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