The Quest For Nar

I've got a guest writer today.  Butterfly is going to write about a small part of our adventures today.

The Quest For Nar!!

This evening, towards the end of a nice dinner at Simit Sarayi, I decided I wanted some nar to have with my breakfast the next day. Nar is the Turkish word for Pomegranate. So I got Dad and Mike to join with me on the quest for nar! And we were off, in search of the perfect nar (or any nar, really). Just around the corner, I spotted some nice looking ones. But that place was only for making nar juice, so we continued on. We passed 5 or 6 places like this. Then finally, after an all around 30 min. walk we reached an outdoor market with veggies, fruit, and fish of all kinds. And then I saw it. The perfect nar!! The man gave me a large sample which I enjoyed, so we purchased a lovely yellowish nar. I walked back to the place we were staying very happy. I am now feasting upon the perfect nar, I couldn't wait until breakfast. But there is some left over for breakfast. 

Uncivilized

I wasn’t sure how my body was going to handle this trip.  Bouncing from one time zone to the next can take its toll.  So far though, with the help of a few strategic naps I’ve been ok.  Mike seems to be doing pretty well too.  We were talking a bit today (a day that started in Dushanbe, Tajikistan and ended in Istanbul, Turkey) about the term “civilized;” mostly about how it is a relative term.  In going from Dushanbe to Istanbul have we moved to a more civilized city, or is it simply more developed?

Forgive me for a bit, but I’m going to talk about toilets.  Many people in central Asia use what can be called a “squatty potty.”  It is basically a hole in the floor.  Whether a cement hole into a pit, or a porcelain hole that flushes, to my westernized mind this is uncivilized.  Take a minute though and think of it this way, to use a western style toilet you have to sit where other people have sat.  Now who’s the uncivilized one?

                                               What did you expect, a picture of a toilet?

Issues of clothing come to mind as well, specifically women’s head coverings.  Some western women view head coverings as a sign of gender oppression, an indicator of an uncivilized culture or regime.  At the same time some eastern women view the west’s lack of head coverings as a sign of impropriety and immorality.  Again who is uncivilized?

People can and will vehemently argue either side of these topics, which proves the point that on many issues that we think of as major points “civilized” is a relative term.  To gain some perspective though how can we use the absolute truth of the Gospel to define “civilized?”  I love having conversations with Mike because he’s good at focusing on Biblical truth for answers to most any question. 

Civilization reaches its high point when it is focused on love.  When a society can live in a loving way with a simple framework of rules it has progressed beyond what most of us have referred to as civilization all our lives.  

What can you do to make your civilization more civilized?

“Love is kind and patient, never jealous, boastful, proud, or  rude. Love isn't selfish or quick tempered. It doesn't keep a record of wrongs that others do.  Love rejoices in the truth, but not in evil.  Love is always supportive, loyal, hopeful, and trusting.  Love never fails!” – ICor13:4-8a

A Framework of Understanding

The easiest way for me to learn new things is to relate it to what I already know.  Discovering the culture here in Tajikistan is no exception.  There are many cultural similarities to Kazakhstan, A larger country to the North that I visited about 8 years ago.  There are also some similarities to Turkey, but, not surprisingly, very few similarities to the US.

My first reminder that we were in a former Russian country like Kazakhstan was the large hats that the police wear.  To me they look a bit goofy, but to the Tajiks they are to be respected.  The second reminder was the visa process.  We had instructions to look for a small room to get them and it’s a good thing we did.  The door looked like it belonged on a broom closet.  We went in and found a long skinny room crammed full of people who could only use half the chairs in the room because of the large marble tables in the middle.  Down at the far end of this room were two men at desks with computers with the occasional sound of a dot matrix printer breaking the silence.  If it weren’t for someone from our flight telling us what to do we’d likely still be sitting there.  As it was we spent over an hour there waiting for a sticker to add to our passports.

Luckily it’s not all funny hats and long lines.  We met our host and he drove us to his house.  The house is also very similar to those of Kazakhstan.  The street he lives on looks like that of a village more than the center of a city of over one million people.  The pavement is rough, sewer pipes protrude like speed bumps in front of every house with that and the gate being the only way you can tell there’s a house there.  Either side of the road is a ten foot wall with gates large enough to drive a car into every 50 feet or so.  We got to one of these gates and our host got out of the car and opened it.  Inside there was a courtyard surrounded by rooms on three sides. The lavatory, wash room, kitchen, living room and our guest room are all accessed by doors to the outside in this courtyard.  While this gives a great feeling of sanctuary in the middle of the city, it also means a trip to the loo in the middle of the night requires a walk outside in any weather.  I enjoy this layout of a house, as do our hosts, but I could see why others wouldn’t.

