The life and Times of Silk Worms

Day 3 – 4/7/10: I first encounter the silkworm. We are expecting the arrival of several Peace Corps staff members and my host brother says, “Kelsey! You have to come and see the gurçuk!”. The what?!?!?!? I obediently follow him out to the area next to our cattle and goat sleeping quarters where we store our potatoes and onions. He leads me into the main area and then into a side area that I have never been in before. The room has this slightly humid warm smell. There are four wires suspended from the ceiling and they are supporting this large wood structure, part of which is covered with a huge white piece of thick paper. On top of this paper is this mat of green. I look a little closer and realize this mat is alive and moving! On even closer inspection the mat is actually hundreds upon hundreds of freakishly tiny green worms and chunks of leaves. Bombyx mori – the silkworm. I run back to the house and try and grab a few pictures but due to the lighting they aren’t very good. These guys are about the thickness of a paperclip but only as long as the lead on a sharp pencil.
Day 7 – 4/11/10: On my way back from the outhouse I realize there are people in the silkworm room and decide to check on the little buggers to see how they’re coming along.
I have a bazaar fascination with living things – when I was younger we were camping through the Boundary Waters and I spent most of the evening staring at a group of snakes that we had disturbed with our presence. I also recall a several worms squirming through the post rain mist that nearly made me miss my bus. If you ask my mother I’m sure she could give many other examples.
But, back to the gurçuk. Today the worms are at least 5 times as long as they were just four days ago. I am totally blown away at their rate of growth. I had noticed from the piles of mulberry leaves that they must be increasing in size. The pile that my family prepared and cut was getting larger and larger every day, I just hadn’t realized their rate of growth was so steep.
Some background on the silkworm – bombyx mori. They exist on a diet of pure mulberry leaves. The worm gains a size of about 3 inches in its approximately 45 day existence. Their cocoons are one continuous strand of silk – they usually average 915 meters in length (1000 yards), but usable silk is between 600 and 900 meters. According to Encyclopedia Britanica the pupae are killed with hot steam in order to preserve the silk cocoons. I’m not looking forward to that aspect. But if allowed to turn into adults – each female lays 300 – 500 eggs. And their wingspan is about two inches in length. Silk production has been around since about the middle of the third century BC and the secret of sericulture was vigorously guarded by the Chinese until about 550 AD when Justinian I convinced several monks to smuggle back some worms. In order to use the silk 2 or 3 cocoons are unstrung at the same time and twisted into one piece of yarn. (This information was obtained through Encyclopedia Britanica)
I have decided to follow and document through words and pictures the life of this gurçuk. I am very excited! Who would have thought – I go to Turkmenistan and learn about silkworms!

Day 9 – 4/13/10: I decided to take some more pictures of them today. They are about ¼ the length of a matchstick. They are so cute. They’re getting more and more active. Today I spent about a half an hour staring at them and making cooing noises in their general direction. These silkworms will be fluent in English before their short lives are over! I still haven’t gotten any great pictures but I’ve decided to include some of the pictures I take so you can get a better idea of what they look like. The second picture has my host mother in the corner. The large mat of them has tripled in size over the past 9 days. Aren’t they just adorable?!?! They have these small horns on their butts, so cute!

Day 17 – 4/21/10: I am simply amazed at the volume of leaves they eat. My host family completely covers them with leaves at least 5 times a day and each time they have completely demolished the previous leaves. You walk into the room and you can hear their collective tiny mouths munching on the food at the same time their tiny butts are dumping the excess. The first picture from today was taken on day 12, the other is from today. I didn’t include the match in the most recent picture because all the worms are longer than the match and about three times the diameter. Like I said, they grow so fast!
Day 26 – 4/30/10: What magical creatures silkworms are! I just returned from helping with one of the five daily feedings. I tossed leaves haphazardly over the growing pile of sticks that was covered with worms now as long as my finger and nearly as thick. The room was alive with the stench of the collective crap from thousands of worms doing nothing but consuming leaves for nearly 4 weeks. My ears were buzzing with the melody of their tiny mouths going to town on a new pile of leaves. I had to be very careful not to step on any poor worms who fell from their perches down onto the ground. I rescued several dozen from the terrible fate of premature death by foot and as I picked them up I couldn’t help but feel very powerful, their soft squishy bodies seemed so vulnerable. It was as if I could feel their intestines moving those leaf bits through their system. When we started all of these worms took up the size of about 2 meters squared. Now they fill two rooms and they seem to crowd one another out on the branches and leaves. I am truly in wonder watching them. I think I got some good new pictures!
Day 34 – 5/8/10: Well, this is it. They have made cocoons. I walk into the room and it smells like rot and decay and moth balls. It turns out that several of the worms never made cocoons, I’m not real sure why, but those that didn’t are dead and rotting on the large pile of sticks.
The end 5/10/10: My host family sold the cocoons today. They ended up with 87 kilos of cocoons. They make 27,000 per kilo so they ended up making 2.35 million which is about $165 for a month worth of hard work. Pretty good income especially when supplemented by my host father teaching at the school. I hope you enjoyed this! I probably made it longer than it needed to be, but I really find living creatures very interesting.

