Banya

It’s really amazing just how totally different this experience is from our previous adoption trip in December, 2004 when we brought Julia into our lives. The first trip held all the newness of being in central Asia with such an intense focus on ‘learning’ the systems. From the language and currency to the logistics of visiting the orphanage, taking care of the paperwork, figuring out what local foods were right for us (all hail vareniki) to such mundane issues as why light switches were outside the rooms they control.

In preparing for this trip I thought that the benefit of our previous experience would leave us with less to learn. To some extent that’s true. Our Russian is better, we know about the brinksmanship of people and cars and we can convert tenge to dollars in our heads (subtract 20% and move the decimal 2 places to the left). But a single difference can spell an impressive amount of change.

This trip, that difference is a man named Igor. Anyone who has been here and dealt with him will be nodding their head knowingly at this point. He is not just our translator, he is our friend. Igor has told us that he likes his job not only because he enjoys helping the families and the orphans, but because he likes to make friends. He is good at it, even when we’re stressed, uncertain or hesitant. He puts us at ease and lets us know that we are on course and that things will be fine.

With that as a background, Igor has been telling me for some time now that I need to accompany him and his friend Viktor to a “banya.” I had no idea what that is and he explained that it involved steam, beer and fish. So far, so good. Oh yeah, and don’t forget your choices; do you prefer birch or oak? Hmm.

It took some discussion of the topic before I finally assembled a mental picture of naked, sweaty men in a sauna being flogged with tree branches. Every so often you dive into ice cold water and then take a break to drink beer and eat some smoked fish. I’m not sure that an upper middle class lifestyle prepares you for this sort of thing.

When Igor would first mention it, I’d make some comment about how ‘interesting’ a banya sounds and then drop the subject. But Igor has a good memory and the topic would resurface. Igor finally pinned me a couple days ago when he said “Saturday at 7:30 pm. Banya.” It was time to weenie out or join the party. What the hell, I said “Sure.”

Igor and Viktor showed up in a cab about 7:15 pm and I squeezed into the back seat pressed up against several large bags. Inside one of them was the smoked fish, bags of peanuts and chips and 30 cans of beer (at ½ liter per can). Another bag held two leafy clumps of birch branches specially prepared for the occasion. The last bag held some miscellaneous things including two large black mitts (think oven mitts). I discovered that Viktor spoke pretty good English as the taxi navigated the bumpy roads.

We arrived at the facility and entered our ‘suite’ after a short wait. It consisted of 4 rooms connected to a short hallway. There was a dressing/dining room where we set up the food and stripped down, a bathroom, the ice cold pool room and finally the small sauna with its two levels of wooden benches.

Modesty was short-lived. It quickly became apparent that it was impractical to try and even wear a towel in this process. You drink beer and eat fish, roast and get flailed in the sauna, endure massive thermal shock in the pool and then start over. When I first entered the sauna, I felt true fear. This was heat at a level that I couldn’t even imagine. You had to draw short, shallow breaths to not sear your lungs. It was much worse on the upper bench and worse yet when they threw water on the open, rock-filled furnace. They did that fairly often.

As if this wasn’t enough, the birch branches were wielded expertly over your body, first lying face down and then face up. Viktor (or Igor) would wear the mitts to protect their hands and start by just waving them slightly over your skin. Already struggling to deal with the heat, this stirring of the air made you even hotter. Then they would progress from lightly touching your skin with the branches and leaves to vigorously flailing you. The contact from the super-heated birch quickly became unbearable and you would be near blind with pain as you ran from the room to dive into the ice cold pool.

It was an awesome experience. By the end of our 3 hours there we’d all taken some serious heat and cold. I held back from drinking too much beer, but Igor and Viktor made up for it. We had some great discussions, tested our pain thresholds and sealed the bonds of friendship all the more. Igor had told me that “After banya, you will go home and sleep like a baby.” He was right.