I had a picture to help demonstrate how funny it is, but rainy days force everyone to be on the run and no one feels very much like stopping to pose for a picture, much less me taking the time to pull out the camera, and get drenched while trying to focus it and get a good shot.

Men around here are known for wearing hats, called doppa's. They say you can tell where a man is from based on his hat, since each oasis town around the desert has a different pattern for the men's hats. The hats are all hand embroidered and are a piece of work to be protected.
Since these hats are such a big part of the culture the men would never think of not wearing their hats, even on rainy days. Instead they take a cheap plastic bag like you would get at the grocery store and they put their hats in the bag, tucking the rest of the plastic inside, before fitting the whole thing back on their head. They go from showing off beautiful stitch work, to having local labels and logos bouncing on their heads. It is quite the sight to see dignified older men walking around town wearing plastic bags on their heads.

Pee Pipe

Trust me when I say you don't even want to pretend to be smoking one of these things. The purpose of this trinket is to direct urine and save on diaper changes.

Actually the Uyghur cradle, also called a bixuk plays a major role in the culture. These cradles are made of wood and are carved to be both beautiful and practical. Forty days after a child is born there is a special ceremony for him or her in which they are placed in the cradle for the first time. A child will spend much of the next two years tied into the bixuk, which is why is it often called the second bosom for Uyghurs.

As I said the baby is tied into the bed, they claim that it will help legs and arms to grow straight. His parents usually wind cloth about two meters long around the sleeping baby. This allows parents to do other things around the farm after the baby has fallen asleep, because there is no fear of them falling out. The pee pipe also negates the need to take the child out for changing and such.
To our western way of thinking it may sound a little barbaric, but it has been working well for the Uyghur people for generations.

Wooden Pipe- Uyghur Trinkets Final Instalment

The last items in our guessing game are finally here. These wooden pipe looking items are still used in modern Uyghur culture, because they are :

A: A high pitched instrument used by local shepherds to call the sheep in and help herd them homeward after grazing on the mountain side.B: A shuttle for weaving fabric on a traditional loom. Uyghur people are famous for their Atlas, a silk fabric that is woven the old fashion way.C: A diaper for babies at night time. Uyghur cradles have a hole in the bottom and these tools help to direct the pee out the hole and into a waiting pan that can be emptied in the morning. It really cuts back on the land fills out here.

I Am 15 Going On 16

The roommate clock continues to click higher and higher as yesterday I invited number 16 to move in too. In someways it was a bit of a hasty or emotionally charged invite, but I think it will work out alright in the end. She is one of my classmates and a good friend out here.

Ever since the semester started there has been rumors floating around all the campuses in our city that foreign students were going to be forced to move onto campus. Our school had basically said that students had until May or when their current lease ran out ( there are over 200 foreign students at our school, most of whom are 18 year old kids from other central Asian countries, whose true motive for being here is to drink, party, and have a good time living away from home). The school currently does not have on campus housing enough to accommodate everyone.

In the midst of this my classmates registration card expired and she was unable to get a hold of her landlord to go with her to register at the police station. The Police therefore gave her three days to move or she would be fined. She knew that she would soon be forced to live on campus she started to investigate different housing options. Our teacher knew of an empty apartment in her stairwell and arranged for a meeting of my classmate and the landlord. Since most tasks out here take a bit of a fight face, we normally find it better to go with a friend (someone to run interference for you).

The night we went to see the place there was no electricity (no one had lived there in five years). We used my key chain flashlight to peek around in the dark and get a general sense of the place. As we were leaving the landlady called a price that was significantly higher than what she had originally told our teacher. Even after a day long stalemate she refused to budge on the price and my roommate reluctantly agreed.

The following morning we showed up bright and early at the apartment ready to clean and polish the place (five years of coal dust can do a lot of damage). All of my roommates Uyghur friends pitched in and five of us worked steadily for almost 12 hours - okay so I didn't quite make it that long, but the rest of them did. Night came and no signed contract.

8:30 the next morning my friend was rushed along by the moving truck guys who had arrived 30 minutes early. Their efficiency is amazing, I wish I had taken pictures, these guys can carry six boxes of heavy books on their backs at one time up five flights of stairs. Which meant by 10
a. m. she had all her boxes moved into the new apartment. We then trialed the landlord for the rest of the morning as we went from office to office paying all the bills. We got back to the apartment tested the water and electricity, called a repair man and started to talk contract. This is when she springs on us that one of the bedrooms is not included. She plans to lock it and keep her stuff in it (without lowering the rent, or even acknowledging that it was one of the rooms we had painstakingly cleaned for her the day before). She asked to take the contract home for the night to go over it and so another day ended with no key in my friend's hand.

Day three ( the day she must be moved) greets us with a landlady unwilling to sign a standard lease agreement. She did not want to take responsibility for repair and maintenance of pipes and such. She had also made a detailed list of the things she was lending my friend to use in the apartment - things like the refrigerator and washing machine were expected on that list, but the plastic garbage can that you could buy at a dollar store that she wanted returned in perfect shape after a year, was a little much. These contract negotiations almost had both my friend and I in tears (partially frustration, partially pure exhaustion from the last three days). Each item she disagreed with on the contract made the knot in our stomachs tighten.

