my heart's all over the world tonight: December 2011

One of the greatest things about life overseas is this: it’s almost ALWAYS so fantastically awkward.

Awkward how, you ask? Well, you’re ALWAYS laughing on the inside, and usually laughing on the outside. At what? Oh, just your life. My teammates and I have several moments each week, maybe daily even, that we step back and say, “Really? This is my life?!” Awkward is not bad, friends. It’s just awkward. Which makes it great.

THIS LIFE IS EASY TO LOVE. And for that reason and so many others, I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

This story is long, but well worth the read… And you will probably feel awkward reading it. And me? I got to live it. Rock on, life. If you're not up for the read, skip to the bottom for the pictures--they're great!

So, I had an incredibly awkward weekend. It was wonderful, and I’m going to tell you about it. So, read on.

I was invited by my coworker, A, to her village for the weekend. The reason for the trip was to attend her cousin’s wedding. Naturally, I agreed. I had been to her village once before—it’s in the north-east of this country, right on the border with Chechnya, and it sits in a valley at the base of several large, snowy mountains. Also, culturally and relationally, it seemed like an opportunity I could not pass up—quality time with a friend with whom I’ve had many opportunities to share with, and non-stop culture immersion at a village wedding.

We needed to leave EARLY Saturday morning, so I went to bed early the night before, planning to take a shower and get ready the next morning. But, oh wait, no water in my house. So I called and woke up one of my teammates in the flat below me. He let me in and I took a quick sink-bath at their house. This is not the greatest way to wash, especially when you know you won’t be washing again for a few days, since the village has no running water, but it was what it was. I went back upstairs, put on a dress, grabbed my bag, and headed down to meet A and her uncle. A’s uncle was our driver for the weekend, since he was also heading to the village for the wedding. They pulled up and I got in the back seat. Cue awkwardness. The first exchange between me and her uncle (though it happened in Russian, it went something like this):

Him: A told me your name and I was wondering who you were but now that I see you I realize that I see you everywhere.

Me: Oh, yeah, a lot of people tell me that. Apparently, I don’t blend in well!

Him: One time I talked to you on the street but you just looked at the ground and walked past me and didn’t talk back.

Me: Well, uhh, I probably did that since I didn’t know you.

I considered telling him how often random men try to talk to me on the street, but decided against it. We drove for about 4 hours with many more awkward conversations. When we arrived in the village, we went directly to the wedding. Since the village is in the north, and in the mountains, it was VERY cold—probably around 10 degrees F, and though snow wasn’t falling, a good bit of snow and ice had build up on the ground. Also, since this wedding was not in a city, it was held outdoors. The street was transformed into a dance floor—hay was strewn over the street to make it less cold through your shoes, and a tarp was hung over it. The back yard was where guests were eating when we arrived—women on one side of the chicken coop, men on the other. I was surprised to notice that nobody was dressed up. Instead, people were in jeans and rubber boots and jackets. Had I not been hidden under 693 layers, I may have felt more out of place. Being the only American (and the only stranger, and the only one not from the village) at the wedding, I got a lot of attention. In fact, the camera guy left the bride to come and video me while I ate my lamb-tail-fat soup. Lovely.

Then, we danced. Thankfully, I was the only one taking pictures and therefore there is no documented proof of my dancing—we did national dances, and I’m sure I looked like a fool! At least I danced with gusto. And that camera guy? He captured every minute of it. The entertainment was loud and played only national music. We danced for about 45 minutes, then we headed home to have tea before we came back for the evening portion of the wedding.

A’s house was built by her mother over three years. Like most of the village houses, it has no gas, running water, or indoor plumbing. Between leaving my flat at 7am and going to bed at 9pm, I didn’t pee. Not once. Squatty potty in sub-zero temps? No thanks. No frostbitten buns for me. While we were waiting for the evening portion of the wedding to begin, we sat at her house and drank tea and lit a small wood-burning oven for heat. About an hour later, we heard someone knocking at the gate door outside the house. A went to answer it and returned with a man who had been at the wedding when we were there. She comes in with him and says, “Juli, this man wants to ask to you something.”

He walks over to me, and since he only speaks Lezghi—the local village language—speaks to me completely in charades.

1: he points to him, then to me, then smiles and nods. I smile and nod back.

2: he traces the outside of his face in a circle, then points to me, motioning that I should cover my head in the traditional mslm way.

3: he mimes putting a ring on my finger.

4: says in English: “yes? To marry with me?”

Now, I’m no stranger to situations like these, but I have not mastered the reply. I sort of smiled and raised my eyebrows to question his seriousness, while being very, very careful not to nod my head at all. Then he kissed my hand and left. And that was that.

