Temperatures have been bitterly cold. Heavy snow has already fallen on multiple occasions. It hasn’t exactly been baseball weather. Almost immediately following the final softball tournament, winter weather had arrived in Azerbaijan. There was no other choice but to put away the bats, balls, and gloves until the birds began chirping in the spring. Then again, the decision was never really up to me.
Despite the cold weather, the children of Oguz still have an insatiable desire to play the game they love. I have received text messages on days with freezing weather and a foot of snow on the ground asking if we could play baseball. I told myself I would stay strong; baseball season would not begin again until March. But they just kept asking. Finally, with not too miserable weather on Sunday, I caved.
The turnout wasn’t huge, but for those who came, enthusiasm proved to be as high as it had ever been. The children shook off what little rust they had, braved the cold, painful stings of the bat, and ripped the ball all over the diamond as if it were the middle of June. Who needs an off-season? In Oguz, baseball never stops.
* * *
As the end of the semester nears, work exhaustion is definitely beginning to set it. All of a sudden, everything to do with teaching English has become painfully boring and tedious. Not only have I been less cheery in class, but I have also begun – however guiltily – to hope my students would not show up to conversation clubs. Not my kids, though. In Bujag, conversation clubs are more packed than ever, illustrating just how ungrateful my desires had been.
Tuesday, I was given a grateful reminder of just how lucky I am. Feeling particularly lethargic, I slept-walked through my first conversation club and was ready to half-ass my second one when something brought me back to life. Working on the vocabulary of personality traits, I asked the children to describe the character of their favorite person. Calling on a young 8th Form boy, he stated that Kevin Teacher was his favorite person, then proceeded to rattle off a long list of favorable personal qualities. I blushed and laughed as he went down the list, eventually cutting him off and accusing him of being a brown-nose.
“All right, all right. That’s enough, Khayal.” Apparently, though, the other students wanted him to continue, and Madina, Bujag’s all-star English student, spoke up in his defense.
“But, Kevin Teacher, Khayal is not brown-nose. I think I speak for everyone when say that you are our favorite person.” After she translated for the students who could not understand, the kids all vigorously nodded in agreement with smiles as contagious as a the plague. And there I was, at once thankful for having made some sort of impact on these kids’ lives and embarrassed that I had ever even briefly wished they wouldn’t show up to club.
So often I hear about how PCVs have difficulty in simply getting children to come to their activities, especially when the weather is cold. I have never had this problem. Whether they speak English well or not, a very large group of Bujag students are loyal conversation club attendees. The fact that I would hope for even a second for this enthusiasm to disappear is the epitome of selfishness. I have taken for granted the excitement of my village. My situation is one to truly be grateful for. Hopefully, never again will it take an act of humorous, ass-kissing flattery from my students to remind me of this.
With a shot of enthusiasm, I was able to finish out the workweek on an energetic note and transition into the festive weekend that awaited me. With the AZ-9s having recently arrived at their respective sites and the holidays quickly approaching, a recently returned Allie and I headed up to Balaken to join the PCVs of Azerbaijan’s middle finger (Balaken, Zagatala, Qakh, Sheki, and Oguz) for the seasonal festivities. Gathering at a restaurant in town, we drank bad wine, listened to Justin Bieber Christmas music, and stuffed our faces with fried khengel (fried dumplings with salted ground beef inside).
* * *
“Kevin, do you think you can finish it?”
“Oh, I’ll make myself finish! It hurts like hell, but I’m gonna make myself finish.” As I sat in that Balaken restaurant with a bulging gut and greasy fingers, I looked across the table to see how Stephan was doing. Like me, the new PCV from Sheki was trying to eat 40 fried khengel. Unlike me, he didn’t seem to be struggling in the least bit. As he neared the magic number, his looks of discomfort and pain seemed contrived, as if only displayed so as to not make me feel bad for the struggle that I was enduring. As I fought to swallow my 36th delectable dumpling, Stephan polished off his 40th. Whether I wanted to or not, I now had no choice but to finish. I couldn’t let an AZ-9 put me to shame. So, with a swig of some particularly disgusting homemade wine and the sweet sounds of The Biebs in the background, I dipped the remaining four dumplings in some ketchup and shoved them into my mouth. While the final two stayed tucked in my cheeks for a solid five minutes, I had downed my 40 khengel. The 2011 Middle Finger Holiday Fest had uncomfortably begun.
After dinner, the PCV bunch headed to Trey’s house for an evening of holiday cheer. With a festive rendition of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” a Yankee-swap gift exchange, and a few games that may or may not have had any relation to the holidays, the holiday season was underway, Peace Corps style.
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