Review
Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? A Peace Corps Memoir of Turkmenistan by Joan Heron
PublishAmerica, 2008
Reviewed by Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom
Chai Budesh? Anyone for Tea? is a Peace Corps memoir by an unconventional Peace Corps volunteer. Joan Heron was 62 years old when she began her Peace Corps service, but reading the story of her experience made me wonder why Peace Corps doesn't actively recruit more retirees. Heron's self-confidence, maturity, and wealth of experience in her field of nursing education proved to be such valuable assets, they easily offset any possible disadvantages of age – which, in Heron's case, were negligible anyway, since she seemed to have plenty of energy to go around, and the wisdom to know when to spend and when to conserve it – another advantage of experience.
In addition to her own personal journey of leaving a successful career in academia for early retirement, a crash course in the Russian language, and the culture shock of relocation to a remote and little-understood region of the world, Heron tells a fascinating tale of a culture in transition, Turkmenistan in the mid-to-late '90s, when it was just emerging from the long shadow of Soviet rule and struggling to find its own way as a nation, amidst poverty, rampant corruption, and the maddening red tape of bureaucracy at every level of society.
We learn from Heron's interactions with her Turkmen colleagues that Soviet rule did have one advantage for the traditionally Muslim Turkmen women: a fragile facade of equality that enabled them to pursue careers outside the home in medicine, government and academia. But "having it all" in Soviet-ruled Turkmenistan must have been even more physically exhausting than it often proves to be in the Western world, since the basics of household maintenance had to be conducted without the convenience of modern appliances and processed foods. Even clothes had to be made by hand or purchased from neighbors who moonlighted as seamstresses, since the ready-to-wear clothes sold in bazaars weren't durable enough to withstand the harsh desert climate with its extremes of temperature. And, of course, there was no concept of division of labor in the domestic realm.
However, through Heron's lens, we also see the beauty of a resilient culture with the hardiness to survive in this challenging political and geographic terrain – the hospitality and openness of the people, exemplified in the chai ritual, and particularly the intellectual and moral courage of some of Heron's closest colleagues and partners.
Heron and her Turkmen colleagues had their work cut out for them in educating mothers and health workers about maternal-child health in a culture in which young women's health and well-being were not highly valued and bedside manner was not part of the medical school curriculum.
Acknowledging the enormity of her task within its larger context but remaining confident in the legacy of her collaborative efforts and personal investment, she writes on page 294, "Even if none of the projects continued after I left, there were now people in this closed environment who had experienced a different way of seeing. Of equal significance was that this view was presented and embodied by a woman."
I found Heron's personal adventure tale and cultural observations fascinating and valuable, especially for anyone with an interest in travel to the area, although I have to recommend this book with the caveat that a closer editing job would have resulted in a volume that was more concise, less repetitive, and free from grammatical errors that could have been eliminated through a more thorough proofreading.
PublishAmerica offers limited editorial services to its authors, and the copyright page reveals that this book was "allowed to remain exactly as the author intended, verbatim, without editorial input." That seems like a big risk for an author to take, and I would recommend to authors using a publisher like this to personally hire an editing service if the publisher does not provide an adequate one.
After reading her story, however, I've learned that Ms. Heron is not one to shy away from risk, and most of the time it pays off for her – and in the case of her work in Turkmenistan, for many others as well.
Joan Heron served in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan from 1995 to 1997 as a Health Volunteer. She holds both an R.N. and a Ph.D.
