a "quick" update

Warning: This blog is going to contain more details about what I have been up to over the past few weeks.

1. Culture Day:
Culture Day is exactly what it sounds like, a day of Kyrgyz Culture. For training, all of the volunteers are split up into different villages. On Culture Day, each village arrived to a field in front of the school in my village with a “cultural skit” prepared. My village re-enacted a Turkish wedding; another town re-enacted the ceremony for a baby’s first steps. One town re-enacted the ceremony for the first time a baby is put in the craddle. Others portrayed both Russian and Kyrgyz wedding rituals. Etc, and so forth.
To start the day off, we all got together and built a yurt. I had been told that yurt building was a community effort. But it wasn’t until I saw how many people were necessary just to old the structure together in the beginning that I fully began to understand all the energy that goes into building a yurt. I do not even know how to go about beginning to explain yurt buildingover the internet. Maybe if you google it you can find more information.
My host aunt made 40 kg of plov plus tomatoe & cucumber salad to feed all of the trainees and their host families. After all of the skits and lunch, my host cousin and myself started a giant turkish dancing party which quickly turned into classic american tunes from the 80s and 90s. Overall, it was a very exciting day and the first time all of us were able to hang out with out having some form of training envloved.

2. Site Placement & Site Visit:
Site placement was the “ceremony” that took place a few weeks ago at which point all of the volunteers We walked into training the Wednesday of our site announcement to find a giant map of Kyrgyzstan drawn on the cement. As we got our placements, we had to stand on our part of the map. It was a very entertaining process filled with much excitement and anticipation. I really enjoyed getting to visualize the distance between myself and my new friends, as well as who would be closest to me. My site partner used to be a pastry chef and has already promised to teach me how to make mozzerella cheese. I think we will get a long just fine after that.
My new family is all over the place. My host mom is from the Caucus, dad is Uigur (part of China), brother-in-law is Tartar… In my house there lives a mother, a father, a sister, her husband and child, a brother and his son AND NOW me. I joke that I will get to live with every minority in Kyrgyzstan and never have the full on experience of living with an actual Kyrgyz family. I am really looking forward to living with them. They have been a training family for years, which means they understand the “odd” things about Americans.

3. My Permanent NGO
My new NGO is amazing. It is called “Delight and Consolation.” I have no idea how to sum it up other than saying it works in various areas of welfare. The NGO started with a Dairy Farm which now pays the salary of 8 workers. The NGO is run by a Director (who was schooled in partially in Denmark), an accountant, a social worker, and another lady who runs all the farm business. They have started Self Help Groups in Kant, some of which down as a mini microfiancing group. They work with pensioners and other people who cannot make enough money to live above the poverty line. They started a chicken breding group to help generate income for the adults and pensioners struggling to survive. People get chickens and sell the eggs/meat for more money. Each year a certain percentage of eggs and baby chickens are given to the NGO to be redistibuted to new families. For the children of these families, they have started life skills training programs, sports programs and health education classes to help keep them off the streets. Everyone keeps a long of their daily activities which is turned into the director at least once a month and the director writes a report to fianancers at the end of each year. The organization is incredibly organized from what I can tell so far. I am very excited about getting to work with them.

4. NGO Practicum Projects:
For our community project, my ngo helped organize a clean-up of the NGO’s facilities. We having been using the building for Peace Corps training and were originally going to have a Field Day there back at the beginning of August. The best part, after the crazy Americans took to the bushes with the hos and axes, and after the trash had been piled up, out came the matches. In Kyrgyzstan fashion, all of the trash and rubbish was burned at the end of the event. Several of the PC Volunteers were taken aback because they thought it was a safety and health risk to burn everything.
Our NGO had asked us (the three of us helping out there during training) to put on a flag football tournament. We will start the morning by teaching the locals how to play flag football. It will be very interesting since none of us have extremely amazing Russian. We have decided to just have several small 15-20 minute games so that everyone will get a chance to play. And for those of use who are less sporty, we will have field day games inbetween each event. I am very excited. Several of the volunteers have said they will come so it might turn into a rather BIG event.