Hospitality, Communication and Surprise PD Sessions
By Sunday morning, fifteen messages had arrived in our International Teachers’ group, which uses the Telegram messaging platform to communicate. They were all from our Academic Director, who doesn’t sleep and thinks nobody else should either. “This can’t be good,” I said to Dave. He only nodded in resignation. The messages were the follow-up from the previous night. I had refused to read them because I believe in a strong demarcation line, reinforced by barbed wire and turned-off devices, between weekends and workdays. Dave, however, keeps breaking the rule. He had succumbed and read the first text. The Saturday evening message informed us to disregard the Saturday morning message. “Well, so it’s good I didn’t read that,” I told Dave. “But now it’s Sunday. So, what is it now? And maybe we should skim it just to be on the safe side.” The suggestion went against my own rule, but we had a week ahead of us without any classes since, on Friday, the students had left for their winter break. During a staff meeting several days earlier we had been informed that we would be sent outside of Nukus to different towns and villages to ‘dispense the wisdom of experienced International Teachers.’ That was the response we received when one of our group had the temerity to point out that we were hired as regular teachers, not teacher trainers. That all took place during the meeting. After resisting the urge for the entire Sunday morning, Dave finally opened the document and read us the program for the upcoming week entitled ‘Specialized Teacher Training – 10 Days of International Experience Exchange.’
“That sounds like a cruise brochure,” I laughed. Dave did not think it was funny. “Wait until you hear this. We are supposed to prepare a presentation about QP.”
“What?”
“Well, that’s what it says. QP.”
“What the heck is QP? Quality Processes? Quality Practices? And why do I have to guess?” I just laughed again because, if I didn’t, I would be tempted to cry. “So here we go, we are supposed to be presenting this when?”
“You on Tuesday, me on Wednesday.” He pointed to the screen. “So this is fun. We are going to talk about QP and we don’t even know what it is. Typical for the way they plan things around here.”
I started to laugh till the tears were streaming down my face. “This is so funny, it’s to the point of being ridiculous. I am going to be presenting on QP in less than two days and I don’t even know what it is.”
It turned out that QP stands for Quality Papers which basically just means good assessments. “Why couldn’t she just say that? Is this going to become one of the new buzz words? QP?” Dave just shrugged.
Between Sunday and Tuesday the plan changed only once. The Wednesday trip was cancelled, and all of the Internationals were going to the same town about 90 minutes from Nukus on Tuesday.
Well, one hour into the trip we received a text message from our Director that there were not enough attending people, and that one car with a pair of presenters could turn around and go back to school.
“Too bad it’s not us,” my colleague, who was going to translate for me, said after he finished reading the message.
It could be worse, much worse, I was trying to cheer myself up. I could have ended up sharing the car with Zana. At least my colleague was slim, not taking too much room in the crowded car. Even more importantly, she was not laden with perfume like our Chemistry teacher. Zana is an Egyptian lady who has a disconcerting habit of pouring copious quantity of heavy perfume over herself every morning. I don’t have to be a German shepherd to know when she walked the hall ahead of me. In the liberal and democratic Western society, someone from the Administration would approach her and tell her to lose it, or at least tone it down. She would get upset, claiming that this is trampling her personal freedom to express herself, and that it is infringing on her rights. She would sue the school for discrimination, and the school board would settle the dispute out of court. She would then go on a vacation or two paid for from the settlement and, once back in school, would switch her perfume brand for something milder. Here, nobody says anything, and life goes on. Luckily, there don’t seem to be any allergies around. There are no EpiPens prominently displayed in the staffroom or the nurse’s room, as is so common in Canadian schools, and there are no notices to staff about student allergies. Dave was able to source peanut butter in only one store in Nukus. Perhaps there is a connection to be made between the lack of peanut butter and peanut allergies.
My musings were interrupted by our arrival at our destination. The local school was a nondescript one-story building set back from the road with a strip of tired looking lawn. There were at least ten people standing in front of the building. In the typical gesture of the Uzbek hospitality, three people approached us as we piled out of our cars and handed each woman presenter a welcoming bouquet of flowers.
