Friday, October 2, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Turkmen Village Party
Hello family and friends! We apologize for the delay in our postings. We are no longer able to access the blogger website at the internet cafe in our city, so we can only post on the rare occasions when we are in the capital.
We are on our way to Nepal for our first vacation since we arrived in Turkmenistan exactly one year ago! We are looking forward to the break and a chance to be among mountains and wild rivers again :^). The big news in Peace Corps Turkmenistan is that a new group of volunteers will not be arriving today, as was planned. The Turkmen government has denied visas to the incoming group. Most likely due to political reasons outside of our control. We are pretty sure that we will be allowed to serve the remainder of our term, but we will keep you posted.
Joshua and I are doing well. We will try to post a video of a recent Turkmen party we attended in a village nearby our city. The internet here is slow, so the video upload may not work.
We are on our way to Nepal for our first vacation since we arrived in Turkmenistan exactly one year ago! We are looking forward to the break and a chance to be among mountains and wild rivers again :^). The big news in Peace Corps Turkmenistan is that a new group of volunteers will not be arriving today, as was planned. The Turkmen government has denied visas to the incoming group. Most likely due to political reasons outside of our control. We are pretty sure that we will be allowed to serve the remainder of our term, but we will keep you posted.
Joshua and I are doing well. We will try to post a video of a recent Turkmen party we attended in a village nearby our city. The internet here is slow, so the video upload may not work.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Pics from our neighborhood health club
... and one picture picnicking beside the canal that runs near our apartment.
A summer update...
Our summer has passed relatively quickly so far. Work has been busier because we are teaching health lessons at summer camps and we are working on a diarrheal dehydration prevention intervention. The focus of the intervention is about Oral Rehydration Therapy, a simple sugar and salt drink that can help prevent severe dehydration among young children whom are at risk of death from dehydration due to diarrheal fluid loss. IF the education intervention is successful, we are hoping to expand the project.
In our last blog entry I mentioned our neighborhood health club. I posted a picture of Joshua and the club kids holding empty water bottles. The kids drew faces, arms, and legs on the water bottles and [after Joshua and I poked holes in the appropriate places], we used the bottles to teach about how the body loses fluid and how we need to replace it. The activity club has been a great way to get to know the kids and parents in our apartment building. Plus, it gives us a chance to teach about basic health.
Last weekend we took a break from our regular schedules for a brief trip with a few other Peace Corps volunteers to one of the only places of natural beauty that exists in Turkmenistan. The nature reserve is called Kugitang, and it boasts and impressive set of incredibly preserved dinosaur prints found on a limestone slab no a hillside. The footprints are remarkable. They were verified as authentic by scientist in the 1980’s. Four-hundred dinosaur footprints are found on the limestone slab, the largest with a diameter of 2.5 feet! The slab is thought to have once been the bottom of a shallow lake that was a common crossing for dinosaur herds. Scientists theorize that a local eruption encased the footsteps in lava that later uplifted and slowly eroded until the footsteps were visible again. The footsteps date back to the Jurassic period.
An interesting human-altered feature in the park is a cave covered in small pieces of fabric that hang from the ceiling like stalagmites (or is it stalactites?). Nationals who visit the cave make a wish and throw a piece of torn fabric with a mixture of clay and water to the ceiling. The cave is called “40 girls,” named after a legend in which 40 girls were facing capture by bandits and prayed that they would be protected. The legend goes that God opened up the cave to allow a safe-haven for the girls.
Joshua and I were easily impressed by the site of steep canyon walls, clear mountain creeks, and green vegetation in the reserve. Nine months in a flat, dusty desert makes all natural beauty look other-worldly. The air was cool and fresh so that we slept better than we have since the weather started breaking 100 every day at our site.
It was not easy getting to the nature reserve… entry to the area, like many in Turkmenistan, is restricted by the government. We waited for a month for visas that allowed us to enter the region. It was an 8-hour drive on rough roads through the vast, empty desert, with multiple government check points where we had to wait because the check-point officers were confused by our foreign visas (they don’t get many tourists in Turkmenistan). Along the way we would occasionally pass the crumbling ruins of another fort of the ancient Silk Road—I let my imagination wander to what this place must have been like 150 years ago. The trip was well the trouble of getting to Kugitan-- it was rejuvenating fuel for the soul.
This weekend we are in the capital again helping the Peace Corps physician teach a cooking and nutrition class for other volunteers. Because of the traditional diet of fatty meat and bread here, it is difficult for volunteers living with host families to get adequate nutrition. The training is to teach simple nutritious meals the volunteers can cook for themselves. All cooking here is completely from scratch, so many volunteers are learning how to cook this way for the first time. We helped teach the same session last month and it was a lot of fun.
Thanks for staying posted on our lives. We are so grateful for your thoughts and prayers. We would love to hear from you. We will not be back to the capital city again until the end of August, so it will be some time before we can post another blog entry.
All the best, Rebekah and Joshua
In our last blog entry I mentioned our neighborhood health club. I posted a picture of Joshua and the club kids holding empty water bottles. The kids drew faces, arms, and legs on the water bottles and [after Joshua and I poked holes in the appropriate places], we used the bottles to teach about how the body loses fluid and how we need to replace it. The activity club has been a great way to get to know the kids and parents in our apartment building. Plus, it gives us a chance to teach about basic health.
