Nyurba:
Again, I apologize for my lengthy disappearance. I’ve moved away from the big city and have much less regular internet access. You can take the next few weeks to read the new posts, since it will probably be a little while until I can post again :). However, I have been writing, so there’s quite a bit all at once.
Anyway, I’m now in a small town, technically called a city, Nyurba. The population is about 10,000 and it is the administrative center of the Nyurba ulus (or “county). The town is situated on the banks of the river, Viliui, which itself flows into the Lena a few hundred kilometers downstream. Bridges are apparently really difficult and/or expensive to build in permafrost regions, making pan-river development more or less impossible. As a result, the entire city is located on just one bank. To look over the river (about 500 meters wide), you see only forest as far as the eye can see on the other side. In actuality, there’s quite a lot going on over there, between potato growing, hay fields, horses and cows roaming and hunting, but if you don’t know where to look it seems like just wild forest. In the winter, its easy to get to the other side—just walk or drive over the ice-covered river. In the summer, the only way is by boat. In the late spring and fall, when the ice isn’t solid enough to cross, people simply don’t.
At the moment there isn’t a single paved road in the town of Nyurba, although there are rumors that the main street may be paved sometime in the coming years. This is a much awaited event as complaining about the roads is a favorite topic of conversation. Indeed, in the springtime, as the snow and ice melts, the roads become unbearably muddy, whole lakes developing in the middle of the road. Many walk around in galoshes, bringing their shoes with them to work and to school. In the summer, when the roads dry, they become dusty, dirt filling the air with every gust of wind. The roads are best in the winter, covered with snow so that the ever-present trash is hidden and then dirt and mud trapped beneath the white blanket. Furthermore, few cars actually continue driving all winter since the gasoline freezes without a heated garage, a luxury few find particularly useful in this small town.
Most of the buildings in the town are made of wood, but there are a few more solid structures in the town center, the most prominent of which is the offices of ALROSA-Nyurba, the regional branch of the state-owned diamond industry, ALROSA— “Almazii-Rossiya-Sakha” (almazii=un-cut diamonds). There’s also the new hospital, and a building housing Schools number 2 and 3, both built with funds from ALROSA. Older prominent structures, include School number 1, city government, and the House of Culture, the latter of which was recently refurbished with funds from ALROSA. Not surprisingly, the new city logo for Nyurba includes the ALROSA logo. I come back to the diamond industry in a later post.
Other than the above listed buildings, the city is pretty much entirely wooden. This is rather unfortunate because the wooden buildings quickly weather in the harsh climate and even relatively new structures end up looking ancient. The local college, for instance is just 10 or so years old, but is already tilting due to the permafrost shifting underneath it. Walking through the corridors on the second floor, makes you feel a little like Alice in Wonderland as the floor seems to wave up and down. In the city center, there are a few stores and other public buildings lining the two main streets. Buses run down these two streets, carrying passengers in and out from surrounding villages and also from one side of the city to the other. Fortunately, it’s possible to walk almost anywhere you want to go in half an hour since the buses take a break at lunch time and don’t run past 7 in the evening.
As far as residential buildings go, there are both houses and apartment buildings. The apartment buildings are small, typically two-story structures, also made of wood. These often will have something that approximates indoor plumbing so that the residents don’t have to use outhouses. But the houses all lack indoor plumbing, even those of the wealthier residents.
Life without indoor Plumbing:
How, you might ask, do people get along without indoor plumbing? It is a bit of a pain, but honestly you get used to it after a while. The worst thing is the rarity of bathing oneself—once a week, minimum. Other than that, its surprisingly easy to get used to. The toilet is in a little wooden structure, a little ways from the house—you just have to put on a coat and hat to go out. Of course, in the winter this can be pretty miserable, but even then, you just run out and back in so that the cold doesn’t get inside of you. To wash hands, they place a bucket with a spigot-like thing over a sink. To wash dishes, they simply use a tub of soapy water. They are also pretty sparing in their use of dishes so that there is rarely an extensive bulid-up of dishes. For many meals, the dishes consist of a cup and a fork for everyone and the pan of food (more often than not meat and potatoes) is put in the center of the table and everyone just digs in. Despite its offense to Euro-American germophobia, it certainly makes the clean-up afterwards much easier—and I don’t think people here are sick any more often than they are in the US.
Slightly more complicated, is washing clothes. The family I’m staying with (the Nikolaevs—relatives of my friend Sardana, who first introduced me to Yakutia when we met at the University of Pittsburgh) does have a washing machine. How common this is, I don’t know. But, to use the washing machine, they simply pour the water in at the appropriate moments themselves and it works just fine. They usually reuse the same water for a number of loads, making it necessary to wash whites first, then progressively darker loads.
Most complicated is bathing. There are no showers here. From what I understand, people who don’t have their own “banya” (sauna-like bath house), go to the public baths—but I haven’t encountered this personally, so I can’t say for sure. Others just bathe with a tub of water, in their house. Fortunately, I live with a family who does have a banya. It’s a little wooden structure that is just barely too small for me to stand up straight in (this seems to be a constant problem for me here, as everything was made for people who are shorter than me). Its heated so that you sweat considerable while in it—the sweating is part of the cleansing process, considered very healthy. There is a barrel of cold water and a basin of really really hot water (sitting on top of the furnace). To bathe, you mix the cold water in a tub with the hot water so that it’s a good temperature and use a wash cloth to clean yourself. Being a separate bathhouse, you just let the water fall to the ground so that its relatively easy and pleasant to bathe. The whole experience is really the highlight of my week, to tell you the truth. Not only do I come out clean, but it’s also relaxing and rejuvenating, just like sitting in a sauna.
Sakha Pastoralism:
Sakha traditionally speaking are horse and cattle pastoralists, which means that in prerevolutionary times, they lived primarily off of horses and cows. To this day, Sakha living in villages almost all keep horse and/or cattle. And many living in small cities, such as Nyurba also keep horse or cattle. They eat the meat and drink the milk of both horses and cows. Horse meat is actually quite healthy. Apparently, the Japanese import rather large quantities of horse meat from Yakutia for medicinal purposes. From fermented horse milk, they make kumiss, the Yakut national drink, which is used especially for ceremonial purposes and given to people when they are sick as it is rather expensive to produce—horses produce quite small amounts of milk in comparison to cows.
Both horses and cattle are special breeds, adapted to life in the severe climate of Siberia. Both the horses and the cows are small and thick, in comparison with European horses and cows. The horse hair is unique in that it is hollow, like a pipe, providing extra insulation in the winter time, but allowing them to breathe in the warmest days of the summer when temperatures can get above 90 degrees F. The horses also are able to dig under the snow to find grasses and other foods, so that they feed themselves all winter. With these adaptations, the horses need almost no maintenance in the wintertime and are let to roam freely around the pastures and forests near the villages. The cows require significantly more maintenance than do the horses but have their own adaptations, like thick coats of hair and small height that helps them to endure the cold better.
