(no subject)

So sitting with Mahbuba and her family last night was quite nice - Mansura opa (Mahbuba's older sister) cooked up golubtsi: meat and veggies all ground up and then stuffered into what they call bulgarian peppers - like bell peppers only less bell shaped. Then you make a tomatoe based soup and cook the golubtsi in them. Interestingly, golubtsi is translated out of russian to mean "little dove" - I have no idea what the connection there is.

I told them that the next time I came to visit I would bring apples and shortening and make apple pie for them. Mansura opa exclaimed that of all the american women they know (and they know alot) I am the only one they know besides their friend Laurel who knows how to cook and how to bake and how to wash clothes (by hand is implied here) and how to knit. It is high praise from them - it means that I am a good woman - they were commenting at how good a mother I will be and (of course) telling me that I should hurry up and have children. Women here, for the most part, believe that women are unfulfilled unless they have children. They also believe that having babies quickly in a marriage solidifies the bond between husband and wife, if there is a baby then the husband won't leave. I have to strongly disagree with this one considering how many women I know who have had kids and the father has left regardless. And I really think that a few years of marriage before kids is a smart thing - it gives a couple a chance to explore their own bond without complicating it with children.

Also Eleanora was doing her sociology homework about the positive and negative aspects of Uzbek mentality - it sparked a long discussion which I really enjoyed about the value of preserving traditions and the role of women in doing this. I tried to gently voice my observations of Uzbek culture so far especially about the lasting patriarchal system here, which is really a criticism on the world because although women have the appearance of choice in many places, they are still functioning within the male devised system, most often in the roles that have traditionally been set out for them.

(no subject)

so today was interesting - in the morning before my dutar lesson I cancelled my uzbek lesson to go to a presentation of CD roms with Uzbek music and folk culture on them to school music teachers - the CD roms are excellent and done in collaboration with UNESCO. It was a beautiful presentation and my advisor here, Rustam Samigovich made a lovely speech and talked a little about his research excursions to the Baysun area.

Then the opened the floor for questions.......

BIG MISTAKE - it turns out that although they were giving out free copies of their CD rom to be used in the classroom as a helpful tool for music teachers, these CD roms are going to be lovely shiny coasters for most of the teachers there (about 40). All the comments/questions consisted of complaints that this new technology is fabulous, but how can they hope to use it to help teach kids when no one has computers recent enough to play the CD roms - those that are lucky enough to have computers in the classroom have really really old ones that don't read CDs. They want audio examples to play for their kids, they dont care about multimedia stuff they can't use. The reply was that they are working on audio CDs and yet again an uproar arose - people don't have CD players - many teachers are bringing their own tape players from home and they are really annoyed that the only tapes they can get are estrada - uzbek pop. One woman made a lovely comment about how they thought there would be a resurgance of availablity of Uzbek folk and classical music after independence but now all that is available is estrada.

So this lovely little presentation/CD give away turned into a chance for school teachers to voice their struggle to teach kids without any decent tools that were promised by the government.

After 5 or 6 comments giving roughly the same complaint, one woman piped up and said that people are complaining to the wrong place - that these nice musicologists are trying to help them and give them free things and they shouldn't complain to them, they should take their complaints to the ministry.

A good point, but I'm not sure how much the ministry can do for them.