Traditions Gone Amiss ( a Ms. who?)

So, less serious blog post this week (well, maybe...). I guess things are going pretty okey-dokey here. I had a light week of teaching; wed/thurs off, but they loaded me up with classes next week to make up for it. I've been having fun in the evenings with a group of professionals I am teaching continuing education English to. This group is very mixed levels; some students are almost fluent, some haven't studied English since high school. I am supposed to teach them to translate scientific articles from their field of specialty to/from English, introduce themselves and their articles in English and just generally freshen up their knowledge. The first few classes I was a bit intimidated by this task and the fact that we had no materials or text books... but I've found a rhythm now; I prepare lots of handouts and then quiz them. The students are a pretty fun bunch just to talk to; they were all pretty shocked the first day of class when they announced there would be a native speaker teacher (I got the job because nobody else wanted to do it). However, I have been finding the work really interesting because the students are different from my regular ones. My typical students are very simple folks; they come to the university straight from the villages, and they're preparing to return to the villages as schoolteachers. The professionals I work with in the evenings have mostly studied in other major Siberian cities. Several of them are lawyers and work at the Arbitrary Court. There are also a couple ladies from the Humanitarian Institute. Still others just finished their first college degree and haven't been able to find a job, so they're going back to school. I also have a couple school teachers and scientists. It's really interesting for me, as an outside to the "society" of Kyzyl, to observe the dynamics among the students... there are a couple of middle aged ladies with high-ranking jobs who carry themselves like primodonnas. But in general, I find these professionals to be ideal students. Even though I originally thought my task was somewhat impossible, we are making progress. Hopefully it will be enough!

Other interesting things this week were that I found out a little more about the history of women in pre-Soviet Tuva (before 1944). Somehow I managed not to entirely realize this before, but the traditional role of the woman in Tuvan culture is pretty restricted (I had a lot of the pieces but I just finally put them together). An old soviet text book I have about the history of Tuva says that “The implementation of the rights of the Tuvan woman granted under the Tuvan Constitution required a relentless campaign against many old customs which had been in existence for centuries. These included bride price and the treatment of women as property, a number of taboos for women with regard to their husband’s older relatives and parents, cases of polygamy, levirate, and the arrangement of marriage between children under age.” I also have had some good talks with my students lately about traditional ideas about women and respecting people older than you. Some of the students are pretty frustrated with the way that older people in Kyzyl feel entitled to randomly shout/verbally abuse younger people on the street. I see it all the time in the buses, when it's very common for old (women especially) to yell at young people to get up and give them their seat (no matter exactly the age of the "old" woman, or how tired the young person may be). Now, not to be confusing; in general I approve very much of respecting ones' elders and I think my students do too. But the deal here that we were talking about was when people abuse the privilege. I guess they do that because the law of age is one of the laws people respect here, and it's a way for a person to feel like they have some power.

Anyways, another thing I talked about with the students was the fact that people get pregnant really early in Tuva. Out of my students about 30% have children already and/or are married. Most of the students are a couple years younger than me; 17-19 years old. Apparently the age for getting pregnant has dropped sharply in the years since Perestroika and its beginning to approach the way things were in the time before the Tuvan Republic joined the USSR. Back in the 1950s and earlier, stretching back to the Chinese rule, the Mongol period, and antiquity, it was normal for a girl of 15 to have a baby, and many marriages were arranged. I guess the traditional role of women is more similar to what I saw last year of traditional Chinese gender roles in my Chinese Cinema course. I'm not sure if any marriages are arranged today; it seems to me that most of these pregnancies are unplanned and occur either when students leave home to study in the university--they don't know what to do with their new freedom or much about birth control. I have also heard of schoolgirls getting pregnant, as young as thirteen. One thing that differentiates these pregnancies from teenage pregnancies in the US is that these students usually stay in school, taking just a few weeks off from school right around the time of the birth. There doesn't seem to be the negative stigma here that I always understood there to be at home. For some people, the practical solution in these instances is to give the child to their parents to raise; this is pretty popular and widely practiced in Tuva. In fact, I've had people here joke that if I find a Tuvan husband, the benefit is that I can give my kids to his parents to raise. For me, this seems exceedingly strange. I can't imagine having a kid then having someone else raise it; but yet, again, it's an example of how extended family plays a big role here.