Dusk came early and we headed back to the wedding, this time in a few more layers, since it was night and we’d be sitting outside watching the wedding party. BRRRRR. Since I was the different one, they seated us RIGHT in the front-center of what eventually became a circle of people about 6 layers of people thick. In the middle of that circle, people danced. I still may have been filmed more than the bride. And all I did was sit and smile and clap. After about 3 hours, I was almost colder than I could handle, and the music was ridiculously loud. Maybe this happens to some of you out there, but when a sound is so loud and constant, I get really overwhelmed and eventually start to feel physically sick from it—super weird, I know. But I needed to get further away from those musicians. I told A that I was just going to walk around a bit, but instead she took me by the arm and led me into the house—great, I thought, kill two birds with one stone: get away from the music and get warm! Before I tell you this next part, you should know that I really can’t handle raw meat very well. I barely eat meat as it is, and can count on one hand the times I’ve eaten red meat in the last year or two, but red meat in its raw form? YIKES.

She led me into a room where a few ladies were preparing food for the next day, brought me over to a bed, and told me to sit on it. I sat down and just took a few seconds to take in my surroundings. There were five little stations of working women:

1^st station (right next to where I was sitting): onion dicing. She had a bucket of probably 75 onions, and she diced non-stop.

2^nd station: cabbage washing and cutting.

3^rd station: large, freshly slaughtered sheep body parts—the ribs, the legs, the head, the booty, the everything else—laying out on a tarp in its own blood and wool. This lady was grabbing a body part, washing it down, cutting the meat off, and tossing the meat to station 4, about 6 feet away. When she’s get a piece, she’d toss it to the next tarp, and it would land—SPLAT—and a small spray pattern of blood would squirt onto the wall behind it.

4^th station: but meat and fat into small pieces, the size of golf balls, and toss them—SPLAT—to station 5.

5^th station: meat grinder. Truly, this lady would grab the golf-ball-sized chunks of meat and fat and shove them through the grinder, which was approximately 5 feet off the ground. After it passed completely through the grinder, the long strings of meat would fall the remaining 4 feet into a large bucket on the ground.

As soon as I sat down, two ladies brought me tea and some national sweets. They told me they were traditionally made for weddings, that they had made them themselves, and they really wanted me to try them! Also, at about this time, the onions started to get to me. When I cut onions at home, I wear neon yellow swimming goggles--holy kamoly, those things burn! So, I sat on the bed while tears flowed freely from my eyes, trying to force down pastries without gagging as I watching a sheep be hacked apart, thrown across the room spraying blood on the walls, and then shoved violently through a grinder. Please, put yourself in my shoes. Hello, cultural overload. Then, this precious little boy, maybe 4 years old, walked into the room to warm up. He looked from his mom, to his aunt, to his grandma, to his sister, to the crying, gagging white girl with blond hair and mascara running down her cheeks, as if to say “which of these is not like the other?” His eyes stopped on me, and he burst into tears. I took that as my cue, thanked them for the pastries, and hightailed it back to the dancing, which was thankfully winding down.

This was the end of the wedding, at maybe midnight, and guess what—the groom had yet to show. And guess what else—THE BRIDE HAD NEVER MET THE GROOM.

WHAT?!

He drives up in his beaten up Lada, shakes her hand, dances one national dance with her, leads her to his car, and they drive away.

WHAT?!

How does that even work?

We went back to A’s house. I peed for the first time in 14 hours, and I did it right there in the front yard. It was too cold to walk all the way to the outhouse, and there was no electricity anyway, so I figured that nobody could see me. Anyway, we’ll just keep that between us.

I put on every piece of clothing I brought with me, climbed into bed, and watching my breath swirl around my pillow as I tried to imagine the emotions that this new bride was feeling on her first night with this stranger, now her husband, and tried to fall asleep.

The next morning, the shepherd that I had met on my first trip to this village came to the house. On that trip, I had taken a picture with him (it’s actually the picture at the top of this blog) and had given him a copy. He showed it around the entire village, and as he walked up to the house, A’s friends and family were looking at me with silly grins on their faces saying, “Choban!” (which is the Azeri word for shepherd) an making kissing noises. Entertaining? Yes. Wildly so. For the record, the shepherd with the crush is just a tiny little 82-year-old man. He brought me bags of apples, pears, and nuts—a super generous gift! [in this village, people often pay at the market with apples and nuts, since they don’t have money.] We walked together to his house because he wanted to show me this crazy lemon tree that he kept inside. We took a few pictures (see below), complimented his tree, and went on our way.

After our visit with the shepherd and a long car ride, we made it back to the city. I had a little bit of culture-overload and food poisoning from (most likely) unpasteurized milk (also, for the record, milk straight from the cow tastes more like cow than milk), but it was very, very worth it. I would do it all again in a second.

My life here overflows with joy and love and happiness and awkwardness. And I LOVE IT.

PICTURES of the weekend:

Our first glimpse of the mountains on the drive up:

Driving into the village:

Pulling up to the wedding:

Dancing--notice how the dance floor is in the street, covered in hay:

To cool to dance, apparently:

The (really, really loud) entertainment!

A dancing!

Instead of bringing gifts, people bring small amounts of money (they change it to Russian rubles, since you can have 5 bills for one Azeri manat) and throw it in the air while they dance.