Despite these abilities, pure Sakha horses and cattle are relatively rare nowadays as the Soviets mixed them with European breeds in order to increase milk production. This of course also severely decreased their ability to survive without constant maintenance on the part of the keepers. Today, great efforts are made to preserve the purity of those few unmixed herds and furthermore to increase the quantity of such herds.
Many people today will keep horses and hold another job quite easily. However, cow farming, even with real Yakut cows, is more of a full time job. Cows can’t live on their own through the harsh winters and so are typically kept in a small structure all winter, where they are fed hay. Traditionally, this structure was right next to the house, and sometimes people lived together with their cows—this way they could share heat with the animals and spare the firewood. The hay is grown during the summer time, traditionally through slash and burn methods. A swath of land would be cut or burned to grow hay. In late July and August, the hay is harvested—the busiest time of the year when whole villages go out for the hay cutting. On bigger farms this is done mechanically, but on many smaller farms, the cutting is all still done by hand with scythes. Those who complained about having to mow their lawn—imagine what it must be like for Sakha teenagers (and adults) who have to go out to the fields and cut hay. During the Soviet period, all the young people in Nyurba were expected to work at least 2 summers on the state farm, cutting and gathering hay.
In prerevolutionary times, the cow farming cycle required regular movement. Sakha were not completely “nomads” in the sense of constantly moving, but rather “transhumant,” meaning they moved seasonally—winter dwellings were typically in places sheltered from the wind, made of wood, mud, grasses, and manure, while summer dwellings were in clearings good for growing hay and looked more like teepees, made from poles and animals skins. Nowadays, of course, residences are permanent and most live in wooden cottages in the Russian style that are nowhere near as effective for protection from the climate.
In the present day, most people in Nyurba at least also have gardens, including all-too-necessary greenhouses, near their house and many also have a larger field outside the town borders where they grow potatoes. Agriculture in Yakutia only started with the arrival of the Russians, and Yakut people came to widely practice agriculture and horticulture only in the 18th and 19th centuries. Until then, Sakha people got flour and other agricultural products only through trading with the Russians and so lived almost entirely off meat and milk products. As a result, in traditional Sakha cuisine, they make extensive use of every part of the animal, since many necessary vitamins and minerals can be obtained from the liver, intestines and other parts that make most Euro-Americans cringe.
Fishing, hunting and gathering:
Fishing, hunting and gathering are also a crucial part of Sakha lifestyle, both historically and today. As one man told me the other day, almost all Yakut men consider themselves hunters and when hunting season starts, the villages empty of adult men, who all disappear into the forests. Most commonly hunted are duck, rabbits, and other small game. Next are moose and wild deer/reindeer. Expert hunters will even hunt bears. Professional hunters (that is, people who are hunters by profession) hunt fur-bearing animals—sable, foxes, muskrat and others—following extremely strict laws that protect these animals from the over-harvesting that just about wiped them out in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Up until the mid-19th Century, all “aliens”, that is non-Slavs in the Russian Empire, among whom of course were Sakha, were required to pay tribute, or “iasak” in the form of expensive furs. Local officials, governing far from the oversight of the central government, often ran their regions like little fiefdoms, demanding enormous quantities of furs, only a portion of which they passed on to the tsar, keeping the rest for their own profit. As such, some animals, e.g. sable, were hunted almost to extinction throughout Siberia. Today, Sakha largely import their furs elsewhere. However, with strict protections in place, many animals are starting to revive, local fur production is growing again, and Sakha are able to earn a living from hunting.
Fishing is also an important source of food, especially vitamins, for Sakha. “Stroganina” or frozen raw fish, sliced in thin strips is considered a national dish and a delicacy. Indeed, made from good “chir” (a kind of white fish) it’s quite tasty. The best fish is found in the north in significant numbers, although sometimes in the central regions they can be caught as well: sturgeon, burbot (?), and others that I can’t find an English translation for. More common is “karas” (translated in my dictionary as “European carp”), which is a small, bony yet tasty fish, often fried. People fish all year round here, drilling holes in the ice during winter, and taking big nets out onto the river in the summer time. I’m learning words in Yakut language for all the different kinds of nets that they use, that I wouldn’t have the first clue how to translate into English.
Finally, where fishing and hunting is largely a male pursuit here, berry and mushroom gathering is the classic female summer activity. They say that Sakha people didn’t even gather mushrooms until the 19th Century when Russian habits came to be more widespread, and some even say that berry gathering was not so popular either before then. Now, however, both are significant additions to the regular diet. Beginning with the rains in June, mushrooms start popping up—they usually eat these immediately rather than canning and preserving them. Then, beginning in July, wild strawberries appear—these are the tastiest (you don’t even need sugar for the jam), but also are the hardest to gather, necessitating hours of searching through bushes, plucking one at a time, just to get a single bucketful. Later in the summer, red currants, cowberries(?)-“brusnika”, and black currants ripen--these are gathered in large quantities, made into jam reserves that typically last all winter long.
Industry and Ecology:
I was speaking with one older Sakha man today (who, incidentally, proudly declared himself a devoted communist), and was telling him about my interests, my research. I mentioned I was interested in the influence of industrial development in the region—his response was to immediately start talking about the disappearance of the animals and fish. For many Yakut, this is what the “influence” of industry in the region means. Ask any older Sakha here and they will tell you that in their youth, the woods were full of ducks and rabbits, the rivers full of fish—you only had to walk to the edge of the forest and you’d find plenty. Now, you have to go all the way to the river “Markha”—a good half-days walk, where the water is still clean and the woods are less polluted to find anything worthwhile. It’s hard of course, to be certain exactly what caused this, but if you ask Nyurba residents, almost all blame industrial development.
The most important industry in the region is the diamond industry. As I noted in my first post, Yakutia’s diamond industry produces almost 100% of Russia’s and 25% of the world’s diamonds, making it an extraordinarily lucrative enterprise. At the moment, it’s almost entirely state-owned, controlled largely by the federal government, although they have plans to sell-off portions of the company in the near future. Diamonds were discovered in the 1950’s, along the basin of the Viliui river, which runs through Nyurba. Since then, the incidence of cancer in the region has risen considerably, birth defects and other problems have increased as well. The significant presence of heavy metals in the water, by-products from the mines, is a well-known fact to all and is widely thought to be the cause of many health problems and the disappearance of fish and other animals from the region. It’s because of this that people have to make their way to the nearby river to find “clean” water.