Last weekend we took a break from our regular schedules for a brief trip with a few other Peace Corps volunteers to one of the only places of natural beauty that exists in Turkmenistan. The nature reserve is called Kugitang, and it boasts and impressive set of incredibly preserved dinosaur prints found on a limestone slab no a hillside. The footprints are remarkable. They were verified as authentic by scientist in the 1980’s. Four-hundred dinosaur footprints are found on the limestone slab, the largest with a diameter of 2.5 feet! The slab is thought to have once been the bottom of a shallow lake that was a common crossing for dinosaur herds. Scientists theorize that a local eruption encased the footsteps in lava that later uplifted and slowly eroded until the footsteps were visible again. The footsteps date back to the Jurassic period.
An interesting human-altered feature in the park is a cave covered in small pieces of fabric that hang from the ceiling like stalagmites (or is it stalactites?). Nationals who visit the cave make a wish and throw a piece of torn fabric with a mixture of clay and water to the ceiling. The cave is called “40 girls,” named after a legend in which 40 girls were facing capture by bandits and prayed that they would be protected. The legend goes that God opened up the cave to allow a safe-haven for the girls.
Joshua and I were easily impressed by the site of steep canyon walls, clear mountain creeks, and green vegetation in the reserve. Nine months in a flat, dusty desert makes all natural beauty look other-worldly. The air was cool and fresh so that we slept better than we have since the weather started breaking 100 every day at our site.
It was not easy getting to the nature reserve… entry to the area, like many in Turkmenistan, is restricted by the government. We waited for a month for visas that allowed us to enter the region. It was an 8-hour drive on rough roads through the vast, empty desert, with multiple government check points where we had to wait because the check-point officers were confused by our foreign visas (they don’t get many tourists in Turkmenistan). Along the way we would occasionally pass the crumbling ruins of another fort of the ancient Silk Road—I let my imagination wander to what this place must have been like 150 years ago. The trip was well the trouble of getting to Kugitan-- it was rejuvenating fuel for the soul.
This weekend we are in the capital again helping the Peace Corps physician teach a cooking and nutrition class for other volunteers. Because of the traditional diet of fatty meat and bread here, it is difficult for volunteers living with host families to get adequate nutrition. The training is to teach simple nutritious meals the volunteers can cook for themselves. All cooking here is completely from scratch, so many volunteers are learning how to cook this way for the first time. We helped teach the same session last month and it was a lot of fun.
Thanks for staying posted on our lives. We are so grateful for your thoughts and prayers. We would love to hear from you. We will not be back to the capital city again until the end of August, so it will be some time before we can post another blog entry.
All the best, Rebekah and Joshua
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Joshua's Birthday
We celebrated Joshua's Birthday in style at an annual Fourt of July bash at the US embassy. It was bittersweet because we are also saying goodbye to three fantastic Peace Corps staff members whom have received scholarships to study abroad, and four great Peace Corps volunteers who completed their service in country last week. They will all be missed, and it was an enjoyable way to say goodbye.
Joshua and I have been busy this summer at our clinics and starting a club in our neighborhood. The club has been a lot of fun. We meet every week with the kids in our neighborhood and do a health-related art activity or game. They seem to love it... and we do too :^)
The weather has become much more hot since mid-June. Temps are over 100 almost every day. We find relief from the heat in the cool canal that runs through the park close to our house. It is usually full of neigborhood kids that swim all day now that they do not have school. On hot days after work we swim for awhile as well-- we are grateful to have water in the desert, but we have read that it is at the expense of the Amu Darya, and the Aral Sea which are drying-up as a result of all the heavy irrigation in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It is a complex issue-- and very concerning environmentally. The canal is as thick as chocolate milk with silt from the desert--- we usually look pretty dirty when we get done swimming (we never go in above our chest :^)).
For Joshua's birthday I bought a couple of old tire tubes and we have even gone tubing down our canal *lol*. When you live in a flat desert-wasteland, you find ways to make life a little fun. Our neigborhood kids think it is pretty funny... they informed us that "tubes are for little kids who don't know how to swim." We told them that they make fun toys for "old people" too :^)
We miss you all so much! Sorry for the less frequent posting, we know longer have access to our blog from our city, so we can only post new entries when we are visiting the the Peace Corps office in the capital.
Joshua and I have been busy this summer at our clinics and starting a club in our neighborhood. The club has been a lot of fun. We meet every week with the kids in our neighborhood and do a health-related art activity or game. They seem to love it... and we do too :^)
The weather has become much more hot since mid-June. Temps are over 100 almost every day. We find relief from the heat in the cool canal that runs through the park close to our house. It is usually full of neigborhood kids that swim all day now that they do not have school. On hot days after work we swim for awhile as well-- we are grateful to have water in the desert, but we have read that it is at the expense of the Amu Darya, and the Aral Sea which are drying-up as a result of all the heavy irrigation in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. It is a complex issue-- and very concerning environmentally. The canal is as thick as chocolate milk with silt from the desert--- we usually look pretty dirty when we get done swimming (we never go in above our chest :^)).
For Joshua's birthday I bought a couple of old tire tubes and we have even gone tubing down our canal *lol*. When you live in a flat desert-wasteland, you find ways to make life a little fun. Our neigborhood kids think it is pretty funny... they informed us that "tubes are for little kids who don't know how to swim." We told them that they make fun toys for "old people" too :^)
We miss you all so much! Sorry for the less frequent posting, we know longer have access to our blog from our city, so we can only post new entries when we are visiting the the Peace Corps office in the capital.
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