Holidays (composed end of December)

Buying a ticket
I decided to buy a ticket to the annual New Years show at the Theater of Mime and Gesture. Pretty easy thing to do, you say? Well, not really. I tell this story because it illustrates two daily aspects of my life- first, the mass of misinformation and the interesting phenomenon that the closer you get (physically usually) to something the information you get about can change dramatically (approaching truth when you actually get to it). It also depicts the “American access” phenomenon.
I had one phone number for the Theater, which I called each hour on the hour Tuesday. I had been warned Monday night that the tickets for this show sell out and I should buy mine immediately. No one answered the phone and so I ended up going to the theater that night, hoping their phone was out of service. I saw lights on the second floor but my hopes were dashed as I discovered the doors were locked. Not wanting to throw away my 30 minute ride on the unventilated oven (metro) I dejectedly loitered around, looking into darkened windows, searching for signs of life. I eventually found a Theater schedule and on it was the phone number I’d been calling and another one I hadn’t tried. I called this number and found myself talking to the administrator of the theater at her home (she was very surprised I had her number!). She told me the ticket office was closed for the day and would be open the following day from 11-4. She didn’t know if any tickets were available. She could not explain why no one had answered my calls and gave me yet another phone number. I left feeling I had made some progress. The next day I dutifully called at 11 the number, which turned out to be a modem and no living being. I tried it throughout the morning and decided that I would just “swing by” again on my way to meet up with a friend. I arrived around 1 and found the exact same situation as the night before, only minus the lights upstairs. So, I began my loitering again in earnest, called the administrator again who suddenly was much less helpful and told me she wasn’t working that day and could not help me at all and knew nothing. Along came a short bureaucratic looking man and woman and they opened the door! I attempted to slip in with them but was confronted by bureaucratic man. He responded in classic bureaucratic fashion which was to deny everything I said while positioning himself inside the door, barring my entrance and literally closing the door on me while I was talking to him, requiring me to hold the door open with my foot.
Me: I need to go to the ticket office of the theater.
The wall of flesh: The ticket office is closed and will not be open at all today. It is only open on the day of the performance.
Me: The administrator said it was open. I need to buy the ticket today, because this particular show sells out before the performance.
The Grinch: I know that all the tickets have already been sold, there are none left.
Me: Are you sure they are all sold? (Despair).
STUPID MAN: (repentantly) Actually I have no relationship whatsoever to this theater and I don’t know anything about the ticket sales. (In other words, I just made up everything I said so you would go away and leave me alone). (Not too repentantly, slams door in my face).

I cursed myself for not coming up with more convincing excuses and somehow prolonging our conversation- I might have been able to outrun the short wall of flesh if it came to that. Instead I continue to loiter feeling very thoroughly misinformed. Before too long an old deaf woman arrives who I have seen at the theater on previous occasions. Unlike the wall of flesh, she looks at me and asks what I want. I explain (our conversation is all in sign) that I want the theater to buy a ticket for the New Year show. She says go in and you’ll see on the second floor (something with the number 2 I didn’t understand- second door, second floor?) I find on the second floor a door, also closed and locked with a sign saying ticket sales for this show on Dec. 30 are from 2-7pm. Boo! I was not sure from the sign if the sales were held daily or just on the 30th. When the deaf woman came along I tried to ask her. She did not understand my question and asked me very pointedly if I was illiterate. I explained that I had been there yesterday at 5pm and the door had been locked, how was one to buy the ticket if the building is locked? She then pointed out the all-important door on the side of the building, the entrance which I was supposed to have intuited. She was pretty disgusted with my lack of knowledge and decided that I hadn’t understood her about the door either and hailed down a passing man to explain it to me. He was hard of hearing and spoke very clearly. He informed me that there were no tickets left. But before your heart breaks, wait just a few minutes. When pressed he told me there were standing room tickets- I would just have to wait 30 minutes or so until the office opened. He also asked me if I was hard-of-hearing and said I looked like I was hard-of-hearing! (Probably due to my sub-par sign). He told me the show would be a bunch of drunken craziness that would not be interesting to me. I then started to explain that I was an American in Moscow studying deaf culture and that I actually did need a ticket. We then had a pretty interesting conversation- he, Sergei, has been working as chief engineer of lighting, heating, etc. of the theater for over twenty years and has two deaf children. We talked about everything- education methods for the deaf, Russians in America (all of which I am supposed to somehow have met) and the fact that Russians have “wide minds” which allow them to invent things. Sergei opened a 3-room museum of the theater for me- it was fascinating. There were advertising posters, photographs and mementos from the past. I got the sense of the “glory days” of the theater, tied up naturally with the glory days of the USSR. He kept talking about the good old days, saying today things have changed.

