Diary of a Lazy Project Manager

Salut,

For the last three weeks, I have been barreling full speed ahead and consumed with work on my grant project. Clubs, classes, and stuff at home seemed to come secondary to work on our project, and we have bought the vast majority of everything we needed, with few things remaining. 

    Baktygul suggested I choose an appropriate TV show or short movie for my 10th graders to watch. They have a small TV in their classroom which connects to YouTube and the internet (my school has internet but it is very finicky and only a few devices can use it at once). I couldn’t think of any free appropriate American shows on YouTube (my first thought was FRIENDS, extremely popular to learn English with but also has lots of inappropriate jokes for younger students). So I ended up choosing H20: Just Add Water which has all its episodes free online. I know that’s crazzzyyyy, but that was my childhood show. My mom bought the first season, but it didn’t work because the DVD was set for Australian DVD sets, not whatever ours was. My 10th-grade class is also majority girls which is why it worked, and I saw they were engrossed by it and found it funny, even with the Australian accents and overall dialogue they could only understand some of it. They were into it, and Baktygul and I are going to use it to teach vocabulary and dialogue. The Australian setting must feel so jarring (the girls in the show wear shorts and tank tops which none of my students would be caught dead in), being an island with so many beaches compared to the very very landlocked Kyrgyzstan. 

    

Baktygul has been suggesting to me to find English songs for the students to sing for an English seminar happening in December. I agreed, and she suggested the song Shape of You by Ed Sheeran, one of the few she knows. She didn’t know the name but could hum the lyrics. I had to remind her that it’s a totally inappropriate song for 5-7th grade students to sing. Students and people here in general will know so many English songs but will totally not understand the explicit meanings behind a lot of them. I showed her the actual lyrics, and she was mortified. She told me that Kyrgyz songs are about romance and love but not with the innuendo or explicitness of American music, which is to be expected. I accidentally once played a snippet of Paint the Town Red in front of my students during a playlist shuffle. Kids here know bad words, it’s unavoidable, they do, but the words don’t carry the same understanding due to the language barrier.  Regardless, I don’t infantilize my students, especially the older ones (and Kyrgyz society definitely doesn’t infantilize them, in some ways some of them are a lot more mature and forced to grow up with more responsibilities than Western children). 8th and 9th-grade students are big enough to hear a bad word and not die, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to encourage or make them sing inappropriate songs. Several of my students say English swear words to my face anyway. 

I’m actually much closer in age to many of my students than I am relative to the other teachers. I do think youth (and many volunteers are under the age of 26) does make other volunteers and me more approachable and more “fun” than older teachers. It has its drawbacks, ones I’ve discussed at length in previous posts. It’s easier to dance and have fun with them, but much harder to hold their attention and be authoritative when you need to be. Particularly among the older boys, they already hold that dichotomy on how they view their teachers, the much older teachers who are grandmothers are held in the highest esteem, while the younger women, they just don’t take them as seriously.  

Adelya is finally going to school. Frank’s school invited her to attend classes in the 0th grade (this is essentially Kindergarten of sorts). I have no idea why they invited her now, we’re so many months into the school year, but regardless she started. She attends classes from 8-10 AM or so every day. My brother and sister-in-law drive and accompany her to school nearly every day. She has an adorable backpack she sticks in her room, and she can be found at the dinner table doodling and starting to write Russian letters. I ask her nearly every day how class was, and she says good. I begin school later than she does and come back after she’s finished so I haven't really seen her go to school yet. I said a long time ago that I wanted to stay here so I could see her off, that I could see the seasons change and wean, see the children age and grow, and here is the payoff.

Daniel, my host cousin, has been back at home for some time. He came back to settle some documentation errors (he’s a Russian citizen by birth but a Kyrgyz national), yet has not returned. He hangs around the house as an inconsistent presence. Recently, Kyrgyz had local elections in our villages. On the day of, my host parents went to the village center and cast their vote for the village deputies who work in the local government, but both my sister-in-law nor brother didn’t vote, which I berated them for (they were “too busy” with “work”). My host father’s brother has also been hanging around the house (he’s visiting also from Moscow), as have some Uzbek construction workers. Gosh, they’re always around. I told my host father that Alihan reminds me of my dog back home, Bean, but I think he took offense to that. They're both the same age, and Alihan runs around the house in circles when I chase after him just like Bean the dog does. Plus, they're both a little dumb in a cute way and naughty in a very annoying way. 

My grant project is in absolute full swing! In the Peace Corps, we are encouraged and given the tools necessary to write grant projects to support our local communities. The education sector is unique in that our work is very defined; I have set lessons with room to do what I want with my clubs. Many other volunteers in sectors such as community development, health, or the specialized fields, are more ambiguous in their roles, so those volunteers make up a lot more projects on their own. Grant projects allow us TEFL volunteers more room to do what we want. Because we work at schools, it necessarily means our projects benefit the school, but that isn’t always the case; some volunteers create community centers, among other things. 

