Adventures at the Health Clinic

The H1N1 shot has just been released here in Turkey for children age 6 mo. to 5 years. Previous to this week only health care professionals and Muslims making the pilgrimage to Mecca (the haj) had access to the shot.

I decided to take Elise and Marie down to the public health clinic to get the inoculation. Clara just turned two months old and was due for another round of shots, so it made sense (in my mind at least) to just get all the pain and agony out of the way in one fell swoop... kill two (or three?) birds with one stone...bite the bullet... go for the gold... you get the picture.

A couple of days ago while James was at work I dressed my children warmly, put Elise and Marie in a double stroller, strapped Clara onto my chest with a baby carrier and headed off to the health clinic.

I should re-state here that Turks in big cities do not normally have children as close together as Americans do. And for reasons that I can't fully grasp, whenever I am out with my three little ones (three is too many kids according to many of my friends) I am stared at as if I came from another planet or am a strange freak of nature. I am asked almost daily if Elise (almost 5) and Marie (2 1/2) are twins, even though Elise is head and shoulders taller than her sister. I think people just can't comprehend me having that many children that close together.

So my freaky brood of kids and I went down the street a few blocks for the dreaded shots. We were stopped 3 times in the 10 minute walk by people who wanted to ask me if I had twins or inform me that my kids weren't dressed warm enough. We arrived at the building to find it crowded with mothers and children waiting to get shots. A nurse noticed the baby hanging off of me and ushered me upstairs for baby shots since downstairs was dedicated to the swine flu vaccine.

Fertile Myrtle (me) and her three kids were put in a small room with two desks, a table for the patient to sit on, and one nurse who first asked if Elise and Marie were twins, then asked if I had all these children on purpose, and why they were so close in age, and then started taking down Clara's information. Another nurse soon joined us with the three shots for poor little Clara, and after getting all the important information (no... not about allergies, medical records, etc... but why I had so many children so close together) she had me get Clara ready for the shots and instructed me on how to hold her still while she administered the inoculations.

The nurse pulled the shiny little needle out and Marie's eyes grew big as saucers. Poor Marie's curiosity drew her closer and closer until she was watching the needles go into her baby sister's arm and legs, and listening to her sad little screams from about 6 inches away. If she wasn't already dreading her own shots, by this point she was pretty much scared out of her socks.

The two nurses decided that since the line downstairs was so long, they would just bring up two H1N1 vaccines for Elise and Marie. So they got on the phone, and soon two more shots and three more nurses were crowded into the small room. I think the new nurses assumed that I didn't know Turkish and so they proceeded to ask the first two all about me. A conversation ensued about how strange and hard it must be to not only be a foreigner, but also to have to look after three small kids. "Why would she do that?" "It had to be an accident!" "They are beautiful... but that's so hard!" "Look at the chart... they are all two years apart! At least she was orderly about it," were just a few of the comments they made to one another... right in front of me. They also laughed about the fact that five of them were upstairs with the yabancilar (foreigners) while only two were left to give vaccines to the masses below.

Marie was next to hop........ er...be dragged... onto the table. By this point I had one nurse still taking down info, one holding Clara, one administering the shot, and two more, plus myself holding down poor kicking, screaming, and struggling little Marie. Screams rang down the hallways, snot and tears flew everywhere and then it was over... well, except the crying.

By this point, Elise had quietly retreated to underneath a desk and was hoping that her freakishly fertile mother and the chatty nurses would just forget about her existence and leave her alone. No such luck. I had to drag her clawing, scratching, and screaming from under the desk, all the while listening to Marie and Clara's cries and to the nurses rehash how close in age my children are. It then took me and two nurses to pry her little hands off her coat, her coat and sweater off of her shoulder, and hold her down so she could have her turn at the dreaded flu vaccine. More screaming, kicking, crying, and snot, and I breathed a big sigh of relief... it was over.

