Islam in my village

My host family are devout Muslims by Kyrgyzstan standards. They never consume alcohol, pray five times a day, and celebrate Ramadan. Women do not have to wear head scarves and can work and go out as they please. As time has passed, I have learned that our family are at the center of the movement toward a stronger Islamic faith in the village.  If someone would have told me this a year ago, I would immediately worry and consider all the problems the news has presented to me about fundamental Islam. After a year in my village, I truly think that Islam--in the way that my family considers it---would benefit the community.

During soviet times, the people of Kyrgyzstan were not allowed to practice Islam. At this time my host father and his brothers were young men. Their father took them up into the mountains and taught them the Quran. Through this effort they became extremely faithful followers of Islam. Post-independence, hiding one's faith became un-necessary. Our host father and his brother became community leaders and are known by the village as good, hardworking, Muslim men.

Currently, our village is home to a medrassi which the men in my host family are very supportive of.  At the medrassi Kyrgyz boys can study Islam and on Saturdays a class is held for women. Our host father and leaders in the region have worked to bring a Iman to the medrassi (currently the closest is in Kazakhstan) to hold a camp for young men and to visit our village to teach the older generation more about Islam so that they can in turn, teach their children. Our extended family is working to hold weekly meetings to discuss issues in the community and their faith. They explained to me that they are trying to learn and preach an Islam that fits the Kyrgyz people and follows the Quran, not to blindly follow the type of Islam other countries have.

 In my experience here- I have seen that Alcoholism is rampant and spousal abuse is common. In such an environment, they type of Islam my family encourages seems to me to be one solution to the problem. Their brand of Islam seems reasonable to me. Women are respected, education (not just with regards to Islam) is valued, and their children are raised to be hard-working, respectful, and tolerant people. The family goes out of their way to invites Alex and I to Muslim holidays and explain the significance to us, but never push us to take their faith. All and all, they are wonderful people whose giving, tolerant nature is tied into their faith. It has been interesting and enlightening to grow to understand a type of Islam other than what we read about in the news. I am happy to know that in this village, the faith is tolerant and brought to young people by a truly good group of people.

I have a garden!

Women are selling apple tree saplings and seeds on the side of the road. Everyone is in the garden after work starting to plant. The fruit trees are budding. It is most certainly spring.
I just got in from making rows in the piece of the family garden our family is letting me use for this season. Thus far I have planted tomatoes, onions, and garlic. I've also started spinach, lettuce, leeks, and peppers indoors (Thanks for the seeds mom!) and some herbs in pots. I made starter pots out of paper (you know you mold the paper around a bottle and then you can plant the paper and all once the seeds sprout) and my family sat and watched me like I was a crazy person. It was quite a spectacle. After a long winter in which the whole village is covered in white, its amazing to see green again!
Generally life is starting to get busy. I am doing a bunch of composting and job preparedness trainings.
I will write more and upload pictures my next trip.

Have a great week everyone,
Athena

Springtime!

It has been a little while since I last updated you all. We have officially been in Peace Corps a year now which is exciting. The most exciting news I have is that it is SPRING! I also ate spinach and avocados---very luxurious.

We recently celebrated quite a few holidays. We had an epic St. Patrick's Day party and have had many Kyrgyz holidays as well. This month we celebrated Mens' Day, Womens' Day, and Nooruz (Persian new year). There have been lots of days off and lots of parties. Which really means more food and fruit then usual :-).

In other news, I made my first Kyrgyz friend which feels like a really big deal. As volunteers we often know a lot of people but do not have more than cordial relationship with most of them. Over the past few months I have been tutoring a young teacher at my school and we have come to be friends. Yay for friendship :-)

In my professional life--I'm busy. Sarah and I are are planning the annual Talas Camp at which we will teach about tolerance, other cultures, and nutrition. Should be fun and a great thing for the new Talas volunteers to do over the summer. I am planning a seminar on job skills for young men and women for 'Take your child to Work Day' in April. I just submitted a grant proposal for my health curriculum project, which I think will be really amazing. Finally, I got my first grant! It was for hand washing stations to be placed at the three schools in my village. The grant was through Water Charities and is a super awesome program, so if you feel like donating to a great organization that helps bring clean water to villages around the world, check it out here. Alex is doing well and has begun to work at a second school with a really motivated counterpart. He is also working on a few translation projects and a technology training grant.

Now we are in Bishkek for Spring break and for the FORUM English teachers association conference at which we will taught teaching a few session. We are actually here for a bit longer than we expected due to the pass being closed. Evidently March/April is avalanche season. To prevent dangerous avalanches the government closes the roads and uses explosions to trigger controlled avalanches. Crazy stuff.

I hope all of you are doing well. Have a wonderful week!

Winter is coming to an end...

The sun is coming up early and setting after five. I definitely feel like spring will come sometime in the future and that's exciting. As you can probably tell-- the cold has been a bit difficult. Definitely not built for cold, long winters, but it feels really nice to have survived it! I now know I can heat a house through a whole winter with coal, that at low enough temperatures glass jars of food will explode, that sleds are the best way to transport water in the winter, and that hats are super awesome.

So as for things that have happened... after vacation we have about two weeks off of school for flu quarantine. That was a super productive time period that I used to work through the details of a lot of projects I want to do. After that we had some school and regular stuff. This weekend we decided to do some research in Naryn City and visit some friends. Turns out, Naryn City is wonderful. Everyone is really excited to hear you speak Kyrgyz, nobody seems all that surprised that there's an Indian in Kyrgyzstan, and the streets are clean-ish and well lit. The road to Naryn was long. We decided to go from Talas to Naryn in one day (two six hour drives) which was kind of crazy but fun. Naryn looks a lot like Talas but the mountains are closer and people seem to take more pride in their houses appearance (matching fences and stuff). Through their mountain pass there are random statues of painted women and silver colored statues of various mountain animals perched atop the mountains. One of the most amazing moments was actually driving into Naryn City, you basically drive towards this huge orange clay cliff and as you get close you see a path winding into it. You drive with cliff towering on either side, curve to the right and see the little city appear in front of you. This city itself is between two mountain ranges with a river running near it.

So things are going we right now. We are more than 10 months in to service and that feels good. New volunteers will be coming in the Spring and I have applied to be a trainer for them, so that might be a cool thing in the future. As usual, I miss you all and look forward to seeing you again.

Athena

Here's a picture of my 5th form...

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, we're gonna have some fun.

Does anybody know that song? I have had it on my mind for a few days now. If you haven't guessed Alex and I are on vacation. We are spending Christmas and New Year with our family in Italy/Spain. So far it has been wonderful. It has been amazing to spend time with our families in such a beautiful, developed place. Not to knock Kyrgyzstan; but running water, refrigeration, heat that happens without work on my part, and complicated food has been a really nice break for me.

We have been busy since we have arrived. Mostly, catching up with family and traveling. We first spend a action packed day in Rome and saw most of the major sites in a very leisurely manner. It was really nice being there in December without crowds. My absolute favorite site was the Sistine Chapel, absolutely amazing. It made me cry. We've also visited Parma which is a wonderful place to eat. I mean, they invented parmigian cheese and prosciutto. Also, you can buy a great bottle of wine for 3 Euro. Today we went to Florence which is also amazing. I feel like I should generally be telling you more about these places but, I think I'm still taking it all in. I guess the things making me happy are my family, the Sistine Chapel, cheese, and red wine. Thanks Italy! Here's a little bit more detail in the form of images.

http://www.facebook.com/media/albums/?id=7606386