A Christmas Message

Turkmenebat city is exactly as you might picture a post-soviet city—lots of dilapidated cinder block apartment buildings in rows. Large statues of the former president (whom renamed himself “Turkmenbashi,” which means Lord of the Turkmen) are on many corners.

Our new host family lives on the outskirts of the city, which gives us the benefit of having a small garden with two cows, a sheep, and twenty chickens. Our host family is very loving and welcoming—thank you so much for your prayers about this! We live with an older retired couple, and their daughter-in-law whom is 30. Miral (the daughter-in-law) has a son and a daughter ages 6 and 7. The kids are great, and it is fun to have them around. We feel like we are living with our grandparents, which is endearing, and Miral and I have enjoyed getting to know one another and cooking together, etc. We have an outhouse and a bathing room separate from the house. The bathing room is thankfully heated by a gas stove so that bucket baths and hand-washing clothes in the cold winter are not bad. I often think of my grandmother's stories of having to use the outhouse at night in the middle of the Nebraska winter :^). I really like our home—it is simple and cozy. For some reason it reminds me of how life might have been in the US in the 192 and 30s (this is solely based on movies, since I wasn’t living at the time *lol*).
The winter is getting colder here, but snow hasn’t arrived yet. It doesn’t usually snow a lot here because we are in the desert, so there is generally very little precipitation of any kind. The ground is already frozen, however. Last winter was exception, and the region received a tremendous amount of snow, and temps dropped to 20 below for two full weeks—so we’ll see how this winter goes:^).

Joshua and I have enjoyed cooking for ourselves and trying to be creative with the foods that we can find at the bazaar here. Vegetables are still available, and we’ve heard rumor that carrots, onions, potatoes, and squash are available throughout the winter. We’ve also heard that apples and mandarins might be available for a good part of the winter (so we might have fruit and veggies this winter afterall)! Many Turkmen families can vegetables and fruit in the summer to hold them over for the winter—we got here too late to do that this year, but we will have to do it next year. Whole-grain flour or bread is not available, but we discovered that the food that Turkmen give to the chickens is actually what is left after they process the wheat into white flour—it is the wheat germ! The humans are eating the white nutritionally-depleted flour, while the chickens get all the nutrients! Upon this discovery, we bought some chicken food, cleaned it, and we have started mixing the chicken food with a little flour in our baked goods *lol* (Don’t tell our host family, they think it tastes great!!! :^). We haven’t decided yet what we should bake for Christmas. We had plans to get together with other volunteers for Christmas day, but the T-stan Peace Corps staff put the word out that we were not allowed to miss work on Christmas Day (aka. They canceled Christmas). Given that it is a celebration of Christ’s birth, Joshua and I will somehow think of away to celebrate together—but we wish we could celebrate with others.

We miss you all... have a wonderful holiday!!!! Christ is Born!!!