I tried to quiet the girls down with marshmallows and fruit roll ups from a care package from Nana (thanks Mom!), but it was a no go. In the end I had to walk out of the room, down the hallway, past scores of people waiting for shots, all the while holding a baby and dragging along two screaming and crying little girls. More than one person tried to pick up one of my two crying older girls to comfort them, which only made things worse... I mean, really, would you want a stranger grabbing you right after your mom betrayed you by holding you down to be jabbed by a sharp instrument of torture!? Me neither. A few curious people tried to stop me to ask if Elise and Marie were twins... and by this point I just wanted to yell, "Can't you people mind your own business?!! Yes I have three kids! No they're not twins! Yes, I wanted all three of my children, and NO, it's not hard to raise them, I'M HANDLING IT JUST FINE, OKAY!! NOW JUST LEAVE ME ALONE FOR PEET'S SAKE (While throwing chairs, and knocking over tables... yeah, things are fine... just fine. I totally have it all together)!"

It was probably only 30 to 40 minutes start to finish, but I felt like I had just endured hours of torture and was quite honestly just wanting to be left alone when a nurse chased me down, handed me a couple of cards with the girl's names on them, and told me that I needed to come back for round two of the flu shot in a month.

What? I thought this was a one time deal!

Pumpkin Fun!

In Turkey, it's tough to find orange pumpkins. We usually end up carving a big greyish green one instead. Let me tell you, those things are tough to carve! The rind is at least 3 inches thick, and hard as a bowling ball. Try carving through your kitchen table, and you'll get an idea of the pumpkin carving experience here in Turkey.

James took the pumpkin I carved for our girls to school to show his students and they were impressed and EXCITED. They'd only seen jack-o-lanterns on TV. His tenth graders immediately begged him to bring pumpkins in for them to carve. They all threw in a little cash and sent "Teacher" to hunt them down.

By the way, Turkish students call all their teachers "Ogretmenim (my teacher)," so when they have an english teacher, he automatically becomes "Teacher." In the US, you'd only hear that coming out of a kindergartener's mouth. So it sounded strange to James to be greeted that way by 16 year olds, but I guess he got used to it...

Anyhow, with 20 lira in his pocket, Teacher headed out to the pumpkin patch.... er .... roadside stand... and did his best to pick out a few nice round greyish-green pumpkins.

Kind of ugly, aren't they? And those orange things in the background... the ones that you probably think are pumpkins... I'm pretty sure those are overripe melons. They're supposed to be green, like the melons on the right.

After James chose a few, the melon/pumpkin guy weighed them with his yellow crate and pulley thingy. He threw in a few melons so that James could use up the entire 20 lira.

I'm pretty sure James tried to swipe an extra melon... check out that guilty look on his face.

A few days later the highly anticipated event finally came, and several excited 10th graders got to sink their butter knives into the pumpkins! The administration wouldn't let them use sharp knives, so James made the first cut then handed the hard and warty green pumpkins over for those poor kids to try to continue carving with butter knives. Good thing 16 year olds are strong.

Everybody took a turn digging out the guts...

This girl found a plastic glove to wear while digging out the pumpkin's innards. Smart! She must have a good teacher.

Mehmet and Ahmet. Good friends putting their heads together to design their very first jack-o-lantern.

Gotta love the uniforms. Makes me wish I had one in high school.

The finished product. Three beautiful pumpkins. Twelve happy students. One happy teacher (the guy in the back with the teeny head and a goatee). And the english practice?? They wrote all about it three times. In past, present, and future tense.

James is a great teacher!

Love and Marriage

Had an interesting conversation with a new aquaintance, Bahar. It gives a good picture of the marriage experience for many women her age, and what things are still like in some parts of Turkey.

Bahar: My granddaughter is 22, she's about to graduate from college with her Master's degree.

Me: Wow! You don't look old enough to have a granddaughter that age!

Bahar: Thank you! I'm 57. I got married young. My mother gave me away when I was 13.

Me: Weren't you scared? Had you met your husband before you married? How old was he?

Bahar: Yes, of course I was scared. I was very scared! We'd never met before. His mother saw me and asked my mother for me, and then we got married. He was 22.

Me: How old were you when you had your first baby?

Bahar: I was 14. I was still a child myself. I liked to play with my daughter's dolls! We grew up together.

When I am 35, I will have a 7 year old, a 5 year old, and a 3 year old. When Bahar was 35, she was a grandma!

Pickles!

Not long after I arrived in Turkey a friend of mine, Gonul, was showing me how to make stuffed cabbage leaves (which, by the way, are one of the most mouth wateringly delicious little things I've ever eaten). After we were done we had quite a lot of cabbage left over. If you've ever seen a cabbage here, you'll understand why. Anyway I said (or at least kind of tried to say... I used a lot of hand motions during this phase of my life), "What should we do with all this extra cabbage?" I must have communicated somewhat effectively because she looked at me with a smile and a sparkle in her eye, raised a finger in the air as if to say, "Ah ha!" and then started making pickles.

