A note from Erik Johnson
stuDent
teaching flame alive outside of skydiving, keeping alive his spirit.
Before his departure last year for the Peace Corps, he made a post
titled
"rec.skydiving confessional", which can be read at:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&th=80021a41eeabdd99&ic=1
Below is a note from Erik updating his adventure. It would help to read
the above post first if you don't know what Erik is up to.
blue ones,
james@clewiston
Hello!
I've made it to a place where I can take some time to
write a proper letter. There is so much to tell I
don't know where to begin or end so I guess I’ll begin
at the beginning. I apologize for covering ground
I've already covered (just skip those parts you've
read). I arrived in the Kyrgyz Republic on 10 June
2000 and started Peace Corps training the next day.
It was a long 11 weeks learning things like language,
local customs, and how to teach kids in this
environment.
The first week we lived in a «hotel.» This is not the
kind of hotel you are thinking about. It's more like
a barracks. After that first week we lived with host
families in villages during our training period. Each
day each group of three or four trainees would meet
with a Language and Cultural Facilitator for eight
hours. One week we spent with a current Volunteer at
their site. For my visit I flew to Osh on a Russian
Yak-40. Osh is about an hour flight south of Bishkek
on the other side of the mountains. The old Russian
plane had to make several spirals before it could get
over the mountains. For such a small country it is
very different south of the Tien Shan.
One week of training we spent in Model School. The
staff had recruited good kids from surrounding
villages to sit in on classes we created. Teaching
kids different lessons every day is a far cry from
teaching motivated adults one class over and over and
over Ad Infinitum, Ad Nausium. And one week we
visited our actual sites. When it was over we had a
swear-in ceremony and shipped out with all our luggage
to what would be home for the next two years.
Starting at my site was challenging because NO ONE
spoke English. We have «counterparts» assigned, but
mine is not very confident with her English. I think
she learned almost entirely from a book. Overcoming
the language barrier in the classroom was
exceptionally difficult. Eventually I learned to say,
«This is a noun. This is a verb. Sit down and shut
up!» One day I decided to say, «Write in your
notebook.» The Russian word for «write» is pissat.
The word for «pee» is pisseat. You can imagine my 7th
grader’s delight when I told them to pee in their
notebooks.
I live with a Turkish family. Actually it is just the
grandmother and grandfather I live with, but they have
seven kids, most of who live next door in all
directions. The kids have spouses and their own kids.
These kids have friends. The old woman and old man
have brothers and sisters and... well, you get my
drift. There are a LOT of people running around and
almost no way for me to keep track of who the players
are. Even now, nine months after arriving here, I
still have code names for them. There’s Belly, so
called because he has an enormous belly. Belly likes
to talk. Most of them like to talk, but Belly really
goes on and on. He likes to try and compare America
with Kyrgyzstan.
«Which is good? America or Kyrgyzstan?» he’ll ask.
«Which do you like better?»
«Each has good points and bad points.» I’ll reply.
Then he’ll say something really off the wall like,
«Do you have shoot-outs in the street?» For most of
the folks here the only exposure they’ve had with
America is through the media and American films. The
films are God awful. They are dubbed over in Russian,
usually with the same voice handling all the parts and
using no inflection or emotion. I sometimes watch
these to help with my own language practice, but can
only stand so much of it.
One day Belly comes into the combination
eating/cooking/sleeping/relaxing room where I’m having
my tea and thinking through a minor problem (I drink a
lot of hot tea now) and the conversation goes
something like this:
«Where is babushka and deadushka?» he asks.
«Don’t know.»
«Are you thinking about America?»
«No, are you?»
«Are you thinking about your mama?»
«Not at the moment. Right now I’m working.»
Undaunted, he continued. «Do you love your mama?»
«Of course.»
«Babushka is my mama. I love her.»
«That’s nice. Right now I’m working.»
Finally he made a production out of eating cheese and
bread, described with grunts and various other
guttural sounds how good it was, wondered aloud why I
don’t eat such wonderfully tasty cheese, and made his
exit.
There are lots of other characters. There’s Eye, one
of the grandchildren, his eye is messed up. There’s
Smilin’ Jack because he’s always smiling when he sees
me. He has offered to take me on a horseback ride
into the mountains to photograph the White Leopard.
There’s this guy whose job apparently is to stand in
the street and greet people. I don’t think he
actually makes money doing this, but it seems to be a
very popular occupation. He is forever trying to give
me women.
«Ohhh, I have a beautiful woman for you. Come see!»
It’s turned into kind of a game now. I hurt for
substantive entertainment.
