http://russiaprofile.org/blog/58937/, where RussiaProfile has asked to publish it!
Please follow the rest of my blog posts on Russia here:
http://russiaprofile.org/blog/58937/, where RussiaProfile has asked to publish it!
0 Comments
Every morning I wake up to blinding sunlight. The throw blanket I have thrown over the curtain bar (I don’t own curtains) does little to inhibit this deep-sleep-awakening glare. Oh, this occurs anywhere from 4-5 a.m., the time this northern sun decides to start the day. For all my focus on duality and bi-polarity in this grand country, the most obvious example of this is the overshadowing darkness of a winter’s afternoon compared to the explosion of light come summer. Russia has been blessed with extremes, and the trajectory of the sun reminds me of this every day.
My brilliant mornings, days, and nights here are doing their best to erase my memory (not very hard in my case) of the past six dismal months (weather-wise). As I prepare to leave Syktyvkar (in two weeks exactly), I am overwhelmed by the glorious weather, the abundance of May holidays, goodbye parties with students, teachers, and friends, and the anticipation of vacation with my parents and Stephanie. I am bound to only have fond memories of this place. I think Fulbright grant dates need to be changed to December-December, so that when we arrive things can only get better, and when we leave we have a realistic picture in our minds of our experience. Instead of this period of fantastic everything. One of my many reasons to be extraordinarily happy: matadornetwork.com/abroad/blind-in-russia/ Homesickness is not an ailment I often suffer from. In fact, I think the term is all wrong for me. Homelonging is something more appropriate to my condition. No one can accuse me of not missing my family, and cat, and friends, and the conveniences of my home country (sometimes in that order, but not always…). But as a younger traveler, I was always too modern, too global, to think of America as my one true home; how could I be homesick when the whole world was my home!? And as far as my meager memory will let me remember, I haven’t been one to overly dwell on thoughts of home, even when I was thirteen and spent two weeks in Venezuela with a group of strangers, or began spending the summers in Russia. What was there in suburban Maryland that outdid midnight sunlight or visiting a world leader who’d been dead for the past 80 years? That isn’t to say I haven’t had my emotional outbursts and long sobbing phone calls home (Sue Leyshon can tell you all about them), but the mathematical ratio of me living away from home to me desperately craving home looks something like this: Ok, you’ve caught me. I still know absolutely nothing about math. But the point I am trying to illustrate is that I have a healthy constitution against homesickness. And I’ve certainly never been a gung-ho American patriot who narrowly believes that the USA is the only country worth living in. Or at least I thought I wasn’t that type of person.
Now that I’ve reached the sage old age of my mid-twenties, I’m starting to question my self-proclaimed international citizenship. America is starting to look more and more appealing, looming on the horizon of my future, where the nuances of daily conversation are not lost on me, where it is possible to take my car everywhere, where I can easily spend the evening or the holidays with my family, where I don’t have to boil my water to drink it, and where I can find a job based on my actual skills and not only my native ability to string together a fluent English sentence. But somewhere along that line of reasoning, I begin to feel like a failure. Why can’t I overcome all those natural weaknesses bred into me as an American and thoroughly adopt my heartier, cross-cultural persona? Does having been born an American really mean I am only fit to live in America? So I began tallying up what makes life in Russia so different from the life I know at home. Yes, the roads are horrendous here (but Russians take perverse pride in hearing that Russian roads are worse than American roads; it proves their toughness. There is an aphorism here, about Russia’s two biggest troubles: Roads and Fools.) Yes, people drink openly on the streets at all hours of the day, even though it is against the law, but as I am frequently reminded, Russia is a free country. Yes, Russian don’t often smile at strangers or in pictures, their outer demeanor is originally prickly, but that is simply a shell. I have shared uncountable glasses of tea with kind and generous people here. Despite these mostly superficial differences, what Russia is lacking for me are the friends and family that have shaped my personality, even the wanderlust side of me. And that is something, that no matter how devout an expat I resolve to be, I can never replace. **My title comes from a Ragamuffin Band song called "You did not have a home." Beautiful words about a beautiful view of faith. 1) Her eyes are covered in yellow and purple bruises, but they are smiling at me nonetheless. This fruit seller at the local market has won my meager patronage of several vegetables and a few pieces of fruit every week. From the selection of fifteen other fruit vendors apparently selling the same wares for the same price, I am not sure why I returned to this stall more than once. My red peppers usually come a little shriveled and my bananas on the brown side, but this woman listens to me as I slowly pronounce how much of each thing I desire. She ignores the impatient customers behind me who want to butt in and ask their own questions—how much does her dill cost—and waits for me to incorrectly pronounce the word cucumber yet again. She’s excited about my foreignness and eager to know what I think about her native town. She’s smiling at me now with her golden teeth, and I forget to ask what happened to her eyes. 2) I’ve had shoe problems in Russia. Finding shoes (that I like) that fit my size feet. Finding boots that are actually waterproof. Finding shoes for a reasonable price. I had one pair of magically perfect boots, and then the zipper broke. Determined that these boots had made it this far on my Russian journey and should last a bit longer, I donned my extreme-Russian-winter-boots, put the offending boot in one of my many plastic bags and took off to find the closest shoe-repair. There, the expert fixer promptly told me (in Russian, of course) that he could do nothing to fix my boot. Somewhat attitudinal, I asked, “um, why? You fix shoes…” He then explained in detail (I’m assuming) why he was helpless. Not understanding a word he said, I asked why again. “Girl, didn’t you hear me?” he responded incredulously. “I’m a foreigner…” I offered up as an apology. He picks up my boot (for the first time) and suddenly realizes that it is within the realm of his expertise to fix my shoe after all. For fifty rubles I have a new zipper on my boot. I don’t think he chose to fix my shoe because as a foreigner I was suddenly a desirable costumer, I think he felt extreme pity for this girl who sometimes mispronounces the word zipper, which when stressed on a different syllable is also the word for castle. 