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~ Home on
the Range ~
July 16 through July 21, 2000
$1 U.S. = 630,000 Turkish Lire
(Remember to click
on the thumbnails for enlargements of the photos)
Gaziantep, Turkey
July 16 through July 21, 2000
(ccl) We left Cappodocia on schedule
at 8:00 Sunday morning. The drive ahead was supposed to be about
seven hours, plus Filiz had a couple of stops she wanted to make along
the way. The first was in a small village where an ancient caravanserai
was located. Caravanserais are found throughout this part of the
world. In the times when camel caravans were used to move goods
from one place to another, they served as overnight stops for these caravans,
providing a place to house the beasts of burden and for the men to get
meals and rest. This particular one was very well-preserved, and
the group enjoyed taking a quick look around the place. Just as
we were leaving, a local woman showed up and demanded money - about
12 million lire, to be exact. When Filiz refused to pay her, she
proceeded to produce a padlock and lock the door of the place, so that
no one could leave. A rather heated discussion then ensued in Turkish,
and finally, when the woman was given 500,000 lire, she released her prisoners.
I guess you can't blame her for trying her hand at the extortion game...
The other stop we made was in the
city of Maras for ice cream, for which the town is famous. Apparently they
beat this stuff by hand, and it becomes so stiff and thick that they can hang it
from a hook. It's so hard it has to be eaten with a knife and fork.
The place we stopped has been making and selling one flavor of ice cream -
vanilla - for 150 years. From the way the place was packed with people,
I'd say that Baskins Robbins might want to re-think their business plan.
It was certainly an interesting experience, but I didn't really care too much
for the strong taste of sheep's milk which permeated the ice cream.
When we finally rolled into Gaziantep
around 3:30 that afternoon, we were all pretty exhausted from the heat.
Gaziantep isn't far from the Syrian border, and it's the hottest area of
Turkey. Leyla's father was a doctor here when she was born, so she has a
lot of contacts in the city, and that's why our homestay portion of the trip was
taking place here. We proceeded to the office of a local woman who
arranges exchanges in America between Turkish students and American
families. She had solicited families in the Gaziantep area who might be
willing to house American travelers in their homes for six days, and had matched
us up with the families. Our family was the first to arrive to collect us,
and we departed with them after learning that we would reconvene in two days for
a meeting with the group.
Kemal and Dilek Karagulle are a young
couple with two boys, Berkay, age 9, and Kutay, age 3. Kemal runs his
family's tire business, and Dilek just finished her certification for teaching
primary and secondary school, and will teach starting in September this year at
a local private school. Dilek spoke English very well, and Kemal understood much
of what was being said, but couldn't speak English. Berkay had studied a
little English at school, and of course, Kutay wasn't old enough to know
any. The only word Kutay said all week that we understood was when he
would fly his Batman action figure by our heads and exclaim in those reverent,
hushed tones reserved only for a super-hero, "Batman!".
Wiley and I were really looking
forward to some time spent in a real home, and Dilek and Kemal made us feel that
we were truly "at home" from the beginning. We stayed at Dilek's
parent's apartment, which was very lovely and bigger than Dilek and Kemal's
place. Dilek's mother insisted that we use her house, since Dilek has no
guest room in her house. Because of us, Dilek's parents moved out of their
house for a week. This is the Turkish way, as I have mentioned
before. Anything that can be done to make a guest feel more at home, is
done. If we wanted anything to eat, anything in the refrigerator was ours
for the taking. When our clothes needed washing, Dilek did them.
When we needed to go shopping or run errands, Dilek and Kemal took us. Our
hosts could not have been more helpful or gracious. But at the same time,
they also somehow made us feel like we weren't imposing on them. I felt
completely comfortable with them from the start - almost like one of the
family.
On Tuesday we met back with the group, and found out that activities had been
scheduled for us for the next three days. I wasn't too happy about this,
since I found it really nice and relaxing, spending time in a comfortable home
for the first time in a long time. However, things weren't going as
smoothly for some members of the group, and they where happy to have outside
activities. The worst case in the group was Vickey's. No one in her
house spoke any English, and you can imagine how tough it was for her because of
this. So she was glad to have something else to do, but I don't think any
of us was prepared for the excursion we took on Wednesday. We left for the
nearby town of Sanliurfa at 7:00 A.M. We wanted to get an early start to
try and avoid some of the heat, which turned out to be pretty much
impossible. I've told you that this region was the hottest in Turkey,
hence the name of this page "Home on the Range", because the heat
resembled the intensity of the big burner on an Amana Radar-Range. At one
point the thermometer on Wiley's shoe told us that it was 110 degrees, and that
was inside the van. The two big attractions in Sanliurfa both have to do
with the prophet Abraham. Muslims believe that the three great religions,
Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, all originated with Abraham, so he is quite
special to them ("Ibrahim" in Arabic). There is a cave in
Sanliurfa that is renowned as the place where Abraham was born. Pilgrims
come from all over to drink the water from the spring in the cave, as they feel
that it has special healing properties. As Islamic standards dictated
extremely modest standards of dress when entering the shrine, most of us had to
don the "rental robes" provided. The men and women went in
separate parts of the cave, and let me tell you that the summer heat did not
enhance the odors inside the cave in any way. However, it was quite
peaceful inside the cave, as women prayed out loud and drank from the spring,
many of them looking for relief from some affliction. I thought about and
prayed for my college roommate, M.L., who had just had surgery for a brain
tumor.