Gonul found a large jar, chopped the cabbage into wedges and stuffed it in. She opened my refrigerator and started pilfering the contents and throwing them into the jar - carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley, bell peppers. Then she grabbed my vinegar, dumped it in along with water, salt, some garlic and lemon juice, and screwed the lid on. Next Gonul pointed to my calendar and showed me that I needed to wait at least a week and then (pointing to the strange assortment curing in the corner of my kitchen and motioning with her hand to her mouth) I could dig in and eat it up, and (patting her tummy, smiling, and saying "mmmmm") I would like it.

What Gonul couldn't have known is that I'd already tried a similar concoction of pickled vegetables at a neighbors house and absolutely hated it. It was, let's see, how can I put this delicately, well, it was absolutely disgusting. But I ate it. I ate a whole lot of it. After choking down one bowl of pickled who-knows-what in order not to offend my hostess, she assumed I loved it and served a second even bigger bowl.

Back to Gonul's pickled assortment. I let it sit for a week so that when she came over she'd see I hadn't just tossed it, then I put it in the refrigerator and every day threw a little bit away. Yep, in order to keep from offending, I basically lived a big fat lie until the giant jar was empty.

Since that time I've learned to speak Turkish and become less scared of offending. Whenever anyone offers me a bunch of pickled stuff I kindly explain that I don't care for pickled stuff. Then, without fail, they say, "Oh, that's because you've never tried MY pickled stuff" As if their recipe is so very very different from everyone elses.

They serve me up a big bowl and wait eagerly while I try it. And without fail, I plaster a fake smile on my face, say, "Oh, you're right... this is better." Then I try my best to choke down at least half of it before lamenting about how full I am and how I can't possibly eat another bite. I lie, I know it's bad, I know I shouldn't, but at least I'm being honest for you, right?

Now I feel like my world has turned upside down. I feel like I've become the thing that I once detested. I've entered a dark and confusing phase of my life.

I make my own pickles. Not only that, I feel really really cool making them, like a pioneer, or a pilgrim, or at least a really homey domestic make everything yourself kind of gal.

It makes me feel so cool that I want to fit it into conversations, just to let people know how crafty I am... but I don't find the opportunity very often.

I keep hoping that one day a friend will be complaining about the price of pickles, and I can say, "Oh really? I wouldn't know... I make my own pickles... from scratch." Or maybe someone will say that they can't decide which brand is best, and I'll say, "Oh, you mean store bought pickles? I wouldn't know. I make my own."

It started with my friend Kim giving me a pickle recipe and a jar of pickles she'd made. This was the first and only time I've ever experienced homemade pickles in Turkey and actually enjoyed it. It probably had to do with the fact that she only pickled cucumbers. She didn't venture into the vile world of pickling vegetables that the Good Lord never intended to be pickled.

Thanks to my new inspiration, I made some pickles too. First I bought cucumbers. Do you see how cucumbers here are much smaller than cucumbers in the States? These are sold in grocery stores as pickling cucumbers.

I tried to take a picture of a cucumber in my hand so I could show you the size, but then I looked at it, gasped as I realized how badly I need a manicure, and immediately deleted it. Here's Marie demonstrating the size for you instead.

I washed these babies up, and threw them in a jar, like so....

Then I put a couple of cloves of garlic (they're called teeth, not cloves, in Turkish... thought you might enjoy a bit of Turkish language trivia). I poured a mixture of boiling vinegar, salt, and water over the top, then tossed in a few sprigs of dill. Last I put on the lid, put it in the fridge, let it sit a few days, and wa-lah! I had myself a jar of pickles. Easy as pie. Or really, it's much easier than making pie.

Sadly, I've now become one of those annoying pickle pushing people I once tried to stay far away from. If you come to my house it wont be long before we're having this conversation:

"So, do you want some pickles?

What? You don't like pickles?? Oh, well that's because you haven't tried MY pickles. Give them a try (pointing at the bowl of pickles that I've shoved in front of your face and motioning hand to mouth) and you'll find they're delicious (saying "mmmmmm" while I smile and pat my belly)."