The life of a foreigner living in Turkmenistan is either filled with grave ignorance of the surroundings or with bursts of anger that spray out like a fireman’s hose that’s too strong for its fireman. Rarely do the people who deserve this anger get fully punished, and often some partially-innocent bystanders face the brunt of the storm. I ended my day today running after a girl with a candy wrapper she had thrown on the ground, yelling, “Here! Take this. You have a dirty country. It’s dirty because of you. Why would you just throw that on the ground. Go home and tell your parents that you live in a dirty place in a dirty country all because of you.”
Yeah. . .
That, of course, is juxtaposed by the fact that I had just gotten a snicker and a “Hello!” shouted from a group of grown men dressed in black suits waiting to greet the P------ and watch the opening of a new hospital, who of course had time to pause first and laugh at the foreigner. That was after I’d set up a basketball lesson for begging students on a Saturday and then none showed up. So candy-wrapper girl got a bit of a shock.
I’m not the only one with outbursts, though. Katie, after too many stories of kids dying, yelled quite loudly at a boy outdoors who was about 2. She found him outside playing with a stick, a puddle, and a dirty syringe. She took the needle, yelled, “Dirty! Dirty!” and a bunch of other instructions and told him to go home. 2 year-olds with used drug needles are no contest for an angry volunteer.
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