Of course, however, one of the central aspects of my own research, is that 10 years ago, they found diamonds on one of the tributaries flowing into the Markha, and have started intensive mining there. As of yet, significant pollutants have not yet reached the lower Markha, but most Nyurba residents I’ve spoken with have low expectations for the future environmental health of the river. At the same time, it’s incredible the amount of attention paid in the media and in the press-releases from ALROSA to the issue of ecological security. In reading through old newspapers, almost every article pertaining to the company, mentions the significant role it is playing in the region’s “program for economic and social development,” a large portion of which includes environmental protection. As such, it’s clear that the company is aware of the problem. What precisely they are doing about it, however, is less clear—but it is difficult to say that they are doing nothing since I don’t have any strong evidence either way. Just the assertions of the company on the one hand and the assertions of friends and acquaintances on the other.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
Villages of Yakutia
In the last post I wrote about Sakha language and a bit about the language situation, especially in the city. It's appropriate then, that I talk a little about the villages here, where Sakha language is especially alive and active and where I've had the most opportunities to speak Sakha language. There are, in fact, people living in the villages who struggle with Russian. They speak only Sakha language with friends and family and have reason to speak Russian only at school, where all are of course expected to learn it and indeed take most of their classes in Russian. It happens though, when all the pupils are Sakha and all the teachers Sakha, that many of the classes are effectively taught in Sakha language and so even teenagers will be shy about speaking Russian.
A week and a half ago I had the opportunity to visit the village of Borogontsi, which is just a 2 hour car trip away from Yakutsk. Some of you may have already noticed the pictures in the slide show from my trip. I accompanied my Sakha language teacher, Stepan Konstantinovich [first name + patronymic is the polite from of address in Russian, like saying Mister or Ms. in English] to the 135th anniversary of Muru school number 1, where he studied just one year. Being 135 years old, however, this school is one of the oldest in the whole region. Schooling only became widespread during the Soviet period, in the 1920's, so when Muru school number 1 was opened in 1873, it was unique indeed. As far as I could tell, almost all the graduates who had the means to come came (there were even representatives from the class of 1930!) and organized reunions by graduating class.
My trip began in Yakutsk on Friday afternoon as my teacher and I, in his car, stopped by the bus station to pick up passengers so they could help pay for the gas to get there. We managed to find 3 people to fit in the back seat, who covered the cost of our trip for significantly less than it would have cost them to take the bus. The road there, like all roads after you leave the center of the city is unpaved. It still being winter, it was better than it is in the summertime as the packed snow makes a relatively smooth driving surface. Where it takes 2 hours in the winter to get there, it can take up to 4 or 5 hours in the summer. To get there, we first drove through the hills around Yakutsk and the coal-mining operations that extract the valuable mineral from them until we reached the banks of the Lena river. It still being winter, we then drive down onto the river, where there is a road cleared on the ice. When I've been with other people, religious or not, superstitious or not, they typically give an offering to the river for luck on their trip. Depending on the person, the offering can be a bit of juice, some bread, candy, cigarettes or alcohol. But typically something consumable. However, my teacher is either scatter-brained and forgets to do such things or simply doesn't care and so we didn't stop.
We arrived in the village earlier than expected, around 5:30, dropped off the passengers at their various destinations and proceeded on to Stepan Konstantinovich's younger sister's house. Since we showed up so early, the family had not yet come home from work, but anyway, Stepan Konstantinovich walked right in without knocking and began to make tea, etc. This is something that continually surprises me here and which I'm only starting to get used to--for close friends and family (even distant relatives) homes are always open. They come for dinner or lunch or just to hang out for half an hour, but are always expected to simply walk right in and make themselves comfortable. Furthermore it's not unusual for relatives to raise each others' children or for them to stay for long periods of time at one another's houses. Just one other example--last summer, my teacher's "nephew" lived with him in Yakutsk while he was going to college. I only just found out that the way they are related is that my teacher's grandmother is his great-grandmother's sister, which makes them quite distantly related indeed.
Anyway, the sister and her husband eventually arrived home and their 20-something son, Kolya came in soon after. We were a long time getting dinner on the table and didn't start eating until well after 8pm, but in the meantime chatted and played with their granddaughter, Diana, who is just 9 months old. I'm proud to say that I hardly spoke a Russian word all evening, managing to participate pretty actively in the conversation using only Sakha language and to follow most of what was going on. After dinner, Kolya disappeared, but the rest of us sat drinking (as usual, the men vodka and the women wine) and chatting until late in the evening. And as usual, I was put in my own room while everyone else split up into the other two bedrooms.
The next day I was able to see a bit of the village. The village is situated on the banks of a big lake, called Lake Muruu, hence the name of the school. When I asked my teacher what the name of the lake was, however, he whispered it, explaining that Sakha never say the names of bodies of water loudly. The village has a population of around 2000 and is the administrative center of the "ulus" or county of Ust-Aldan. As such, a lot of people there have jobs in government offices (like S.K.'s brother-in-law), or banks (like Kolya) or other such institutions and don't necessarily do a lot of farming, as they do in most other villages. However, almost everyone has a good-sized garden and a sizeable portion of residents keep animals. S.K.'s relatives, for instance, have quite a few horses and a hen house full of chickens.
Some of the buildings in the center of the city, for instance the school and the government buildings, are built from stone and/or synthetic materials, but almost all of the other buildings and houses are made of wood. And indeed, most people build their houses themselves. Like everywhere outside of the biggest cities, there is no running water in the town and so all the houses have outhouses for toilets and a bucket positioned over a sink to wash your hands. Instead of showers, those who can afford them have bathhouses, which are effectively saunas. Once a week or so, they heat them up and everyone goes in one by one and scrubs themselves silly, using the cleansing powers of sweat to help.
S.K.'s sister's house is situated some distance from the center of town, on the edge of a large field where they grow hay for their horses in the summertime. Just beyond that field is the forest, where everyone gathers berries and mushrooms in the summertime. As the weather was getting warmer, Sunday morning the women all went for a walk in the forest while the men stayed back at the house grilling "shashlik" or shish-kabobs--a favorite springtime activity here. By that time, S.K.' sister's daughter (the mother of the 9-month old) had also arrived from Yakutsk, bringing with her some of her brother's friends and we all stood around, chatting and enjoying the spring day, before S.K. and I left for the city that afternoon.
A week and a half ago I had the opportunity to visit the village of Borogontsi, which is just a 2 hour car trip away from Yakutsk. Some of you may have already noticed the pictures in the slide show from my trip. I accompanied my Sakha language teacher, Stepan Konstantinovich [first name + patronymic is the polite from of address in Russian, like saying Mister or Ms. in English] to the 135th anniversary of Muru school number 1, where he studied just one year. Being 135 years old, however, this school is one of the oldest in the whole region. Schooling only became widespread during the Soviet period, in the 1920's, so when Muru school number 1 was opened in 1873, it was unique indeed. As far as I could tell, almost all the graduates who had the means to come came (there were even representatives from the class of 1930!) and organized reunions by graduating class.
