Emails from Uzbekistan

I can honestly say that the last 6 weeks have been, without a doubt, the most stressful, scariest and most uncertain of my life.

I have to be honest. I want you to know that the Peace Corps experience (at least, my experience) is not all smiling villagers and blissful, sunset-y moments. It's hard, it's risky, it's painful in all possible ways - emotionally, mentally and physically. Right. Well. Boyovut was -is - an extremely small, poor, ultra-conservative and extremely isolated village in the southwest. A village in which (this is pretty key) none of the residents had ever seen an American before, let alone a 'highly noticeable' 5'10" American female. I was in Boyovut for six days. On the third evening there I was sexually assaulted by a resident of the village who then, for the terrifying remaining 3 days, proceeded to stalk and threaten me along with a core group of 5-7 other full-grown Uzbek males. My apathetic and mildly abusive host family (3 members, no host father) were never home and had no locks on their compound which left me home alone most nights pushing furniture against the house gate to prevent those aforementioned men from trying to enter the house. On the occasion when I had to leave the house (to haul water from across town or to walk the 10 minute walk to my school) I was followed, had stones thrown at me and generally verbally and physically harassed.

For six days I internalized all of this - the one time I tried to tell my counterpart what had happened she chastised me saying that I shouldn't leave my home after 4pm anyways (note: the Hokim, the 'mayor' of the town agreed with her, basically saying 'yes, so glad to have you here. Now, please spend the next two years divided between your bedroom and your classroom.'). The
worst part is that, for those days, I thought that maybe what I was experiencing was normal. Everyone tells you that the first three months at your new site are going to be hard - that's the thought that would loop through my mind over and over again on those nights when I stayed awake crying into my pillow or furiously writing in my journal, too afraid to go to sleep lest the men break in, lest my host family steal my money, lest … I was terrified, emotionally paralyzed and felt like a trapped dog (there was no phone in my village that would let me dial out, say to Tashkent to the Peace Corps). THIS is what I would have to endure for the next two years? Would I have to go to bed with the threat of rape hanging over my head? Would I have to learn to live in the same town as my assailant(s)? Were these safety risks par for the course? Was what I had experienced, assault and all, just 'normal' new-site, post-training jitters?

60 pages of my diary testify to my misguided attempts to 'justify' the situation, to talk myself out of it, to 'be a trooper', to dismiss the events, terrible as they were, as one-offs. For six days I did this and then, on the evening of that 6th day, the Peace Corps called me just to 'see how I was doing' and I cracked (aka: snapped back to reality). What I was experiencing wasn't normal, in
fact I was in a downright dangerous situation and I told the Peace Corps as much and begged them to let me come into Tashkent and get out of that bad, bad place. Long story short, Peace Corps let me come into Tashkent where I filed several incident reports, visited the doctors, and met with my Program Manager and his boss and presented my case. PC agreed; Boyovut presented a clear risk to my safety and health and PC would move me from that site and into a new one, should I choose not to go home. And, obviously, since I'm not writing this email Stateside, you can see which option I chose. But honestly, I was battered and bruised, shaken and exhausted in body, mind and spirit. Those six days in that damn site, those several horrible incidents, have done what three previous months in Uzbekistan (what a lifetime of travel and experience, in fact!) had not yet done - it had shaken my confidence to the core, made me doubt whether I was strong enough to do this, whether I was capable of carrying out my two-year commitment, whether or not I should give up and go home, it sunk me into a mild depression.

The thought of ET'ing (Early Termination) crossed my mind a lot in the days I spent recuperating at the office in Tashkent. I was depressed, overwhelmed by everything (couldn't even watch BBC in my hotel room without crying) and scared of almost everything. I wasn't quite, to put it lightly, myself. But I accepted Peace Corp's offer of another site, traveled back to Boyovut (with a PC security officer and a driver) to collect my belongings and to 'say goodbye'.

