Friday, October 15th, 2004

Wow, ten days without an update. I’m sorry to keep you all waiting (if any of you are, in fact, reading this). To make a long story short, I’ve developed a social life. Which means that my hour of writing each day before bed has disappeared. And daytimes have been rather busy, with lots of popping round to visit various places. So the writing has suffered. I’m sorry. I really am; not just for you, but because I won’t have an intricately detailed lowdown of the past 1.5 weeks.

Anyway, the social life is good. My main friend is Elif. We do a lot of chilling, mostly with her housemates, Zeynep and Yasmine. Zeynep is a funny, pudgy girl who smokes like crazy, laughs a lot and cooks very tasty food. Yasmine is more quiet, studies computer science, and is very enjoyable to be around. Elif is rather crazy. She’s from Istanbul, loves to laugh and yell very loud and quickly. She has nicknames for everyone. We get along very well. I taught them how to swear in English the other day, which has been an absolute riot. I will not repeat the learned words here since all might not appreciate them as much as I do, but wow… Turkish girls screaming obscenities at each other provides me with hours of entertainment!

Another good friend is Ildis. She doesn’t live with the girls but is close by and comes over a lot. She’s a bit older, more intellectual and very thoughtful. I really wish we had a shared language as I think we feel very similarly about many things. Ildis used to have a business designing bridal dresses, but now is in school studying Tourism. I’m not sure what happened with the business; I think it probably ended when the economy went crazy four or so years ago. But she still designs sometimes, and gets paid by a local dressmaker for various projects.

The last close friend is Umut. He’s a funny sort who likes to joke around, especially about dirty things. So we get along great. He speaks English very well and makes an excellent translator when needed. I don’t know what else to say really.

We do a lot of making meals, drinking çay, smoking cigarettes (not me), listening to crappy cassette tapes very loudly, playing tabla (backgammon) in cafes, and wondering around the rather boring streets of Çankiri. It’s a very good time. I meet various people through them, get to talk a lot, as questions about Turkey, and basically have a good group of friends who are a similar age. Elif and I also go to a lot of restaurants, which is wonderful for me because I can try all different kinds of food. And man is it cheap. We can get a meal consisting of soup starters, huge entrees of kepabs or whatever, salad, ayran (yummy yogurty drink), and çay at the end, all for about 14,000,000 TL, or basically $9. And that’s at one of the nicest restaurants in town. There’s one that students eat at a lot due to its cheapness and quality, where we’ve had a nice meal for two costing maybe $4 or $4.50.

At these prices I can afford to eat out all the time, which is really nice. Not worrying about money here is really nice. Especially because everyone worries about money. I mean everyone. Without the strong family connections I think students here would be living on bread and water. Maybe some are anyway. Seriously. Which is why I feel good when I can pay for a meal. It’s not handout and I think it goes a long way. So I will continue to do so as much as possible.

On the studying side of things, last week I visited some factories. Turkey has been pumping tons of IMF money into developing a serious manufacturing sector that exports mucho. And I visited a planned industrial area, a place where the government subsidizes industry in order to get many to open plants there. I toured a textile factory, an electronic counter factory, and a salt factory. It was interesting stuff. I asked a lot of questions, especially about the textiles, as I’ve read too much about sweatshop products and had some concerns. It was interesting to find out that the government monitors a minimum wage very strictly and re-evaluates it often. I asked if it was a living wage, but they found that question difficult to understand. “Of course, they said, families survive on it.” But my question of is it enough did not really sink in. It would be good to speak with workers sometime, which is a meeting I will try to arrange. One interesting thing to note is that all the textile workers received health insurance! This seems very progressive and noteworthy.

The salt factory was fascinating. All the processing was completely automated. At the beginning, workers broke up the rock salt with jack hammers, then fed it into the system. On the other end it came out and worker bagged it and packed it. The whole middle process only required two guys to monitor the computers. Very advanced and impressive.

The one thing that gets me here is worker safety. I saw so many people in loud areas without ear plugs, workers spray painting without masks, and everyone in dangerous areas without hard hats. Managers thought my questions about these things to be funny. “They can buy earplugs if they want to, but no one does.” Interesting. Is this due to bad education? I’ve noticed that the current generation of older parents (mid thirties to fifties) all have bad teeth. Selo said it’s because they simply didn’t know that you’re supposed to brush your teeth each day. Their parents never taught them so they didn’t do it. Now everyone has false teeth, or more likely just really bad teeth. Maybe this is the same way? I wonder what the factory conditions are like in similar countries. Do human rights organizations conduct audits of factories in Turkey? Not in any I visited. It seems like an important area of focus, especially with the EU desires that are so important right now.

Oh, I must sleep. I have more to write about, which I’ll do this weekend. Topics include moving to Ankara in a few days, CCID related activities that I have been involved with, possible employment opportunities, and other junk that I can’t think of right now. I’ll try to be more diligent in the future…