2003-06-18 - 4:38 p.m.
Almalik, Uzbekistan is an industrial city about 30 km from Parkent. It is home to a ferrus metals mining company and my Peace Corps volunteer friend John Sciurba. I have spent the last two weeks here assisting with an English summer camp. Brian, another volunteer, has recruited helpers from amongst the volunteer ranks.
Although I am donating my services, I am taking a break from the classroom. This week I am playing cook and Oshpaz, or kitchen assistant. This role works well for me, accomodating my late morning arrival and satisfying my appetite. I have also been fed a steady plate of stories from Tatiana, Brian's teaching counterpart. Tatiana is a middle aged Russian woman who's grandfather was killed in Moscow and whose grandmother was exiled to Tashkent after having been labeled an enemy of the state because she attended medical school in Poland, and was married to a husband who was murdered. Tatiana has plenty of opinions. She also has a developed world view, having attended ACCELS teacher training in Chico, California. Her son also attends USC.
Today, while we stood near the open windows and chopped onions and diced tomatoes, Tatiana recalled years prior. Once a boat from Florida came, she said. I was a student in St. Petersburg and it was my job to take two sailors on a tour of my favorite places. They gave me two English language books and a packet. It was in English and I didn't know what the packet was. I was going to take it home, put on my glasses, and read it. When we returned to the boat, there were two Soviet men checking us. They made me empty my coat and found the packet. It was gum. They asked me where I got it and I told them. The took me aside and scolded me for maybe forty minutes. Don't you know all foreigners are spies, they told her. Why do you want these foreign things?, they asked. Tatiana laughed as she told the story. It is sometimes easy for me to forget about the huge Russian population in Uzbekistan because Parkent, my home, is only Uzbek. But Tashkent and its environs are heavily populated with Russian people and there story is equally intriguing. Sometimes I get a glimpse of the world on twenty years back when I open a textbook and read, Hello My Soviet Friend, says the English text. But Tatiana brings this criticism to life. Another time Kevin, she says, when I was a student we were made to memorize long texts of English. I hated this very much and often did not go. The texts were always about the same people, Mr. Black from New York, Mr. Brown from London and Ivan from Moscow and Peter from St. Petersburg. Ivan and Peter were workers, members of the trade union, and had one daughter and one son each. There children were Pioneers, the youth league for Communists. Mr. Black was always unemployed because his political views were different than those of his capitalist boss. He always slept underneath a bridge and never had any food. Mr. Brown lived in Hyde Park and slept on a park bench, using cartons and packages to keep warm. He was always cold. Tatiana laughed. No matter what season it was, Mr. Brown was always cold. A few years after this I bought two English books from the street side, she said. I remember one was called, This is London. It had sections about the industry and monuments of London. One part was about Hyde Park. she chuckled again. I read it with great interest. It sounded so beautiful. And, as she continued to laugh, she said... there are no benches in Hyde Park.