A week later I was moved to my new site, a back-up site PC had half-way developed, a little town called Salar just outside the Tashkent limits and in the Qibray region. Once again, I plunged into the routine of meeting my new host family (14 members in this new household plus one ginormous shaggy dog), meeting my new students and colleagues and counterpart (500 Lytsee students who seem to think I'm Jennifer Lopez, some great and some not so great colleagues and one really, really wonderful counterpart named Malika) discovering my new community (very small, lots of cows, excellent bus transportation running through the town). But this time around I wasn't the happy-go-lucky, up-for-anything, completely trusting and optimistic volunteer that I recognize from my first months in Uzbekistan. Instead I was jaded, guarded, tired and doubtful (nothing like a cliché, huh?). Still battling a minor depression, still waking up with anxiety every morning, still having flashbacks to those days in Boyovut, I got by (and am getting by) by putting one foot in front of the other, putting on a brave face, looking for those 'chocolate truffle moments' in the words of my good friend Brenda, venting to several good friends here and relying on emails and phone calls from family and friends back home.

Uzbekistan is a very hard country to serve in. It's doubly hard when something like what I experienced happens. Please don't think I'm bragging - I'm not brave, I'm not stronger or more capable than anyone else. But I AM supremely stubborn (thanks for the legacy Mom) and I refuse to let one bad man (or 7), one dangerous community and several scary experiences get the better of me. So I'm sticking it out, knowing that 'this too shall pass', that it's always darkest before dawn or something like that. I came here to do a job and I'll do it, I don't quit, I still have positive feelings for Uzbekistan, I still have those sunset-y moments I ragged on earlier. I still have the support of family and friends back home which means more to me than you can imagine. So
I've made up my mind to stay here. Whether or not the Uzbek government will see fit to accommodate this decision has been incredibly doubtful lately.

For anyone who hasn't tuned in to CNN or the BBC lately, Uzbekistan's been making headlines due recent violent, bloody and entirely heart-breaking uprisings in the east, specifically in the Ferghana Valley city of Andijon. The violence began Friday when a group of Uzbeks stormed an Andijon jail where several business men were being held on charges of 'religious extremism'. Following the prison break, arms were stolen and hundreds upon hundreds of citizens (rumored to be 10,000 at one point) swarmed the city center to demand the resignation of Uzbek President Islom Karimov and his (virtually universally hated) government. The protests seized several key city buildings, set fires and took milisyia members hostage. Dispatched to the city, Karimov's army clashed with the protesters and opened fire on all those present - men, women and children. Karimov gave the number of dead as 10 or maybe a dozen during his weekend address to the nation. In reality, 0ver 500 are dead. As we speak, the citizens of Andijon are digging graves for their family and friends. To hit home, one of the Peace Corps staff members, my Program Manager in fact, is from Andijon and several members of his family were killed in the violence. The massacre is being slammed as a clear abuse of human rights by many, many governments (notably Britain) but, unsurprisingly, our own US govt., who maintains a key military base here at the Uzbek/Afghan border, is keeping mum. Politics. Most recently, thousands of Andijon residents have also fled to the nearby Kyrgyz Republic (which, if you remember, experienced a massive uprising and government turn-over only a month or so ago) and there have been more deadly skirmishes near the countryborders. Since Friday, the Uzbek government has blocked any Uzbek or Russian TV or Radio channels from broadcasting reports of this violence, undoubtedly to prevent further 'copy-cat' uprisings across the country. Karimov is not stupid. He knows the bulk of his countrymen can't stand him and his authoritarian and oppressive government that has ruled since Uzbekistan's independence in '92. He knows it's only a matter of time before something big bigger) happens. And THAT is what worries the Peace Corps. We were able to evacuate all the Andijon region volunteers and they are safe and sound here in Tashkent at the moment but they ill not be returning to site, ever. Peace Corps is going to give them the option of finishing their service (for some, one year is left) or letting them choose whether or not to go home.