My trip began in Yakutsk on Friday afternoon as my teacher and I, in his car, stopped by the bus station to pick up passengers so they could help pay for the gas to get there. We managed to find 3 people to fit in the back seat, who covered the cost of our trip for significantly less than it would have cost them to take the bus. The road there, like all roads after you leave the center of the city is unpaved. It still being winter, it was better than it is in the summertime as the packed snow makes a relatively smooth driving surface. Where it takes 2 hours in the winter to get there, it can take up to 4 or 5 hours in the summer. To get there, we first drove through the hills around Yakutsk and the coal-mining operations that extract the valuable mineral from them until we reached the banks of the Lena river. It still being winter, we then drive down onto the river, where there is a road cleared on the ice. When I've been with other people, religious or not, superstitious or not, they typically give an offering to the river for luck on their trip. Depending on the person, the offering can be a bit of juice, some bread, candy, cigarettes or alcohol. But typically something consumable. However, my teacher is either scatter-brained and forgets to do such things or simply doesn't care and so we didn't stop.
We arrived in the village earlier than expected, around 5:30, dropped off the passengers at their various destinations and proceeded on to Stepan Konstantinovich's younger sister's house. Since we showed up so early, the family had not yet come home from work, but anyway, Stepan Konstantinovich walked right in without knocking and began to make tea, etc. This is something that continually surprises me here and which I'm only starting to get used to--for close friends and family (even distant relatives) homes are always open. They come for dinner or lunch or just to hang out for half an hour, but are always expected to simply walk right in and make themselves comfortable. Furthermore it's not unusual for relatives to raise each others' children or for them to stay for long periods of time at one another's houses. Just one other example--last summer, my teacher's "nephew" lived with him in Yakutsk while he was going to college. I only just found out that the way they are related is that my teacher's grandmother is his great-grandmother's sister, which makes them quite distantly related indeed.
Anyway, the sister and her husband eventually arrived home and their 20-something son, Kolya came in soon after. We were a long time getting dinner on the table and didn't start eating until well after 8pm, but in the meantime chatted and played with their granddaughter, Diana, who is just 9 months old. I'm proud to say that I hardly spoke a Russian word all evening, managing to participate pretty actively in the conversation using only Sakha language and to follow most of what was going on. After dinner, Kolya disappeared, but the rest of us sat drinking (as usual, the men vodka and the women wine) and chatting until late in the evening. And as usual, I was put in my own room while everyone else split up into the other two bedrooms.
The next day I was able to see a bit of the village. The village is situated on the banks of a big lake, called Lake Muruu, hence the name of the school. When I asked my teacher what the name of the lake was, however, he whispered it, explaining that Sakha never say the names of bodies of water loudly. The village has a population of around 2000 and is the administrative center of the "ulus" or county of Ust-Aldan. As such, a lot of people there have jobs in government offices (like S.K.'s brother-in-law), or banks (like Kolya) or other such institutions and don't necessarily do a lot of farming, as they do in most other villages. However, almost everyone has a good-sized garden and a sizeable portion of residents keep animals. S.K.'s relatives, for instance, have quite a few horses and a hen house full of chickens.
Some of the buildings in the center of the city, for instance the school and the government buildings, are built from stone and/or synthetic materials, but almost all of the other buildings and houses are made of wood. And indeed, most people build their houses themselves. Like everywhere outside of the biggest cities, there is no running water in the town and so all the houses have outhouses for toilets and a bucket positioned over a sink to wash your hands. Instead of showers, those who can afford them have bathhouses, which are effectively saunas. Once a week or so, they heat them up and everyone goes in one by one and scrubs themselves silly, using the cleansing powers of sweat to help.
S.K.'s sister's house is situated some distance from the center of town, on the edge of a large field where they grow hay for their horses in the summertime. Just beyond that field is the forest, where everyone gathers berries and mushrooms in the summertime. As the weather was getting warmer, Sunday morning the women all went for a walk in the forest while the men stayed back at the house grilling "shashlik" or shish-kabobs--a favorite springtime activity here. By that time, S.K.' sister's daughter (the mother of the 9-month old) had also arrived from Yakutsk, bringing with her some of her brother's friends and we all stood around, chatting and enjoying the spring day, before S.K. and I left for the city that afternoon.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Language
Sorry all for the long break, but I've had intermittent internet problems and have been very busy anyway. As a general update I can say that things are going quite well...I've been especially concentrating on learning Sakha language and have been making a bit of progress finally, after a total of 5 months studying (three months last summer and 2 this winter/spring). I am beginning to be comfortable holding short conversations even. In honor of that, I thought I'd write this blog post about Sakha language--first a few words about the language itself and then some about the language situation in the region.
For those of you who don't know Sakha language is the indigenous language of people who live here. It has Turkic roots, so is more closely related to the languages of Central Asia (Kazakh, Kirghiz, etc.) and to Turkish. As an example, one Turkish friend of mine here who has never studied Sakha language can typically understand quite a bit of what is going on when people are speaking Sakha. Sakha is also incredibly complicated, grammatically speaking and the logic of the language is quite different from English which makes it super complicated to actually speak despite knowing a lot of words. The verbs, for example, always come at the end of a sentence--which, for an English speaker creates a logical problem since we're used to thinking about verbs first and then objects and direct objects later. On top of that, they have about a hundred different affixes that they add to nouns and verbs in order give meaning. For instance, instead of using an extra word, e.g. "yet" in "I have not yet eaten." The verb is conjugated differently--the incomplete present tense. Furthermore, instead of using a word like "not" to show negation, they conjugate the verb differently. So, instead of saying "I do not eat vegetables", they would conjugate the verb "to eat" in the negative form. It makes it super complicated that they do not have a simply translated "yes" and "no"--when someone asks you, "do you like Yakutia", for instance, instead of saying "yes" you have to repeat the verb in the positive form, "I like." "Instead of saying "no" you have to repeat the verb in the negative form: "I don't like." And there are a million other complicated things about the language that I won't bore you any further with :)
As far as usage of the language goes, it is varied. Despite the fact that during the Soviet period official language policy actually promoted the use of the language, to some degree, in schools, especially those in the villages, most people I talk with seemed to feel a lot of pressure to use more Russian and to give up their native language. They talk about being embarrassed to be Sakha speakers and feeling like using the language in public in the central cities of the Republic was even taboo. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union speaking Sakha has become much more popular and you can hear people speaking it everywhere. There is quite a bit of pride, in fact, in being able to speak "their native language" and Russian-speaking Sakha now are more likely to feel ashamed of their inability to speak Sakha. Nevertheless, most kids growing up in Yakutsk, at least, don't end up speaking Sakha at home and therefore end up as Russian speaking. Even some that speak the language at home, but go to school only in Russian, feel more comfortable speaking Russian.