3) Everyone here has a grandparent with a war story. You think the repetition of these stories would be tiresome or lose their appeal, but it isn’t so. World War II, or as the Russians call it, the Great Patriotic War, left no family untouched. One day I’m in a local museum with two students, who are showing me the irons and toys and tools and banners that filled the lives of their recent ancestors. Nadya, who is tall with blonde hair (the picture of a Russian woman) surprises me by telling me she is Komi. Most Komis I have met fit my picture of a short, brown haired people. As we pass through the hall with pictures of war heroes from this village, in the hushed whisper of a museum, Nadya tells me how her grandfather survived the war to return home and start a family. He was taken prisoner and sent to a camp in Germany. He was experimented on and hurt, and he cried out and cursed in Komi. One of the doctors also spoke Komi, and eventually because of this common language, the doctor would help Nadya’s grandfather escape the camp and return to his native republic. 4) She caught me one day, petting and cooing over the kitties outside of the building entrance. I looked up and caught her gaze, joy in her eyes that someone else was also crazy about her cats. Living in Russia comes with its difficulties, but the greatest problem I’ve faced is separation from my pets at home. Every chance I get, I stop to fondle the cats near my apartment. Eventually I introduced myself to Tamara. She was sitting on the bench outside her flat, one cat on her shoulder and one beside her. She rents out a room in her flat to man from Azerbaijan, she whispers to me. Her daughter lives in Bulgaria with her family, and she hardly gets to see them, she sighs. She’s a pensioner with no husband, who grew up speaking Komi, was forced to switch to Russian and doesn’t know which is her native language. On another day, on my way out of my flat, I pause to scratch the kitties’ chins, and Tamara beckons me into her first-floor apartment. She serves me tea and boiled eggs and tells me about trying to read the Bible. She gave up, she says, but she believes in God more than ever and points to the icon above the cabinets for proof. 5) Sometimes I come into work in a poor mood. Usually on Wednesdays, when the work piles up like a traffic jam, and I anticipate the absenteeism and plagiarism and excuse-isms of my students. At 7:55 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, I was not expecting to enjoy my day. A first year student, who usually peers out at me from behind her dictionary and tries to use sad eyes to get out of reading her sentences aloud, unexpectedly walked up to me and with a shy smile handed me a Kinder candy bar. That gesture changed my entire attitude for the day. And I don’t even think she was trying to bribe me for something. 6) Russia has a lot to offer, but none of her resources rival the daily convenience of the ubiquitous coat check. I remember my first few experiences with this Russian phenomenon several years ago. I was defensive. Why did they want to take my coat? Did I have to pay for it? Was it safe to leave my keys in my pockets? They would really just take my wet outer-clothes for the whole day? I wouldn’t have to lug around these dripping items from class to class? Obviously, I changed my tune quite quickly. The coat check is not a luxury or sign of fine dining, it is an expected and necessary part of Russian life, and something I will sorely miss in America.
7) Russia has this type of metal garages scattered here and there next to roads and houses and piles of trash. Ten years ago when I first came to Russia, I remember sitting on the train chugging through the countryside and seeing whole neighborhoods of these corroded metal shacks. Keep in mind that the majority of Russians live in apartments without basements or attics and share their homes with many relatives. That doesn’t leave much room for storing stuff. But when I saw the windowless cement and metal hovels, I thought the worst. Do people live in these?! Which doesn’t seem like such a far-fetched idea after some of the living situations I’ve witnessed here, but that’s not my point. On my way to work, I walk past a smattering of these metal garages. After the first few snows, hordes of carelessly acrobatic boys started skipping from one structure to the next, jumping over the one foot gaps and seven foot drops with the effortless thoughtlessness only 8-year-old boys know about. In a mothering fashion unfamiliar to me, I worried about these kids and how one false step would send them sliding and head banging to the ground. As the drifts of snow built, I took reassurance that their fall would be softened. But now there is no snow, no safety net or cushion, just the slippery wet surface of spring time, and yet they still jump unaware of my fretful eyes. “European and American women are too arrogant for you? Are you looking for a sweet lady that will be caring and understanding?” asks an advertisement from an international dating site. Websites targeting men looking for international relationships in no way disguise their mission. Assuming that these men have not found American women to be sweet and understanding, the message continues, “Then you came to the right place- here you can find a Russian lady that will love you with all her heart.”
