Teacher exchange encourages democracy in a peaceful way

Nurmurad Nurmeradov (left), principal of a Turkmenistan school, presents Concord-Carlisle Regional High School teacher David Nurenberg with a handmade carpet and flag. (ARSLAN SOYUNOW)

Gulnara is a natural behind the camera. Within minutes of having been shown my Sony Handycam, the diminutive olive-skinned teenager is already weaving to find the best angle, instructing her subjects to take positions. When I tell her she has a bright future as a photojournalist, she blushes but does not hide a proud smile.

Gulnara, whose name means pomegranate flower, is one of many students I meet on my two-week teacher-exchange visit to Turkmenistan. The rare Americans who come to this insular Central Asian nation tend to work for oil and petrochemical companies, their movements carefully restricted by a government that 15 years ago shed Soviet membership while retaining Stalinist-style controls. For a foreigner to gain access to homes and schools as I have is nearly unheard of, and my hunger for knowledge of their world pales in comparison to the desire of Gulnara and her friends to learn about mine.

Gulnara's teacher struggles to keep up with the translation, let alone keep order in her crammed classroom. Boys in suits and ties and girls in green uniforms, caps, and long braided pigtails fire questions at me: How much do things cost in America, how old are people when they get married, do I know Fifty Cent or Brad Pitt personally? In return, they tell me in halting English about their lives, their preferred foods (pizza and plov, pronounced "pa-low," a rice and meat dish), about how Turkmenistan's vast oil, gas, and mineral resources allow citizens to enjoy gasoline and electricity virtually cost-free.

A cynical observer might say that my trip here, paid for by the US State Department, is merely a human-interest veneer shellacked onto a grab for the region's oil. But everyone I meet from IREX, the program that administers this teacher exchange, seems to share my idealism. Their mission is to "improve the quality of education . . . foster[ing] pluralistic civil society development" by sending US and Eurasian teachers to one another's countries as cultural ambassadors, banking on the power of personal contact to work transformations.

Encouraging democracy this way seems more effective, not to mention cheaper, than through bombs and invasions.

Given the Turkmen government's paranoia, IREX must proceed carefully; Turkmenistan banned the Open Society Institute, a similarly themed private organization, from its soil. But the 2006 death of President-for-Life Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov (who oversaw the construction of hundreds of gold statues of himself, renamed the months after his family members, and centered school curriculums around his own book) has opened up new avenues for cultural exchange.

Gulnara's teacher, Rita, is an idealist of a different sort. One of the few non-ethnic Turkmen to remain after the USSR's collapse, she earnestly tries to equip her rowdy students in their broken-chaired, nearly windowless classroom with necessary skills for the global economy.

"English is the key to my success," she tells them, coupling language instruction with lessons in geography, mathematics, and even good hygiene.

Her dedication does not go unnoticed; several students tell me hers is the only class they bother attending.

Rita hopes they will become translators for American and British oil companies.

I wonder how the inevitable and much-needed global transition to Green Power will affect these children, sold on dreams of oil as their gateway to success.

Their world, while not easy, has its charms. At times their town feels like a Norman Rockwell painting full of headscarves and old Soviet Ladas (cars).

Every morning parents walk their children to school, and by afternoon children play pick-up games while adults listen to the radio or gossip with neighbors.

My host family stuffs me full of bread, apricots, and camel's milk at every opportunity. Neighborhood children pull me into soccer matches. Merchants refuse to take my money, offering me free wares.

The school principal warmly clasps my hands and gives me a carpet and flag to take to my own school.

These are Muslims, and I am an American Jew, and none of that matters.

The goose-stepping soldiers perpetually appearing on state propaganda television provide chilling reminders that this is no utopia. Yet people offer political opinions to me with surprising casualness, assuring me they can separate me from my country's government.

Rita asks me to do the same with her people, all but begging me to forestall an American invasion: "Please! Tell your people that we love peace!"

Rita tries to build that peace one student a time. Pointing to Gulnara (who sits in on every class I visit and volunteers her time as an unofficial tour guide), she says, "This one is smart but lazy."

Rita wants Gulnara to become an attache for Exxon. I see in her a budding photojournalist. Gulnara's parents want her to be a store manager; Gulnara's mischievous grin tells me she's determined to write her own destiny.

"Lazy," Rita repeats, "but then you came. Now she suddenly wants to be a perfect student."

Maybe this is mere flattery. Maybe my visit did some good after all. Anywhere around the world, teaching, like diplomacy, is always an act of faith.

David Nurenberg teaches English and literature at Concord-Carlisle Regional High School in Concord. He lives in Somerville and can be reached at dnurenberg@ colonial.net.