Summer Camp Extravaganza

On Friday I returned from a 10 day summer camp extravaganza in the wonderful sea-side town of Turkmenbasy. To give you a sneak-preview of my experience, I did the following during my time there:

Caught a craw-dad with someone else’s shoe.
Celebrated the Fourth of July with delicious veggie burgers and homemade French fries.
Saved an old man’s flotation device from drifting off into the horizon. Mad lifeguard skills!
Slept on the front porch of my friend’s house to take advantage of the sea breeze (ie I looked like a hobo)
Took 1.5 real showers in ten days.
Took a really incredibly slow train overnight there and back during which I answered approximately 3.5 million questions put to me by inquisitive Turkmen.
Learned to cook eggplant.
Made awesome looking crowns (for camper of the day) out of trash.
Danced the cupid shuffle. Repeatedly.
Invented a sport: Bottle Hockey.
Paid only 3000 old manat (20 cents) per Taxi. So cheap!
Walked and walked and walked on the beach.
Swam with snakes.
Had an extravagant sea-weed war.

Ok. Perhaps that list was not a good idea. I feel like I’ve told you the punch line before the joke! Anyway, those were the highlights. Now, let me follow up by saying that Turkmenbashy is a whole different world from Ashgabat. The sea-blown neutral tones of Turkmenbasy were a welcome change from the busy streets and white buildings of Ashgabat. T-bashy fills in three little niches in the hills that line the banks of the Caspian Sea. To get from niche to niche, you flag a taxi and pray as your taxi (inevitably a old, white Lada) attempts to hall you up and over the lip of each niche. Travelling tip: Lean forward. Then, your taxi driver kills the ignition to cost down the other side. Travelling tip 2: Lean backward.

The town is sprawling. Although there are a number of high occupancy apartment complexes, there are many single family houses that climb up the sides of the low mountains. Malory, the volunteer who invited me to teach in Tbasy, lives up toward the top of one of these hills. It is quite picturesque. And yes, I will try to post pictures soon!

As I said, I rode a a very, very slow overnight train to get to Tbashy. I doubt very seriously that the train ever hit 40 miles per hour for the entire 14 hour trip. I was told later that it must go slow or the sand from the Garagum desert that blows on the tracks will derail the train. I was also told that the train is obligated to stop for anyone anywhere in the desert. I don’t know if this one is true but this would account for the innumerable inexplicable stops along the way.

Finally, I arrived and was met at the train station by the smiling faces of Malory and Chase. Megan, the fourth volunteer working this camp, was waiting for us when we arrived at Malory’s house.

Camp began on Monday June 29th and went through July 8th. We soon settled into a routine. I was the first to wake up each morning. My first duty was fetching water from the outside faucet in a metal bucket. J Despite its location, Tbashy has limited clean water and we had to ration while we were there. Hence the 1.5 showers. With water from this bucket, I cooked up either oatmeal or rice pudding and stirred up some Nescafe.

The others trickled into the kitchen and we groggily did last minute planning. We walked down the hill to catch a Taxi from the main street to the language center where Malory works. Around 9, our forty campers, ages 9-14 began to trickle in. Day 1, we divided them up into four teams and they competed throughout the week in an English World Cup. The teams included the US, England, Canada, and Ireland because collectively we knew how to draw these flags from memory. Each volunteer generally worked with one team at a time and the teams rotated. Chase and Megan did activities at the pool and Malory and I stayed at the center.

At the center, we kicked of the day by announcing camper of the day and playing some game we dredged up from our collective childhoods. These included but were not limited to: Mother May I, Charades, and Red Light, Green Light. Then we split the kids by team. Over the 10 days, I taught Yoga, played kickball, did all sorts of relay races, helped organize a paper quilt project, played Bingo, created and held a scavenger hunt, and lost my voice completely.

Ah! And the sport I invented! In T-stan, as in many other countries, drinks such as fanta, coke, sprite, and fizzy lemonade are purchased in one liter plastic bottles. Malory, like many good Turkmen, saved her bottles for buying milk and yogurt. Towards the end of the week, our bouncy ball had deflated and we pondered worriedly what sorts of sports were possible that we hadn’t previously played. And it struck me, bottles + deflated ball = bottle hockey! With the older kids, it was a definite success. Kids, feel free to try this one at home. J

So to sum it up, all of you who have been waiting for the typical Peace Corps experience, there it was.

Now I’m back in Ashgabat. I am spent this past weekend helping my host mom can everything from tomato sauce to cherry liquor, going to a magnificent wedding were again I was required to give a toast, hanging out with my friend Annie who is in town from Lebop (region in T-stan), and looking forward to Thailand!

Yes, that’s right. I’m going to Thailand next weekend. Thailand!

Till next time, I miss you guys and stay cool (literally and figuratively)!