Banya Adventure

I have no idea how you actually spell banya in English, but it is essentially a sauna. I have finally had the banya experience. Our nanny invited us today to come to her house for banya. It was probably one of the best experiences we've had here, if not the best, because it was a true and actual experience in the land of Kazakhstan. So much of what we do here is with Americans or what seems to be normal stuff you can do anywhere. It seems hard in this country to find the interesting cultural things. Maybe because we don't get outside the city. I guess that's probably what we miss most about Egypt; there was always something interesting, literally every day. One of our fellow Cairo teachers wrote this same exact thing in his blog recently, but it's true. Sometimes we just miss that constant stimulous of the unknown every day.

So, I digress. The banya. (And this will be a long one.) We had a terrible time trying to find our nanny Ira's house. We picked up one of her fellow Jehovah witness members, an American named Loni, from the Jehovah compound that is right next to our school. We'd dropped Ira off once at home, but never actually saw which house it was. We set out to find it, but we ended up just working our way up and down the narrow streets. In the residential areas, there are tons of houses like the picture below. (The picture is not her house, but a similar one I found on line.)



Now, the streets are terrible in these areas, basically dirt roads with huge potholes, bumps, and ruts. We had to back all the way down one today because we couldn't get up it. I was getting motion sickness from all the bumps. Finally, we found it by dumb luck and because her daughter, Dasha, saw us and came out to tell us we were in the right place.

All I can say is that we are so lucky. It is surreal when you realize how other people live and you compare that with what you would consider inadequate living. After today, we are not sure if Ira has indoor plumbing and we think that she may live in half of the house with only a small kitchen and living room. We never saw the other half of the house, nor a door or means of getting to it. There was an entry way with a refrigerator and gas stove. Then, there was a small kitchen and a living room. No bedrooms and no bathroom. Joe said maybe he saw an outhouse. I'm just not sure if it's possible or not.

The first thing that I saw when I entered her house was a large cement oven in the middle of her kitchen. On the side was a door that you opened to shovel in coal. This oven is for cooking and for heating the house. At the top were some metal sheets on which were her pots for cooking and heating water. I went to wash my hands, but her faucet did not work. Instead, she filled a funnel like plastic contraption with warm water from the stove.

In Ira's small living room was a small TV, DVD player, table, two sofas, and a large cabinet that reached almost to the ceiling (common here as storage and space is limited). We hung out there and Sophia had a grand time playing with their cat and Dasha's old toys.

Then, it was time for the banya. Loni went and used the banya first. Then, it was time for Joe and I. The banya is basically a small cement building, maybe the size of two small backyard sheds put together. There is an outer room, a middle room, and the inner room. In the outer room, it was kind of like a shed. They had some old bags and broken cabinet doors lying in there. The ceiling was made from what I think was old outer metal house gates.

Then, you open the door to the next room and you can feel some of the heat. In the middle room, they had a bench, some hooks, a towel on the floor and a mat on the floor. You get undressed in this room. Dasha also fed the fire in this room. There was a little door (imagine a pot-bellied stove door) that opened into the inner room and she had a coal/wood fire going down there. Maybe it was just wood; I'm not sure. The walls were covered with droplets of condensation and a single lightbulb hung from the ceiling beneath a small square of metal.

We opened the door to the banya and steam rolled out. Basically, it is a sauna - home-style. There is a low wooden bench and a high bench obviously built by hand. They spread a white sheet on the top bench. In the corner is the fire with stones stacked on it. There's a black hose coming from this if you want to get hot water. They keep a big bucket of cold water in the other corner. There are a couple of ladels for pouring water over yourself and for flinging on the hot stones in order to make more steam. And boy, was it steamy. It wasn't terrible, but we had to go back out to the middle room a few times to cool down and get our breath back. They also had lots of soaps and facial scrubs for us to use. Interesting to me was that they had older-looking loofa and puffs for us to use, nevermind how many people had used them before.

