Haircutting Party and May Day, Ura!

This past Friday night we cut the hair of Erenzhin, the three year old son of Namdolmaa, according to local traditions. The party was kind of similar to weddings I have attended in the states. We rented out a hall, complete with catering and local pop music stars. The total cost was significant, something around $3000. Preparations for the festivities involved buying prizes from Mongolia, renting the hall, organizing the food and balloons, hand delivering invitations to 80 relatives in the city, deciding on the guest list and making sure nobody was forgotten, and making about 700 dumplings the night before. I helped out mostly with the dumplings and childcare while Namdolmaa and Muslim (her husband) ran around town trying to accomplish all of this.

I spent the day of the party out at Tyotya (auntie) Mendi’s house, in the far East end of Kyzyl. Тетя Mendi is my new Tuvan language buddy--basically a lady I am paying a couple thousand rubles to speak only Tuvan to me. I try to visit her every day, although it takes a while to get to her house so I haven’t been going every single day. It’s a nice change from my city life to visit the sector of private, stand alone houses where she lives. I have actually slept there a couple times lately--we had lots of extra people in our apartment due to the haircut party (out of town relatives) and was struck by the quietness. I am also going to be helping to plant the big garden in her yard pretty soon. I will take some pictures and put them up soon (as soon as we get to the point in our relationship when it wouldn’t be awkward) to show what a typical Siberian stand alone house (частный дом) looks like.

My presence is also supposed to be therapy for Tyotya Mendi, whose husband died suddenly back in March (I mentioned it a while ago). Apparently she’s been just crying nonstop since then and talking with a foreigner is supposed to be interesting to help pull her out of her depression. I feel a little weird about this, because it’s a pretty personal part of somebody’s life to get involved in. But Tyotya Mendi seems authentically interested in me, and like a pretty nice and sweet woman. I hope that we will be able to help each other this month…

Anyways--I was over at Tyotya Mendi’s house before the party, and then we went to the party together. One the way we stopped at a dormitory where Tyotya Mendi’s friend works as the caretaker and lets her take free showers (private houses don’t have running water usually). Lo and Behold, the friend of tyotya Mendi was also the mother of one of my students! It was pretty funny to walk into a dormitory with a lady I barely knew and walk into the kitchen of one of my students. The student, Dorzhatma and I had tea while Tyotya Mendi took a shower and I got a full tour of the dormitory. Apparently one of the rooms is occupied by the famous Kezhik--a popular heartthrob singer of the Republic. Once again, I was surprised by the connectedness of the Tuvan Republic… everybody knows everybody here! And the look on my student’s face when I walked into their kitchen was priceless J

Then we set out for the party. Relatives arrived slowly, but eventually all the tables were full. Altogether there were 85 or so guests--of all ages. Lots of children, who seemed to relax and have fun more quickly than the adult guests. At the front of the hall Muslim, Namdolmaa and Erenzhin sat at a raised table next to the artists. There were very, very many grandiose, elaborate, sincere speeches--every guest was supposed to make one. The soundboard people were super-ready with dramatic sound effects to accentuate specific moments of the party with trumpet fanfares, drum rolls and all sorts of little touches to add to the drama.

I sat at a table at first with the elders, but then there wasn’t enough room and they moved to a table at the front of the room and I stayed with Tyotya Mendi and Sveta (a cousin of Namdolmaa) and their children and friends. We drank wine and cognac. The cognac was pretty rough, and I quickly remembered how much I don’t like drinking cognac. There were lots of Russian salads, smoked salmon (yippee), caviar on buttered toast (gross!), fruit, bread, vegetable salads, and then a popular dish here which is a hamburger patty with a fried egg on top, with a side of mashed potatoes. It was all really tasty, although I would have been more excited if Tyotya Mendi didn’t feed me pelmeni earlier in the day. But people in Siberia love to feed you--it’s really kind of charming, although sometimes it can be frustrating.