It was too much and my friend turned to me "Is that offer to live with you still open?" I willingly agreed - anything to save a friend from this nightmarish situation. So we told the landlady on the spot that unless she signed it as we gave it to her we were walking. Five minutes later we called the moving guys again, they re-picked up all the stuff and brought it to my house. Welcoming Roommate 16! She is unpacking boxes as we speak. The recently added Roommate 15 will still be staying with us 3 nights a week, and so my quiet house has become very active.

Traditional Medician Shop

For all those of you who liked the sound of the Uyghur Medicine man grinding both your cinnamon and your snake skin in the same grinder, you will love these photo. Here is the traditional Uyghur Medicine shop, I don't even know what half this stuff is used for, and to tell you the truth I am a little too scared to ask.

Snake Skin - Uyghur Trinkets 4

A) While it is true that the Uyghur people are Muslims, much of their faith and practices comes from folk Islam, which is much more mystical and superstitious. That is why the snake plays such an important role. It is believed that having a dead snake in the house will keep people from sinning (since sin entered the world through a snake). The dead snake shows victory over that and an ability to walk on God's road. You will often find them hidden somewhere by the front door of a home.

B) Kids at home are often forced fed cod liver oil or other natural products for health purposes, here it is snake oil that is said to keep children healthy.

C) This dried snake skin can be ground into a powder and put in a medicinal tea. The guy at the dry good store will use the same grinder for your snake skin as he does for your cinnamon sticks, so that everything can gain that nice reptile taste.

Roommate 15

Just a month and a half after my roommate returned to the states and I have already filled my extra bedroom with a new person. While yes it was true that I was enjoying the quite and solitude, it is fun to have someone around. My current roommate Patty is a Uyghur girl ( this really isn't allowed, which is why I have never lived with a local before) who is just staying with me three or four nights a week. I actually first meet her via Roommate 13. She is a fun out going girl- as you can likely tell from the picture with the tea cozy on her head, who teachers English at a near by training center. Her language ability is amazing, but she tends to get tired of speaking it after teaching nine hours of class each day, and so when she get in at night she prattles away at full speed in Uyghur. She was originally living with her parents on the other side of town. It took her an hour and a half on the bus just to get into work each morning, now it is only a 20min walk from my place. We share the same hobby of cross stitching, so at night we sit around like a couple of old women with our embroidery in hand chatting about whatever.

I threw her a welcome party the other night so that she could meet all of my friends at once. These parties are always fun and they are a mix of three or four ethnic people groups all speaking together using a combination of three languages. It was funny to witness how peoples personalities changed depending on what language they were talking. When speaking Uyghur people tend to be more boisterous and out going, which is a hallmark of their culture, when speaking the national language they seemed a lot more reserved and so forth. My new roommate is one of the few people I know that can be her same outgoing self no matter what language she is speaking. She really did impress all of my friends with her stories and quick sense of humor. I think it is going to be a good roommate experience.

Four Out of Five Dentist Suggest Miswak

I always include this trinket as kind of a joke, considering I have never seen a Uyghur person actually using one. They all do the same thing we do and go to the supermarket and buy a regular toothbrush. But these fancy stick versions can be purchased from all the street vendors who set up shop in front of the Mosques. The use of the Miswak stick as a toothbrush is not just a Uyghur thing it is a Islamic practice. While not actually mentioned in the Qur’an, the use of the miswak is frequently advocated in the Hadith (the words and traditions of Mohammed – which well not considered up there with holy law, they are said to be examples for life). In the Hadith Mohammed is quoted as saying “Were it not that I might overburned believers, I would have ordered them to use the Miswak at every prayer”.

I have to admit when I hold this broken off piece of branch in my hand I fail to see how it could even compare in teeth cleaning power to the “double- action- triple- rotating- head –super- toothbrushes” that are on the market today. But as I did some more reading on the topic I found out here might actually me some modern day scientific support for rubbing your teeth clean with a stick. Miswak, is a natural toothbrush made from twigs of 'Salvadora persica' tree. It is said to strengthen the gums, prevent tooth decay and eliminate toothaches, as well as supposedly eliminate bad odour, improve the sense of taste and causes teeth to glow and shine. Chemical analysis has revealed it contains 19 natural substances, beneficial to dental health. Miswak's natural antiseptics kill harmful microorganisms in the mouth, the astringent tannic acid it contains protect gums from disease, and miswaks aromatic oils increase salivation. Supposedly miswak itself tastes "pleasantly bitter".

Add to that the fact that it is disposable, biodegradable and the ultimate environmentally friendly toothbrush that can be carried in your pocket and doesn’t require water or toothpaste, and you have the latest in dental hygiene for those who want a green tomorrow.