Humor

The government loves acronyms

—

PCV1:  Dude, have you checked out the PCTs?

PCV2:  Yeah man, that one SOCD? I mean, SCD now – Rockin’.

PCV1:  Which one?

PCV2:  The one with the crazy LCF.

PCV1:  Eh, the SCD’s ok – the HE’s better.

PCV2:  Too bad we’re not PCVTs…

PCV1:  Hey, did you get your SPA?

PCV2:  No. Stupid SPA rep’s got it out for me.

PCV1:  You should just do a PCPP – a lot easier, you know.

PCV2:  I might throw it at VAST and see what happens. Oh! Did you hear who ET’d?

PCV1:  No!

PCV2:  That K-20 who didn’t send BAS to the DO and the SSC flipped out. The CD started AS but she didn’t want to deal.

PCV1:  VAC should say something.

PCV2:  You going to see your PM at PST?

PCV1:  Naw, I still haven’t done the VRF… But I might have to see the PCMC for some Cipro. I popped ‘em all last week.

PCV2:  Rough, man.

—

Was this a Peace Corps conversation? Or secret code in some shadier dealing?

If you’re in the application process to become a volunteer, you’ve probably already run into some of these abbreviations. Many of the Peace Corps publications include a list of acronyms or initialisms on the opening page so you’re not lost after the first sentence. There was even a special session during our Pre-Service Training explaining some of the more common ones. I was like, “If we have to spend all this time sorting out abbreviations, is shortening our phrases actually saving us any time?” The inevitable “huh?” that comes up in these conversations coupled with the explanation can end up taking several times longer than just saying the original phrase.

imageThis message is going in the T-R-A-S-H

And then there are the conversations that get sidetracked because no one really knows what the acronym stands for.

“Hey, the PCMO—”

“No, she’s the PCMC now.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know…Peace Corps Manager of Care?”

“No dude, the M still means Medical. I think she’s a Choreographer or something.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense.”

So far in my volunteer service for the government I’ve learned enough acronyms to fill a pallet of alphabet soup. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if I learned the government has a federal bureau of abbreviations. Or in their love language, the FBA.

Expect the unexpected

A project I’d like to start sometime is waking up in the morning and listing all the things I’m going to do that day, then at night making a second list of all the things I actually did and contrast the two lists. A short reading of the morning and evening entries would look like I’m living two parallel lives with geography being the only bridge between them. Allow me to indulge:

—-

SATURDAY

Morning Entry

10am – I’m awake. *yay.

11am – fire has been lit with extra sheep poop added

12am – finishing leisurely brunch while browsing discgolfer magazine

Evening Entry

9am – woken by my neighbor friend’s second cousin calling me to come outside *vague ideas of strangling someone

10am – trudging out of village in search of “Yellow Tree” so that we can strip its bark and boil it to make medicine for neighbor friend’s niece who has Hepatitis A

11am – watching an old shepherd scratch in the snow a map of where to find Yellow Tree who then decides to show us the way himself and leaves his cow in the care of a fellow neighbor

12am – getting stabbed in the hands by inch long thorns while breaking apart the freshly uncovered Yellow Tree which has turned out to be a bush. *rah.

—-

imageAlways expect disc golf

It’s a cliché title, but it couldn’t be more accurate. I often find myself saying that today is “unusual like usual.” This is where flexibility comes in.

I’m not talking physical flexibility, though that also comes in quite handy when the 40th person stuffs herself into the 17-passenger van you’re riding or when you’re chasing two sheep that escaped your host dad’s flock down a mountainside. I’ve been attending the women’s club yoga sessions for that. (Strictly for flexibility reasons, I swear.)

What we’re talking here is the ability to adapt, change, bend, and stretch out of your comfort zone so that the next time you can stretch a little bit further. There are always going to be situations that you don’t want to be in but simply have to get through with sanity attached.

Sometimes it comes loose. Sometimes you flip out and yell at the man who’s calling at you, “America! America!” Sometimes you lock yourself in your room all day eating clif bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Sometimes you come out.

But be warned. There’s just no telling how far you may have to walk for what kind of colored tree covered with who-knows how many thorns. At least it’ll be expected.

The inconvenience of flying ‘Peace Corps Class’

Obama was right when he said you cannot have both 100% security and expect 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. I just wish I didn’t have to learn this one the hard way.

Peace Corps status DOES NOT give you special privileges when traveling internationally. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed to be more difficult.

Stepping up to the Boarder Control desk, I took a deep breath, then told the truth. There was a pause at the keyboard. “Sir, you said you were where for how long doing what?” It turns out spending a year in an unpronounceable place slaughtering sheep does not put you in the fast lane through customs and security.

image“Sir, did you ever leave your bags unattended?”

It was one moment in a long string of precautions and questions. When I finally made it to my gate I was told by the airline agent that I had been flagged for additional security and I would have to return. The plane would leave without me.

You can understand how disappointed I felt, not having been home for a year, my family waiting eagerly on the other side of that portal, just out of reach. The airline agent assured me this was all for my safety. “Your security is our top priority,” she said solemnly. Really, I wondered, because stopping and preventing me from getting on the plane seemed a lot more like she was concerned with everyone else’s security. Huddling in some forsaken corner of Toronto’s airport clutching my bag and shivering off the cold certainly did not make me feel more secure.

