keith birthday has norwegian arms

I WENT TO TUVA AND DRANK VODKA WITH NOMADS

Note: A modified version of this article appeared in the Summer issue of JUMP magazine. This is the original.

(photo courtesy of Helen Stuhr-Rommereim [who was also on this trip])

We woke up early, set out early. A long bus ride out into the steppe. We were to meet nomads. Grass and grass and maybe a small hill. The horizon was beset with very tall mountains with snow on the top. The bus was filled with people; four American visitors, one newly arrived Nigerian student, and about twenty local students. We had already started to drink cheap local beer out of two liter plastic bottles. The boys in the back had started to sing. The professors in the front shook their heads, probably thinking fondly of their youth or something.

 Take a map of Asia and find the geographical center. According to the natives, this is where Tuva is. The south of Russia, in the center, technically Siberia, on the border with Mongolia. Most of the buildings looked like Russia, all of the people looked central Asian. We had started in Kyzyl, the capital, and were heading out towards the mountains, beyond some small nameless village we stopped in for various foodstuffs.

 I had been in Russia for about seven months at this point, had taken this trip under the guise of working in the university and ‘spreading goodwill’ on behalf of the Fulbright program, but mostly because I had recently emerged from a period of serious purposeful solitude. Being around fellow Americans stationed in various Siberian cities felt good. I had felt pretty awful for months already. Also Tuva is where throat singing is from.

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Hand In Goat

What’s it like
to put your hand inside of an animal
feel around some organs and
assorted body parts

put your hand on its heart
and squeeze/pull/rupture something
near the heart
maybe feel the blood pour out
of a major artery/vein?

Do you feel:
Like a man
Connected with nature
Still drunk from yesterday? 

Attempt at Reflections on Tuva

At this point I hoped that I would be able to put some thoughts down about what happened to me a few weeks ago. I guess I’ll start with a list of things that happened:

-Saw some fields on fire while taking the train to Abakan
-Took a gorgeous taxi ride through the mountains with ever changing scenery that reminded us Americans of 5-6 different states
-Met a lot of really nice Tuvan people
-Took a long bus ride out into the mountains that involved pushing it up hills and feeling like we were going to fall over. The driver was amazing, it was like a safari ride, and I will never make fun of those short little Russian buses anymore.
-Met some shepherds who were very stoic.
-Watched a goat die via hand through slit in chest and separating aorta from heart
-Ate lots of various goat parts
-Listened to quite a bit of Throat singing
-Played music with throat singers in the back of the bus on the way home
-Saw Tuvan wrestling
-Saw basically every bank in Tuva
-Rode a horse across the Steppe
-Played a song for an English club
-Went to a Tuvan club that really was the closest thing in Russia to clubs I like at home (no frills)
-Got really sick for 30 hours (flu)
-Attempted to make burritos for everyone

I feel like the week I spent there was just long enough for the idea of Tuva as a beautiful place to be solidified in my mind without having to deal with the troubles of every day life. They say drunken Tuvan men can be dangerous. They say there’s crime and racism but I didn’t see it.

Since I’ve been back in Tomsk I’ve tried to process these experiences but it’s difficult. The world felt a little but more connected there, or something like that. People seemed a little more real than many of the Russians I meet. Maybe it was the richness of culture that I sensed. Russia still seems to be figuring its identity out, Tuva seems to have a very ancient one. I want to go back.