Day Thirteen - Istaravshan

We are welcomed at another school. This time we had the Tajiki drum we love so much, but a boy also was playing this huge horn.

We are greeted with the bread and salt,

but we’re also given these purple live flowers that just had an amazing fragrance.

Children on both sides of the walkway lined up waving flowers. Smiles, cheers, “Welcome”. This is like the 10th time we’ve been welcome but its still totally overwhelming.

I straggled behind the group and played photographer – smiles in any direction I was pointing. We made it up the steps, did some group photos with the school staff,


and then into the building, so we can sit at our usual “feast table”. We were treated to poetry,
a song,
dancing, then we had to dance, we were each given a student made stuffed animal by the student who made it (I got a cool purple dog). They showed us the traditional process for their special cradles they use for when the baby’s first nights.
After all the presentation we head to the ILC for our turn to do presentations. I had the day off, since I had done the last two. This was actually one George’s partner schools, so he had goodies for them from his students. Andy also did a great student experience with his leadership activities.


He had a large excited, ‘gung-ho’ group of kids. I photographed and assisted Andy as much as possible. Every now and then, about 3 or 4 times, I would wonder off into the school yard and start playing with the chain and ring. The crowds were so massive I could feel them on 3 sides of me. Everyone within viewing distance joined up. Then on echild brought me a postcard and wanted to sign it. So I printed my name, signed my name and added ‘Houston, Texas USA’. Then comes some papers, then notebooks and before you knew I had signed 50 or 60 autographs. I needed to go in an check on things, and everything was good so I went back outside and ended up doing another 50 plus autographes. This time their was this one little girl I made a connection with so I played with her a little with everyone around and ended up putting my McDonald’s bandana on her and given her a kiss on top of the head.

The noise at that point was incredible. The phrases I have found all Tajiki kids know in English:
“Good morning” – they say it anytime of day
“What is your name?”
“One, two, three, four”

One student had camera, and wanted picture with me. It took me five minutes to get the crowd to open a path between the photographer kid and me and the student, and I bet she still gets 25 extra kids in the shot! A teacher comes out and runs the kids to wherever so I go back inside.

Things are still good, so I go back outside again with my digital camera, but I got to a different side of the school. Next thing you know I am swarmed, but since I got the camera, they are telling me they want their picture taken with me. So now I got kid photographers fighting over who go to use the camera (these are elementary age kids) and kids fighting over who is going to be in the photo or where they get to stand. We get some done, unfortunately, the kids are the best photographers and heads get chopped off and things like that. We do this until the batteries go out.

I go inside and put the camera away, and my partners are doing fine without me, so I stat walking around and here they come with their pens and paper. So I go into a classroom so I can sit at a desk, and do autographs until there is no one left wanting my autograph. I write nice little comments now since I had the time so when they got it translated they would feel good or special. By the time I was done, I probably autographed over 200 items. Never in a million years would I have guessed I would experience that.

I was talking about this experience with my partners, trying to figure out anything that would be equivalent. A visiting foreigner would not have the sameeffect in the US, because students have foreigners sitting next to them in class sometime. The best comparison would be if we told the students a Space Shuttle Astronaut was visiting. Even though the kids may know nothing about the person, his job/title makes him special. And the astronaut probably doesn’t feel that special because he’s just doing his job when he’s in space. Here we are just teachers, but because we come from the other side of the world, we are treated like very honored guest.

So now I’m in the gym with Andy’s crew photographing them, and its time for the “crossing the river challenge” which is going to be done outside. So in the gym he breaks them into four groups tells them he’ll instruct inside so they can hear better. We finally go outside and I don’t believe. This is this huge crow of people in this oval shape. Reminded me of a bunch of people waiting to watch gladiators. They see we are coming and their cheers and claps like the home team just came out to defend the championship at a major sporting event.

I climb up on a water fountain a decent distance away to get above the crowd shots in the inside. The crowd is so big, I can’t fit them into one picture! So I work my way through them into the middle for good action shots.

To be continued…