Noxious, unwanted episodes have been sprouting up all week! DPJ has made a new friend next door, finally, and in his attempt to entertain and show his friend a good time he's become more daring in his exploration about the property. Monday night while Nathan was outside making preparations for banya, our neighbor Sasha and his little sister Tanya were also outside playing with D&Z. I was indoors preparing dinner and taking it easy (it's become a tradition of sorts that the babes don't come back inside until they are clean, it takes about 2hours to get the banya ready and hot.) So, Nathan comes in at one point and leans against a wall and buries his head in his arm. He was awfully silent for about a minute. Then he tells me that Desi has broken the pump to the well. He and Sasha were throwing stuff down into it -- heavy stuff like metal and wood, as well as random dirty things like homemade whiskbrooms, etc. I was so afraid that one of the babes might have been injured (a well! think of it!) that our thirst and necessity for water didn't quite take root. It's taken root now, day 4, and we're completely dependant on buckets.
Then Nathan gets an email with the 'final' verdict on our attempts to renew both our Russian and Kazakh visas were, "No" with caveats. We cannot get a 1-year Kazakh visa but perhaps a 3-month, though the law stipulates that foreigners can only get Kazakh visas once a year. What?! Which is it? And no, we cannot get another 3-month Russian visa but there's a chance the agency can arrange for one month. Meanwhile, our Kazakh visas expire the end of August and the Fulbright folks expect us to be in KZ on 15Sept per grant stipulations. Too much density, we need to prune back.
And while Jones is stricken with all this grave, complex information, Des enters the room with an open paint can and proceeds to drip/spill/unload a modest amount all over the carpet. He found the paint in the bathroom, tucked away in a far corner, and before bringing it along to show Nate had dribbled/leaked/oozed a generous amount all over the bathroom floor. I was out at the time sitting in a flower garden, near the fountain, reading Dostoevsky and dabbling in poetry. It was lovely and then I returned home. Alas!
Speaking of weeds, Des brings me one of these this week, a conciliatory gesture, as there have also been several small upsets lead and instigated by him that have multiplied our nightmare.
Upon close inspection of the weed . . . could it be? Could it be marijuana? Nathan confirms. Our neighbors, the Saltzburg brothers, pointed it out to him when they were over to give a hand with the well and pump.
Laughter. Contemplation. On such a week, the weed emerges. I took a walk with thebabes this morning and there are patches of it growing wild everywhere. No one seems to mind it.
It's just a weed.
2 comments:
I watched a BBC special about Kazakhstan a while back, and the reporter stopped on the road because there were bushes and bushes of marijuana everywhere.
When he basically asked a local why everyone doesn't just smoke it, he said something along the lines that everyone is so preoccupied with just essentially trying to survive, work, and make a living, that no one would really have time to think of doing something like that.
Don't know how representative that is of everyone in the country, but it really struck me as an interesting reason of why people in developed countries did think about smoking it.
This reminds me of an episode of Gilmore Girls - Jackson and Souki found marijuana in their garden. Don't know if you ever watched it, but it was really funny. It's fun to check in on you in your overseas adventure.
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