There is a treat we’ve gotten here that I have a hard time hanging on my framework.  In the middle of the courtyard there are two persimmon trees.  From a distance they look like oranges, upon closer inspection they aren’t.  The texture is kind of like an apple, but mostly not.  I tried coming up with flavors I could compare them to, but couldn’t.  I do know that I enjoy them and so do the children of our hosts.

But What Have You Been Doing?

Our adventure started 14 hours before our scheduled flight time.  We left so early because we didn’t know what to expect on long island considering the damage from the hurricane the week before.  Our trip down I-87 was blissfully uneventful and our drivers got out of NYC on the leading edge of a snowstorm.  After a 4 hour delay because of the snow storm I had already watched an “in-flight” movie, got to see firsthand what it looks like to de-ice a plane and gotten very excited because we were finally on our way!

This is the ground crew spraying what looks like Rain-X on the wing

We arrived in Istanbul on Thursday night.  By the time we got here the people waiting at the airport to meet us had left because Turkish airlines never posted that the flight was late.  I was excited by the challenge though of getting all 3 of us from Europe to Asia.  In case you didn’t know Istanbul is the only major city in the world on two different continents.  The airport is on the European side and our apartment and most of my friends are on the Asian side.  I got the privilege of getting a cab at the airport at which point my Butterfly thought I was impressive for telling the cabbie where we were going and figuring out the cost in Turkish.  So we went from the plane to the cab and from the cab to the “Deniz Otobusu.”  This is Turkish for “Sea Bus.”  The Sea Bus is a double hull, high speed, ferry boat that took us from the shores of Europe to Asia where some friends were waiting for the approximately 10 block walk to our apartment for the next few days.  These 3 friends are artists and musicians that we’ll get to know better later in our stay.

A street of beautiful restaurants that we found just after we ate at a diner.

It’s now Saturday night and we’ve spent two days in meetings that I won’t go into the details of here and doing a bit of sightseeing.  I think for the most part the sightseeing is an excuse to get some exercise and fresh air.  We’ve so far been to the Blue Mosque and the Grand Bazaar and only gotten lost a little bit in the streets surrounding the Sultanahmet area of Istanbul.  It has been a great few days with some profitable conversations and perhaps a little Cokokrem.

Breakfast of champions!

A Fate Worse Than No Internet

There is something worse than having no internet service at all.  That’s having some internet.  I don’t say this to try and compare access to FaceBook with clean drinking water or a roof over your head.  I can certainly do without it, but I woke up this morning (thanks to jet lag) at 4am.  Some -quick- groggy, early morning math told me that would be 8pm back at home.  This would be a great time to video chat with Tricia and the kids.  My expectations high, my hopes were up.  I opened my laptop and it automatically connected to the local wi-fi, however after 30 minutes of reconnecting, rebooting and growling at my computer, here I am, still offline.  The router won’t connect to the internet.

Sometimes I feel the same way about my family’s adventures in trying to get here to live in Turkey for the past few years.  We go through times of hopeful expectation when we think access to this world is only moments away. At any time we could get a call that would make it all happen.  Then there are other times that we’ve gone through an entire re-boot and entered into a period where we knew we weren’t going anywhere for a year or more.

The common factors in this comparison are expectations and hope.

I always expect baklava to be delicious.

Unmet expectations can be a source of great frustration.  In living cross-culturally how we react to them is crucial.  I’ve had years of living with unmet expectations.  Some I’ve dealt with in healthy ways, others not.  At the moment I’m dealing with unmet expectations in a productive way, by writing this post instead of sulking, getting angry, or trying to break into the office where the wireless router is.  The key to reacting well to unmet expectations is remaining flexible.  We need to be able to set aside our preferences for the sake of self control, peace and joy.

Hope is different than expectation.  Hope puts trust in something.  My hope this morning was putting trust in technology which is never a safe thing to do.  My hope for moving to Turkey, however, is putting trust in God.  Which of these makes more sense?  Obviously a hope in God is much more well-founded.  It is a house built on rock instead of sand.  While I may struggle with it for a while I will eventually give up on the hope of technology working, but I will not give up on my hope in God.  He has given me my dreams, desires and talents for a reason and I will be faithful to pursue those dreams and use those talents wherever He has me no matter what.