Pochimo? And parties!

I got to work late today, just no energy for it. So was pleased when I arrived when my Head suggested coming with her and year 0 to a little exhibition at another school.  I mentioned that I looked a mess as I had not brushed my hair and the kids started singing This is the way I brush my hair, brush my hair, so that was funny.  We were only gone half an hour but it was fun to do something different.   The kids really enjoyed it, their little faces, lit up. And it was nice for me to be able to say hello to the Kruski kids who come from this school to class. I found I was still the object of interest despite having lived here so long, so me saying hello to some of them seems to have been okay in terms of street cred.

The exhibition itself was also

of interest.Here me and my English colleagues have found some challenging attitudes to disabilities. True in the UK sadly many people with disabilities find themselves the victims of crime and deceit from what I can tell in the press by so called healthy/normal people and I have recently found out from someone who works in the sector that a lot of children in special schools are victims of abuse at home, that social services are informed about it, but then do nothing because there is no where else for these children to live. So we are a long way from being an integrated society with positive attitudes towards disabilities, but we are infinitely more integrated and positive than when I was growing up say.  Kygyzstan is only just beginning to try and develop more positive approaches to people with disabilities, but according to the person I know who works in a Bishkek orphanage many children left in orphanages are left there because of a disability and the assumption is that they will not achieve anything so they are sort of just left to rot.  So I am pleased so say that by contrast I have come across some very positive models say within the family at The Ashu and at the school where difference has been very well tolerated by the parents and furthermore they have had faith that their child will survive and flourish, which is why they have sent them to the school  However, the exhibition took such positive attributes even further because it was work  by a little girl who is very sick and she has produced this exhibition of Plasticine models (something that a lot of the kids seem to do here)  to help bring in funds to help support her treatment.   Thus combining a great creative and dynamic solution to her own problem which is a good model here, where a lot of people seem to lack faith in their entrepreneurial ability,  and providing a positive model re ill health and disability.

So after that me moaning will seem all the more stupid But почему? почему? Something like Pochimo It is a great sounding word. Why, Why is what I think sometimes here, in fact often here. Why clean my room when you know I have to move out as there is no room for me on Friday?  Why clean the toilet and take out the toilet paper that I have had to search all over the hotel for as no one gives me any? Why do you always tidy up the dirty clothes I have deliberately separated from the clean ones? Dirty clothes it is getting harder and harder to clean as I have little access to the washing machine or iron.  Why clean my room but leave all the little flies that I have been unable to clean away as some time ago you removed the cloth I had bought to help keep my room clean and I do not want to use the toilet paper as it is so hard to come by.   Why take away the nice warm cover on my bed, when it is still so cold at night and every time you take it away it somehow reappears on my bed as soon as I can find one to filch. So почему?

Tomorrow we have it turns out yet another party, this time with the school which held the exhibition so I briefly helped prepare a bit of the food we are taking and then left the rest of the staff to it.  Others were practicing their party pieces so I am just going to check the lyrics to "What shall we do with the drunken sailor" as that seems so appropriate should I be called upon to sing.  So party tomorrow, on Thursday it is the last day of term so the kids will do their party pieces all day and we will probably have a meal together after and then Friday more partying in the village. I have also just been invited to a farewell party in Bishkek, (losing yet another friend) so I will try and get that. So for every почему? A glass of vodka to quell my puzzled mind.