It is Always Unpredictable

I knew before coming to Azerbaijan that I was worried about the bathroom situation. The anxiety comes in part from never having been outside of the Western world of flushable toilets, and in part because every time I need to use the bathroom in this country, it is a toss-up as to what I am about to walk into. Some of them (luckily, like my own house) have modern, Western, flushable toilets. Few, no matter how nice they are, have toilet seats, and that is one thing I still have not figured out. Of the normal toilets, some flush, some need buckets for manual flushes, and some just sit on top of holes in the ground. There are bathrooms with really nice porcelain everywhere and extremely clean, just of the squat variety. Some just are not clean. And then there is the outhouse. The dreaded outhouse. My experiences so far have brought me to the conclusion that while some outhouses don’t leave me with the feeling that I should immediately shower and rid my body of all toxins in inadvertently soaked in by stepping foot inside of the claustrophobic wood box, many unfortunately do. And that is the situation I found myself in during my dreaded “outhouse” incident.
My host parents asked me to come along over to their daughter’s house one Sunday evening. She lives in her husband’s house with their children, and his mother and father (Almost always the case if you are the youngest son of the family – my host brother, who is 27, lives in our house with his wife and two kids). Now, I don’t particularly like going over to this house in general because the father-in-law smokes in the room where we all sit and have our food and tea (It is also the only room for guests so you cannot escape to the kitchen) and because the daughter happens to also work with me at school and gets so nervous to speak English, there is a lot of confusing conversation. Nevertheless, we had been there a lot longer than I had expected and it was nearly eleven p.m. when I decided to bite the bullet and ask about using their bathroom. The problem is, in Azerbaijan, it is a slight faux pas to even talk about the bathroom or anything having to do with it. And amazingly, it seems to be only the foreigners who ever need it when they are not at home (I think my family has super human bladder strength). So after two hours of being uncomfortable, I got up the nerve to ask if I could use their bathroom, and the daughter said, “I’ll bring you out there.” Which I knew only meant one thing: Outhouse. And, boy was I right.
After we tramped through the entire orchard, I was given the flashlight for some lighting in the dark abyss. But after I rolled up my pant legs and stepped out to widen my stance, the floor board broke from under my leg and I not only fell on top of the hole that everyone pees (and other gross things) into, but my leg also went under the outhouse. I thank all of my lucky little stars that this one was not the kind that was near overflowing because my leg did not touch a thing. But I screamed, and my host sister/counterpart came running in to help, but then could not stop laughing at what a ridiculous situation I was now in. I felt a little better after that because she was so embarrassed about what happened she couldn’t stop laughing. I was also embarrassed and highly grossed out about falling in an outhouse and would have probably started crying if I hadn’t done a little laughing about it. I asked her a million times over not to tell the seven people back at the house what had happened, but she couldn’t quit giggling and it was inevitable. I ended up dousing my cuts and bruises in antiseptic, and washing my jeans twice(which is not an easy task when you are hand washing) from essentially sitting on the floor of an outhouse, but it has proved to be a fairly hilarious story for my family to repeat, and another good, “Did that just happen?!” moment for my Peace Corps service.

Did that Just Happen?!

I am starting a section here called “Did That Just Happen?!” in regards to the daily things that occur to me while in Azerbaijan which leave me shaking my head and thinking, ‘Did that really just happen?!’ I came to the conclusion one day these small transactions are what epitomizes life in a different culture. Sometimes I find it difficult to explain (not just in Azerbaijani but also in English) why living in Azerbaijan is so different than living in America. There are times where the culture differences are vast and easy to point out. But sometimes, it is the fleeting observation of table manners that makes me chuckle, or chasing down a mashrutka in a taxi that leaves me thinking, ‘Whoa, I am not in America.’

Runaway Mashrutka
To preface this story, a mashrutka is a small bus, usually ten to 12 passengers which is used for both in-city travel at twenty cents a ride and from city to city at about three to six dollars a ride. (I am fairly certain mashrutka is actually a Russian word, but I am not sure there is a different Azeri word for it. Or if there is, no one uses it.)
My friend Rikki and I were on our way back to Goychay from a neighboring region where we were visiting another volunteer for the weekend. We picked up a taxi in the city center to take us the fifteen minutes out to the highway where we were catching a mashrutka as it passed on its way to Goychay. After the taxi driver had to take his little boy home for lunch first, we headed off to the highway anxiously checking our watches as we were getting close to the time the bus should have been driving by. Sure enough, as we pull up to the road, we see a blue mashrutka in front of us on the road. Rikki tells the driver she thinks that is the bus we need to be on, and without hesitation a pursuit ensues. Within about ten minutes of driving like a bat out of hell and passing multiple cars along the way, our taxi man had honked enough to flag down the mashrutka. Unfortunately it was filled to capacity, but the driver took pity on us and made other people share seats so we could board. As we were safely returning to Goychay, Rikki and I chatted about how when we both came to Azerbaijan, that ride would have scared the living daylights out of us and neither one of us probably could have appreciated it. We drove fast (really, really fast) and were allowed on a bus with no room or seats for two women plus backpacks. But in America, we would have simply just missed the bus, and that would not have been much fun either. I had to get to back to school. So for one of the many moments of, “Did that just happen?!” I was really glad it did.

Eggshells
There are a lot of beliefs in America about what will make you sick and what will make you healthy. Eat fruits and vegetables. Don’t eat butter and salt. Wear sunscreen and your seatbelt. Don’t listen to music too loud, etc. Azerbaijan has what feels like a thousand ideas about sick and healthy items. Unfortunately for me, they are usually near opposite to America’s. Sometimes I just don’t believe them. Sometimes I want to try them. And sometimes, I just shake my head and steer clear. One item for good health I shake my head at is eggshells. For about a week we had a bag of cracked eggshells hanging up in the kitchen. I figured they were being used for compost or something regarding the multiple animals and plants we have hanging around. But about a week later, I was enlightened to their use. My host sister-in-law put them through the meat grinder a few times and ground them to almost a powder, added a bit of milk, and fed them to the one year old baby for important vitamins. Ick. I’ll pass on the eggshell paste.

Child rearing practices
While we have been guesting at other people’s houses lately for birthdays and holidays and such, the two year boy has been especially frustrating. He is in an attention, terrible twos, wild stage. Lately, this includes wanting anything and everything other people have. As he is normally indulged in what he wants, I was not terribly shocked when he had half a glass of wine at dinner. My host sister-in-law said he was just showing off and would not like it anyway. I agreed, but after he had a few drinks, and then downed the whole glass, I’m not sure it was just to show off. And afterwards, if he was falling down because he has bad balance or because he was three sheets to the wind, no one will ever know.