Sheryl (Wallin) Abrahams, T-11

Getting Dirty

 

Arriving in my Turkmen village in November, at the beginning of the wet winter season, I quickly learned to talk about the mud.  The thick, black, suck-your-boots-off kind that lined my daily route to and from work.  Batga in Turkmen; palchak in Russian.  Whichever word we used, it was a favorite topic of conversation between my neighbors and I.  “Walk over there- it’s drier on that side,” we’d call as we passed one another on the road, “Keep towards the middle here.”  My early Turkmen vocabulary was flush with words like “dirty” and “galoshes”. 

I first began to get a sense of my lot when I heard my street referred to as the “Palchak Yol,” or “Mud Road.”    I’d noticed when I arrived that women incline their heads and click their tongues- a standard sign of sympathy- when I told them where I lived.  Soon I learned that my nameless street was notorious in our village for its mud- being newer than most, it had never gotten the benefit of Soviet-era asphalting.  In my first few weeks at work, my supervisor asked anxiously about my welfare.  “How are you, Sheryl?  Is Turkmenistan difficult for you?,” she’d inquire daily, searching my face nervously for signs of strain.  My host family and co-workers had been kind and welcoming, and I liked our little village, so her questions confused me.  Until one day, when she finally burst out, “You’re not going to leave because of the mud, are you?!”  I had traveled over 3000 miles to be there; I was hardly going to turn back around because of some mud, I assured her.

Soon the mud became a point of pride.  We Peace Corps Volunteers liked to out-do one another, and we vied for bragging rights to the most intense “Peace Corps experience.” I watched with satisfaction as two Peace Corps staff members, venturing out from the capital city for site visits, made their way gingerly through the mud from their Peace Corps SUV to our front door, looks of horror on their faces.  To my delight, they explained that the driver had had to use the 4-wheel drive to get down our street.  I visited the PCVs in my area and became smug with satisfaction at their cement courtyards and paved streets.  In my second year of service, I became defensive when two Volunteers moved to my area and complained about the mud in their village.  I went to see it for myself, and conceded that it was a tie. 

In the spring, the roads quickly dried into dust, and by summer were so cracked and hard that it was difficult to imagine that the ground had ever held water.  My feet kicked up dust as I walked, and I stored my boots in our spare room.  As my second winter passed, I took pictures of the muddy street and almost regretted that my sloshing days were over.  These days, driving to work seems like less of an accomplishment, compared to trudging there slowly through the ankle-deep mud.  My heels click on the asphalt parking lot, and I sometimes long to hear the familiar squishing sound. 

Sheryl Abrahams was a health Volunteer in Nurana village, from 2002-04.Nurana is located in the Murgap etrap, Mary velayat.