Searching for your wife in a catalogue is an American institution older than baseball or Edison’s light bulb. When our foremothers wrote their personal advertisements in a mail-order bride catalogue, hopped on a cross-country train to meet their mate, and arrived in the gold mining towns of the 1840s without a guarantee of lawful matrimony, they were paving the way for Internet-bred international marriages of the 21st century. Word for word, the female pioneers of the American West and the foreign brides of the dotcom-era present themselves to their male counterparts as traditionally feminine, family-orientated, and modest. In fact, the information suspiciously stays the same. Cooking, cleaning, sewing, and taking care of the family seem to be the norm for every woman. This consistent manner of self-advertisement appears to author Erika Johnson of Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband, “as if there was a rumor circulating that those hobbies garnered a positive response from the audiences they were addressing.” Enter Guy Dominique, audience member. In 2002, Dominique was recently separated from his first wife and began perusing dating sites, looking for women within ten years of his own age. “You have to be reasonable and realistic,” says Dominique. “I looked at thousands of pictures of gorgeous 20 year olds… but I wasn’t interested in getting a daughter. I wanted a wife.” Dominique decided to look online for an international relationship after his coworkers shared stories of their success with “mail order bride” relationships. During the Christmas holidays Dominique, a systems analyst from Eugene, Oregon, started corresponding with Valentina Moroz, a retail employee from eastern Ukraine through Confidentialconnections.com, a now defunct international matchmaking agency. This catalog-bride phenomenon developed in situations where men outnumbered their female counterparts, for example in settling the American West. Frontier men in need of wives would receive pictures of potential spouses from their family and friends. This practice eventually transformed into an agency-based business that consolidated the photographs and information of many women into one catalog. Catalogue brides gained popularity among American men in the 1970s, according to Christine Chun, author of The Mail-Order Bride Industry, because they became dissatisfied with the career-oriented American woman and began searching for more “old-fashioned” females. A successor to Confidentialconnections.com, the Ukraine-based international matchmaking site, UAladys.com, reassures its male users looking for “old world values” that the Ukrainian women they meet will not be concerned with being the leader of the family. “She has much more traditional values and believes that the man's responsibility is to be the main breadwinner,” the About Us section of the website boasts. Not surprisingly, the women featured on this website advertise themselves as domestic goddesses. From the first twenty-five listings on UAladys.com gallery, nineteen of the women voiced their competence at cooking and cleaning, sometimes twice. “I love cooking, making my flat cozy, everything domestic,” writes Elena Z., pictured with her tanned body leaning over the edge of a blue swimming pool, golden necklace dangling. In 1887, Matrimonial News, a San Francisco matchmaking magazine, featured a young widow identified by the number 221 who spoke for her talents as a “first rate housekeeper.” Today, Natalya S. holds up her blonde highlighted hair with her hands, her push-up bra holding up everything else, and adds to the litany of desired household skills: doing laundry, washing dishes, and ironing. Online mail-order bride websites allow the male viewers to maintain a voyeuristic gaze, contained only by the limits of their credit card. To conduct research for her book Dreaming of a Mail-Order Husband, Johnson bought a “Gold” membership for a mail-order bride website that would allow her to purchase the addresses of multiple women off of the site. Johnson writes of the women she viewed on mail-order websites as “voiceless images to be clicked on, evaluated, and placed in shopping carts.” The author continues, “I was surfing through a veritable catalogue of goods. And I mean literally.” Johnson found that she could customize her search, looking for women new to the site, women from certain regions, women with no children, women who had blond hair, etc. The common thread of these smiling, posing ladies was written in the profiles and echoed in the About Us section of each website: women are made to cook and clean for men. What really defines traditional values and why do men value them? Sure, Mad Men is a great show to watch, but who really wants to return to the casserole cooking, secretary abusing society of the 60s? The authors of Goodwife.com do. This website claims to be designed to help educate and inform men seeking foreign brides. In the introduction to the site, the authors state that the type of women they are sick of meeting include those with a “‘me first’ feminist agenda,” and ladies who make their man “take a back seat to her desire for power and control.” And what do the authors of this site suggest to men facing these dire marital prospects? Mail order brides. Guy Dominique says that he tried online dating within American borders, but found the women he talked with to be either too coy or too demanding. Now, sitting at home in their Eugene duplex after seven years of marriage, Valentina, a slender brunette in her mid forties, pipes in that “Russian women are more family oriented. Our responsibility is to cook, and take care of the home.” Dominique adds, “more old-fashioned.” Valentina concludes, “American women are more independent.” What’s critically important, remark the Dominiques, in searching for a foreign soul mate, is honesty. Dominique recognizes that many women looking to marry internationally are living in dire situations and have good reasons to leave their hometown. But the mix-culture relationships that result from international matchmaking agencies often leave the woman feeling deceived, says Dominique. “They want to paint a really pretty picture,” he says, “but don’t realize in America we still have to struggle.” Chun writes in her article that international matchmaking