I spent the night in Section Q with the other squatters, awaiting my turn through customs and security once again the next morning. I was tempted to do it differently this time. To lie. To just get through that card in a way that would reunite me with buffalo wings as quickly as possible. Then I got to the part where it asks, “Were you on a farm?” Considering the fact that Kyrgyzstan is basically one large sheep pasture it was too difficult to answer “no.” So I was pulled into the back room for some shoe washing.

After waiting half an hour for the U.S. Customs Shoe Washing Unit to arrive, they glanced over my shoes for caked on dirt, determined there wasn’t enough to shake their washing stick at and passed me through. It didn’t seem like the appropriate time to mention the turkey and horse blood stains so I followed the extended arm out to the next security step.

After sending my bag through, I was randomly pulled aside for the “raise ‘em and spread ‘em” machine. Try coming from a country ending in –stan while wearing a beard and see if you don’t get randomly selected for extra security. If you want to serve your country in an unknown corner of the world for vast stretches of time doing “development work,” you are going to have your freedom and convenience violated.

But that’s what we signed up for, right? It’s not convenient to put a relationship or career on hold. It’s not convenient to step out into the unfamiliar and unknown. It’s not convenient to give up hobbies and support networks and to say goodbye to family and friends for two years of your life. And it’s not convenient to travel through airports.

But we didn’t sign up because of that. We signed up because, despite the difficulties, despite the hardship, we know this work matters. That nothing worth doing has ever been easy. That the inconveniences are not an end in themselves, but rather show us we’re on the right path.

I made it through. I’m in America, typing this right now in the land of the free and home of TSA. I have only two weeks here and then I’ll be back at the airport, back in line, headed back to the work and people I love. Yes, it’s inconvenient. And yes, it’s so worth it.

Keep a camera on ya

I’ve been noticing a strange little lilt to my gait. It’s been veering right ever so slightly. I’d blame the new winter weather, but it was there before the snow began to fall. It started shortly after that lump showed up on my right thigh. Ah – my pocket camera.

I carry way too much stuff, and even when I go without a backpack my pockets are stuffed with a notebook, a cell phone, a pen, a back-up pen, a camera, a wallet with built in coin purse and sometimes an iPod and earbuds. I have to get a workout in somehow to keep the pudge off the middle.

imageIt finally paid off

The addition I never regret is the camera. As a visual learner, I find that it spills over into the recall part of my brain as well; one look at a snapshot from a decade ago can spark all kinds of memories surrounding that scene – what else was going on that day, what a friend in the picture had said, how I felt.

I want to remember those things, I want to remember in vivid detail the when, how and why of life, the dots that when connected reveal the shape of where I’ve been. And I find that people along the way don’t mind sharing that with you, or maybe more accurately, don’t mind photobombing your memories.

“Who was that guy with his arm around you?”

“I don’t know, but he seems like he knows me.”

“C’mon, think – you must be repressing some kind of memory.”

“Seriously, I have no idea who that is.”

When the camera comes out here, so do the line-ups for deadpan poses. I think it’s a product of the Soviet days. Or maybe it’s just a Russian smile. It’s funny to see a group of American volunteers posing with local friends; the Americans are splayed with the widest, shit-faced grins, while most Kyrgyz look like they’re posing for a line up. (It was the other guy.) Our inclination to flash the pearly whites has been seared in since childhood. “Ok, we’re having fun here, everyone smile…I said smile!…SMILE DAMMIT OR YOU’RE NOT GETTING YOUR BIRTHDAY CAKE!!!”

And when the photo is taken, and each person has had proper time to approve of their mugshot, the reminders for their own printed copies fall clattering about your ears.

The money spent on photos is always worth it. And so is the uneven wear on the back and the shoes. When I do finally slow down and look back, I will be so grateful for those little sparks to the memory.

Terrible Posture

I got this plastic apparatus in the mail a few months ago. It’s a wide hook with a ballpeen point on the end. When my host brother asked me what it was I said it was for massaging your own back, and then gave him a little demonstration. He fell into fits of laughter and said it was a good joke, but really, what is it for? I just shrugged and set it down.

I’ve been doing all kinds of terrible things to my back, some overtly inflicted but most have crept in more subtly. I’m not a tall person by American standards and used to walk with my shoulders back and my head held high to try and pass off my 5-11 for 6-1. I just wanted to fit in, that’s all. But here I’m taller than most and in my attempt to fit in I slouch much more often. I notice it in my shadow sometimes on the dusty path, shoulders rolled and neck tilted forward. There’s a practical side to slouching too – a greatly decreased chance of smacking my forehead for the seventh time on that doorframe. Doorways are generally made shorter here and not just because people are shorter. Shorter houses mean less building material and less cubic meters to heat. When I visited a fellow volunteer, he didn’t warn me not to hit my head on the roof, but warned me that I would hit my head on it. And I did. Twice.

And then there’re the backpacks. Yes, I carry multiple backpacks. I wish I could write “How to pack lightly” as the title for one of these posts, but it’s simply something I haven’t learned yet. I still lug that extra power adapter across the country thinking that one of these trips I’m going to need it, like I’m going to find an outlet in a tree somewhere when our taxi gets a flat tire.

imageTurnstiles: for keeping out cows and American tourists

And let’s not count out stress as a contributing factor. I have to mutter things like, “Unclench the fists. Ok, good…breathe…ok, good…let the shoulders down…there, now we’re getting somewhere…” to myself often. If I had access to a girlfriend who had a knack for massages then maybe my back wouldn’t hurt so bad. But now I’m just bringing up a point of further stress, and “breathe…good, good…”

So I’ll settle for my plastic hook, sitting on the edge of my bed, door closed to keep the laughter out, posturing for my position.