The most interesting part of the banya is the branches. In the banya are a bunch of birch (I think) branches. It's really more like a bunch of leaves. They put these together, wrap a rag around the end, dip it in hot water, and then beat each other with them. Our nanny suggested this was like a massage. However, I find that being hit with branches is not like getting a massage - it's just, hmm... how do I describe it -like getting hit with branches! We tried that out, scrubbed, sweated and then sweated some more. We spend about 45 minutes out there in all. When we finished and dried off, it was so refreshing. My skin felt so pure and clean. We walked outside and didn't feel the winter weather at all.

All in all, a positive experience. This was much less intimidating than I originally expected. I was having horrible images all week of having to get naked with our nanny and her daughter. Americans, at least the ones I know, or maybe just the women I know, are not too interested in sitting around naked, sweating it out together, especially with their employees. Like I said, much less intimidating with it being just Joe and I.

We went back in their home and had a late lunch together. Ira made monte (dumplings), beet, cabbage and pomegranate salad, and the best - gelatinous meat! I have never been so glad to be a vegetarian. I knew as soon as I saw this dish that Joe was in for it. Imagine, a bowl of cold, plain gelatin with chunks of meat suspended in it. Mmm, mmm, mmm...no thanks. The best part, we got to take some home. Even though she made that very culturally different dish, everything was delicious. Ira, of course, overfed us. Then, we had cake and tea, a must after every meal. Before we could leave, we had to take three full dishes of food with us and so did Loni.

I came away feeling happy, to have made a friend as warm and generous as Ira. I came away feeling guilty, that I seem to have so many material possessions while they have so few, and I came away feeling satisfied to have seen a different way of life. Oh, and I came away feeling very relaxed from the banya and so much food.

This is what traveling overseas is about.

Walking Carrot Top

A little video of little Miss Talkative. She's saying "walk" in case you can't understand her gibberish.

Pig Tails and Jam

Sophia just loves it when I put pig tails in; she spent a lot of time smiling at herself in the mirror. I just had to capture the raspberry jam smeared all over her face. It didn't stop her from shoving a banana in!

Still Learning

One of the most interesting things about working in an international environment is that you never stop learning about other cultures. Today, I felt like a fool because I had no idea about something that a student presented in class. Our school is about 22% Korean. The Korean's are always taking about the Japanese in such a hateful manner, but I never fully understood until today.

I never even knew that Japan annexed Korea and took their resources. They exported tons of rice and took over lands. I never knew they tried to eliminate Korean culture and put so many people into forced labor. They made the Koreans change their names to Japanese surnames. I didn't know that they forced so many of the women to be "comfort women" for the Japanese troops. How could I not know such shocking things? I always hate when I have these moments where I realize how limited or perhaps, narrow, my education has been, especially in the area of history. I know so little of Asian or African history. Let's not even talk about my geography skills!

So, it's interesting because my students educate me, and they keep me on my toes. It's interesting to hear their perspectives on things and to learn about their values, beliefs, etc. Here's another example, we were talking about something like superstitions or ghosts in my American literature class. The Kazakh students started telling me about little hairy gnome-like creatures that they all have as protectors. They really believed it. They were telling me how the creature stays with you at night and protects the house. One girl even said she saw hers sitting on her bed. I'd never heard of something like this before. Supposedly, the Kazakh people have lots of things like this. This is why I always ask the kids about things in their culture because I never know what I might hear.

Another interesting thing - food tastes. The other day our nanny's friend Alonya(whom we work with) brought us a huge gallon jar of honey to bring back to our nanny. We brought it to her and she was telling us all about it. Apparently, you can buy it from a car that drives around. She told us that the store-bought honey we bought was really bad. Now, that store-bought honey was just like what we have in the U.S. However, the honey she had was more like liquid sugar. It was thick and crystallized. She spooned some out for all of us to try. Then, she filled up a tuperware container for us. Now, how much honey does a person eat? Maybe a teaspoon on its own. Maybe a teaspoon in tea. No joke, when we got home, at least a half cup of honey was gone! Who eats that much honey? They do apparently. She says they eat it all the time for health as it's full of micronutrients. Definitely different from us, I think.

Sometimes I forget all the interesting little details.