Aylanmak

Aylanmak: to take a walk, stroll, or travel around.
The carpet man, aka Serdar, lives just outside of Ashgabat and makes good money selling Turkmen and Afghan carpets to foreigners both in Turkmenistan and abroad. He and his wife are really nice people and I have visited his house twice in search of carpets, once when my family came and a second time with another volunteer on July 3rd.
Serdar’s family is originally from the region of Turkmenistan that I live in. His family fled Turkmenistan for Afghanistan when the Russians arrived. Serdar was born in Afghanistan. When war came to Afghanistan they fled to Pakistan. He returned to Turkmenistan with his family in the mid 90’s. Carpet making in Turkmenistan has moved away from what it traditionally was. Most carpets made now are made with synthetic dyes and only made to last 10 years or so. Traditionally carpets were made to last forever. Because Serdar and his family weren’t here for the transition to synthetics he still knows how to make all of the dyes by hand, how to take care of the naturally dyed carpets, and how to wash them without bleeding. As far as I know he may be the only person in the country who still uses traditional dyes. Serdar obtained his Turkmen citizenship shortly after arriving back in Turkmenistan and got married shortly after that.
Back to the story: after the second visit Serdar’s wife mentioned that Serdar would be traveling to visit some of the girls who make carpets for him in Halach (my local county). She asked Jess and I if we would like to aylanjak (future tense) with him. We replied with enthusiasm.
He arrived in the region on Monday and didn’t call. Tuesday his wife called Jess and said he might take us out then. He didn’t call. Wednesday he called me at 9am and asked if I would be ready if he picked me up at 11 that day. I said yes!
11:00am: Serdar arrives in my village and we travel towards Halach center and stop on the way. There are six girls who are about to cut a 4m by 3m silk carpet from the loom. We watch as they cut the carpet down and tie off the fringes on the ends. Serdar folds the carpet and puts it in the trunk.
12:00pm: We travel to a village just outside of Halach center where Serdar is using a small house owned by one of the families who makes carpets. We drop off the carpet, I take a bunch of pictures of all the yarn he has in this house. The colors are simply beautiful!
12:30pm: We go and pick up Jess from her village and then return to this village outside Halach.
1:15pm: Lunch: beef stew with potatoes, peppers and tomatoes, bread, yogurt, watermelon, cantaloupe and beer.
3:00pm: Visit at least 10 different houses to look at carpets. Each tribe in Turkmenistan has its own carpet pattern. We saw several of these patterns as we were traveling. Jess saw a pattern that involved the five main tribes ‘flowers’ in one carpet and decided she needed to buy another carpet.
Carpet stats: Serdar has girls and women in each welayate (region) making carpets for him. There are over 100 girls just in my region. The silk carpet that I mentioned above took 6 girls 3 – 4 months to make. For each square meter the girls collectively get 1.5 million old manat (about $100). They split that money up according to the amount of work done. For the large carpets the person whose house it is and whose loom it is gets a percentage of the money and the rest goes to the girls.
4:30pm: Watermelon break followed by an hour nap. The sun is so intense here that at least 90% of people take afternoon naps sometimes sleeping as much as 3 hours in the afternoon.
6:00pm: Serdar takes Jess and I to see the Amu Daria. I have only seen it once before and we weren’t allowed to get out of the vehicle to actually get a good look at it. The section of the river we saw was 2km wide. It was absolutely astonishing how large it really was. The water by us was moving very slowly but we could hear rapids and see the water towards the middle of the river bubbling and turning as it sped along.
7:00pm: Return to my village. Tell my host family about the trip. Onat aylandyk (great trip - past tense)!