The more things change................
General
The most interesting cross-cultural experience is the concept of “mehmon,” or guest. This open-arms attitude will pull you into the community, keep you from starving on the road, and protect you from having your face “washed” with freezing snow by over-zealous young men during the winter. While being the guest can be a little overwhelming at times, as I discuss below, it’s the most admirable aspect of Uzbek culture.

Household chores
Ironically, Uzbek homes are a city-dweller’s dream - sprawling, multiple building dwellings, surrounding gardens and grape trellises. Did I mention gardens? During the summers, you can grab apricots by the handful and eat grapes until you burst. Admittedly, my humble apartment didn't quite fit this description, but many an Uzbek home did.

Probably the greatest source of cross-cultural adjustment I ever faced was getting used to having a broom thrown at my feet when I needed to use it. In direct conflict with our customs, a broom is not to stand upright against the wall, and handing someone a broom is a sign of disrespect. I don’t know what they’d think of jumping one. I admit that the broom in my apartment always leaned Chicago-style with no untoward consequences.

Further, I attached a handle to the broom. Perhaps previous generations of women were only three-feet tall and yes the Tajik ladies were usually shorter than I was, but the back-bending two and a half feet that characterizes the style of broom unaccountably preferred by women the world over made me want a lumbar puncture, so the moment I got my own digs, I extended the handle to the logical straight-backed five feet.

Floors are washed the way grandma did it – on hands and knees. Many a floor is hardwood and nothing but hands and knees will do.

Sinks will and do back up. Faucets may spit salt-white water followed by thick black sludge, brilliant iron-deposits, steam, or some combination of all three. Bath water was best boiled and sponged on. I took a clue from my first host-family and literally boiled my dishes on the stove, then soaped them down, rinsed and boiled again. Clothing got almost the same treatment, except that colors were washed in distilled water after I found that the normal water put irredeemable salt streaks through a favored skirt.

The electric current is wishy-washy and if a person were to, say, set the iron down and then walk away to watch Esmerelda on TV, an hour later the appliance wouldn’t have even heated up.

My Home Entertainment System

However, if one were to actually touch the iron to clothing, it would immediately overheat and in the space of a minute later there would be iron marks all over a new skirt. To avoid frustration just wear a lot of prints and corduroys.

Or you could learn to sew, as I did because, well, everybody else was doing it. For years, my mother and grandmother had tried to teach me and my sisters to sew, cook, make the bed, and so forth. For years, we laughed and kept going. At least learn to “can,” they said. Naturally, we took this as a joke. The grocery store provides food in cans, why do the extra work? Well, apparently they knew that someday I would climb off the high horse and discover that canning and sewing are actually useful to most of the people in this fine world. Sewing actually cures migraines and when you live by yourself, it’s a great break from books. Canning? Well, I never bothered because the store had canned tomatoes and canned peas, but I did learn to cook. Sort of. top

Curtains I hand-sewed for my apartment

Food
Early morning is the best time to go for nan, a bread which can be bought from any of the ladies who pushed carts, or from the vendors who worked right outside of the bakery a block and a half away. If I was feeling lazy and didn’t want hot nan, which I admit was half of the time, I’d buy it from the store across from my apartment.

I usually kept the nan wrapped in cloth and left it on the table. Why leave nan on the table? First, I had no refrigerator. Second, unlike the small, thin pieces that you get in Indian restaurants, Uzbek nan is roughly the size of the tires on a compact car. One nan was more than enough to last me three to four days. It is delicious hot, great after two days, and tasty, though rock hard, after three.

On the other hand, Kefir (a tangy yogurt) had to be drunk that day or used for baking. Though the quintessential Uzbek dish is osh (steamed rice with oil, meat and vegetables), I’d recommend a trip to Uzbekistan just for the nan and kefir.

All dairy products can be procured from one of the many ladies who make a regular route to Uzbek homes. While you are not likely to hear the prayer called in this country, you will be awakened before dawn by “KEEEEEEFIR! KAAAAAYYYYYYMOK!” Whether you pray after getting your day’s supply of calcium is, of course, up to you.

Flap jacks can be flapped on a gas stove, eggs can be boiled, scrambled or fried, buckwheat makes great breakfast food, lentils are wonderful for dinner, pasta is available, but needs oil so it doesn’t clump, potatoes may be mashed, spinach and radishes are tasty snacks, raisins and peanuts were there for the asking. Who needs to be a gourmet chef? top

Dinner, Uzbek style

The unusual
The pit toilet is a fixture of Uzbek houses and, when well-kept, is a perfectly clean and natural experience. You squat, do your thing, wipe up (please see below for the many ways in which this may be accomplished), and keep rolling.

