Essay #6 (Flies)

My sister's bride price party was beautiful! The guests loved it. My sister was great.

But each of the 50 guests left behind 12 flies, and they all wanted to live in my room. I had a little breakdown and swatted about 50 flies while my family, no doubt, sat in the other room discussing how strange Americans are. Exhausted, I finally went to sleep only to wake up to a house once again free of flies.

Dead, you ask? No, I later found out that what I had thought was a strange dancing ritual is really a fly-clearing technique. My first night in my house the women had appeared in my room and had waved scarves in the air while walking the length of the room towards the door. Evidently they also performed the fly dance after my sister's bride price party and successfully removed the entire population of flies in Turkmenistan in a few short minutes.

I can just picture them wondering why this strange girl wants to keep the dead flies instead of just waving them out with scarves like any normal person.

They are used to flies, unfortunately, since flies are present at every meal and on every animal they own. Telling a Turkmen woman to prepare food cleanly is like telling her to serve only food prepared entirely under a mosquito net in covered cups with straws to a family hiding under blankets in a very warm room.