organizations (IMOs) rely on economic and social disparities between the consumer-husband and the potential bride, perpetuating racial and gender stereotypes. The women are marketed as “Pearls of the Orient,” or “Hot Russian Girls,” and the headlines are paired with glamour shots that position the women in typical men’s magazine style photos: bare skin, see-through clothing, and gratuitous cleavage. IMO advertising exploits the “exotic” stereotypes of foreign women, but tempers their beauty with professions of domesticity and traditional values, a combination appealing to men who are self-admittedly tired of “career-oriented western women.” Men from developed countries can afford to buy the women featured on international dating websites (the successor to the mail-order bride catalogue), and the relative wealth of the gentlemen gives the females incentive to leave behind their poorer homelands. Whatever grounds women have gained in equality is lost by these unbalanced unions. In 1999, in response to a Congressional request, the Attorney General in consultation with the office of Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) conducted a study of International Matchmaking Organizations. The INS reported that that mail-order bride websites create an uneven “balance of power between the two individuals,” one that is “skewed to empower the male client.” Erika Johnson comments that IMO websites “give the impression that there are literally thousands of beautiful, smiling women who are breathlessly waiting to meet the single man who is surfing alone at his computer, a knight in shining armor who can sweep his bride away to a future of love and economic stability.” According to the INS’s report to Congress, “the mail-order bride transaction is ‘one where the consumer-husband holds all the cards.’ In using these services, the male customer has access to and chooses from a pool of women about whom personal detail and information are provided, while the women are told virtually nothing about the male customer.” The report goes on to contrast the powers of the male and female participants. The male client may be seen as “purchasing a bride” but the woman “has everything to gain from entering into this arrangement and staying in it, no matter what the circumstances.” Maybe some of these men looking for foreign brides have been hurt by past relationships, maybe they are too shy to reach out to women around them, maybe they are desperate for companionship and the easiest way to get it, is to pay for it. By not developing successful relationships with American women—by American standards—these men have failed in their masculine role. They cannot fulfill their traditional position as a provider, a father, or head of the household. Instead of admitting failure, the men of Goodwife.com push the blame on to Western women, citing their assertive personalities and lack of “old-fashioned values” as reasons why they, American men, are still single. The desperation to have companionship, and in doing so prove themselves as men, leads some men to spend thousands of dollars on a woman they are only legally obligated to have met once before marriage. In their eagerness to obtain their soul mate, they disregard the financial cost of their relationship, as well as the emotional cost of the women they are pursuing. Today is a day of silence in Russia. Or at least a day of media silence about the presidential election tomorrow. This Russian tradition is designed to give people one day to come up with their own opinions about the five presidential candidates. Somehow this law does not successfully take down all the United Russia billboards that dominate my city’s streets… but by now their longstanding slogans (Strong Russia, Strong President) just blend into the snowy mist. In anticipation of the sixth presidential election since the fall of the Soviet Union, I have been leading my own mini-campaign to infuse my students with a last minute dose of civic responsibility. This infusion, however, has not been without my own hobbled-together, foreign media-influenced, gung-ho-spirit of naivety perspective of tomorrow’s elections. These watered down political rallying cries come in the form of class-starting discussions. Students walk into the room and on the board is a question, for example, Does your vote count? Hopefully they are getting used to these enforced discussions, I’ve been making a point to start off every class with a question specifically designed to answer some burning issue I have about Russian culture. The students are my very own focus group, disguised in the veneer of conversational English class. Discussions have ranged from the lack of a word or concept for “efficient” in Russian to the fact that not very many Russian kids want to be astronauts when they grown up (a misguided assumption I had). But this week things took a relevant and somewhat desperate turn on my part. I don’t delude myself by thinking I have oh-so-much influence on my students, especially what they choose to do with their time outside of class. I can barely command their attention in class. For my class of journalists, I challenged them to go to the (peaceful) opposition rally this past Sunday. They are, after all, aspiring journalists, and this is the stuff to write about. Out of a class of twenty students, I saw one of my journalists at the “Russia Without Putin” rally. And she was planning to go before I offered bribes of colorful books from America. I know this, because the previous week my starting-class assignment had been to list two things you are proud about Russia. Out of the maybe forty students I got responses from (most common answers: Pushkin and nature), this student was the only one to list the ongoing political demonstrations, the first of their kind since the early 90s. It occurred to me, that the political demonstrations taking place in Russia (read: Moscow) that I read about in every major western publication are not that big of a deal in Russia (read: not Moscow). For the most part, my students just don’t see how standing out in the cold and showing solidarity will help change the presidential results they are sure of and unsatisfied with. This ties into another class starting conversation in which I had my students list, in their opinion, the top three values of Russia.
