Ears, stomach, and moonshine, oh my

In my 17 weeks in country, I’ve managed to lose weight at a rate that exceeds a pound a week. 26 pounds lighter than the day I arrived, each day with the host family in Kapan is a new adventure in my effort to distance my culinary intake from any semblance of pleasure. Whether it's consecutive days of white rice and ketchup, or yesterday’s awesomeness of 2.5 meals of only cold boiled eggplant…food at the house is kinda rough with my host sisters.

The good news? Khorovats! This is meat on swords. We don't get much meat here, but when we do, it is often armenian bbq, cooked on swords. Did I mention there were swords involved? The bad news tonight was that we didn't get chicken or pork khorovats. Nope, it was organ night at the Balosyan house.

And tonight’s dinner? Let's say I longed for the days of rice and ketchup.

It is served as a semi-solid glassy blubber that jiggles this way and that, like jello. I spooned it around in my bowl, thrusting it against eggplant and cow stomach. I think that’s cow stomach. I know the word for cow, but not beef. And I’m not sure if I know ‘stomach’ at all. Usually I just make a series of horrible gestures more befitting an American Pie sequel than an international aid volunteer.

Then I closed my eyes, prodded my soul for courage, and lifted the stew to my lips. I wish I could say that I savored this crunchy rampage of jumbled body parts, this casserole of failed Armenian tradition that fractured but would not go down. I wish I could. I wish.

To further convey enthusiasm for the meal, I tore apart a loaf of meat, released a mini battle whoooop!, lowered teeth to platter, and razed everything within scent-range like Godzilla after a bad breakup. Not everyone did that. Nope. Just me. But I did impress them with my ability to take down their feet-scented homemade vodka. I also made multiple well-received toasts towards peace in Karabakh and for the health of my host father, who still is recovering in a Yerevan hospital. I hoped it earned me some leeway with the ears and stomach stew, but frankly, I have no idea.

Times like this have also shown me Armenia’s rich, soft underbelly: the gracious friend of a friend who treats you to an unforgettable meal, displays the true meaning of hospitality, and who then can’t go home with a smile until you’ve tried some of his pig ears or cow stomach. And drunk from his Fanta bottle filled with moonshine.

My suggestion is this: next time you visit a foreign country in the hope of discovering a New World, eat local food and learn the local language—no matter how rubbery the meat, or how grueling the grammar. Next time you’re being chased by bandits in Colombia, turn around and, en espanol, offer them your wallet in return for some home-cooked potato sopa. If you lose an arm along the way, well, at least you’ve still got another. And it’ll make an awesome story for the grandkids.

Dammit. I’m gonna need grandkids now. I’m not sure how entertained Robbie and Jay will be when they hear this story for the 74th time, sometime in winter 2052.

The South Caucasus, Kevin Kolb, and justice

When you’ve lived long enough to experience the kind of grief that I have (34 in May!!), few tragedies catch you off guard. Having to settle for the third college on your list. Being saddled with semester after semester of jerk roommates. Not being blessed with the kind of pointless overrated lead singer in a shitty band voice that makes Colleen fall in love with you in clear deviance of her better interests. I’ve dealt with some of the worst that life has to offer.

Every so often, however, there sneaks a devastating cruelty past the safeguards of even your most cynical expectations. Those are the ones that really get you. The ones you can’t shake off, that make the full malevolence in the world so self-evident that it could be referenced in Satan’s founding document of Hell. I could never begin to know the full complexity of Kevin Kolb, but I bet that’s what he has to be feeling at this moment.

You see, Kolb was selected in the second round of the 2007 NFL draft. High enough to be regarded as a viable starter, but low enough to he could be allowed to whither on the bench’s vines for several years. He did so with dignity, but also with hope that eventually his day would come. He never spoke out of line and did what was expected of him. And though it took the departure of an underappreciated legend happening before its time, Kolb’s day did come. Only that day ended in disaster. He suffered a concussion, the type of injury that will be one day render him homeless and incompetent. Someone to be hauled in front of Congress as a cautionary tale of the sport.

That will come later, of course. For now, Kolb is still a football player. The concussion should have only been a minor setback. He had earned this job, after all. Only no. Fairness would make too much sense. That would be the script if we operated according to our better angels. But how often do they have a a part in how things play out?

Instead, an electrocuter of dogs has arisen to usurp the job with a few flashy plays. Here is a man capable of unspeakable evil, nevertheless able to dazzle all around him with athleticism. And now he is proclaimed leader. How can people be so blind as to the inner workings of the soul? I want to say they will pay for lack of perspective, but I know from experience that they will probably not.

I want to say the lesson of Kevin Kolb is that one must disregard the virtues of patience and simply, maybe callously, take our most heartfelt desires. To do otherwise is only to foster deception. Deception most inimical.

To that end, tomorrow will mark day 95 in a consecutive streak of cucumber, room temperature vodka, and salty cheese. Tomorrow's first toast is for you, Kevin Kolb.

Lightning is worse than The Blob

This week in Kapan I am the only volunteer around. My two site-mates have gone to Tsakhadzor, a winter resort town in the north that is approximately 8 hours away (errr…maybe 90 miles? Gotta love the developing world.) In any case, I have the city to myself, and therefore I’m forced to spend more time with my host family than I typically would. Without my host grandparents around (43 days and counting now), their granddaughters are staying with me and the gender rules here make communication and interaction somewhat difficult.
I was going to take a shower last evening during a thunderstorm here in Kapan. There was a lot of hand wringing and panic as I approached the bathroom at 6 PM, one of three one hour windows for running water here in the city. It turns out that, in much the same way that sleeping with your window open makes you sick, or how rubbing vodka on your chest makes you well, there is HORRIFIC scientific theory on showering in a storm in Kapan. They gestured to the faucet and explained by making explosion noises and by flashing the lights that maybe, just maybe, this was something I should not do. Apparently lightning travels through the water or metal pipes during storms. Lightning is evil. It’s worse than the Blob.
Secretly, I've always wanted to be struck by lightning. Yes, I know it can kill you. But there's also the possibility that the lightning could electrify my blood and give me the power to shoot lightning out of my fingertips and power unplugged appliances simply by touching them. It's almost worth the gamble. After I can get my own apartment in Kapan I will ALWAYS shower in a thunderstorm.
On another note, I had a four-day weekend due to Armenia’s 19th Independence Day on September 21st. I got to go hiking and camping with two good friends, including an overnight stay in a 10th century church. We met with several Armenian families on picnics and we shared food and homemade vodka throughout the afternoon. We stayed up as late as we could, playing ridiculous music on an Iphone. In the morning, we badly scared a group of Belgian religious pilgrims who were at the church at dawn. When they entered our dark secondary sanctuary, my greetings to them in Armenian simply served to chase them from the church. I can’t imagine how far they’d come to get to this random spot by 7:00 AM, but I couldn’t help but be amused at their hasty retreat and failure to return. Just one of the many ways that speaking Armenian has its perks. We negotiated with the one-armed groundskeeper for permission to sleep in his 1100 year old church. The Belgians? They were so spooked by our Armenian greetings that they didn’t even get to see the cool secondary sanctuary. America – 1, Belgium – 0.

*Note – There is no actual way to know that these were Belgian pilgrims, but it’s funnier to me that way. And I do know they weren’t Armenian or Russian, so Belgian seems like the next most likely nationality for them. Don’t question my logic.