One example of this is the family of my Sakha language teacher. He is a Sakha teacher and his wife is a "culturologist", studying mostly Sakha culture. They have 3 children, 26, 17, and 12. With each other, my teacher and his wife almost exclusively speak Sakha and before their 3 children started school, they all spoke almost no Russian at all. When they started school, however, their teachers reported to the parents that the children had to be held back because of their bad Russian and therefore, they had to be made to learn Russian as quickly and completely as possible. So, they switched to using Russian at home, not imagining that their children would lose the language entirely. The oldest son was lucky because he spent every summer with relatives in the countryside, so continued to speak Sakha. The younger two daughters, however, stopped speaking entirely. The 17-year old now has absolutely no interest in the language and, while she understands some when people speak to her, she makes no attempts to speak herself. The 12-year old I think has picked up more of her parents' sense of shame that she can't speak and wants to really badly. But its really difficult for her and, being 12, doesn't really have the self-discipline to make herself learn.
And so, you have this sharp distinction between city Sakha and village Sakha--city Sakha, being largely Russian-speaking, and village Sakha being Sakha speaking. For this reason, people continue to emphasize to me that if I want to really learn Sakha, I have to go live in the villages (or at least in one of the smaller cities). Indeed, this is what I intend to do, when I go to the city of Nyurba at the end of April.
This past weekend, my teacher took me to a village, Borogontsi, where many of his relatives live. Indeed there, they really do speak Sakha. Everyone could speak Russian, but predominantly, even with me, spoke Sakha. We visited the school there, which was exclusively a Sakha language school (with the exception, of course, of Russian language and literature). To help facilitate my use of the language, my teacher would tell people that I didn't speak Russian, forcing them to have to speak with me in Sakha. I was a little embarrassed by this at times, especially since I have worked so long and hard to learn Russian, it was difficult to sit there and say, yes, yes, I don't know any Russian. But, surprisingly people responded astonishingly well. One woman even bowed before me upon being told I speak Sakha but not Russian. Of course, I think she was joking, but it's still indicative of the feeling that some have that their language is being smothered by Russian. For a foreigner to come here and speak Sakha and not Russian, for a lot of people, is a huge compliment to their language and its usefulness in the world.
For those of you who don't know Sakha language is the indigenous language of people who live here. It has Turkic roots, so is more closely related to the languages of Central Asia (Kazakh, Kirghiz, etc.) and to Turkish. As an example, one Turkish friend of mine here who has never studied Sakha language can typically understand quite a bit of what is going on when people are speaking Sakha. Sakha is also incredibly complicated, grammatically speaking and the logic of the language is quite different from English which makes it super complicated to actually speak despite knowing a lot of words. The verbs, for example, always come at the end of a sentence--which, for an English speaker creates a logical problem since we're used to thinking about verbs first and then objects and direct objects later. On top of that, they have about a hundred different affixes that they add to nouns and verbs in order give meaning. For instance, instead of using an extra word, e.g. "yet" in "I have not yet eaten." The verb is conjugated differently--the incomplete present tense. Furthermore, instead of using a word like "not" to show negation, they conjugate the verb differently. So, instead of saying "I do not eat vegetables", they would conjugate the verb "to eat" in the negative form. It makes it super complicated that they do not have a simply translated "yes" and "no"--when someone asks you, "do you like Yakutia", for instance, instead of saying "yes" you have to repeat the verb in the positive form, "I like." "Instead of saying "no" you have to repeat the verb in the negative form: "I don't like." And there are a million other complicated things about the language that I won't bore you any further with :)
As far as usage of the language goes, it is varied. Despite the fact that during the Soviet period official language policy actually promoted the use of the language, to some degree, in schools, especially those in the villages, most people I talk with seemed to feel a lot of pressure to use more Russian and to give up their native language. They talk about being embarrassed to be Sakha speakers and feeling like using the language in public in the central cities of the Republic was even taboo. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union speaking Sakha has become much more popular and you can hear people speaking it everywhere. There is quite a bit of pride, in fact, in being able to speak "their native language" and Russian-speaking Sakha now are more likely to feel ashamed of their inability to speak Sakha. Nevertheless, most kids growing up in Yakutsk, at least, don't end up speaking Sakha at home and therefore end up as Russian speaking. Even some that speak the language at home, but go to school only in Russian, feel more comfortable speaking Russian.
One example of this is the family of my Sakha language teacher. He is a Sakha teacher and his wife is a "culturologist", studying mostly Sakha culture. They have 3 children, 26, 17, and 12. With each other, my teacher and his wife almost exclusively speak Sakha and before their 3 children started school, they all spoke almost no Russian at all. When they started school, however, their teachers reported to the parents that the children had to be held back because of their bad Russian and therefore, they had to be made to learn Russian as quickly and completely as possible. So, they switched to using Russian at home, not imagining that their children would lose the language entirely. The oldest son was lucky because he spent every summer with relatives in the countryside, so continued to speak Sakha. The younger two daughters, however, stopped speaking entirely. The 17-year old now has absolutely no interest in the language and, while she understands some when people speak to her, she makes no attempts to speak herself. The 12-year old I think has picked up more of her parents' sense of shame that she can't speak and wants to really badly. But its really difficult for her and, being 12, doesn't really have the self-discipline to make herself learn.
And so, you have this sharp distinction between city Sakha and village Sakha--city Sakha, being largely Russian-speaking, and village Sakha being Sakha speaking. For this reason, people continue to emphasize to me that if I want to really learn Sakha, I have to go live in the villages (or at least in one of the smaller cities). Indeed, this is what I intend to do, when I go to the city of Nyurba at the end of April.
This past weekend, my teacher took me to a village, Borogontsi, where many of his relatives live. Indeed there, they really do speak Sakha. Everyone could speak Russian, but predominantly, even with me, spoke Sakha. We visited the school there, which was exclusively a Sakha language school (with the exception, of course, of Russian language and literature). To help facilitate my use of the language, my teacher would tell people that I didn't speak Russian, forcing them to have to speak with me in Sakha. I was a little embarrassed by this at times, especially since I have worked so long and hard to learn Russian, it was difficult to sit there and say, yes, yes, I don't know any Russian. But, surprisingly people responded astonishingly well. One woman even bowed before me upon being told I speak Sakha but not Russian. Of course, I think she was joking, but it's still indicative of the feeling that some have that their language is being smothered by Russian. For a foreigner to come here and speak Sakha and not Russian, for a lot of people, is a huge compliment to their language and its usefulness in the world.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Mister Yakutia
Thursday night, the Austrian girls and I were given free tickets to go see the annual "Mister Yakutia" competition, in which 24 of the most beautiful male Yakutians are brought together to demonstrate their talent and beauty. It was surprisingly entertaining.
The show began with the men being paraded onto stage, shirtless with traditional Sakha peasant (slave?) pants, following a man dressed as a wealthy toyon, or Sakha noble man, drums beating in the background. They performed a short dance/ceremony for us and then each came forward and introduced himself in his language of choice--about half spoke Russian, half Sakha. Most were university students, between the ages of 18 and 24 and many did not necessarily fit what you might imagine as the stereotypical beauty contestant participant. Some were tall and thin, others short and hefty, some super fit, others a little pudgy. There were stern, stoic faces and big, silly smiles. Most were Sakha ethnicity, but there were a few Russians in there as well.