Patience, Resignation, and Sympathy. Well, the word resignation wasn’t in their vocabulary, but the concept was. In their words, “We’re used to taking things like they are.” So back to my full-court press to get them to vote. Here’s where some foreign guilt comes into play. I had some students genuinely willing to argue one side or the other of the question of their vote counting. But for the most part, my students looked at me with quiet exasperation, shaking their heads inwardly at my inability to come to terms with the how the system works here. And even as I preached civic duty and regaled them with stories of “my first time” voting (a disgusting pro-Putin voting campaign I’ll mention in a bit) in the American presidential elections, I realized what I was doing wasn’t fair. The ironic “Don’t Vote” youtube video chocked-full of American celebrities got their laughter, but didn’t get to the heart of the issue these young citizens face. The blatant examples and video evidence of voting falsification in December’s parliamentary elections only proved what these students already believed, nothing they say or do or cast their vote for really matters here. Harrison Ford and Justin Timberlake earnestly confiding to you that your one vote does count, because in the 2000 American election the presidential decision came down to 537 votes, does not apply to these students. This is Russia, this is not America. And as much as I want their votes to count, I am possibly doing my students a disservice by encouraging them to care. On top of this, I am not even sure what ethical lines I am crossing as a teacher, pushing my political hopes and dreams for their country onto my students’ shoulders. But here I am not giving them enough credit. When it comes to their own country, my students have critical minds that detect and dissect (and maybe dismiss) current issues, but like I admitted earlier, I don’t have so much influence over their thought processes. To the best of my ability, I’ve been transparent about my goals as an English teacher and an employee of the United States government. The Fulbright program sends out eager young Americans, as informal ambassadors of “soft diplomacy.” In every aspect of American life, culture, politics, race, religion, education, entertainment I’ve done my very best to give the most balanced perspective on these subjects. But for some reason, when talking about the Russian equivalent of these themes, I can’t seem to keep myself even-keeled. Maybe part of the reason I can’t keep my thoughts to myself (if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all, Randianne!), is because of particular pro-Putin advertisements that have been playing on TV and the internet. Titled “My First Time—Only For Love,” this series of campaign ads feature young, beautiful Russian women going to the doctors or a fortuneteller to discuss their nervousness about their “first time.” Ostensibly, the fresh-faced female is talking about losing her virginity. The doctor or the gypsy or whoever tells her that it is normal to be nervous, but if it’s for love—then the camera pans to a shot of Putin’s face on a magazine or calendar or fortunetelling card—then she will be safe. The next scene the girl is eagerly striding into a polling booth. The whole concept, and the fact that it’s an acceptable campaign for a presidential candidate, makes me sick. In contrast, these ads actually makes me appreciate the billboards for the ultra-nationalistic, “clown” Zhirinovsky, that simply state in dramatic red letters on a large black background: Zhirinovsky or it will get worse! But I forgot, we’re not supposed to be talking about the election today. The most common question I am asked here, is “Why Russia?” Russians ask me this question with all the sincerity in the world. Why would an American choose to make a home and work in and enjoy this country? I promise to answer this question, but first I want to address the reasoning behind this question. It’s my opinion, as an outsider to this country, that Russians are insecure about their feelings for their homeland, especially when conversing with non-Russians. They know that Russia is a great country, with world-class literature, an intriguing history, hospitable people, beautiful landscapes, a wealth of natural resources, and many other distinct qualities. But, for some reason, they don’t understand why foreigners would be interested in living in Russia. Maybe they assume that life in America must be easier than life in Russia. Sometimes, this is true. Maybe they think that Americans are only concerned with their own country. Sometimes, this is also true. But not always. I traveled to Russia for the first time when I was fourteen, as a part of an international missions organization. I spent that summer (and the next four) in Russia playing with children around wooded campgrounds, on flooded soccer fields, and under brilliantly lit midnight skies. The Russian kids teased me for my total lack of knowledge about their language. They taught me how to say silly phrases and patiently showed me how to play a Russian card game appropriately named “Fool”. The bond I made with two orphan girls that summer led to eight years of shaky, bilingual correspondence (fueled mostly by stickers and smiley faces). Before that first summer, my entire knowledge of Russian culture consisted of vodka, the Russian mafia, the cartoon Anastasia, and something about communism. I had no clue that I had flown nine hours east to a city with White Nights in the summer, to a country with an 80-year-old dead dictator on display, or to a place where we were instructed to place our used toilet paper in the trash can instead of the toilet. This was something to write home about. I wish I could more accurately remember my first impressions of Russia, eleven years ago, but a combination of repeated trips to the same place and my horrendous memory makes this impossible. This recent Wired article on the science of forgetting sums up what I’ve been trying to explain to anyone who asks me to describe my first thoughts about Russia. “New research is showing that every time we recall an event, the structure of that memory in the brain is altered in light of the present moment, warped by our current feelings and knowledge.” So in my head, I’ve always loved Russia. Each new trip, experience, bowl of borsht only reaffirms those sentiments. I remember having to wash my laundry for the summer by hand. There was one room in our dormitory that was heated especially for drying our wet clothes. I remember coveting the window bed in a room of six