Days 19-21: Batman! (Gümüşhane)

Let’s see. What have I been up to the past few days? Well, I visited a gold & silver mine. I put together fairly coherent lessons for my classes this week. I caught up on my own assignments. AND OH YEAH – I WAS ATTACKED BY A BAT!

Some people go abroad and they have a nice package holiday experience. This isn’t my idea of fun, but sometimes things get a little too adventurous for me. So, two nights ago I was getting ready to go to bed a bit after midnight. I took my evening shower, slipped into bed, opened the window because it’s always hot in my room and then lay down. I reach over to turn off the light and just as I’m putting my head back down on the pillow – BAM! A bat flies through the open window and lands DIRECTLY on my face.

At first, I thought it was a moth. Well, I should say at first I didn’t think I just swatted wildly at it and then I wondered what it might have been. I must have really smacked the mess out of it because it went sailing across the room, smacked the wall and then slid down onto my backpack. I flipped the light on and there sitting on my backpack was a bat. Not a moth or a piece of debris as I originally thought, but a bat. A furry, horrible, fanged bat.

I immediately freaked out. I hate bats. Not only do I hate them but I’m also afraid of them. I eventually managed to corner the bat, throw a towel on it, scoop it up and fling it out the window. But not before I spent an hour freaking out about it with Celia online.I vacillated between killing it, setting it free or capturing it. I don’t know why but all my knowledge of science went right out the window. Only after I’d thrown the actual bat out the window did it return and I realized I should have kept it in case it needed to be tested for rabies. Scouring the Internet kept me up until 3:00 AM worried about undetected bat bites, rabies and everything else under the sun (much like the State Department’s Travel Warnings, the CDC’s Health Warnings will freak you out in a heartbeat). But now I’ve just convinced myself it didn’t bite me. Denial wards off rabies, right?

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Yesterday, we visited a gold mine owned by the only Turkish mining company operating in the country. They have half a dozen or so mines spread across the country but the rest of the mining industry is controlled by foreigners (strange, considering how nationalist Turks are). When we arrived at the mine site, one of the students sidled up next to me and motioned to the bare mountainside with a smug look on his face. “This is high technology, eh?” he said, impressing upon me the great accomplishments of the Turkish people. I started to shoot back, “Yeah, kid, strip mining a mountain-side and extracting gold with cyanide is real advanced technology – I bet nobody’s thought of that before,” but instead I smiled and nodded.

I’ll admit that it was interesting to see an actual gold mine but the trip dragged on a bit long for my tastes. The company’s PR lady took about 50 pictures of us, but at least we got a hat a T-shirt out of it!

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Both of the other volunteers have been sick, and I’ve had a bit of a cold. Today was the first day I actually called in sick. I was just feeling beat down and exhausted so I wanted to take a day to rest and recuperate. One of the volunteers claims to feel like he’s not really safe here anymore, but I think that’s slightly over exaggerated. However, things here certainly are a bit…hostile.

Somewhere in the province there was a pretty violent riot by a certain oppressed ethnic minority (no sense in asking for trouble by mentioning their name) a couple of days ago; Gülçe said she heard gunshots and saw the police chasing some people near the school the other night; and I’d have sworn that upon being introduced to some random guy on the street by the headmaster I was called an imperialist. Supposed Dr. B is under pressure from several quarters over the school. It seems that some people are not particularly happy about him bringing Americans here to teach English. Some people think we’re here to promote American culture, Christianity, etc. and given the recent row between Turkey & Israel over the Gaza aid flotilla shootings aboard the MV Blue Marmara, anti-Americanism seems to be at a high.

Unfortunately, this is small town Turkey. And with small towns come small town mentalities, like the inability to separate the United States from Israel or American citizens from the American government. I assumed because I was coming to a small place that people would be friendlier than usual; however, I found people in Istanbul to be exponentially friendlier than they are here. All you get in Gümüşhane are cold stares that border on being downright malicious. It certainly makes you appreciate the students more. They scream your name at the top of their lungs and bound across the street with a big smile on their face, happy to see you out and about in town.

Even so I’m back home in 41 days, and I’m counting them down.