I have been late to the ball game, around half of the volunteers in my cohort are working on or have completed a grant, many during the recent summer. Due to previously mentioned events, with the absence of Baktygul and my director from the village for most of the summer, I had no movement on my projects. I also was a tad listless and unsure of what I was doing. Quickly after MST (Mid-Service Training) in September, I got everything together and submitted my grant. Most volunteers are doing similar grants in nature: building new classrooms or creating a new English center or buying new English equipment. Mine is the latter, as there was no real need for building new classrooms. My community (i.e. my director and Baktygul) have been incredibly indecisive about what they want and how much of what they want. I made a budget but you’ll soon see that we end up deviating significantly, as I expected. 

My grant isn’t anything special, but I do think my students will be happy. Especially as it gives love to my school, a small school dwarfed by the larger, better-attended, and more well-known neighboring Russian-language school. Whenever I tell people where I live, they always ask “Oh, you work at (insert name of Russian school)?” Ugh, even a year later, Frank’s school weighs down on me. It’s understandable, his school has over 2,000 students while mine allegedly has 500 (feels like less). Most volunteers work at the biggest school in their respective village, so working at the smaller one is an unusual situation I’m in. It often means, in conjunction with being in a very large village compared to other volunteers, I have a sense of anonymity and privacy. Most volunteers are known by their entire community, celebrities almost, easily recognized on the street, and familiar with 80% of the people in it. I can walk on the street and not recognize most of the students (because they go to the Russian school), an unimaginable feat for most volunteers. Lump that in with passing well (looking Kyrgyz), and I may as well blend in, if not for some of my occasional fashion choices. Frank didn’t blend in well, as he told me. 

All this is to say that my project feels like a big fun secret in my community, a gift to my small school, and one they’ve rightfully earned. Baktygul has been an invaluable asset in all of this. Mostly because she does a lot of the work. This is partially why I give myself the name of a lazy project manager. I am not empowered to be the primary or most important manager of this project; the community is. If I were to bulldoze in and run it myself, it would threaten the sustainability of my project. Having the director and teachers primarily running the show (ie communicating with vendors, watching over installations, etc) empowers them to see the new equipment and become invested in sustaining it. My role is primarily the accountant, and I am an intermediary between them and the Peace Corps, which supplied a huge amount of funding. I keep track of all the money (and I also have all the money in a separate account) and receipts, which I then have to submit. Baktygul is the communicator and she supervises the installations. We had an electrician/worker guy installing the projectors and new SMART board, and my role was mainly to continue teaching classes while Baktygul supervised the work, and then I paid the man and collected the receipts. 

So far, we’ve bought new textbooks, new workbooks, a laminating machine and laminating sheets, new reams of paper, two new printers, a SMART board, two new projectors, a new laptop, extension cords, and wiring, and the PE teacher is creating iron windows or something. We still have a few loose ends, and we are holding our trainings soon for the teachers. I had original plans for what to buy, we were going to buy four projectors, not two, but my director’s indecisiveness and input have derailed us into changing out items we may, or may not, need. It’s getting on my and Baktygul’s nerves I think, but I think that I’ve learned as a manager the necessity of balancing priorities between what my community (and director) claims to want, and what is necessary and feasible. 

There was a stretch of time when I was in Jalal-Abad city several times in one week. I visited to watch an afternoon football game in the city, for my first time. It reminded me of small volleyball games back at my high school (football games at my HS were intense and well-attended with their own band cheering them on). Baktygul and I visited the city again to buy stuff for our project: a new laptop for the school, textbooks, workbooks, etc. Then I visited the Modern International University to do a talking club. With winter here, it’s an excuse to get out of the house. That day was Aidana’s birthday, one of the few times my host family actually gets out of the house. They brought back a ton of french fries, pizzas, and chicken wings. 

During Thanksgiving week, I printed out Thanksgiving word searches. Many other volunteers had students create turkeys and write about what they’re thankful for. Unfortunately, I was too busy with Baktygul buying new equipment and supervising construction to plan something that elaborate. Additionally, we installed a new SMART board, so we showed them instead a short kids' video about the meaning of Thanksgiving. Then, I played fall and autumn music while they worked. Circling back to my comment about inappropriate songs, I played Take Me to Church because I think it’s a fall-ish song but one I love, and Baktygul recognized it, having listened to it in her undergrad days, but she hadn’t understood it. I couldn’t begin to have the words to explain the metaphor and meaning behind that song. It was controversial back when it came out over 10 years ago, and explaining to her, someone not well versed in the history and controversy around the Catholic Church is nearly impossible. 