Sometimes we complain about extra duties such as traveling to distant locations. But the truth is that, at the end of the day, I enjoy these experiences and appreciate how hospitable the Uzbek culture is to strangers. Back in my first year, I was invited to my co-teacher’s birthday party at her home. I knew she does not drink any alcohol so the easy gift of a bottle of something special was out. My question “What can I bring to the party?” was answered by “Nothing Ms. Zora. I would be just honoured and happy to have you there.” She is such a polite and kind lady, my co-teacher. But not very helpful in answering my question. On that occasion, l settled for a bouquet of flowers and a box of chocolates. It’s not very original but, I reasoned, you can hardly go wrong with flowers and sweets.
During the party I noticed an envelope travelling around and later I found out that it is a standard practice to collect money when hosting celebrations. It is a very practical solution and, had I known this, I would have been happy to contribute and save myself a trip to the florist and a sleepless night of pondering my gift choices. Lack of communication will likely be the end of our civilization as we know it, and not global warming or Trump’s presidency.
It reminded me of a story circulating amongst the Czechs in Toronto some years ago. A Czech family had arranged for a visit of their elderly mother from a small town in the Czech Republic. Because the family lived far from Toronto and their mother arrived late at night, they asked their Canadian friend Martha to pick her up at the airport and host her until morning when the family would arrive and collect her. All went well, their mother arrived safely and was picked up and taken to their friend’s house where she was asked what she would like to eat. “Oh, nothing,” she answered politely. Martha asked her one more time with the same result and that was the end of it. In the morning the mother could not have been happier to see her family. Not just because she had not seen them for a long time, but the poor elderly lady was famished because she had not eaten anything since her departure from Prague. The Czech polite response to being offered something is to decline at least twice. The Czechs love being persuaded and coaxed. The third time is the lucky charm and the offer can be accepted gracefully. The Canadians are more direct, and I like it. It saves time, and doesn’t leave people hungry.
The money collection makes sense. I personally love having flowers in my life. Especially during the cold winter months when anything remotely colorful outside are usually discarded plastic bags. To relieve the tedium of gray sky and tired looking lawns I always have some flowers in my room. Bringing a bouquet to my colleague’s house was a reasonable solution to my birthday gift dilemma. However, when you invite four hundred people you don’t want to end up with a large catering bill and a living room looking like a flower shop or a funeral parlor.
Next time I was invited to a birthday party, the situation was very different, and I was better informed about the proper protocol. Another of our local colleagues celebrated her 50th birthday in grand style. The venue was a banquet hall, and the collection of money was well organized with two men sitting by the entrance and noting on the list the names and the amount contributed. “Let’s not be stingy, it will be noted,” I joked to Dave.
We never know when to arrive at these occasions. There have been times when we arrived at the specified time and we were the first ones there. And once we arrived twenty minutes late and everybody was already there looking at us reproachfully. There seems to be a special phenomenon called Uzbek Time that governs local people’s perception of time, but we have not been initiated into it. On this particular occasion we arrived at about the right time, as there were already many people milling about, but no one was seated at their assigned tables yet. The man who showed us to our table was another school colleague whose name we did not know. We thanked him and scanned the large table appreciatively without sitting down. It was loaded with plates of various nibbles and salads. Feeling a bit self-conscious to be the only people sitting down, we opted instead to walk around the room. A large display monitor was looping a PowerPoint presentation of photos at various stages of Nulifer’s life. Being the only Westerners there and, as such, standing out in the crowd, we had to beat off several nice people, whom we did not even know but who tried to steer us to our assigned empty table thinking we were lost.
As at any Uzbek social gathering the organizer had two small games prepared for our entertainment. One involved us, the internationals. We were called to the center and, with the spotlight on us, told the simple rules of the game. Taking turns, we had to say one Uzbek word we had learned. “And whoever runs out of vocabulary first is out,” our colleague obligingly translated. All the time in Uzbekistan I have been polishing my Russian so I knew that my supply of Uzbek words mostly related to food would run out very quickly. But it was a friendly game and we all ended up with a small gift for our participation. “Don’t want to sound ungrateful. But what are we going to do with a third useless glass fruit dish, or whatever this is,” Dave wanted to know. I laughed as I lovingly stroked my plastic Tupperware-type container, “Eat your heart out. I actually got something useful this time.”
Sometimes I need to pinch myself and thus remind myself. Hospitality and chaotic communication. It’s a package. It all balances out at the end of the day and I revel in it.