The other attraction is the Balikli Gol, which are pools of sacred carp that
supposedly rest on the site where King Nimrod attempted to immolate Abraham on a
burning pyre, because Abraham had been destroying Nimrod's favorite pagan
gods. God saved Abraham by turning the fire into water and the burning
coals into carp, and the fish that live in the lake today are considered sacred
by the Muslims. If you go there, don't try to feed them pretzels, as I
did. You will get yelled at if you feed them anything other than the
officially sanctioned fish food, available from several conveniently located
vendors.
After lunch in the park, we again boarded the Inferno Express for a trip to
Belkisi. You may have recently read about this archeological site in USA
Today, as it is slowly being flooded by the recently dammed waters of the
Euphrates River. Archeologists have been working frantically to remove
several beautifully preserved mosaics from Roman times, and many have already
been successfully relocated to the Gaziantep museum (we had seen them on
Tuesday). The others are apparently matters of national security, because
the armed men that loitered around the sight we very clear about the fact that
we were not to go into those areas. I guess they are trying to avert any
kind of protests from any international groups looking to help preserve the
antiquities. I think that as a country, Turkey tries to preserve its
ancient history, but it takes a lot of money, and when it's a question of
producing more food to feed an ever-growing population, or saving some old
mosaics, the needs of today's people win out.
When we got back to Gaziantep at
7:00, we found out that Dilek had been waiting for us at the office for over an
hour. We were exhausted, and it was nice to go back "home", take
a cool shower, and enjoy another delicious meal with friends. The next day
the rest of the group was going to visit a nearby village, but we had already
told them we would be skipping that activity.
During the week, Wiley really got close to the
boys. He had a great time playing with them, and I think they liked him as
well, despite the language barrier. I guess there's really no need for a
common language in play. They had intense smash-em-up sessions with some
little plastic McDonald's cars we had brought. One of them had Fred
Flintstone driving with Dino in the back, and Kutay called it his "yabba-dabba-do"
car. Berkay liked playing chess on his computer at home, and he
good-naturedly played Wiley ten or so games, losing every time.
As for me, I really enjoyed helping
Dilek with the cooking, and getting to know her better. She showed me how
to make a couple of traditional Turkish dishes, and my favorite was Eggplant
Kebab. She opened up about the challenges she had faced, going to
school while raising Berkay, and being pregnant with Kutay. We talked
about the Muslim concept of "in sha'Allah", which loosely translates
to "God willing". Muslims believe that everything comes from
God, and if you get something you want, it was because of God. Dilek
believes that you get what you want only by working for it. She aspires to
go further in school, to get her masters degree and one day teach in
college. She also feels that it's important to spend your life doing
something that you love; something that you are passionate about. These
are, of course, all concepts that Wiley and I spend a good deal of time talking
about, as we consider the next course in our lives.
But I think what was really special
about the week was that we both felt like we made a connection with these
people. They were not afraid to open up to us, to talk about their dreams
and desires, the problems and challenges of raising a family, and the issues
that face them living in their country. Dilek's brother and sister-in-law,
Yalcyn and Nilufer, joined us for dinner one night, and then invited us over to
their apartment for tea another night. We found that Wiley and Yalcyn had
a lot in common, including interests in Zen Buddhism and spirituality.
Both Yalcyn and Nilufer speak great English, and I felt sorry that Kemal was
left out of the conversation so often.
On our last night with the family,
Wiley and I cooked dinner for Kemal, Dilek, Berkay and Kutay. Dilek's
parents, Ilhan and Huseyin, and her brother, Ugur, also joined us. I made Fettuccine
Alfredo, and everyone wolfed it down, which is really no indication that the
food is good in Turkey, because it's considered bad manners not to eat all the
food that's put in front of you. After dinner, Wiley presented Kemal with
a stuffed Pikachu doll that talks and lights up, and Dilek with a remote
controlled race car. This was, of course, a joke, as Berkay was crazy for
Pokemon, and Kutay loved crashing cars. The kids quickly grabbed the toys
from their parents, and we never saw them without them for the remainder of our
visit. The boys said "thank you" in their best English to us,
and I wished I could have done something more to show my thanks to these people
who so willingly opened their hearts and their homes to us. I hope they
have some idea of what that week meant to both of us. We will certainly
never forget any of them.
On Friday afternoon Dilek and Kemal
drove us to meet the rest of the group for the all night bus trip to Alanya.
It was sad saying goodbye, as I felt I had really gotten close to them in the
few days we had been together. I can only hope that one day they will
visit us in America, and we can repay their hospitality and enjoy their
friendship again.
Alanya, Turkey
July 21 through July 23, 2000
Back with the rest of the group, we shared stories about our experiences during
the week. Almost everyone had had a remarkable time, and felt like they
had made connections with the people they stayed with. Alanya was the
final stop for the group, and Wiley and I made the decision to move on to Greece
early. We both felt that it was time for us to move on, and that we needed
to get back out on our own. For both of us, the most positive thing about
the LISLE experience was the homestay. We both felt like maybe a three
week guided tour is, for us, too long. But we met some great people on the
trip and hope to cross paths with them again someday.
We took another over night bus, this
time to Bodrum, and when the bus arrived the next morning, we headed straight
for the port and bought our ferry tickets for the short ride to the island of
Kos, in Greece. We were both exhausted, but looking forward to a change of
scene in a new country.
Click
here to continue in Greece with "Islands of Pleasure"
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