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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.

A donkey costs less than a bicycle

This is true. You can even get one for free if you catch one wandering the streets. It’s amazing that a horse is the pinnacle of all culinary options while its little brother the donkey is detested in almost every possible sense, not least of which is its meat. I mean, the Chinese eat donkey.

I asked my counterpart, Nazgul, one day how much a donkey cost – four, five hundred dollars? A horse costs twelve hundred at least and usually goes for two grand. She laughed at me and said, “Forty bucks. And if they try to sell it for more they’re ripping you off.” So then I started thinking transportation costs. Fifty dollars to ride a bike. Forty dollars to take a donkey.

I wasn’t the first volunteer to be thusly persuaded. A man asked me just the other week if I was going to ride a donkey to school since that’s what volunteers do who live in the villages. It was probably one guy like fifteen years ago, but our reputations outlive us so grandly. Ten years from now I doubt anyone in my village will remember my name, but they probably will remember me famously mispronouncing “horse fat sausage” for another word that only looks like horse fat sausage.

Nazgul and Ulan’s son got a young donkey recently. He’s keeping it in the feed pen so it won’t run away. He’s super excited. I asked if Ulan had got it for him and Nazgul said, “No, he found it on the road.” “But what if it belongs to someone?” I answered. “Well, no one’s called saying it’s theirs yet.” People often times just turn them loose since they are apparently less valuable than the grass they graze on, growing out in tuffs here and there in the yard.

Yet, despite all of this, the reason why I won’t end up getting a donkey is because I don’t want to wear one of those ridiculous Peace Corps issued bicycle helmets while riding one. I could get administratively separated (or, “fired from volunteering” – wait, is that semantically possible?) for riding anything without a helmet. Yes, I’d look ridiculous. But then again, I’d be riding a donkey.

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There’s something about shoveling manure that’s good for a man’s soul

Now admittedly I’m coming at this from the angle of the weekend dabbler – like the man who works in an office all week and then hauls some rock in his yard on Saturday and feels tough. If I were a farmer for a living I’d probably feel differently about the manual labor, but at the present I feel pretty good about my blister.

I think it’s the work specifically that does it. Manure means cows. Cows means production. Production means provision and that there, gentlemen, is what each of our souls strives for. We’re getting dirty. We’re getting involved.

It’s like God who stooped down into the mire of His creation, choosing to be born of the very dust into which He first breathed life. I’m so above a cow and I think that also puts me above what comes out his rear, but for a higher goal I’ll spend a day pushing it around.

Unlike God, we can’t get rid of it. I have no way of dealing with the stuff other than to turn it into a neatly stacked pile, or burn it to heat my bath. And don’t think burning is efficient removal. Then you get to push around a pile of manure ash.

And this too is good for the soul. You watch it carefully. Cool it indoors for a day. Gingerly sift it onto the ash pile watching for any remaining embers. You don’t want to miss one and inadvertently burn your house down. That would be the opposite of provision. Whatever that might be. And so we provide. The cows are fed, the udders are milked, the calves are sold and the manure is shoveled. And it is well with my soul.