squeaky bed frames. I loved sitting in the huge windowsill, both sets of the double paned windows wide open to the summer sunlight, my feet hanging out above the pine needles and young campers below me. I remember whispered conversations on the balcony, talking about fears and frustrations. I remember these summers as a time of teenage enlightenment and coming-of-age all wrapped up in the magnificent scenery and dramatic backdrop of Russia. This is why I love Russia. I fell in love at such an impressionable age, that my wax memory has deep etchings when it comes to this country. But going back to the insecurities of Russians. When they ask me—incredulously—why I am in Russia voluntarily, I give them some sort of the answer above. But their lack of confidence is displayed in other situations. In Irkutsk, a town I found breathtakingly beautiful and Petersburg-esq, I was photographing old wooden window frames. They looked individually hand carved, with small details of flowers or other designs painstakingly added for decoration. They had aged with grace that, in my opinion, probably made them most beautiful at this moment in time than when they were originally created. Xirsti and I were talking in English, while taking pictures, probably about how enamored we were with the city. A middle-aged businessman passes by, and then stops. He starts loudly reprimanding us in English for taking pictures of the old, dilapidated parts of his city. Why do you foreigners want to show people the ugly parts of our city, he bellows (approximately). With an air of practiced patience, X and I explain that we genuinely find these “ugly” aspects particularly appealing. We don’t want the polished buildings (he was suggesting we go to the newer part of town to take pictures of modern things), we want the average. Because for us silly foreigners, even the average is interesting. He shook his head at us, and walked on seemingly doubtful of our explanation. "The Bird's Last Meal" My most recent exposure to these on-going insecurities stems from a picture I submitted to a “Touch Russia” competition. The organization asked for any picture that literally or metaphorically depicted “touching Russia.” I entered a photo I took at a Komi culinary competition. A man’s bloody finger is pointing to the exposed throat of a bird that had been hunted specifically for the cultural event. Inside the bird’s gullet are whole berries that it had recently ingested. Graphic, yes, but the situation is thoroughly explained as a celebration of Komi culinary tradition. “Oksana” commented on the picture “… when someone gives a unique picture of your country with an open flesh on it under the title ‘Touch Russia’, I don’t think I should like it, as if nothing more precious is there in Russia to touch. Equality does not mean to let people give a wrong impression about your country even on pictures (sic).” (She also I suggested I go to a slaughter house and touch as much flesh as I want, but don’t touch Russia.) I understand some people have a problem with killing animals, but that is not this woman’s complaint. She is complaining, that this outsider named Randianne, is showing the world the real life aspects of her country. Slaughtered birds do not fit into the picture Russians want the world to see. I replied as evenly as I possibly could, but internally upset that this woman couldn’t see that this picture represented my love for her country as much as any stereotypically picturesque photo I have of the Church of the Spilt Blood in Petersburg or the fall colors of Syktyvkar. Part of loving a country, or respecting a country, is to appreciate all aspects of the culture and people, whether these aspects are considered stereotypically beautiful or not. It is not enough to merely photograph the pleasant or the perfect, but to also capture the mundane or in some cases the shocking side of life. But for someone like Oksana, who is hesitantly cautious about how the outside world views her country, I can see why “unbeautiful” pictures would threaten the view of her country she wants to project. As reasoning for this attitude, I offer up a recent article about Russian/American relations. “The end of the global confrontation [the Cold War] essentially destroyed Russia’s international stature. The United States gained almost everything that the Soviet Union lost. Russian public and political consciousness is still unable to process this…” (source: RBTH) For me, post-Soviet Russia is in this stage of awkward teenage years (one I can relate to), when despite the assurances of peers and family that she is beautiful and skilled, she refuses to believe this about herself. She has strong opinions on everything, but is still so conscious of how other people view her speech and actions. She is shy and stubborn at the same time, desperately wanting to be understood, but not really giving people a chance to get to know her, the real Russia. pictured: accused bedroom window and lackluster heater. special appearance by kitty. Waking up in Russia, in Syktyvkar in particular, it’s rather cold outside of the blankets. My dual-pane windows are great for letting the recent explosion of winter sunlight into the room, but the cold seeps in as well. My heater, which resides directly under the window, might as well be buried under an avalanche of frosty air trickling through glass and cracks. The brisk air in my Russian room is not unlike the cold that would permeate the old farmhouse I grew up in. Too sprawling for its own good, our house was expensive to heat—a concept that I refused to understand even up to my late teens. But at home, I could sneak into the room with our central thermostat, a wheel labeled clearly with permanent marker dictating the amount of heat we were allowed for nighttime and daytime, and try to crank it up, just slightly above the parental approved mark. I would keep turning the knob until I heard the heat kick on in the bowels of the house, and then retreat, determined to enjoy the warmth until I was found out, told to put on more clothes if I was cold, and the heat returned to its right but dismal temperature. These heat tampering guerrilla warfare techniques I learned as a young, homeschooled child—who wore hats and gloves as she read Little House on the Prairie and whenever she tried to complain about the circumstances, her unsympathetic mother would remind her that Laura and Mary Ingalls woke up with snow on their bed once! And they were happy when they received an orange for Christmas! And Mary never complained about anything and she was blind!—would follow me into my adult years.