Wiping up is an interesting experience. Toilet paper is a luxury item, so most family’s recycle. Depending upon the wealth of the family, whether they live in a city or the country, and their dedication to recycling, you may find yourself contemplating either loose sheafs (newspaper, magazines, books, old home work), actual toilet paper (usually resembling crepe paper, but with a toilet paper texture), or rocks. Quite frankly, I never saw a reason to waste good money on toilet paper when I could save it to buy eggs, so at the end of the month, when my allowance dried up, I used some of the extra sheets of paper that magically sprouted in my files.

Which brings up roaches. Yes, the critters can live in the desert. Worse, the things were the size of my thumb and bright red. Now, nature has apparently given the desert roach this lovely color in order to pull sympathy from the human heart and spare the roach the wrath of the human foot. I could never think of any other reason that such creatures would not only be so brightly colored that a person could not fail to see them, but they, like all insects in this country moved slowly.

Imagine sitting in your living room at ten in the evening and suddenly having your thoughts of nothing interrupted by the sight of a fat creature lumbering past toward the kitchen. When a heartbeat later, you have jumped up on search and destroy mission, you find that the invader has literally made it to the kitchen carpet, flipped over on its back and died.

This was the story of my apartment. No matter how clean I kept it, how often I swept, mopped, or scrubbed; no matter that I never actually had food in the place, some critter always decided to visit. Then one of my friends told me about a Chinese solution called “mel,” which means chalk. Mel comes in green or blue packages and has to be broken into small squares before it is applied to cracks and crevices. If you are bored, as I occasionally was, it can be used to draw circles around groups of ants hunting your bathroom floor, for who knows what. The beauty of this powder was that any insect trapped in its circle would refuse to tread through the powder until desperation struck and it made a mad dash for freedom. No sooner does the doomed vermin pass through the powder than it begins to dance a strange jig, curls up and dies. Needless to say, I quickly painted the floors of bathroom, washroom and kitchen dusty white. Goodbye cockroaches. Goodbye ants. Hello peace of mind.

Except for the gigantic hornets that Uzbeks swore would kill you with a single sting. They ran me out of my classroom twice and left me shivering under the mosquito netting numerable times. top

Frustrations
In all honesty, film and I have never worked well together, but my Bukhara photos just refused to come out. Not only did I lose a great picture of my former pupils in front of the statue of Khoja Afandi, but their graduation pictures came out in shadow. Bring a camera from home, lots of film, a digital camera, a couple of single use... and take a photography class for certainty.

Calling home is possible. My family used one of the international services to call me, and from 20/20 hindsight, I'd say take a couple of phone cards, as well. Great patience is needed, but you can also use local long distance booths.

Email allows you to rave, vent, give yourself a well-deserved public pat on the back, cry, scream, educate, and learn. Best of all it helps you keep in touch with those rooting for you, and perhaps contact the Congressional Black Caucus in emergencies...(smile)... Admittedly, quite a few enthusiatic new neighbors will be looking over your shoulder while you type.

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Personal
Getting the “butter whipped” [hair done] is possible in Uzbekistan. One of the first things you’ll notice getting off the plane is that a whole lot of heads seem to sport hair that looks a lot like yours. The blacksmith trade is alive and well in Uzbekistan, so having a hotcomb special made isn’t as implausible as it seems. The salt water seemed to have no detrimental affect on my hair and I preferred olive oil and braiding.

You can have clothes made in Uzbekistan very easily because every woman you meet is a bonafide seamstress. The tailors par excellence will parade their works at the beginning of summer, so keep an eye out for the best-dressed sister in the bazaar and feel free to ask who made her clothes. The ladies selling bolt cloth at the bazaar can also make clothes, as can the ladies in the craft centers. If you want an interesting conversation in addition to new clothes or spices, see the artisans and vendors in the Old City. top

"The Spice Guy", selling spices in the Old City of Bukhara

Entertainment
Spanish language telenovelas are synonymous with entertainment in Uzbekistan. They are dubbed into Uzbek and all sex (including kissing) is edited out. The results are hysterically funny scenes in which pious Catholic Mexicans make the sign of the cross while invoking God the Uzbek way. I’m sure you can appreciate how much of a pain it’s been to keep my promise and send some American soap operas over- how do you explain to people that in order to honor their cultural standards, I’d have to cut out everything except the credits?

Parties are a way of life at schools, with teachers’ birthdays featuring flowers, meat pastries and speeches- lots of speeches.