Andijon is one incident which, by all accounts, has been contained for the moment. But anti-government sentiment exists all across the board. Should the country rise against Karimov, Peace Corps will have no choice but to evacuate us all. This is not going to go down like Kyrgyzstan. This will be long, bloody and will result in civil war. AND, even if the people do not rise up again in the near future, Karimov is already wary and scared of American NGO's here in Uzbekistan to refuse the renewal of our accreditation and the issuing of visas because he thinks, somehow, we will contribute to this unrest. Well, my visa runs out on June 1st along with every other volunteer in my Uz-18 group and we haven't yet heard a word about PC getting them renewed. It's like living every day with a big old question mark over your head. No sooner do you start to sort out your own problems, make up your mind to stay here and carve out a satisfying life for yourself when suddenly, your future here is no longer in your hands. How do you prepare yourself mentally for something like this?

But what about those 'chocolate truffle moments' as coined by my friend and fellow Volunteer, Brenda … When I was really, really blue Brenda told me to look for 'chocolate truffle moments', those simple little bits and snatches of happiness, of contentment, of bliss even!, that happen every day, moments that are the spiritual and emotional equivalent of eating a scrumptious chocolate truffle.... So, to cheer you all up after slogging through my messy emailed life, here are just a few 'chocolate truffle moments':
- Walking with my host cousin Iskandar after dinner one night in the rain, watching lightening crack all around us and light the sky over Tashkent purple …
- Being given a bouquet of perfect spring roses by one of my students just because …
- Picking cherries by the bucket off my friend's cherry tree and then sitting with her and gorging ourselves on them …
- Teaching my little host brother (Bahodir, age 4) how to knock and ask 'mumkinmi?' (may I?) before barreling into my room and, possibly, catching me kiyimlarbiz (without clothes) - this was a huge accomplishment actually …
- Sitting alone on bus number 96 or 83 and actually being LEFT ALONE because people now seem to mistake me for a Russian now that I don't hang out with a group of Americans (like I did in training). Believe it or not it's my only bit of solitude, sitting on a bus surrounded by 60 other people …
- Being able to buy milk from our neighbor so that I can have café au lait instead of my usual bitter instant Nescafe …
- Bargaining with one of the local strawberry vendors who hawk their berries on the street outside my house and actually walking away with a good price and a kilo of the world's most DELICIOUS organic strawberries (abt 200 cym, 20 cents for a kilo, 2.2 lbs if you were curious) …
- Having my classes at the Lytsee cancelled just because, leaving me with a whole blissful day off …
- Phone calls from my Mom and friends, in America and in Uzbekistan …
- Nora Roberts novels
- Making home-made jam with my new host mother and not really doing a good job but having her be so sweet anyways …
- Hearing a WICKED good song come on my shortwave and being able to pull my room curtains closed and dance like a fool if only for 2 and ½ minutes …
- Going to an internet café and actually finding that the internet works …
- Having to fight for sidewalk space with COWS on my way home from school …
- Watching sunlight filter through the grapevines and leaves outside my bedroom window …
- Obtaining the best haircut of my life from a woman who spoke only Russian (a language I still don't know) by drawing little sketches on the back or a receipt and making tons and tons of hand motions all for the equivalent of 3 USD…
- Having a breeze blow in my classroom's window and cooling the otherwise stifling temperatures …
- Lying in bed at the end of the day and not feeling like 2 years here looks like Mt. Everest (which, most of the times, it does) …

I'm well and truly living and it's nitty-gritty and it sucks sometimes and it's challenging - I crave anonymity, predictability, privacy and a culture I understand and I fight anxiety and anger and doubt and confusion daily. And yes, I'd rather be home on the couch, watching this all unfold on the news or, better yet, a movie, tucked up in my pj's with a bowl of popcorn on my knee. But that's virtual life, at least, to me it is.

Much love, Annie

***
Hey guys -

This will be my last email from Uzbekistan. My group is being evacuated. The government is forcing us to leave and because of this, coupled with a recent rise in Uzbekistan-based anti-American terrorist activity, Peace Corps Washington is evacuating us immediately.

Can't believe the way this is turning out.

Annie


Annie Wright