After introducing themselves, they left the stage to change clothes and we were shown film clips from the previous days' sports competitions--almost all traditional Sakha sports like wrestling, pulling a stick (two contestants sit opposite one another, holding a horizontal wooden stick and try to pull it from the other's hands), long jumping and then, hopping on one foot.
When they came back on they were dressed as soldiers in the army, marched around the stage in a few formations and then one by one came forward and showed a little dance/kung-fu like move. Some were quited talented break dancers, others just did something silly. The best thing about the evening was that they all seemed to be taking the contest light-heartedly and even making fun of themselves a bit. The next number was a costume show--they each picked some kind of costume that showed off their style and sense of self. A couple dressed as traditional Sakha warriors, others dressed in sillier outfits--like a pirate, a sad clown, a doctor, a snowboarder, etc.
Finally, the "jury" left the hall to discuss the final results of the evening. We were kept waiting an hour or more and with the anticipation building, they came back in to announce the winners. First, each of the jury members chose one man as their choice--kind of as a runner up prize. Then, the top 3 were announced. The winner ended up being a young man from one of the provinces of the Republic who studied in the institute of physical education. He was given a hunting rifle as a prize (almost all the men in Yakutia are active hunters) and the opportunity to go to Moscow to compete in the Mister Russia contest.
All in all, the whole evening was surprisingly relaxed and fun, everyone enjoying the silliness of the beauty contest. Some of the men had their support groups in the audience cheering for them, but everyone was just up there having fun.
The show began with the men being paraded onto stage, shirtless with traditional Sakha peasant (slave?) pants, following a man dressed as a wealthy toyon, or Sakha noble man, drums beating in the background. They performed a short dance/ceremony for us and then each came forward and introduced himself in his language of choice--about half spoke Russian, half Sakha. Most were university students, between the ages of 18 and 24 and many did not necessarily fit what you might imagine as the stereotypical beauty contestant participant. Some were tall and thin, others short and hefty, some super fit, others a little pudgy. There were stern, stoic faces and big, silly smiles. Most were Sakha ethnicity, but there were a few Russians in there as well.
After introducing themselves, they left the stage to change clothes and we were shown film clips from the previous days' sports competitions--almost all traditional Sakha sports like wrestling, pulling a stick (two contestants sit opposite one another, holding a horizontal wooden stick and try to pull it from the other's hands), long jumping and then, hopping on one foot.
When they came back on they were dressed as soldiers in the army, marched around the stage in a few formations and then one by one came forward and showed a little dance/kung-fu like move. Some were quited talented break dancers, others just did something silly. The best thing about the evening was that they all seemed to be taking the contest light-heartedly and even making fun of themselves a bit. The next number was a costume show--they each picked some kind of costume that showed off their style and sense of self. A couple dressed as traditional Sakha warriors, others dressed in sillier outfits--like a pirate, a sad clown, a doctor, a snowboarder, etc.
Finally, the "jury" left the hall to discuss the final results of the evening. We were kept waiting an hour or more and with the anticipation building, they came back in to announce the winners. First, each of the jury members chose one man as their choice--kind of as a runner up prize. Then, the top 3 were announced. The winner ended up being a young man from one of the provinces of the Republic who studied in the institute of physical education. He was given a hunting rifle as a prize (almost all the men in Yakutia are active hunters) and the opportunity to go to Moscow to compete in the Mister Russia contest.
All in all, the whole evening was surprisingly relaxed and fun, everyone enjoying the silliness of the beauty contest. Some of the men had their support groups in the audience cheering for them, but everyone was just up there having fun.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Men's Day (or Susan becomes a celebrity)
In Russia, the 23rd of February is men's day. Well, officially, it's "the day of the defenders of the fatherland" (den' zashchitnikov otechestva), but since most men serve in the army, it has become kind of the analog of March 8th (International Women's Day--international in the sense that all the former communist countries celebrate it). Anyway, they have big celebrations all over the country in honor of all the men, whether or not they served in the army. On a frozen lake, near where I live, they had music and other kinds of performances all day long, people gather together with friends and family, women buy their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands/boyfriends small gifts, and, in the evening, young people go out to the clubs, where a whole set of events are staged in honor of men.
My friend, Masha, is a kind of event coordinator in the city, so I had the opportunity to go club-hopping with her as she went around to different places to MC the festivities. First, we went to a restaurant where a group of doctors/medical students had a party. Masha had men volunteer to take part in various games--for instance, who can braid a girl's hair the fastest, who can blow up a balloon until it pops the fastest, who can tie up a girl the fastest so that she can't get out, etc. After a number of these games, she tells them she has a present for all the men. An American young lady has come all this way to congratulate them, and not just in Russian but in Sakha language! And she calls me up on the stage, insisting that I say a few words in Sakha--which for me is still quite difficult. I was mortified as I stumbled through a greeting. and she kindly apologized saying that I was shy... And then, later, after the final game, the prize turned out to be a dance with this same American girl...
A word of explanation: Americans very rarely end up in this part of the world and so I end up as a kind of celebrity at times. America, by virtue of its endless outpouring of hollywood movies, appears as the center of the world, a land of milk and honey where everyone is beautiful and everyone eats in restaurants all the time. So, to simply be from this world is something fascinating for people here. And then, that I can speak Russian and a little Sakha language on top of that gives me far more social capital than I deserve.
Anyway, the night went on and we ended up at a club called "Sporthouse" where further men's day events were being staged--here this included a belly dancer to entertain the fellows. and of course another greeting from the American guest. Fortunately by this time, I had figured out what I was going to say and so no longer looked like a complete fool. Sporthouse is one of the more popular clubs in Yakutsk (although the most popular is without a doubt "Dragon"--a 3-story European style club that has different kinds of techno music on different nights-drum and base, house, etc.). Sport house is two stories--the first floor being the discotec and the second floor for billiards. (I was surprised to find out that Russian billiards is actually played quite differently than in the States--there are no colors and no stripes, any ball can be hit into any other ball. Just one ball is orangey-yellow and is worth more points than the others if you can manage to hit it into the pocket.) After the main festivities, we were introduced to the owner of the establishment who turned out to be overjoyed at the presence of foriegners in his club (at this point some girls from Austria that I knew from the dormitory had met up with us as well--America is not the only place with prestige). We were showered with free drinks and invited to sit and eat various Siberian delicacies with them while we were there. In addition, the idea was proposed that we be given free passes to Sporthouse in order that our presence would somehow give the place greater prestige.
We finally extricated ourselves from our host's hospitality around 2:30 am and headed home. No limousines showed up, but anyway, such was our night of celebrity...
