Days 17 & 18: How I Nearly Died in the Mountains of Eastern Turkey (Gümüshane/Kent Ormani)

Today started off pleasant enough. No activities were scheduled until the afternoon, so I was able to sleep in. Sort of. The maids are apparently illiterate or otherwise just don’t care about the “Do Not Disturb” sign hanging from the doorknob, even though it’s written in English, Turkish and Russian. Every time I put it up they still come in my room to try to clean, but this time around I managed to foil their attempts to catch me butt naked running around the room. If I leave my key in the lock from the inside, then their key on the outside won’t work. In your face, perverted Turkish maids! (As an update, they just waited for me to leave the hotel to eat and then rushed in and cleaned in. I think they monitor my movements: “Dust Buster to Clean Sheets– come in Clean Sheets – subject spotted and he’s on the move. Recommend immediate implementation of Operation Filth-B-Gone in Room 117, over.”)

I dragged my butt out of bed long enough to go downstairs for breakfast and then I slept in some more. It was so nice. It was like…heaven on earth! But then it was time to prepare and go to the school for our afternoon activity, which was supposedly hiking to the ruins of Old Gümüshane. If you’ve been following the blog then it should come as absolutely no surprise to you whatsoever that the plan changed no less than three times in the span of one hour. Whenever we began to board the buses, I still had no idea where the hell we were going.

Dr. B saw fit to divide the students into groups of five and assign a group to each of us. My group was composed of the older, more mature students so thankfully I didn’t have to herd them around like a bunch of infants. It turns out our destination was a forest called Kent Ormani, which had been much talked up by my students. Well. It’s a forest, I guess. I’ve seen a lot better, though. The most impressive thing is the mountainous setting, which has absolutely nothing to do with the forest itself. The problem with traveling a lot might be that you get jaded and so only mildly appealing locales become pretty mediocre. The watermelon we all shared on a blanket really rocked, though!

The hilarious (irritating?) thing about Turkey is that people here are SO narrow-minded that they think that everything in Turkey is the absolute best thing in the world. This forest is the best forest. Their food is the best food. Their army is the best army. Istanbul is the best city. The Turkish lira is the best currency. The Turkish unibrow is the most distinguished unibrow in the world. Turkish chauvinism is the best chauvinism. The Turkish language is the best language. Turkey is the best country. UGH. You’ll never encounter more thorough or misguided nationalism as you will in this country. It’s like a showcase for the horrors of national brainwashing. They’ve certainly built a strong nation (at the expense of a certain ethnic minority that rhymes with “herds”), but they’ve also gone overboard doing it.

A few evenings ago, we went to an event at the local university that I knew had something to do with the European Union. It turned out to be a visit by an envoy from the European Commission who was holding a “town hall meeting” with the Gümüshane area concerning Turkey’s application for entry into the European Union. I thought it was interesting to note that the Commission sent a Greek national as an envoy to speak with rural Turks given the history between the two countries. And it was deeply amusing to hear his comments, which were thankfully delivered in English before being translated into Turkish.

The guy’s position was clear, if somewhat condescending: it’s up to Turkey to gain entry into the European Union, not the other way around. He was extremely diplomatic about saying so but it wasn’t hard to read between the lines. He said that the negotiations between Turkey and the EU weren’t negotiations in the traditional sense, but rather it was designed to determine the steps that Turkey needed to take (and any financial assistance they might require) to meet the requirements laid out by the European Union. He emphasized several times that all 27 member states needed to agree on everything before Turkey would be allowed to enter.

At first, I thought the guy was being a jerk. And before I got here, I went along with the line that relatively racist countries like France were blocking Turkey’s entry over issues of Islam and immigration. However, now that I’m here, I see how far Turkey has to go. The ball really is in Turkey’s court. Restrictions on basic human rights are kind of appalling and as another example, the envoy pointed to waste water treatment. That isn’t something I’d have even thought of but it’s true – the town I’m living in seems to literally dump its untreated sewage directly into the river running through the town. Call me crazy, but those aren’t the sorts of standards I think of when I think of the European Union.

Back to the point. Whenever we visited the forest, the headmaster decided we should climb a mountain. There’s no two ways about it: I’m overweight and out of shape. C’est la vie. I assumed the trail might be steep in places but then level off to give you a bit of a breather but no. It was pretty much straight uphill all the way. About halfway up the trail, I decided I wasn’t going to do it anymore. It probably didn’t help that we were like 7,000 feet above sea level or that the trail had zero maintenance and clung to the side of the mountain like it was hanging on for dear life. The fact was I just couldn’t make it, and I felt like I was about to die from oxygen deprivation or something. Pssh. A wake up call, I know. I was becoming much healthier in Chicago and then I went back South and within a few weeks my healthy persona was found floating face down in a pool of gravy.

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Today we were supposed to take a trip to the Santa Ruins. I’d been told Sundays were free days, so I was a little miffed. At no point did anyone tell me it was an optional trip. So I woke up at 7:00 AM, got ready, had breakfast and trekked to the school. I dutifully boarded the bus, noting the absence of the two other American volunteers, and shared complaints with Gülçe, who I was sharing the front seat with. When we met up with Dr. B, she encouraged me to try to save myself. I asked if the trip was optional after he seemed astonished not to find the other two volunteers. “Yes, of course,” he replied. All I could envision was all the extra sleep I lost.

I flew out of the bus. I think I nearly crushed Gülçe trying to escape. It’s not that I don’t want to see the Santa Ruins, it’s just that I don’t want to hike 11 kilometers (~6.8 miles) up a mountain to see them and spend all day of my free day doing it. I was so happy to get back to the hotel, and even happier to see that Celia was still awake. So I chatted with her for a bit and then there was a knock on my door as I was getting ready to go out for lunch. It was one of the other American volunteers, and he explained that he went to the school and it was locked. So it turns out that no one even told them that we were leaving to go to Santa Ruins at 8:00 AM. The only reason I knew was because I asked. He seemed bummed out because he’d actually wanted to go, but instead he decided to go to Trabzon with the other volunteers. I declined to accompany them because I was looking forward to a lazy day, taking a quick nap and catching up on the piles of homework that have been accumulating but don’t think I wasn’t extremely tempted by the prospect of a movie and Burger King/Popeye’s Chicken/Sbarro. But I’m absolutely beyond the shadow of a doubt going to Trabzon next Sunday.

I’ve enjoyed the day of dining out at restaurants, catching up on things on the Internet, sending e-mails and doing my homework. Also I slipped a nap in there that was prematurely interrupted by the most beautiful adhan (call to prayer) that I’ve heard since arriving. I can think of worse ways to be woken up (the top of the list being my mother’s perennially cheery “RISE AND SHINE!”).

Tomorrow begins a new week, and that’s about all I have to say about that.