pcv

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.

Beef jerky and vodka do not make a good meal

Look. I’ve been there. And now my stomach is telling me where I’ve been. That place where the world tells you no matter how tight you tie the tourniquet, you can’t stop the bleeding.

It’s rough. It’s not just rough on your body. It’s rough on your soul. Where you wonder from where the strength for the last 9 months will come. Where you wonder if you should just extend indefinitely and save this world. Where you wonder why you thought beef jerky and vodka for a meal would help you in your pursuit.

Things are going so well. I have nothing to complain about. I’m an extremely lucky person. I just don’t know yet how to use that luck to my advantage rather than my detriment. I’m all soft in the middle. I said it. Pudgy.

The pursuit. Out among these lonely hills, living like we’re in grade school, living with parents of kindergarten-aged kids, living with no car, nowhere to go after dark, no one to hold as you slip off into another day. No one to tell you beef jerky and vodka for dinner is not a good idea.

Where do we find our salvation? How do we stay? When we could be on a plane tomorrow back home and just leave it all behind. It’s almost like survivor’s guilt. I can leave. Leave that family in the midst of their struggle; leave those friends to shorten the guest list by one; leave those students to work on their Halloween party alone. And they could, and they’d survive, and the world would continue to spin in God’s hands, the world over which Jesus looked and wept.

It’s preposterous. Preposterous to think that I’m in a position to save. Be? Yes. Exist? I can continue to do that, but not on a diet of beef jerky and vodka.

I’m here. I’m still here. Maybe that’s the success. Maybe that’s the hill I’ve conquered. Planted my flag. Watched it flap and flail in the wind. Stood looking up and seeing only sky, sky behind that flag, sky behind the colors I have fought so hard to preserve—the color of human.

Own the fight

Something happened this early September that I’m not allowed to talk about here. At least not in the way I’d like to, heavily laden with expletives and a sprinkle of incitation likely to attract an enemy or two. I was going to keep quiet, and for the first 29 years of my life I’ve done just that. Not anymore.

A particular injustice was committed against dear friends of mine, and it made me very angry; the kind of angry that burns like a buried coal, slowly cooking any who dare linger by the surface. That anger ignited me as well, branded me with outrage, and finally lit the wick on that missile called action.

It’s not Kyrgyzstan that forced my hand. There are things about every country that must change. But it was the nature of the injustice, committed against my dear friends that made me start flipping tables. There is a kind of righteous rage, and I will not stand idly by as injustice continues to flourish.

A volunteer friend of mine told me I need to pick my battles. That I’ll go crazy trying to fix everything. I can’t fix everything. I know that. I can only do the work of one person and yet—that person is I—and I will be responsible for every moment of time that I can control and use to steer towards a freer and just world.

There is a fine line in Peace Corps service when it comes to expressing opinions about a host country. How do you pay well-deserved respect to a wonderful culture and turn the screw on the wrongs at the same time? How do you not come across as offensive or disparaging? In my so far brief state of incensed fury I haven’t fully arrived at an answer. But I do know that it party lies in owning the fight. I can fight for America because she is my home, my motherland, because at her breast I was nourished and weaned. But how do I do that for Kyrgyzstan? Ah—Kyrgyzstan is my home too. This is my village, my school, these are my students, my friends, my conspirators, my fellow survivors in the wake of what we call life, plowing its way through our valley.

I do a disservice to anyone I tell that everything is fine, that the nature is beautiful, the food is good and people are generous. Those things may all be very true, but we wouldn’t be here as Peace Corps Volunteers unless there were things that needed to change. Who can deny that corruption ravages a nation? That ignorance is a turn back to the dark ages? That poverty saps the health and joy of a man? These were things I knew existed, but they floated over me like a cloud, just out of reach. Yet no cloud of oppression is innocuous but spreads and seeps quietly until all are caught in its disastrous roar. Unfortunately I didn’t see it until it had settled about me, until it was my lungs filled with its poisonous air.

So I will fight. I will take whatever near or distant hill the limits of my body and circumstances will allow. The battle has always been there, but now—it’s mine.

I am America

If you’ve done a little bit of digging into becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer you’ve likely come across the Ten Core Expectations. Think the Ten Commandments but rendered much less memorable through the government’s uncanny ability to make simple communication incomprehensible.

It’s the kind of stuff that seems profound and important, but for the life of you, the moment you’ve set the list down, you can’t recall a single expectation in any detail. You know there’s something in there about being a good person and serving well, so thinking that’s enough you put it aside until you’re told to read it again. Unfortunately this usually doesn’t come until a warranted prompting from persons somehow aware of what you may or may not have been doing the other week when you thought no one was watching. And then you’re like, “Hmm…maybe I should have paid more attention to that bit in #5 about being responsible 24/7…”

Since we’re talking about slaps-on-the-forehead, let me now recall Core Expectation #9: Recognize that you will be perceived, in your host country and community, as a representative of the people, cultures, values, and traditions of the United States of America.

Note the polysyllable, representative. It’s nice to think that people will see me as a delegate, a passageway so to speak, through which American culture and values freely flow allowing perceptive considerations and weighing of differences through acute perspective. But in reality, my relationship with America is much more intimate. I am America. For many people in my village I’m the only American they have ever interacted with, and every little quirk about me gets laid on every other American like a kind of itchy, stereotyped blanket. “Why are all Americans a bit pudgy about the middle? Why don’t Americans iron their shirts? And why do they look so funny riding horses?”

My only redemption lies in the fact that the good things can settle too. Maybe I am a bit weird. Maybe we all are. But if after I’m gone people think, “Americans aren’t so bad. In fact, despite their inability to slaughter sheep properly, they are kind of nice and helpful,” I’ll consider my Core Expectations fulfilled.

imageWear them proud

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.