My friend, Masha, is a kind of event coordinator in the city, so I had the opportunity to go club-hopping with her as she went around to different places to MC the festivities. First, we went to a restaurant where a group of doctors/medical students had a party. Masha had men volunteer to take part in various games--for instance, who can braid a girl's hair the fastest, who can blow up a balloon until it pops the fastest, who can tie up a girl the fastest so that she can't get out, etc. After a number of these games, she tells them she has a present for all the men. An American young lady has come all this way to congratulate them, and not just in Russian but in Sakha language! And she calls me up on the stage, insisting that I say a few words in Sakha--which for me is still quite difficult. I was mortified as I stumbled through a greeting. and she kindly apologized saying that I was shy... And then, later, after the final game, the prize turned out to be a dance with this same American girl...
A word of explanation: Americans very rarely end up in this part of the world and so I end up as a kind of celebrity at times. America, by virtue of its endless outpouring of hollywood movies, appears as the center of the world, a land of milk and honey where everyone is beautiful and everyone eats in restaurants all the time. So, to simply be from this world is something fascinating for people here. And then, that I can speak Russian and a little Sakha language on top of that gives me far more social capital than I deserve.
Anyway, the night went on and we ended up at a club called "Sporthouse" where further men's day events were being staged--here this included a belly dancer to entertain the fellows. and of course another greeting from the American guest. Fortunately by this time, I had figured out what I was going to say and so no longer looked like a complete fool. Sporthouse is one of the more popular clubs in Yakutsk (although the most popular is without a doubt "Dragon"--a 3-story European style club that has different kinds of techno music on different nights-drum and base, house, etc.). Sport house is two stories--the first floor being the discotec and the second floor for billiards. (I was surprised to find out that Russian billiards is actually played quite differently than in the States--there are no colors and no stripes, any ball can be hit into any other ball. Just one ball is orangey-yellow and is worth more points than the others if you can manage to hit it into the pocket.) After the main festivities, we were introduced to the owner of the establishment who turned out to be overjoyed at the presence of foriegners in his club (at this point some girls from Austria that I knew from the dormitory had met up with us as well--America is not the only place with prestige). We were showered with free drinks and invited to sit and eat various Siberian delicacies with them while we were there. In addition, the idea was proposed that we be given free passes to Sporthouse in order that our presence would somehow give the place greater prestige.
We finally extricated ourselves from our host's hospitality around 2:30 am and headed home. No limousines showed up, but anyway, such was our night of celebrity...
Lost in Translation
An embarassing, but yet funny enough story that it must be shared...
Since I arrived here, I have been plagued by static electricity--wearing heavy winter clothes all the time in a rather dry climate creates a lot of it. As such, every time I take off my hat, half of my hair stands up on end. So, since I've arrived I've been thinking of trying to find some kind of hair product that would help with that--in particular mousse, I thought, would be just the thing. Of course, how to say "mousse" in Russian--I hadn't yet figured out. Well, the other day, as I was taking a shower, I noticed that one of the other girls who uses the same shower had a bottle of something called, in Russian, "moos." and then something about hair, but I didn't look too closely or pay too much attention, assuming it must what I was looking for.
Well, a bit later, again frustrated by my hair, I decided she wouldn't mind if I took just a touch of it. I sprayed it onto my hand, and indeed it looked like mousse, so I put a bit in my hair to just flatten it down. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled absolutely terrible. Thinking, what kind of strange Russian mousse is this, I tried to pull a brush through my hair so that it spread through a bit more. But I couldn't even pull the brush through my hair--it seemed to have become completely like straw. Still not thinking it might not actually be mousse (I never use hair products at home, so I'm not used to what the results ought to be), I washed it out of my hair--I had to wash it three times and my hair still smelled a little.
Next, when I was brushing my hair, I noticed that my lap became covered with small pieces of hair--I thought, that's odd but was in a hurry by this time and didn't really pay attention. Later that evening, I was telling the girl who's bottle it was about her strange mousse--she looks at me with this pained expression on her face. "You put that in your hair?" she says, "Susan, that's not mousse..." It turns out that rather than mousse, it was "moos dlya ydaleniya volosi"--meaning, cream for getting rid of hair--that is, the stuff like Nair, that you put on your legs to dissolve your leg hair instead of shaving. So, not only was it not helping my hair to lay flat, it was actually dissolving it!
Fortunately, I didn't use very much, so it could have been far far worse. As it is, I'm still brushing small pieces of hair out whenver I brush my hair and, if you look closely you can see that I've got quite a lot more shorter hairs, flyaways, but it's not really noticeable to anyone but me. Of course, the static has actually gotten worse because of the top layer of short hairs that all stand up straight when I pull off my hat. But, they will grow long again and I've at least got a funny story to tell...
Since I arrived here, I have been plagued by static electricity--wearing heavy winter clothes all the time in a rather dry climate creates a lot of it. As such, every time I take off my hat, half of my hair stands up on end. So, since I've arrived I've been thinking of trying to find some kind of hair product that would help with that--in particular mousse, I thought, would be just the thing. Of course, how to say "mousse" in Russian--I hadn't yet figured out. Well, the other day, as I was taking a shower, I noticed that one of the other girls who uses the same shower had a bottle of something called, in Russian, "moos." and then something about hair, but I didn't look too closely or pay too much attention, assuming it must what I was looking for.
Well, a bit later, again frustrated by my hair, I decided she wouldn't mind if I took just a touch of it. I sprayed it onto my hand, and indeed it looked like mousse, so I put a bit in my hair to just flatten it down. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled absolutely terrible. Thinking, what kind of strange Russian mousse is this, I tried to pull a brush through my hair so that it spread through a bit more. But I couldn't even pull the brush through my hair--it seemed to have become completely like straw. Still not thinking it might not actually be mousse (I never use hair products at home, so I'm not used to what the results ought to be), I washed it out of my hair--I had to wash it three times and my hair still smelled a little.
Next, when I was brushing my hair, I noticed that my lap became covered with small pieces of hair--I thought, that's odd but was in a hurry by this time and didn't really pay attention. Later that evening, I was telling the girl who's bottle it was about her strange mousse--she looks at me with this pained expression on her face. "You put that in your hair?" she says, "Susan, that's not mousse..." It turns out that rather than mousse, it was "moos dlya ydaleniya volosi"--meaning, cream for getting rid of hair--that is, the stuff like Nair, that you put on your legs to dissolve your leg hair instead of shaving. So, not only was it not helping my hair to lay flat, it was actually dissolving it!
Fortunately, I didn't use very much, so it could have been far far worse. As it is, I'm still brushing small pieces of hair out whenver I brush my hair and, if you look closely you can see that I've got quite a lot more shorter hairs, flyaways, but it's not really noticeable to anyone but me. Of course, the static has actually gotten worse because of the top layer of short hairs that all stand up straight when I pull off my hat. But, they will grow long again and I've at least got a funny story to tell...