Next comes a funny, sort of embarrassing part of the story. The ticket seller arrived and came to look for me (here was a reversal for you!) Also the deaf woman who thought I was illiterate got very friendly and asked me if I lived in Brooklyn, where her son is. When I went up the now open office they all discussed whether they could sell me a ticket, Sergei said I should be given a ticket because I was a guest. I said I’d like to buy the ticket, which the other two women there thought was the proper way to do it. Then they all discussed where I should sit (no more question of standing room only). One woman said I should sit in the front row (proximity to the stage in a sign language theater is the number one factor determining seat desirability). The other woman said I was too tall and would block the view of others. I happily agreed to sit to the side a few rows back, but the front row woman prevailed and I was sold for 250 roubles (a bit less than 10$) a seat in the middle of the front row. There is this strange awkwardness- I want to be treated like a Russian (preferably deaf) person, but it’s hard to turn down the gifts that come with my status as American. On one hand, I am a guest and they want to show their generosity- but also I don’t want to live here as a guest, nor do I think I deserve any special treatment based solely on my nationality. I guess I’m glad I don’t have American printed on my forehead, as I do have chances to “be Russian” as it were, incognito especially with the deaf who don’t hear my accent but I am also glad to have the “get out of bureaucracy free card” of American status always up my sleeve to pull out if need be. And so I exited out the side door with a new hard-of-hearing friend, intimate knowledge of the internal workings of the TMJ, a reminder of my near god-like status as an American and oh yeah, a ticket.

Travelling the provinces
I took to the railroad at the end of November on my long awaited visit to Saratov. I had an acquaintance through a Fulbright connection- Masha. Masha is, in short, the living hope that Russia will develop a civil society. She’s a third year student in social work and pretty much a one-man charismatic army. Together we visited the VOG office (All-Russian Organization of the Deaf) where I met some deaf entrepreneur seamstresses and interviewed a very depressed bureaucrat. The woman (hearing) went on and on about how no one in Saratov will hire a deaf person, despite laws. She said, they would rather pay the legal fines than work with the deaf. Her response to this seemed to be a sort of hopeless despair which irritated me, while at the same time was not that surprising. Masha, however, got incredibly excited and right there on the spot came up with this idea to gather her army of social reformers (her fellow students) and do a sort of press conference featuring interviews with employees, VOG workers, deaf unemployed. So while the situation in Saratov for the deaf is rather depressing, the presence of Masha gives me cause for hope. The next day we went to a deaf school together and I found myself once more infuriated by ignorance and an attitude of “mediocre for the deaf, is good enough”. Of course, looking at their non-resources and aging staff who had never left Saratov, it is all understandable, but nevertheless maddening. One particular event summarizes this. The vice-principal came in to honor my visit and I asked about problems facing the deaf after graduation such as unemployment and discrimination in general. She said, “I will never worry about the deaf getting along in Russian society because once, during WWII, we all went to Moscow to get food as there was a shortage in Saratov. When we arrived there were many lines for various food products- bread, meat, cheese, etc. Our group was standing there talking in sign language (everyone except me was deaf) and other deaf people waiting in the lines noticed our group and snuck us into line with them so that we didn’t have to wait. We received better and more food products because we were deaf. If we had been hearing, no one would have said, come and cut in line because you are Russian.” I don’t want to disagree entirely, certainly the deaf do form a fairly coherent community that spans cities and countries and at times being deaf can get you stuff. However, it was hard for me to see how some deaf people getting bread in the 1940s was relevant to the huge problems of unemployment, under-education and discrimination they face today. It seemed like denial and wishful thinking.
Sort of by chance I decided to travel further west along the Volga to Samara. Two Fulbrighters stationed there had promised a sofa and I thought I’d make the most of my escape from Moscow. We had some good times enjoying the town and talking about our frustrations and little joys. I decided to check in on the deaf community as I happened to be there. I found a bunch of phone numbers online for the VOG office, none of which worked, and also an address where I showed up at the end of the working day, completely exhausted having had to navigate very wet slushy streets and confusing ground transportation system which required me to do a lot of walking after getting off not exactly where I wanted to be. I felt a bit ridiculous walking up to the office and just saying- here I am, little American who hardly knows RSL, talk to me- but I had come too far at that point. When I first introduced myself as an American interested in deaf stuff the head of the organization (deaf) eyed me very suspiciously and began to question me and demand documents proving I was not a missionary. Apparently a lot of American missionaries have come to Samara and in her words “gobbled up” deaf people who stop attending the deaf events, drop out of previous responsibilities and become sort of zombies. She began to trust me when I mentioned that I worked with Anna Karmarovna and Bazoev. I then interviewed her, asking about the general situation in Samara for the deaf. She outlined their extensive cultural and sports programs. Unemployment did not seem to be as big of a problem. At what I thought would be the end of our interview I presented a box of chocolates, which was (as it always is here) a stroke of genius. Our interview was transformed into a tea party in which the main attraction was a real live American. Phone calls were made and soon a crowd of local deaf leaders were gathered, googling and talking with me.

Breaking into the deaf world one conversation at a time
The frustration I was feeling over my lack of access to the deaf community in Moscow peaked when I returned from Samara. I had been able to accomplish more in three days in Samara than three months in Moscow. I actually considered perhaps I should move in the spring to a provincial city. I shared some of this frustration with Anna Kormarova and for the first time she understood how much I wanted to be doing and was not doing. She wrote me a list of names and phone numbers- a sort of who’s who in the deaf world and agreed that I would start teaching in the bilingual school in January. We visited the school together on their last day before winter break and I met the class I will teach and had an interesting conversation with a deaf teacher.

Sign language really is critical to my progress in the deaf community. Level-one of sign language training ended last week, we all passed! My class is quite a group of folks- architect, ADD-jewellery-maker-self-help-workshop-leader, 18-year-old-economics-major, linguists, a businessman and future social workers. At the beginning I was thrilled with the progress we were making, but after awhile I became frustrated that I didn’t have enough practice and I was forgetting half the signs we learned (while most people in the class were forgetting even more). This inspired my latest idea, which is to rent a room in an apartment with a deaf family for emersion in RSL.