A Chai Chat

On January 14, I am going to do what is called a Chai Chat. This is an weekly event at the Embassy. It is an opportunity for local students to visit the American Embassy, hear one of the diplomats or spouses talk and take questions thereby practicing their English.



I went to one Chai Chat when I first arrived. A woman led songs from her childhood. She had a room full of high school students singing “Old MacDonald” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (in a round), “ABC”,“This Land is Your Land”, “B-I-N-G-O”, “The Eensy Weensy (or Itsy Bitsy, depending on where you were raised) Spider” and more. At the end she asked which were favorites that they wanted to sing again and she got several requests. I was amazed that high school students would want to sing songs like that. Most of them sang, laughed and really seemed to have a good time.


At my Chai Chat I am going to do storytelling with them. Most of you know that my main goal here in Tashkent is to get strong enough in my Russian language skills that I can go out and learn local folklore from people and share American folklore with locals. It will be a long time before I’m ready for that, but this Chai Chat is an opportunity for me to start sharing and I can do it in English.


I will begin with a story I often begin with when I go into elementary schools and tell. It is a personal story about how I thought my father did not love me when I was growing up. I share a (slightly embellished) story of the day I broke my arm while trying to pop a wheely on my bicycle. I go on and on about how mommy comforted me but all dad did was yell and be grumpy. Why? Because when I came home injured I dropped my bike at the foot of the driveway – a no-no. He was under the car changing the oil and yelled for me to pick up my bike. I was in pain and ignored him. He came into the kitchen angry with me while mom was comforting me. He started to tell me again to pick the bike up when he realized I was really hurt. He knew he had to get me to the hospital. The more he tried to hurry the more obstacles he encountered: the oil change had to be finished, the bike in the drive had to be driven around, he had to contend with traffic and red lights on the way to the hospital, the car had to be parked, paperwork had to be filled out, etc. etc. All the time he dealt with all this (read: yelling at the drivers, swearing under – or on top of – his breath) mommy was holding me and comforting me. Obviously daddy didn’t love me but mommy did, right? The students to whom I’ve told this story jump to my dad’s defense. It’s really encouraging. This is an excellent “bridge” story; we all have something like this in common.


I haven’t chosen all the stories I’ll tell that day but I will include some storytelling games where the students work together in creating a story or two.


Sometimes I feel so foreign here, like I am so different that I don’t belong. I understand that. Yet I also know that, though I am so different, I am as much the same. I’ve shared with you what a difficult time I have understanding spoken Russian - even words I know and use. The other day at the vegetable stand I frequent, a man said something to me right after taking a big bite of something. It came out just as it would in English, all garbled and incomprehensible. I turned and looked at a couple of women who were watching this (women who recognize me and know I do not speak much Russian) and I made mumbling sounds and a funny face. We all laughed together (except the man – he didn’t notice). Humor is a great bond.


Stories also make a strong bond. Many countries have their own version of Cinderella, for instance. Many cultures and religions have their unique version of the creation and great flood stories. Through all the variations in the story details (Did Cinderella have a fairy godmother or a magic tree? A prince or an enchanted fish? Did it rain or did someone cry until the earth flooded?) the story still comes through.


It is important to me to teach people of all ages that they can often find within themselves what they so desperately seek elsewhere. For instance, people everywhere turn to strangers for entertainment (television, cinema, recorded music, etc.) when good company can be as entertaining and much more rewarding than television every will be. When I taught piano I loved the house parties where we played for each other all night. I particularly loved Halloween parties that usually wound up with the late partiers telling scary stories to each other. I’ll take that over a good, fright film anytime – and I LOVE fright films. When Doug and I lived in Minnesota, we regularly gathered with people and sang. This was no formal choir; we never performed. Sometimes we didn’t sound very good; sometimes we sounded excellent and to be a part of that sound was very exciting – more exciting than singing along with a new recording by my favorite group. So, with that said, I want to inspire these Uzbek students to turn to their own creativity and the ingenuity of their friends for entertainment. It’s free. It is more rewarding to feel a part of the “show” rather than envying those strangers who are. It brings out of us what we weren’t aware of, it awakens what we have put to sleep and it develops a maturity in us. I am speaking of trusting our intuition, trusting others to teach and to learn through story or music and reviving the old endangered value of a close knit group versus a broad spectrum of acquaintances.


I need to say that I find nothing wrong with watching some television or paying top dollar for concert tickets. It’s getting lost in the near worship of celebrity that is disturbing to me. I also see the value in having a broad spectrum of acquaintances; it enhances our world perspective first hand. I think it is dangerous to have 10,000 'friends' on Facebook and no one to sit down and laugh or cry with when you need it at 2:00 AM.

I'll close with a few pictures of a Tashkent snow. I'm posting these with my Minnesota friends in mind. You recently got somewhere in the neighborhood of three feet of snow, right? We got about a third of an inch! But, remember, this place if very similar to Phoenix weather-wise so that's big, exciting stuff! You couldn't shovel this snow if you wanted to. Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes) would have to do his snowmen house of horrors in miniature. It snowed all morning and, by late afternoon, it sounded like it was raining because of the melt. The top right picture shows the infamous tree from "The Hill and the Tree" post of December 5.