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
At the Market
Last Sunday I went shopping--which always seems to be an adventure here. I was trying to act as the tourguide this time, however, as 3 Austrian girls had just arrived in Yakutsk and didn't know their way around. Of course, despite having spent a considerable amount of time in the city, I managed to put us on 3 wrong buses before we got on the right one and found our way to the market we wanted to go to, that is "krestyanskii rynok" or "peasant market". I wanted to go here in particular because it's one of the larger markets and has a wide variety of both food and other products. Half of the market is outside, while half of it is in a large 2-story building. The cheaper products are, naturally, all outside, while the more expensive things are inside.
Sunday, of course, happened to be one of the coldest days yet since I've been here--well below -40 degrees, a fact discernable by the thickness of the fog the enshrouds the city. Below -35 or so there is a thin fog and it gets thicker the colder it gets. So, Sunday we could hardly see 5 feet in front of us, meaning that it was likely around -47,-48, which partly accounted for my inability to actually get us to the market. Despite the cold temperatures, all the outdoor merchants had their little shops set up. No one, however, was there shopping. Perhaps out of boredom or perhaps to keep themselves active, they all decided to harass the foriegners--as we obviously were. So, before we even got to the indoor 2-story building, we had to pass through the gauntlet of outdoor merchants standing in front of piles of frozen rabbits, squirrels, fish and moose meat. They had no problem grabbing our arms to lead us to their stands. Initially, the interest was in getting us to buy products from them, but soon they stopped caring about that altogether and poured an onslaught of questions--where are you from? why are you here? what do you think of yakutia? aren't you cold? how old are you? what is your name? I have a cousin in America! Do you know Brittany Spears? And one man, who was very proud of his limited English speaking ability, decided to demostrate with repeated declarations of "I love you baby," accompanied by attempts to hug and kiss me. It gets to feeling a little like being an animal in a zoo sometimes.
Having frozen ourselves fending off the outdoor vendors, we made our way inside the two story, brick building. On the first floor is where they sell fruits and vegetables (during the summer this is all outside as well, but understandably can't be in the winter). These are all in one large room. There are about 4 or five kiosks there, selling potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages and even oranges, grapes, apples, tomatoes and bananas. The latter group are extremely expensive, however, (grapes were $6 a kilogram) and not the best quality. So I find it best to stick with the root veggies. All of the vendors sell precisely the same products for precisely the same prices--I can't for the life of me decide how people decide who to buy from because I simply don't see a difference in quality, price, or selection. I choose randomly typically.
Passing through the fruit and veggie room, you get to a corrider that winds around a large staircase. The corrider is lined with various shops selling assorted products like toiletries or movies or simply socks or handbags. On the second floor of the market is a much larger room where meat and dairy products are. Again individual vendors sell much the same products, lined up one after another in front of little refrigerators showing their butter, cheese, ground beef, large chunks of beef, horse, etc. and even intenstines, tounges and heads of various animals. They call out as you walk past "what are you looking for?" "here, take some cow toungue--the highest quality! I'll give you a discount, special for our visitors (priezhie)."
Also on this floor are small stores similar to those that are everywhere in the city that sell a wide range of groceries. Like in other stores as well, all the products are displayed behind the counter and you have to ask the cashier to grab things for you. However, shopping in the market is generally much more pleasant than elsewhere as you can wander around and look at what all the different vendors are selling and think about what it is that you want to buy. Some will even barter with you a bit if you push them to--"those are so expensive, you can't give me a discount?" Although, bartering culture is not super highly developed here as in other places I've been--the posted price is generally a fair price, so that you're not expected to haggle and if business is good, the vendors won't go any lower. I often give it a try, because things are not cheap here--I think because of the cost of importing things, oftentimes some products are even more expensive than they would be in the US.
Sunday, of course, happened to be one of the coldest days yet since I've been here--well below -40 degrees, a fact discernable by the thickness of the fog the enshrouds the city. Below -35 or so there is a thin fog and it gets thicker the colder it gets. So, Sunday we could hardly see 5 feet in front of us, meaning that it was likely around -47,-48, which partly accounted for my inability to actually get us to the market. Despite the cold temperatures, all the outdoor merchants had their little shops set up. No one, however, was there shopping. Perhaps out of boredom or perhaps to keep themselves active, they all decided to harass the foriegners--as we obviously were. So, before we even got to the indoor 2-story building, we had to pass through the gauntlet of outdoor merchants standing in front of piles of frozen rabbits, squirrels, fish and moose meat. They had no problem grabbing our arms to lead us to their stands. Initially, the interest was in getting us to buy products from them, but soon they stopped caring about that altogether and poured an onslaught of questions--where are you from? why are you here? what do you think of yakutia? aren't you cold? how old are you? what is your name? I have a cousin in America! Do you know Brittany Spears? And one man, who was very proud of his limited English speaking ability, decided to demostrate with repeated declarations of "I love you baby," accompanied by attempts to hug and kiss me. It gets to feeling a little like being an animal in a zoo sometimes.
Having frozen ourselves fending off the outdoor vendors, we made our way inside the two story, brick building. On the first floor is where they sell fruits and vegetables (during the summer this is all outside as well, but understandably can't be in the winter). These are all in one large room. There are about 4 or five kiosks there, selling potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages and even oranges, grapes, apples, tomatoes and bananas. The latter group are extremely expensive, however, (grapes were $6 a kilogram) and not the best quality. So I find it best to stick with the root veggies. All of the vendors sell precisely the same products for precisely the same prices--I can't for the life of me decide how people decide who to buy from because I simply don't see a difference in quality, price, or selection. I choose randomly typically.
Passing through the fruit and veggie room, you get to a corrider that winds around a large staircase. The corrider is lined with various shops selling assorted products like toiletries or movies or simply socks or handbags. On the second floor of the market is a much larger room where meat and dairy products are. Again individual vendors sell much the same products, lined up one after another in front of little refrigerators showing their butter, cheese, ground beef, large chunks of beef, horse, etc. and even intenstines, tounges and heads of various animals. They call out as you walk past "what are you looking for?" "here, take some cow toungue--the highest quality! I'll give you a discount, special for our visitors (priezhie)."
Also on this floor are small stores similar to those that are everywhere in the city that sell a wide range of groceries. Like in other stores as well, all the products are displayed behind the counter and you have to ask the cashier to grab things for you. However, shopping in the market is generally much more pleasant than elsewhere as you can wander around and look at what all the different vendors are selling and think about what it is that you want to buy. Some will even barter with you a bit if you push them to--"those are so expensive, you can't give me a discount?" Although, bartering culture is not super highly developed here as in other places I've been--the posted price is generally a fair price, so that you're not expected to haggle and if business is good, the vendors won't go any lower. I often give it a try, because things are not cheap here--I think because of the cost of importing things, oftentimes some products are even more expensive than they would be in the US.
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