There’s Naked Baby. He’s just a naked baby. I
started calling him this, and no one knew what I was
saying, then he started saying, «Naked baby! Naked
baby!» in English whenever he would see me and I had
to explain. They thought it was kind of funny. I
thought it was hilarious. Of course, like I said, I’m
ripe for just about any entertainment. There’s also
Pachimo Man. He asks «Why?» (pachimo) to everything I
say.
My daily life is not filled with «have to» kinds of
things. I have a minimum load of actual classes. I
have my own classroom with a lock (a luxury not
afforded to all teachers). I’m given wide latitude to
do a number of things that interest me. I run an
English Club in the evenings on Tuesday and Friday for
three groups. The first group is my «advanced» group.
We read, do skits and some critical-thinking type
things. The second group are little kids / low level
kids. We do things like spelling games and hangman.
I also run them through some of the lessons which I
use in my regular classes since they aren’t in my
regular classes. I use a lot of pictures and drawings
since these cut through the language barrier. My
third group is teachers. I’ve also been using picture
lessons for them also. I translated and wrote down my
Russian tapes and run them through these. I
definitely enjoy working with adults more than
children. Children require constant song and dance,
and I’m just not much of a song and dance kinda guy.
Still, the kids love me, and I REALLY love it when
they overcome a barrier. These instances make me see
that I’m not wasting time here and that I am having
some effect. Several kids have told me that they
didn’t want to study English until I came. Most kids
greet me with, «Good morning, Mr. Erik!» every day
(sometimes even at 5:30pm). Lately we’ve been working
on question formation. The question format last week
was, ‘Why’ + verb + pronoun + .... Immediately one
girl pipes up and says, «Why are you crazy?» No one
in this school could ask that before. That’s
something.
The school is old, built in 1961, but recently
acquired some donated computers to which we are trying
to connect to the Internet via antiquated and poor
quality phone lines. That has yet to be done. They
currently use the computers to play games on and teach
BASIC with. For the most part the computers stay
locked up because there is only one teacher with a key
and she guards it jealously. I bought an English
language computer program using money from the sale of
photographs (the people here go absolutely NUTS over
photographs) and installed it. Now I want to use it
to teach with, but getting a key has been an arduous
task.
Some of you have asked how I feel about my decision
to join the Peace Corps. That is really a very tough
question to answer. I guess the answer has changed
with time. At first I wasn’t looking for the Peace
Corps, but I was desperately looking for something. I
found myself sliding into that pit of restricted
movement, limited options, and alienated labor which
I’ve raged against my whole life. I was being burned
by my perceived acceleration of time. I saw myself at
the end of my skydiving career and felt a animal
desperation in the pit of my stomach. I could feel
what had once been the determined spark of my human
spirit starting to dim and my purposeful pursuit of
life diluting. At a minimum it was uncomfortable.
These are only a few of the many reasons I joined the
Peace Corps. Having been here nine months now I’ve
seen the power that changing perceptions can have,
both for myself and to a greater or lesser degree, in
everyone I come in contact with. I came here with the
model for living I have developed over time, and
intended to test that model here to see if it could
withstand an alternate reality (yet another reason for
my being here). Every smile, every handshake, every
word, every movement I make is scrutinized to the nth
degree. I am indeed a fish in a bowl. But this
scrutiny really tests my values and belief systems.
That’s good.
Every day I and my growing network of kids and adults
make tiny baby steps toward dissolving differences,
meeting in a practical, workable middle, and moving
our collective realities toward that big ball of
Truth. This is what I think «peace» is. It takes a
LOT of work and frustration, words, listening time,
and handshakes, but I believe these steps are
constructive and necessary to help move our human race
on to bigger and better things. What those things are
I don’t know and won’t even hazard a guess, but I do
know that something that doesn’t change is dead. And
I think that with all the universal randomness that
doesn’t care whether we live or die, with all the
active forces opposing constructive progression toward
Truth, that it would really be a shame to neglect to
do what we can, within the sphere of our own
perceptual and personal growth, to build those bridges
and networks so desperately needed for the next step.
The costs for not listening to Belly or the old men
ramble about how much better life was with Communism,
or simply saying «Hi.» to the jobless (and hopeless)
men who squat in the frozen street playing cards
waiting for something to happen, is, I believe,
greater than simply being there to say by your
presence, «Yeah, I’m an American, but look I’m also a
human being. We are all human beings here. Believe
it or not your destiny is open, and in some ways more
open than the average American’s. Let’s explore a
little bit of it together as human beings.»
Oh well, enough for now. Hopefully I can have more
access to computers (and be able to use them when it’s
not freezing) in the near future to send more stuff
from the other side of the rusted Iron Curtain.
Erik
_________________________________________________
When I hear from Eric again I will post it.