(Warning: Some of this blog post may be inappropriate for readers of a certain, impressionable age... if you are a kid and are reading this, please stop immediately! There's probably something really good right now on the TV!)
Ok, so I am going to talk a little bit about Tyvan culture and the amazing things I have learned in the past two weeks. Since the holidays have begun I have been intensively studying Tyvan. It turns out that Namdolma's first specialty in her training is being a teacher of Tyvan language (it's very Tyvan of her not to have mentioned this; people here are unfailingly humble). Well, we have worked out a deal where now she's teaching me Tyvan in the evenings. I came up with a brilliant plan to accomplish this (Americans, on the other hand are not so humble). In the last frantic days before I left Alaska I bought some basic English textbooks at the local bookstore, so that in case the university had no books at all I would still have something to work with. These textbooks have a good sense of humor, are intelligent, and have lots of pictures (Practical English by Harris/Rowe)--they are the books I would want to learn english from if I were studying English. So, we are using these textbooks; and just translating everything into Tyvan. It's a plan that suits my learning style, which, thanks to my Fulbright training I know is strongly kinesthetic/visual. Anyways, I am rambling, but what I am trying to say is that I'm studying Tyvan using my English textbooks and making much more progress than I was with the Russian-Tyvan dictionary. Big thanks to Namdolma for all her help--I love my host sister a lot.
So we had an interesting discussion tonight about some of the adjectives I am learning. The adjective for "beautiful" or "pretty" is "charash" in Tyvan (чараш), but it is strictly forbidden to say that a child is beautiful for fear that such positive attention will attract the attention of bad spirits and devils who will come and plague the child. So traditional Tyvans actually go around telling people their children are "choodek," or ugly (чудек). But... that said... some Tyvans are less traditional, and if you tell them your children are ugly, they'll take offense. So either you can tell them the kids are ugly, and qualify it with an assurance that you are just trying to keep the devils away, or else use another word, "chaptanchig" (чаптанчыг), which means that the kids are good-looking, but not so good looking that they would attract negative attention.
However, in real life situations, it can work out differently. For example, if you tell the two year old that lives with me that he is ugly, he will say, "No! I am pretty!" It all depends on individuals, I guess...
Speaking of the two year old, I should mention him a bit, because he has been a huge part of my last two weeks. I guess our interactions were pretty much what you might imagine between a self-confident two year old Tyvan, and the strange American auntie who sleeps on the sheep mattress in the corner of his living room.... bizarre is the best word I guess (but I mean it positively). I am basically on his level in Tyvan language... the family took great glee in making us both count things, and seeing who would made the least mistakes. I'm pleased to report that usually did better; but of course, I have 20 years and a college degree on the little sucker. So I'm not that pleased.
The two-year old and I have lots of games that have no words. This includes a game where we pretend to puke something up in our hands and throw it at each other, until one of us decides to eat it. He also loves it when I sprinkle water from the sink while I'm doing the dishes on his head. Kids are so easy to communicate with; it's really a joy.
Granted, getting woken up in the middle of the night for two weeks by a screaming baby is less of a joy, but I was really surprised how quickly I developed the ability to sleep through anything, and after the first few days it didn't bother me really. Although I'm not sure how soon I'll rush into parenthood; because the parents actually had to do stuff to make the kid be quiet and go back to sleep, whereas I could just roll over and cover my head with a pillow!
One of the highlights of my holidays was on the second to last day the two-year old was here, when he started to pronounce my name: "Aye-yi!" It was a big surprise. He always came to the door when I came home to flap his little fingers at me; and then suddenly he said my name too! Круто!, as the Russians would say. He just went back to the village where his grandma is, and apparently has not stopped saying my name, but it seems that he's gotten confused. He's telling everyone in the village that there are two "Aye-yi's" at the apartment in Kyzyl; he has decided that my name is the word for "sister," so he's started calling his sister "Aye-yi" too. Anyways; I'm basking in the peace and quiet, but I definitely enjoyed the bustle and company of the holidays.
Ok, finally to the part of this post that is inappropriate and bawdy :-) Ye-haw! Buckle up, and, kids, stop reading!
So, as Namdolma was reviewing my homework tonight, she discovered that I was making a mistake with the word "terek" (tree) and instead writing "tevek." A tevek is apparently a "thing" made of sheep's fur that men play with at the time of Namdam--the Buddhist New Year's. It's hard to put this into words, because it's a traditional herder game and I've never seen it, so I can only repeat the explanation I heard, and probably something is getting lost in translation... But the idea is that it's a ball of fur people kick and throw around. After reading the mistake in my homework, Namdolma related to me the following anecdote:
A woman was standing in her yard doing the wash for her family (many people here wash by hand). Eventually, she came to the end of the dirty clothes, and decided that since she was doing the wash, she might as well do the job right, so she took off her underwear (she was wearing a bathrobe) and washed her underwear too. Then her son came into the yard, playing with his "tevek." He was playing and playing, and threw it in the air, and it landed on the roof of the house.
"Momma, Momma, I've lost my tevek!" he cried, "Can you get it for me?"
The woman climbs up the ladder by the house and looks around for the tevek, forgetting that she has no underwear. The little boy stands at the bottom of the ladder, looking up expectantly.
"It's not here, my son! It's probably on the other side of the roof!" the woman tells the boy.
"No, no, Momma!" he cries, "I can see it right there!"
[Break in the telling of the story, while Namdolma explains to me that what the little boy really sees is the woman's crotch].
The woman, quick on her feet, replies to her son, "No, my son. That is not your tevek. That is daddy's tevek!"
...
Anyways. I repeat this anecdote, though it makes me blush to type it, and Namdolma would most likely not approve, because it shows something I like about Tyvan culture; people here enjoy bawdy jokes (especially, I have found, highly educated, literate, language-loving people). I think it has something to do with growing up in a rural, countryside setting--you can't escape that kind of a background, no matter how much education you have (and you shouldn't try!). My students don't live so sheltered from what most industrialized Americans would consider the "dirty" side of life; poop, copulating sheep, smelly/moldy things, etc. It's all fair game, and the cultural taboos are different (for example, calling a kid "pretty"). Now, this is not to say that people here aren't polite. I feel like much of time people here are extraordinarily polite; considerate of me and my feelings, giving, and eager not to offend. Just, the definition of "low-humor" is different, I guess. It's often the people I most highly esteem who make/tell me such jokes... And I have found that if a person doesn't trust me, they won't ever tell me any thing off-color. It's only the people with whom I have some kind of close relationship; because Tyvans care a lot about how the outside world percieves them, and I'm inescapably a representative of the distant, rich, highly-respected and often-envied world of America. It's really pretty ridiculous sometimes the amount of respect I get; it's a challenge for me to live up to it all!
That's all for tonight! Hope you guys are taking it easy, and remember to remember where you put your tevek.
Peace,
Riley
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