A Call to Tact, and Some Russian Jokes

Bryan was asked to take down his blog. A couple local people (anonymously, at least as far as Bryan knows) complained to the Peace Corps director about their characterization in it, and she, in turn, asked Bryan to remove it. A friend of mine, being told about this, said, well, in America, I'm sure you can't publicly criticize people in power, either. Well, actually...but really, that's neither her nor there - whatever the rights of average Kazakhstanis to publish their opinions of the power structure on public, inexpensive places like web site, we're not ordinary Kazakhstanis. Peace Corps volunteers have a serious and important commitment to being apolitical. If we were going to be empowered to be a threat to power structures that we object to, these power structures wouldn't have invited us here in the first place.

Maybe more significantly, saying publicly what we think of the way things are managed is counterproductive. Taking cultural issues head on (and unfortunately, attitude towards incompetent management is a cultural issue), openly and honestly, tends to blow up in your face the same way moving openly and honestly in chess does. Frankness doesn't seem to change things, and it makes people angry.

So how do you effect cultural change? Damned if I know. But when I find out the secret, I'll make sure to post it here.

Anyway, Bryan knew all this, he basically just forgot that his website was public and wrote imagining having only his friends back home as an audience.

And you may think this is just academic, but thinking about this has made decide not to write about work in this entry and instead to write a less offensive anecdote, which will be three Russian jokes that I was told at at a banquet for poets and singers from Kokshetau and Petropovlosk that I was lucky enough to attend last night. That they are funny to me isn't meant to be implied.

1) A little girl wanted a bicycle very badly. Every day for a week, she asked her father for a bicycle. Finally, on the seventh day, her father took an axe and cut off her legs. "What do you need a bicycle for?" he asked. "You don't have any legs!"

2) A hunchback and a stammerer were friends. The hunchback came up to the stammerer and said, "I have good news for you! You've been offered a job as a TV anchorman." The stammerer was very offended, and said to the hunchback, "Well, you remember that photograph you gave me of yourself? I'm giving it back to you so I can close my photo album."

3) Two men, Ivan and Vladya, got very drunk together. Staggering out of the bar, Ivan fell into a filthy ditch with chickens in it, and the chickens started pecking at him, cheep cheep cheep. "Ivan, shoo the chickens away," said Vladya. "I can't," said Ivan.

Beans, and an Old Enemy Therein ...

I went to the corner store to buy beans for chili. The Russian word for "bean" is "fasol". I walk into the store, and seeing a Kazakh face, ask in Kazakh: "Do you have any fasol?" (lit: "At you beans are?") (I'd forgotten the Kazakh word for bean, which is burshak. It would have saved me a lot of trouble, as you'll see.) A blank stare from the saleslady. Thinking maybe Kazakh is the problem, I ask in Russian: "Do you have any fasol?" (lit: "Around you beans exist?") Another blank look. I have no choice but to try again. "Do you have any fasol?" A blank look. I come face to face with the paucity of my bean-describing vocabulary. "They're little. They're food. I need them wet," I try. "Fasol." The woman frowns and says, "No, we don't have those." "Do you know what I'm talking about?" "No," she says. "FASOL," I say. The commotion has attracted another saleswoman. "Can you understand me?" I ask. "I need fasol. Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong." The women look at each other. "Fasol," I say again. "Ah!" they say. "You need fasol." "Yes! What did I say?" "You said fasol." "And how is it supposed to be pronounced?" "Fasol." "Fasol?" "Yes." "Fasol. Am I saying it right?" "Sure, you're saying it right." "Do you have any?" "No."

So what went wrong here? As I discovered when I finally found a can in another store, is that fasol has the hated-by-Americans-trying-to-speak-Russian-everywhere myakii znak at the end, which turns the normal L into a mysterious Russian soft L. I, for one, cannot for the life of me hear any difference unless people leeringly exaggerate the pronunciation like they would do when talking to cats or very stupid people. But if you say the wrong L, the word is rendered totally incomprehensible to native speakers. "Fasol? What does he mean? Oh, he means FASOL."

Dammit.

An Inspection

I lost my temper with my counterpart yesterday. I very rarely lose my temper, but this time I did. I'm teaching this "experimental program" for teaching math in english. The government has provided zero support for this, in terms of textbooks, a syllabus, a course outline, experience of past teachers, nothing. Which is fine with me - I've been writing my own textbook and doing my own thing. But this week there was an inspection, and my counterpart asked me why I didn't follow the government's experimental "plan". She had heard me say to a school board member that I was making up my own textbook and syllabus. What plan? I asked. The plan I showed you at the beginning, she said. The plan she showed me at the beginning was for a math class, and they were following it in their Kazakh-language math classes. It wasn't for English. There wasn't a plan for English. So I was making my own plan. Well, if you don't follow the plan, the city school board will cancel your program, so you have to follow the plan, she said. And I lost my temper.

But in a (for me) proud moment (for my counterpart, probably the opposite), I dodged entertaining the very same commision that day. They observed one class, and I had another scheduled after that, but after the first class they wanted to sit and "discuss" things with me. But I have a class, I said. My counterpart told me, just give them an assignment and let's go, and I evidently (judging by her reaction) gave her such a look that she said, oh forget it, just come down when you're ready.

I've moved into a new apartment. Pictures are attached, courtesy of Don and Robin, two very nice Americans who are staying in Kokshetau in accomodations luxurious enough to have a high-speed internet connection. They found me through this blog; by having done so, they further enabled my bloggin. This is sustainable development. Brian and I will show them the shashlik place tonight.

Isn't it about time I started looking seriously into graduate schools? It is.

Google helps

I'm planning on moving my old posts to the blogger format from the old blog program that I wrote myself. Mostly, it's so that people can post comments. Neal advised me that if I didn't know what I was doing - and I don't - then I could easily open up security holes if I tried to add comment-writing functionality to my bloggin software.