Right after Thanksgiving, my school had a ceremony to commemorate World AIDS Day, which is today, December 1st. Many other volunteers were surprised my school would even deign to make a mention of it; Jalal-Abad is conservative and to even mention AIDS much less in an educational school context was interesting. In the auditorium, I noticed many months ago photos of students dressed in nurses' uniforms from an unnamed holiday last year. This is another school celebration I missed last year; it happened during my In-Service Training I had in Bishkek (the same one where our hotel burned down). You can read about my trials and tribulations last Thanksgiving here. I think last year was so chaotic with being new that I often missed random celebrations. This year, they put me on the judging panel. The ceremony consisted of two classes, 8A, and 8B classes, presenting information about AIDS on informational posters, then doing skits about warning signs/at-risk behaviors, and then they sang songs (I think both were about general love and health, neither really made mention of AIDS that I heard). 8A’s skit consisted of two girls going to the nail/beauty salon and apparently contracting AIDS there? It’s all in Kyrgyz, so I got the general idea, but after the nail salon, they all went to the doctor describing symptoms of AIDS, before a follow-up test confirmed they had AIDS. 8B was more daring and creative; it opened with the boys snorting what appeared to be sugar or salt standing in for drugs, while drinking alcohol and partying. Subsequently, they did the same routine, appearing at a doctor. I don’t know a ton about AIDS, but I am suspicious their display of “at-risk behaviors” (alcohol and going to salons) are real causes of AIDS, but I digress. 

Dr. Marat swung by the south to deliver flu and COVID shots, which as PC volunteers, we are required to get. The boosters have made me feel fatigued, but he showed up at my house on Thanksgiving, handing me several juice boxes as a gift, before he jabbed me in our guest room. According to some other volunteers, he was in such a rush he gave the injections on the side of the road in their villages (like in his car), not bothering to stop at their houses.

 

Over the weekend, most of us K-29 volunteers in the south gathered at Tahmin’s house to celebrate our own Thanksgiving. Much to my frustration, Hoyt, our Country Director, hosted his own Thanksgiving, Hoytsgiving, at his house. But as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, getting to Bishkek is immensely time-consuming and expensive for volunteers in the south. Northern volunteers have huge advantages in that regard, particularly the ones close to Bishkek already. For them, a weekend trip to Bishkek might be around 30-40$, 5-10$ for bus tickets plus 10-15$ for a night in a hostel plus food. But for a volunteer like myself in Jalal-Abad, we must fly because the roads are dangerous and too long. Plane tickets one-way start at over 40$, so not even counting food or a hostel, but transportation alone to and from Bishkek (including getting to and from the airport) would be nearly 100$. Just for one dinner. 

I’m not upset that he hosted a Thanksgiving at his house, I’m upset that it so heavily privileged the northern volunteers who could with much more ease bear the cost and time. A few volunteers in the south were able to go, and two volunteers in the south bore the cost themselves, but considering how little we make (it’s in the few hundred dollars per month), a trip like that is simply unfeasible. So we settled on having our own potluck style. One wasn’t able to join us due to being ill, but I brought some white wine bottles and fresh fruit I cut up into fruit salad. Others brought pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, a charcuterie board, more wine and soda, baked potatoes, chili, apple turnovers, and rolls, while Tahmin provided the turkey, roasted vegetables, and stuffing. I was salivating for the chili, which was just as delicious as it smelt, thanks Zoe! His host family, who speak fluent English, briefly joined us. 

When I was leaving, my host family warned me it would snow and that I should wear bigger and thicker clothing, which I relented to. The whole time I was there, it didn’t snow in his village, it just rained heavily. On the way back, in Jalal-Abad city, it also was raining cats and dogs. But as the taxi drove northward, there actually was snow, and after confirming with my family, December 1st was the first snow day in our village and area! Tahmin and the others are in a drier part of Jalal-Abad, so they won’t expect a ton of snow during the winter. So my family’s prediction was actually accurate for once. People make weather predictions about countless things here, and they’re so rarely correct, and usually, Jalal-Abad city’s weather is similar to mine. 

It’s December 1st, so it’s time for Mariah now! I know she says November 1st is the earliest time you can start legally playing her song, but I think it’s too early. In the past, I took Thanksgiving for granted; I’ve always lived close to my grandparents in the US, so Thanksgiving never felt really that special. Thanksgiving has always been significant stateside because people travel across state lines to gather and eat together, but for me, it was always a 15-minute drive or so to see them. As the saying goes, you never know what you have until you lose it. It is this time of year that I miss my family the most, as the biggest holidays in Kyrgyzstan are in the spring, but in the US, the fall. When I came home, Aidana said the snow indicated that winter had finally arrived. With that, my last autumn in Kyrgyzstan. Last year was a time for firsts, this year is a time for lasts. A last Thanksgiving and a last first snow. 

Cue the Christmas music!

À Bientôt,
Grace

 

Fall Music! (yes, some of this is very old)

1. Mine Forever- Lord Huron

2. Marjorie- Taylor Swift

3. Exile- Taylor Swift

4. Number One Girl- Rose

5. Drops in the Lake- Lord Huron

6. Take Me to Church- Hozier

7. As It Was- Harry Styles

8. Back to Black- Amy Winehouse

9. Counting Stars- OneRepublic

10. I Found- Amber Run

11. Fire Burns You Cold- Isak Danielson

12. Lovely- Billie Eilish

13. Minefields- John Legend and Faouzia

14. Far From Home (The Raven)- Sam Tinnesz

15. Love Runs Out- OneRepublic