To the Permanent Location

I am writing from the town of Sakar, center of the Sakar Etrap (kind of like a county) in Lebap Velayat (kind of like a state). This town will be my home for the next two years. Peace Corps sends us here, before the end of training, to gather important information about our sites, such as: mailing address (yay! This town has a post office!) and any potential problems (like the fact that m door doesn’t lock because the previous volunteer took the key). I am sitting in my host sister’s room staring blankly because I don’t know where to begin the description. I suppose at the beginning.

This past Wednesday, we found out about the election, and far more historically, our “permanent sites.” When I heard I would be in Lebap Velayat, I was thrilled because I had heard many positive things. Liberal enough for women to wear pants, better food, less gender separation, the current volunteers are cool. I was also happy for selfish reasons, because we got to take an overnight train there, which meant more time traveling with friends and less time isolated with strangers at my permanent site for an entire week.

Then, on Thursday, I met my official counterpart. She is a family doctor at the small health clinic attached to the hospital in town. She is in her late 30’s or early 40’s and has a kind face. Immediately she seemed like she would be easy to work with, an opinion supported by the fact that she is unmarried, a pretty radical thing for a woman. That Thursday was a “counterpart conference” run by Peace Corps so we could meet our colleagues in a controlled environment. We watched a video of a blind person and a sighted person running a race together. Then, I told her, “I am like the blind person because I do not know Turkmenistan well. However, with the state of my grammar, what I really said was: “I no see ‘cause to me Turkmenistan don’t good know.” She put her hand on my knee, looked deep into my eyes and said, “I will help you.” It was probably the sweetest part of the conference The rest was fairly tedious because it was a bilingual conference, which meant that it took at least three times longer than it would have in a single language. Whenever they asked if people had any questions, my counterpart would mutter “no” under her breath. So, rest assured that not just Americans are bored at conferences. In a hurried session at the end, the PC staff reviewed our travel plans with our counterparts.

Those of us in the Lebap velayat were to catch the 5:00 PM train in Ashgabat, which would travel for 14 hours to Turkmenibat, the local capital of Lebap. A have heard so many horror stories about trains in developing countries that I was surprised to find new trains, significantly nicer than AMTRAK. Me had a sleeping car, a small room with two sets of bunk beds. All the volunteers were in all-volunteer cabins and the first part of the journey was very pleasant, chatting and enjoying the train’s gentle, sluggish crawl. The drive to Lebap only takes seven hours. Later, as we began to consider sleep, some very drunk boys knocked on our cabin and proceeded to attempt conversation with us. It wasn’t threatening because there were two men in the cabin, but we got or first real tasted of Lebap Turkmen. The boys were returning from their two years of conscription in the army, and I think they somehow believed they would be able to sleep in our cabin. A policeman also briefly joined us and asked if we had an problems. I think he just wanted to meet the Americans. My host sister here in Lebap asked why people kept smiling at me. I explained that they may not have seen an American.