May 24, 2013

Since I had slept so poorly the night before, I had a hard time getting myself together this morning. It had started to rain right before I went to bed and this morning the skies remained dark and ominous while the temperature had dipped substantially or enough for me to see people wearing their coats again.

I got to Lingua a bit before eleven after dropping off the original handouts to be printed for the session in Naryn on Monday. I brought Zarina the set of kitchen utensils I had purchased last fall as she and her husband are now building a house for themselves and will be needing everything for the household.

Gulnara was available, so I sat down with her to discuss the results of Jennifer’s visit and what was happening at Forum, which wasn’t much since no meeting of the officers had been held in a couple of months. I brought her the book Peter had given me on reflective teaching as I never had a chance to use it here.

I finally sat down to make the changes to the CATEC program Jennifer had requested so that all entries were uniform. Zarina notified me that a special luncheon was being held at one to say goodbye to both Nargiza and Adina as one was getting married and moving to Kazakhstan and the other to Dubai to make more money.

I wasn’t particularly hungry, but tradition dictated that I had to have at least a small portion of the plov prepared by Nargiza’s mother and the salads provided by Adina. The plov had no color or flavor and I had a tough time eating even the small plate of it mixed with a green salad.

I excused myself to go back to my project and worked on it until about 3:00. My copies were ready and the young guy even remembered to prepare a receipt for me. The #4 trolley came by just in the nick of time and I was home in no time at all. I had to take a short nap as I felt depleted of all energy.

Asel and her student were coming by at six, so I got up to make a list of the pages that were giving me problems with the e-book. They showed up on time and I made coffee for them before he positioned himself at my computer to look at the e-book.

It turned out that  the student wasn’t familiar with the program I was using and felt that unless he download it to his computer and played with it for a while, he couldn’t find a solution to the problems I pointing to. He did agree to provide me with a program so I could design a cover page on my own.

I worked on the booklet for another two hours before giving up on it and deciding that watching a movie would be a more suitable pursuit at that time. I chose a rather harrowing tale of human determination, “Rabbit-proof Fence”, based on a true story of a group of aboriginal sisters that are first abducted by the Australian government because they were of mixed blood heritage.

As in many other parts of the world where the notions of an inferior race plays a significant role, the sisters are taken to a camp to be indoctrinated into the Christian faith and prepared to become the future servants, nannies, and guards for the white people as well as unpaid prostitutes for the white masters.

No one makes any mention of the fact that if the white masters didn’t rape the aboriginal women, there wouldn’t be a mixed blood children problem to be dealt with in the first place. The hypocrisy of the Australian society continues to this day as the prime minister refuses to acknowledge the theft of the lands from the aboriginal people or the inhumane treatment to which they had been subjected ever since England turned that country into a penal colony.

Why did choose such a depressing film tonight?