When I moved to Oregon for graduate school, my first real apartment there was lovingly called the “Cottage” by its residents and collectively known as by the residents’ friends as the “Shithole.” As you’re naturally curious about this dual-personality domicile, you may read more about it: here. But the point I would like to emphasize is the house had no insulation. And under our front door that opened up to a back alley and an encroaching rose bush, there was a two inch gap between where the door ended and the floor began, letting in with the wind an army of slugs that would leave their slimy, shiny tracks behind as evidence in the morning. It should also be noted, that the only heater in the entire front section of the house was placed strategically next to the door that did not connect to the floor. You can only begin to imagine the screaming matches we had with our landlord (former hippie and friend of Ken Kesey turned slum lord). Fast-forwarding to the last of four apartments I had in Oregon (every move was definitely a step up in the rental housing market). Not only did this house have a heater in every room (a rental requirement, but the only house I lived in that actually followed through on it), but it also had central heating, controlled by an electronic thermostat (much more modern than my childhood home’s nebulous knob marked with scotch tape and marker) that displayed the desired and actual temperatures. My economical roommate and I had daily arguments concerning the numbers on that display screen, except since this time I was paying the bill and not my parents… I thought about the situation somewhat differently. But we were arguing about the heat when the outside temperature was in the 40s or 50. Now I am dealing with 60 -70 degree difference from those balmy days in Eugene. Today I’m excited because it is 0F on the streets instead of the recent -20-25F. But back to my window+heat, or rather window-heat, situation. I now have no control over how warm or not-warm it is in my apartment. This being Russia and not a farmhouse in rural Maryland or a duplex in college-town America, the heat is turned on by the whim of the government. Of course, it is on all day and all night, but choosing the actual temperature or an electronic display screen? Forget about it. Still, even when I call to complain to my mother—who, if at home, is inevitably sitting on or near what we kids nicknamed “her friend,” a portable electronic heater that was her constant companion during our school days as well—she tells me to put on another a scarf or imagine living on the prairie and having to dig tunnels through the snow drifts to reach the outdoor toilet. She’s always had a knack for saying the right thing. Entrance, through the rosebush. (Originally written in 2010) If you are a first time visitor to my apartment, the entire ground floor of a former bakery, your eyes will be slightly assaulted upon entering the front door. Aqua teal and sunflower yellow cabinets dominate the kitchen landscape. Depending on your state of sobriety, the paint was either sloppily or artistically sponged onto the wooden cabinets by an enthusiastic former tenant. The first time I entered the apartment, after finding the rental listing online, I was mesmerized by those impudent colors. Maybe it was the overwhelming scent of pot, the rose bush I had to wrestle to get through the front door, the parrot sitting on a makeshift stand in the front living room, the blackberry vine climbing into the house through a window, or the patch of bamboo outback that my roommates and I would later lovingly refer to as “’Nam,” I was immediately sold on the house, hook, line, and sinker. Maybe sold too quickly. Despite the assurances of our Merry Prankster landlord, formerly known as Mal Function, that the house was adequately insulated, I spent most of the winter huddled under two comforters, my hands outstretched to an electric heater than only functioned on high. Our upstairs neighbor’s sink often leaks into our colorful cabinets and mold grows on too many different surfaces to even notice anymore. The combination of two cats and the constant Eugene rain leaves our house smelling more than slightly of urine.
There are no right corners in our house. Ceilings slope, walls curve, floors dip. This makes hanging pictures, arranging furniture, and walking in a straight line quite difficult. Luckily those pastimes are not important to my housemates or me. Mod-podging cut-out body parts onto Christmas cards, making pancakes at midnight, and designing intricate personalities for our cats takes up most of our time. When scrounging for free furniture for our hippie hovel, I found a black kitten with a crooked tail in the drawer of a yard sale dresser. After a slight moment of indecision, I threw responsibility out of my mold-covered window and took the kitty home. At eight weeks old, Behemoth – named after a rakish Russian literary feline – could fit into a coffee cup, an oven mitt, and many other household items just begging to hold a mewing bundle. Behemoth’s name was shortened overnight to B-bop and soon to just “B.” B now plays her part in the clockwork of our house. She sits in the dripping sink. She chews on the intruding vines. She stares at those hypnotizing cabinets. Those bold colored cabinets provide us with culinary audacity- bison stuffed acorn squash sealed with gouda cheese, pancakes baked with yogurt and fruit in the middle, pumpkin beer bread, and red wine infused mushrooms. They also distract us. We forget to add the flour to our strawberry oatmeal bread. We boil out the alcohol in our rum-infused cider. We turn on the coffee pot without adding the water. But despite any physical or olfactory discomfort, this house, unlike the room I sublet the previous summer, is a place I feel comfortable calling home. I’ve learned to ignore the layer of mold growing in my ever-dripping bathroom sink. I now deftly avoid getting caught on the thorns of our blossoming rose bush. I’ve taken to breathing through my mouth to avoid certain smells. And some days I don’t even give a second glance to the psychedelic hues of our cabinets. I’ve said this before, Russia breeds resourcefulness. For example, I keep everything here. And not in like a hoarding way, but glass jars are really useful things and it turns out you can’t just pick up a dozen of them at your nearest home-goods store. You have to buy a bag with your grocery purchase, so why not just keep (and then use) a stash of them at home. Jenn Harvey and other UMBC roommates may remember my collection of plastic bags in our dorm, so maybe these hoarding sensibilities aren’t new to me, but they certainly are more useful here.