Joking to me that I should find a Tuvan husband is pretty common; in fact, pretty much every woman I meet here suggests that I find a Tuvan husband. However, like most humorous things I believe that this suggestion is funny because of the dark side (it's the old tragi-comedy routine). According to the gossip of the women, Tuvan men are chronically unfaithful, STDs are running wild in the community, plus they are very prone to early death due to alcohol and violence. A very large number of my students' families are without fathers. It's gotten to the point where I hesitate to discuss parents in classroom situations; because I can be sure that one or more students will have to respond to a question "Well, I haven't got a father..."

It all sounds grim at first glance, but from what I can tell Tuvan men are a pretty happy bunch. They have a really good rapport with each other; whenever they meet a guy they know they stop whatever they're doing to shake hands with him (women are excluded from this). They wear tight jeans, black coats, and black beanies and sort of strut down the street. They love to sneak up behind girls and scare them, shouting "Whoopeee!" or something similar. The male students I teach are generally pretty lazy compared to the females, but some are very charismatic. I guess it's hard for me to get my head around how men in Tuva are treaty like a precious commodity and women are not cherished in the same way. Even in my home stay I see this; the little boy is doted upon. The girl is told she's not worth so much, that's she's ugly and should study more. Sometimes the dad teases the little boy that the sister and Namdolmaa belong to him and they pretend to fight over the women. I just sit there in baffled bemusement and watch this whole performance. I guess I feel like really an outsider sometimes, but I'm grateful to the family for allowing me to share in their culture. Generally the visits of the family from the countryside are a little bewildering for me; I feel somewhat like a Martian from planet America. And it's a big realization that equality for women is a rare thing in history. And what does "equality" really mean after all; can't men and women be separate things, different but both good and necessary?

I guess it will be interesting to see how/if gender roles in Tuva change in the future. In some ways I feel like Alaska and Tuva are very similar (climate, isolation, etc). But in other ways they're very different--Alaska women pride themselves on being independent, whereas here some women I've talked to pride themselves on being dependent. And, as always, there's a dialogue between Russian and Tuvan cultures going on at the same time. I see this dialogue happening most clearly in the realm of fashion. Girl's fashion here, especially for ladies in my age bracket, is really souped up to the nines. I can't help but remember a term from my Gender Studies' classes in St. Petersburg; the "gender display." This term was used by a gender studies specialist lecturing us about "Women Under the Soviet Union" to describe the extent to which women had to compensate for their lower economic status by being extra sexy to get a good husband and ensure their future economic flourishing. If anything, the "sexiness" level of women's fashion here is even higher than I have encountered in Western Russia, where it's normal to meet women in more European style clothe--like sneakers (although very fashionable sneakers). Here the women have a kind of cult fashion; certain trends are repeated over and over throughout the population. For example; right now bright red, purple, magenta, and blue wool coats are really popular for women. They are everywhere. The same way, there seem to be just a couple styles of hat that everybody wears. It certainly is an eye-opener for me. Alaskans are known for their casual dress. Russia is living proof that people can live in cold, remote places and still think about fashion.

On that note, I think I'll call it a week. Spring is still waiting somewhere around the corner here; word on the street is that it won't warm up until mid April, but I have noticed little signs of progress that mean the thaw is on the way. The snow banks are already starting to melt. The sidewalks melt a little during the day and then ice over into slippery runways. People are a lot more perky and most have switched from their heavy winter coat to a spring one (most people here with even a little bit of money have at least three coats!). I have switched too; but my wool coat is the wrong style, so I've been getting a little more attention than usual. In general, attention in Kyzyl is a bad thing, so I might try to find a cheap spring jacket so I can at least blend a little more. Or maybe just buy a goofy hat like the locals wear! However, this might compromise my American identity, so perhaps I'll just be stars and stripes forever, proud of who I am.

Lots of love you guys. Peace,
Riley