The haircutting began with another big soundboard flourish (the biggest yet) and Erenzhin was put in front of the crowd standing on a chair with a special silk satchel on his shoulders. The satchel had deep pockets on either side of him--front and behind. His parents stood close by, holding the boy tightly. The oldest and most respected uncle (actually a stand in for another uncle who had gone to a sanitarium in Abakan) gave a long speech and then cut the first locks and put them in the back pocket of Erenzhin’s satchel. Then he put an envelope stuffed with money in the front pocket and everybody smiled while the sound people made another big flourish of synthesized music.

This process went on through all the relatives. Aware that I was going to be asked to give a speech, I prepared a speech in Tuva (with the help of Tyotya Mendi) and read it slowly, with plenty of mistakes, but people understood me and clapped loudly. As part of my speech I described the evolution of my friendship with Erenzhin this year and how he has been such a good teacher for me. I also invited him to come live with my family in America for a year later on, and I can’t help but wonder what that will be like if it acutally happens. It will be awesome if it does, I think--I can’t imagine what kind of a man this little boy I know so well will grow into, but I have a lot of faith, based on knowing his parents and family, that he will be a good person. Anyways… could make for a very interesting year in my life down the road aways… I’ll try to put my speech up here in translation sometime soon.

I was somewhat surprised that Erenzhin didn’t actually lose much hair at the party. Most people just took small snips and he came out looking a little ragged, but still with most of his hair. I guess he will get a proper haircut later in the month, but his parents are trying to limit the stress the child experiences. People in Tuva have a really unique relationship to haircuts. One thing I was surprised to see before the ceremony was Erenzhin’s father consulting a pocket Buddhist calendar that lists good days to get your hair cut in 2010. This reminded me of a similar calendar I saw in Buryatia last summer. Really interesting. Also, the biggest insult you can give a Tuvan man is to grab his ponytail (if he has one). This tradition goes back to the Mongol years at least.. And women seems similarly concerned about their hair. Some of my female students have written really insightful essays this year about the feelings of stress they felt when their hair was cut at age three (traditionally it happens for girls as well). And many many Tuvan women seem to never cut their hair (after the three year old party), at least not before marriage/children. Instead it runs in thick single or double braids down past their waist. There also seems to be some stigma attached to women who die their hair other colors. In talking to people, in friends and acquaintances, it seems to happen usually after a trauma or life changing event of sort--maybe the loss of a child, maybe a rape. Interesting, really. I’m very intrigued by the Tuvan relationship to hair. And I have to say that I’m somewhat conforming to these ideas as well--I haven’t cut my hair since last summer, and I like it that way. Here my hair seems connected to my identity, and trying to do anything to change that would be like trying to change who I am! Maybe I’m going kind of spring crazy or something…

The party then really got going, as the tables finished their first or second bottle of hard liquor and the dancing started up. Dancing was pretty fun. The sound board people even played “Rock around the Clock” specifically for me--as well as many of my favorite techno songs from the minibus and the singer who was there did a little throat singing too. One thing I liked about the party was that the ages seemed to mix together very freely. Also, it was nice to see the whole family clan together at once. I was surprised how many people I knew--people who had at one time or another this year stopped through the apartment and said hello. I felt pretty comfortable at this party for that reason, though I was definitely still a little bit on the outside. But I’ve gotten used to those feelings, and they don’t bother me as much as it did when I first got here; I guess I’ve made my peace with being an ethnic and cultural minority, and come to appreciate the ways in which it’s pretty cool as well.

As people started to leave, I was invited to the elders table where the grannies of the family poured me several too many shots of vodka and started scheming about which nephew would make an ideal husband for me. The respected males of the family gave me a taste of the sheeps’ rump (there was boiled sheep as well), which is the fattiest and tastiest part of the sheep, and always goes to the most respected man of the family. They told me that you can tell in a man is kind of not, by whether he shares any of the rump meat. Then they explained to me the theory of the Tuvan family--how it was like a clan, everybody sticking together and helping each other. It was pretty enjoyable, all in all. I always enjoy talking with older people.

Then we ate cake, and started to look for taxis home. We waited on the street for a while, used the outhouse in the street for the reception hall (there weren’t toilets) and eventually I went to Tyotya Mendi’s place to sleep because all the out of town relatives were crashing at our place. I was glad to get to sleep. Even happier to wake up the next morning, take the 15 bus back home and get a shower and clean clothes, and a cup of hot coffee from our Turkish coffee pot.