Uzbeks “speak” every chance they get, from birthdays, to anniversaries, and weddings. You would think that they were recovering from a vow of silence, the way people pontificate, gesticulate and propound at every event. top

Weddings
Weddings are actually “the” entertainment in Uzbekistan, but because they are also the most important events in a family's life, I thought they deserved special mention. An Uzbek wedding is a subculture unto itself. Contrary to popular belief, getting down is not restricted to the Southern hemisphere. Heart, soul and life savings are poured into the wedding. Trunks of bedclothes, shelf upon shelf of dishes, more clothes than anyone can wear in two lifetimes, jewelry, furniture and carpets are prepared for that special day.

Uzbek weddings last for days. The women have their party, spending hours giving the bride advice and gifts. Entertainers sing and dance. Food, sodas, tea and liquor are abundant, though the latter isn’t likely to be opened. The men’s ceremony takes place on a different day, with mountains of osh, lots of solemnity, and a ceremony that goes by so fast, you’ll miss it if you blink. Finally, “the” party of parties is the third night.

There will be boys on stilts. There will be boys with horns. There will be speeches by every relative, friend and casual acquaintance in the house. There will be enough food to stuff a couple hundred people for the rest of the week, or until the next wedding, which ever comes first. There will be sweaty musicians singing their hearts out. There will be sweat-free dancers performing miniature Persian operas. There will be toasts to health, luck, joy, pretty children, God’s blessing, money, jobs, wisdom and moral strength. The bride will be crying as if she’s on the way to execution. The groom will be looking perplexed, but then he’s under a lot of pressure. And you? You will be part of the entertainment.

No Uzbek wedding will be complete without having you, “the guest,” on a videotape. Not only will you be expected to give a speech in English and Uzbek (and Tajik in Bukhara), but you must dance.

It matters not if your feet hurt. Nor does it matter if you hate to dance. Religious restriction? Just pray for forgiveness and plan to do the two-step. When the professional dancer begs you to join in with her, what are you going to say? No? Certainly not. You’ll grimace and dance.

If you can’t dance that’s no problem. Uzbeks like to party and they want you to like it too. They will smile at you and actually praise whatever ridiculous move you make up. In fact they lie so convincingly that if you’re not careful, you might start to believe that you can “dance like Michael Jackson.” And that’s when they will form a ring around you, as some of their ancestors must have trapped a horse or two, and you will have to face-off with each and every soul. Ne’er a Saturday night diva has pulled off the attitude of the Uzbek woman who “knows” she can dance. She will stare you down, get in your face, perform gyrations that would make Isis’ eyes cross, out step any AKA, and then smile triumphantly as she leaves you hanging out to dry. But keep at it and by the twentieth wedding, you too will shake it like a pro and you’ll love it. To quote my grandmother, it took going “all the way around the world to get some rhythm.” Well it was supposed to be a learning experience. Sheesh.

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The bottle
The few unpleasant experiences I had in Uzbekistan (and there were very few) always involved an Uzbek man who’d left his marbles in a vodka bottle. There is no polite way to put the fact that many Uzbek men drink like their souls are trapped in the bottom of a bottle. I won’t say that they all drink, but it’s a societal problem. They’re not so far gone that (at least in my experience) they routinely commit unforgivable acts, but sometimes you’ll have to strain to remember that this “self-independent” people used to be a great nation. But so were we all. top

The awesome
While the festival of Navruz came during the spring, autumn was the most interesting time for me because I got to experience the epitome of recycling. Kurbon Hayeet (Eid al-Adha: the festival of sacrifice commemorating Abraham’s near-sacrifice of one of his sons) fell during January 2003, and a sheep would be necessary for sacrifice.

Navruz Celebration with my Landlord

Plants die and leaves drop during autumn and all that deadfall had to go somewhere. The neat solution was to bring home a sheep, let it loose in the yard and patiently wait while it a) removed all of the dreary foliage and b) fattened itself up for slaughter.

This phenomenon of letting an unsuspecting ram do the yard work was seen throughout the year by the way, and my first host family had a nuclear herd that required an astonishing amount of hay, but the neatness of the whole recycling system was particularly poignant when the animal was contentedly munching himself to a date with destiny.

While waiting for the major festivals, I filled my time by visiting the talented seamstresses, artists, teachers and shop owners of the Old City. Uzbeks are an extremely polite people and they love to have guests. I honestly believe that I met a quarter of the city of Bukhara within the first three weeks of being there, partially because my host family had innumerable relatives to visit and partially because guesting just seems to happen, the same way breathing happens. It's great!

Great Guesting Experiences

You take a breath, you let it out, take a breath, let it out, walk out of your door, have lunch with complete strangers, walk out of their door, have dinner with complete strangers…. Next

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