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Call your family

You are driving in a car with your wife and mother on the way to a party. While crossing a river, another car swerves and causes you to go careening off the edge into the water. As the car is sinking you realize you only have time to save one person, either your mother, or your wife. Whom do you save?

This question was presented to us in a cultural anthropology class I took in college. It was a scenario from a study that had been done some years before. I still remember the Saudi men’s overwhelming majority answer: Mother, of course. You only have one. You can always get another wife.

While I can’t say that answer would come so easily for me (sorry mom?), I like to think the Saudi men’s answers show a deep devotion toward family more so than a lack of concern for a drowning wife…?

As Peace Corps volunteers we’re given 48 days of leave that can be used throughout the two years of service. This time can be used to travel in country, but most people use a lot of their time for out of country travel to neighboring “far-off” places since plane tickets are cheap and, heck! we have the time. At Christmas break and after seven months in country, I was one of only two volunteers who made the trip back to the States. The reasons for not going back were varied: insufficient funds, too soon, rather go somewhere else, and not wanting to see what is being missed. I don’t think there’s a single Peace Corps Volunteer who doesn’t miss friends and family they’ve left behind, but for me, those reasons simply couldn’t hold a candle to how much I missed people back home.

My parents will be my parents for life. My sisters won’t ever stop being my sisters. And because they’re family I want to keep getting to know them and continue these very significant relationships in my life. It was really hard to leave again and return to Kyrgyzstan, but I am so happy for each memory we made back home.

I try to live by few mantras, and “Let the wife drown” certainly hasn’t made the select list. Yet, a piece of paper ripped from a notebook is taped to the wall above my desk. Scrawled there bubble letters it reads, “Call your fam.” It’s a decision I never regret.

Life is really, really hard. And then it gets harder. And then you die.

Several years ago I came up with a relative definition of “adult.” The more responsibility you have, the more of an adult you are. This definition is not based on age, or even experience, but rather on a level of assumed responsibility. That means a 22-year-old with a spouse, two kids, full time job and house payment is more of an adult than the 35-year-old living in an apartment with a part-time job and an xbox. (As if that was hard to tell.) But I think the definition works for more nuanced situations as well.

Horses don’t just slaughter themselves, you know

Life is going to be hard whether you live as a 22-year-old producer or 35-year-old siphon. That’s the short of it. Yet the more responsibility you take on, the more complicated and difficult it becomes. Add to that a determination to live for God and you have a divine edict promising it will be.

Life is really, really hard, and then it gets harder, and then you die. This is actually a hopeful realization. It means that the difficulties in life are to be expected and that there isn’t full joy until we see Jesus face to face on the other side of this life. It allows us to not get frustrated when what we thought would bring us joy just ends up being a burden.

The joy comes not in the things themselves, nor in the work itself. Our tilled earth is cursed and nothing grows without toil. But just as God promises hardships, he also promises a measure of joy surpassing the hardship when the work is done for Him.

So keep working. And don’t let the work be done in vain. Life is really hard with or without God. But with God, there is hope.

Fables only sound ridiculous when they’re not your fables

The presumed father of all Kyrgyz people is this man called Manas. I wanted to write “legend” instead of man, but people here really believe he was a real person. And maybe he was, before the stories grew.

Manas is like what Paul Bunyan would be if he had founded a religion and was also the moral center of the government. The stories surrounding him are epic. I’ve even climbed a mountain he built with his bare hands.

image Newly-wed photo shoot under the watchful eye of Manas

There’s this million-line poem too about him called The Epic of Manas and some people devote their entire lives to memorizing huge stretches of it. It’s spoken in a kind of trance verging on the spiritual and indeed, the times of old must have been. Us foreigners chuckle in vindication when we read the history books that say much of what is known of Manas was compiled a hundred years ago and then systematically disseminated by the Soviets.

But the thing is, we have fables too, even if we don’t label them as such. Like self-esteem or six o’clock dinner. We just can’t see them because we’re so entrenched. And even if someone opens our eyes to our own absurdities we grow indignant and feel attacked.

Now sometimes I feel like I have the right to be defensive. I’ve given up a lot to be here and have adapted and changed so much I feel like a chameleon who’s forgotten his true color. I don’t want to abandon self-esteem or six o’clock dinner. I happen to know they’re cultural and that right there has a big deal to do with why I like them, thank you very much.

My host mother told me a few weeks ago, “You’re the one who came to Kyrgyzstan so you’re the one that needs to change. Get used to it.” While that’s not the most accommodating sentiment I’ve received since coming, it might be the most realistic. It allows me to see a little better what others go through when they reach our shores. “This ain’t ching-chong China, bud. We do things the right way here.” We think they should change – they must follow the rules. But unlike human rights, most rules pour from culture and don’t make sense to those who haven’t been steeped in it their whole lives.

So we hang on to our own and yet change and adapt. We see both sides and feel the pain as we twist and stretch to try and be in both places at once, both mindsets at once. I’ll never get used to eating at 10pm and then going to bed. Or my stomach won’t, anyway. But I might be able to listen to a story or two of Manas before I drift off to sleep. He was a pretty incredible man.

Faking a smile until you feel like it sometimes just gives you a sore face

Bright, cheery, naïve advice is about as useful as an Ethernet cord in the village. There are going to be days (weeks, months?) that just plain suck. And what can you do? Sit back and eat an entire box of Girl Scout cookies? It’s worked before, though I can’t credit anyone else with the advice, nor am I giving it either. (Especially if I’m the one holding the cookies.)

We’ve all heard it – “Cheer up,” “Think positive,” “It’ll be ok.” The last one gets me. What if it’s not? What if it just continues to suck and there’s no fixing anything? Sometimes you have to cut your losses and get out. I’ve heard that one before too.

It is a gamble, this Peace Corps life. Thirty-eight people in my group made it to country, and to date five have left. There will probably be more. Yet I’m not condemning those who have left – quite the opposite. If moving on to something else is going to make people more satisfied, more productive, or just plain more joyful, then that is wonderful and I support it. Me, I rely on an inherited patch of stubbornness to get me through. It pairs well with a sour face. Maybe I’m passing time waiting for the phrase, “I did it” to make everything worthwhile. Maybe I am waiting until it will be ok.

I miss home like hell

And by that I mean I miss it in a way that is exactly opposite of how I miss hell. I left my family, friends, language, culture, food, church, holidays, hobbies, ways of dealing with stress, support networks, country and that comfortable feeling of knowing you’re “home.” I sometimes pinch myself to see if I’m dreaming; am I really stuck in the middle of nowhere for two years?

But then I think about Nazgul, my counterpart. She’s never left an area the size of southern Minnesota, except this isn’t Minnesota at all but an equally tiny sliver of known universe lost up the side of a mountain. If I hadn’t been flung here in a Peace Corps blessed aircraft, I never would have met her. I never would have met any of these people, walking to school, planting their crops, building houses and flour mills and barns, driving their animals to pasture and driving them home again at night. People with stories as big as the open sky and bright as the stars that wash the valley. People who will spend half their paycheck to make sure you feel welcomed.

People ask me sometimes what I think is better, America or Kyrgyzstan. I answer, “America, or course. It’s my home.” “Ah, you must miss it,” they say wistfully, their minds wandering to nearer mountains and land well loved. “Oh home beloved where e’er I wander…” is what my heart starts to sing, “Though fair be nature’s scenes around me and friends are ever tried and true…”

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The truth of it is, I’m going to miss this place too. I think everyone misses it when they’re gone, and you have to let that future knowledge affect your appreciation for the place today, no matter how shitty things are going or how fed-up you are with the whole lot. We miss things. And we’re going to miss this.