Then I got a phone call from the student who I had surprised in her kitchen the day before, inviting me to attend May day celebrations with her. I shrugged off my hangover and met her at the park, where I was immediately shocked by the huge crowd of people. We paid the 5 ruble entrance fee and made our way deeper into the park then I’ve ever been before to the stadium for “Huresh”--Tuvan wrestling. The student managed to talk us in for free, because she works part time as a journalist, and we found seats on the steep wooden bleachers.

The ceremonial pageant to start the wrestling was already beginning, with enormous wrestlers in blue and red underwear and embroidered waistcoats stretching out and hopping around at the end of the stadium. In the center there was a patriotic reenactment of how the partisans joined the independent country of Tannu-Tuva to the Soviet Union during World War II (Victory day and the 65th anniversary of the war’s conclusion is coming up in a week). Then there was a parade around the stadium with camels (!!) and carts covered in patriotic slogans from the Tuvan ASSR and people dressed in old Red Army uniforms. Later Namdolmaa told me that it was actually her Uncle Alyosha who designed and directed the whole pageant. It was neat.

Then the wrestling began, and it was cool, although I had more fun watching wrestling in the villages of Buryatia last summer. Here the wrestlers were far away and there were three or four matches going on at once. It was harder to keep track of everything! The judges were wearing the Red army uniforms, which made everything interesting and kind of old-school.

Then the president of the Republic made a speech and so did the oldest veteran of World War II, an elderly Tuvan babushka who left after the ceremony to fly to Moscow to take place in the all-Russia parade commemorating the war next year. Apparently this lady is some sort of grandma of Namdolmaa’s as well. Tuvan Republic is really just one big family… My student-journalist friend was a lot of fun, and I had fun with her friends. Then we went out to the park to get some shashlik (grilled meat) at what was essentially a big, all-city barbeque. We ran into lots of other students and eventually got tired and went home. It was a fun day; a lot of excitement in a short period of time.

I have spent the last two days since then resting. I taught some private English lessons today; realizing how much I’ve enjoyed working with different high-schoolers in Kyzyl this year, how I’m going to miss them pretty soon. I have hopes that one might be able to study in a US university, but I know it’s a long shot. People of all ages are pretty cool, and I really value the ones I have gotten to know this year.

I guess one more interesting thing happened, which is that I saved a stray kitten from some hungry dogs and then spent a couple hours trying to find it a home. Eventually I couldn’t and my phone battery died. I abandoned the kitten inside the Philharmonic Hall ticket office, hoping that the ticket seller or someone would take pity on it (feeling a little like I was abandoning baby Moses or something). Then when I got home and charged my phone, I found out my librarian friend wanted to take the kitten and went back to look for it; but it had somehow disappeared. I guess it was a little tragic, but also the kitten had some nasty little bugs, and I was kind of worried about my librarian friend getting bugs in her house! It was an interesting moment for me, probing the feelings that people in Tuva have for stray animals. Also, Namdolmaa thought it was pretty funny when I explained in the US that we have orphanages for homeless animals. I don’t know which system is better, though. Just different.

The other thing that has happened is that Erenzhin has gotten a place in Kindergarten here, which is seriously hard to do and was only possible through the interference of powerful relatives and some well placed bribes. So the boy is moving in with us permanently! Which should be a lot of fun, but also means that home will be a little more interesting (read: less restful). I think I am up to it however; the street is warming up and getting nice, and I think I’ll be too busy to notice much anyways, plus it’s awesome that he can finally live with his mom and sister--that sort of separation is hard on a little kid.

So that’s pretty much what’s up in Kyzyl. I’ll try to get some pictures from the weekend up soon. This week is plagued with holidays at both ends--we only work three days, and then only four next week. Other Siberian fulbrighters are coming next weekend, which should be a bit of a whirlwind, but kind of fun. Anyways. Tomorrow my third years and I are going on a picnic too, which should be great. Now that spring is here, I’m all about canceling class to stroll around town with my students! And practice our English, of course J

That’s all for now. Lots of love from Kyzyl,
Riley