Russia is changing me in many ways, but one of the changes I’m happiest about is the determination to fix small things instead of just setting the problem aside or buying a new whateveritis. Case in point: early on in my stay here, my French press broke. And if you know anything about Russia, it’s that for whatever reason, this country doesn’t believe in coffee makers. So a French press is the only way you are going to get non-instant coffee/caffeine into your blood stream. Well, while rinsing off this life-saving device, the little washer that holds the press part of the French press together slipped off and disappeared down the sink drain. So imagine this situation. I quickly envision the rest of my year here without [good] coffee. A ridiculous thought, because they do have French presses here… Next, I move on to commiserating the death of my beautiful French press [a white and pink porcelain affair bought in English and close to seven years of coffee memories attached to it] just because I’ve lost this small piece of metal. So I get down on my hands and knees in the public washroom of the sanitarium I was living in and start taking apart the pipe behind the sink, hoping the washer is stuck in the U-bend of the pipe. Water, gunk, and bewildered stares of my neighbors, but no washer. To give a moral to this drawn out story, it occurred to me several days after this incident that Russia has hardware stores, and is likely to carry similar, shiney metal pieces. In broken Russian, not even knowing the word for washer or whatnot, I explain to the bemused hardware clerk my dire situation and for the price of about six cents he gives me three of exactly the right size washers, just in case anything should happen in the future. All this is meaningless now, because I was bequeathed a larger French press, that pales in beauty comparison to my porcelain wonder, but makes twice as much coffee for me, which is the real deciding factor. Second supporting argument. I bought a pair of boots at a market in town. The random collection of clothing and toiletry kiosks sits above the market where I buy my cookies, juice, and other essentials. I needed a pair of not-extreme-winter-boots-but-heavier-than-the-shoes-I-brought-with-me-from-America boots. The sales woman was intrigued in my foreignness, as she prince-charming-ishly slipped the boot onto my Cinderella-foot. The boot itself claimed to be made in Italy and repel water, one of which was a requirement in my boot-buying quest. Neither of which proved to be true. But regardless, I spent money on these boots and I was going to get my money’s worth out of them. So, when on the Trans-Siberian railroad, and entire toe area of right boot disconnected from the sole and the only other pair of footwear I had packed were heels meant to be worn at the Fulbright conference in Moscow, I looked into getting the shoe repaired. Lucky for me, there are shoe repair shops everywhere in Russia, and wandering around Irkutsk—the gem of Siberia I might add—yielded the same results. Because our train was due to leave in three hours, I was concerned about the amount of time it might take to fix my shoe, and also was not altogether adverse to buying a new pair of actually waterproof shoes. Xirsti, in all her wisdom, urged that we at least ask the expert shoe-fixer what was up. Turns out, that for the equivalent of three dollars and fifteen minutes, they could super glue back into its rightful purpose. Some 5,000 miles later, the thing is still holding up. But, the other boot I guess was feeling left out of the fun and several days ago the zipper broke. Determined that the boots had made it this far on my Russian journey and should last a bit longer, I donned my extreme-Russian-winter-boots, put the offending boot in one of my many plastic bags and took off to find the closest shoe-repair. There, the expert fixer promptly told me he could do nothing to fix my boot. Somewhat attitudinal, I asked, “um, why? You fix shoes…” He then explained in detail (I’m assuming) why he was helpless. Not understanding a word he said, I asked why again. “Girl, didn’t you hear me?” he asks incredulously. “I’m a foreigner…” I offer up as an apology. He picks up my boot (for the first time) and suddenly realizes that it is within the realm of his expertise to fix my shoe after all. For less than two dollars I have a new zipper on my boot. I don’t think he chose to fix my shoe because as a foreigner I was suddenly a desirable costumer, I think he felt extreme pity for this girl who sometimes mispronounces the word zipper, which when stressed on a different syllable is also the word for castle. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for the result. I often regret not paying more attention to my father or brothers who are able to fix anything their hands touch. I grew up in a family that never paid for a plumber or electrician or mechanic or shoe fixer, because chances were, our father could solve whatever the issue was. And if all else failed, I owned plenty of other shoes, so I would tell myself I would fix the shoes later, put them into a closet and promptly forget about their existence. Russia does not allow that sort of neglect and waste to happen as often. Having these small victories in Russia yields a heightened sense of accomplishment, which is something I can use more of here. Owning two functioning French presses, along with a collection of washers in case I should need them, and two boots with mismatching castles…errrm zippers…are slight symbols of my successful navigation of life in Russia. |
AuthorI am required to inform you, that this website is not an official Fulbright Program website. The things I write and photograph are entirely mine and do not in any way possible represent the views of the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State or any other government entity. Other blogs I highly suggest reading!
ruthinrussia.wordpress.com sequinsandsnow.wordpress.com undertherussiansun.wordpress.com wheninkaliningrad.blogspot.com dosvidaniyamama.tumblr.com kukla88.wordpress.com siberianadventures.wordpress.com amongstthecaviarandwatermelons.wordpress.com storiesfrombashkortostan.blogspot.com whobroughttheroadsnacks.shutterfly.com julianochkajourneys.tumblr.com geoffinrussia.blogspot.com emilyincheboksary.blogspot.com anamericaninulyanovsk.wordpress.com sarahlillibridge.blogspot.com russianreport.wordpress.com Archives
October 2012
Categories
All
|