New Office!!!

As some of my more faithful readers may remember, my office was torn down my second week at work (See: The Most Legitimate Excuse to Miss a Meeting, Ever). Well, what goes down must come up and I have a new office, kind of. The attachment to the old building the required the other old building to be torn down is almost finished and, in good Kyrgyz style, we had a party to celebrate the new office.

Literally translated as “Building Birthday Party,” this little celebration has several interesting (some funny) rituals that I actually wish we did more often in the US. This same celebration is repeated for homes as well, though on a much larger scale. The most important of the ritual revolves around the smell of the new building. It is important that as soon as possible, “borsok” should be made in the building to create the smell of a home and of good times. “Borsok” is essentially fried dough (think flat doughnut with no sugar) cooked in oil with onions. They are made especially for parties, so it is important that the first meal in the new building be that of a party, so that the smell of this “good time” gets into the walls and remains forever. Personally, I love fresh borsok, so I really didn’t care why it was made, I just ate and kept my mouth shut.

After the smell has thoroughly permeated the room, and we all come to sit down and eat, a few passages from the Koran are read to bless the new place and to ask for protection against any dangers that could destroy it. After that, we all ate and drank tea to welcome our new little building into the world

Personally, I am quite excited for the new building. The women started working with the World Bank before I got here and it appears they have secured the funds to procure office equipment, including computers and desks, even possibly internet access at our office! With the new office almost complete, the workers are moving on to remodeling the “store” side of our complex. The basic plan is to knock out a wall that created two separate rooms in the old building (one for the office that customers had to walk through, another for the store). I am using all of that grand Target experience to help create the ideal shopping experience for our future customers and my director seems very interested in my perspective on layout. I knew those couple of months on the planogram team would come in handy someday (don’t be concerned if you don’t get the joke. You should be happy you don’t.)! Anyway, I am told they already know where my desk is going to be. Besides the disappointment of not having my own office, the building seems to be going great.