pcv

Stars Twinkle

Night crept in with dark brilliance, seeping into the earth below. A canopy of stars unfurled like a blanket across the sky. Over the far mountain reared the stallion, a deep purple armored with precious stones, now shining blue, now flashing red. I could see his silhouette in light, trace his wild mane, watch him kick the glacial peak, sending a milky dust into the cosmic air.

I had never seen the stars twinkle. I knew it only in a nursery rhyme, that old tune sung at the cradle. They existed there too, but we spewed smog and light with such oppression we blotted out the very stars themselves.

Somehow it surprised me, that towering glow. Somehow it blindsided me, that nature scene, pulling the air from my lungs in short gasps each time I stepped down from the porch; that undisturbed universe, never heeding the scratched protests beneath my feet.

I am very selfish

They say it takes getting married to realize what a terrible person you are. It’s not that you were a great person while single; you were terrible then too. You just didn’t have anyone close enough to point it out.

Like it was your fault. Everything about singlehood prompts us to be selfish and inwardly focused. From an early age we’re given individual desks and lockers at school and told to be self-achievers. When we hit that mystic age of adulthood at 18-years-young we’re told to pursue our own studies, concentrating day and night on how to improve ourselves individually. And then upon graduating we enter the work force, sacrificing family and relationships on the altar of career advancement.

We tell everyone it’s for the common good. That our striving for personal improvement is so we can best serve the world. But can the world be best served from the inside of a cubicle? Does our hand reach those on the other side of our selfish isolation? Will a workaholic lifestyle help our elderly neighbor with her spring cleaning?

All this I process as I slip into my room, latching the door behind me. I’m escaping the noise, I tell myself. I need “me” time. I’ve got work to do. But really I’m avoiding the work out there – the rounds of tea and kymyz, the dishes, the entertainment of guests. How did I get to be so selfish? Ah – I’ve always been here.

So I learn to share and give and bend as the Kyrgyz do so well. If a kid shows up to school with an apple, he ends up eating a paper-thin slice. If a neighbor asks for a sheep, it’s provided and the money comes later. Even cheating on exams isn’t seen as an affront but rather encouraged as helping lesser abled classmates.

imageGod bless the man who shared his underwear as a paint rag

I show up to school in my work pants and dirty T-shirt. I end up spackled in paint, a nose full of dust and a week to the next bath. But you know what – a hard day of work for others makes me sleep better at night and the camaraderie makes me enjoy the experience all the more.

I’m not married, so I probably haven’t yet fully explored the abyss of my total depravity. But I do live in close relationships and it’s enough to teach me a valuable lesson – if I focus on others and work hard, the selfishness ebbs to reveal what was hidden: community.

It’s easy to criticize the guy who’s doing something

There are numerous empty carcasses caught in the interwebs about Peace Corps being little more than a way for over-privileged college grads to pad a resume or drink cheap beer on a two year adventure. People moan and complain about everything under the sun that is wrong with the system, wrong with staff, wrong with policy, wrong with vision. But in the end it comes down to just one thing: the volunteer himself. What are you, given an all-expenses-paid two year stint in a foreign country, going to do? The options for abuse and ineffectiveness are wide and easily available. But the opportunities to do something great are as tall as the stars and as deep as the hearts of the people you live among.

What I’m doing may not jibe with those in the comfy academic or political swivel chairs. And I admit that I’m not saving the world; no development or friendship program can. But at least I’m doing something. I am sharing my skills and knowledge in order to do my part to try and make my little sphere a better place.

It’s easy to criticize the guy who’s doing something, because there’s something there to criticize. The Peace Corps is that guy – is filled with those people. People who stop gaping at the problem and put their hand to the plow.

There’s a proverb in Kyrgyz that reads: Koz Korkok – Kol Batyr. It means, “The eye is a coward but the hand is a hero.” If you merely look upon all that must be done to make the world a better place, the coward emerges to stomp with his boots of judgment and despair upon what little spark of inspiration had flamed. But put your head down and get to work, and the hand will fan that flame into a vibrant energy that can effect a great change.

How to poop in a hole

This was one thing that I was legitimately worried about before arriving. I had only squatted once in my entire life, and that was an emergency so things just kind of happened on their own. Now that it was going to be intentional, I wasn’t so sure how it was going to work out. I still remember one of the trainers on our last day of orientation at the hotel saying, “Oh yeah – one more thing – you get down like this,” and proceed to flat foot squat on the floor. He must have been missing a tendon or two because my legs didn’t bend that way and I was positive that position would send me straight down the hole.

The first morning in my host family’s house was all trial and error. I went to the outhouse seven times in two hours, but ironically nothing was coming out. Did the pants go in front or in back? I honestly had no idea; I kept swinging my hips forward and backward, eyeballing the distance between my jeans and the imminent free falling object. I could only squat for about 45 seconds at a time, both arms straight out to the sides bracing myself in a tremendous iron cross that would make an Olympic gymnast jealous. I was a nervous wreck for days, avoiding the toilet and corking it “until the time felt right.”

I had been completely spoiled by my previous living abroad experience those two years in Japan. Those people know how to go in style: built in bidets with dials to adjust the temperature, knobs to change the angle and pressure, and a button that when pressed plays the sound of tinkling water for the more modest goers. Even the seat was heated; you could take a nap on it and still look at yourself in the mirror afterward.

imageThere’s no toilet in the toilet

When I arrived in Kyrgyzstan I found not only an absence of the bells and whistles but the complete absence of a toilet at all. It did, however, force me to acclimate very quickly. I can cork it a good while, but there just ain’t no will power on God’s green earth that will stop a bout of giardia from passing as it so pleases.

Now a year on, I’ve grown so accustomed I just squat and play Sudoku on my cell phone – with a vice-like grip mind you – mashing the numbers and hoping it doesn’t fall. My legs have gotten more flexible. I can stay down for about 16 or 17 minutes before my feet go numb (I time it with my Sudoku games – don’t judge).

The one upside about being able to poop in a hole is that it is a truly transferrable skill. I can now poop in all kinds of holes in all kinds of places. Of all the things I’ve learned in the Peace Corps, that right there is the most satisfying.

Water is a limited resource

“Turn it off when you brush – it’s a five gallon rush – turn it off, off, off, off, off…ba dum ba dum ba dum…”

The words came rolling out of the fifth-grade recesses of my brain, matching the rhythm of my footsteps. I hauled the water and hummed the tune, making my way back over the kilometer of icy road to pour another bucket into the tank in our sauna. It would take four more trips before it would be full enough to light the bath. These words had stuck with me some twenty years, yet it wasn’t until now that they held any weight. One quickly learns the value of a gallon when every drop must be hauled by hand.

We were lucky. At least the water was flowing today. In other parts of the country water is often so scarce that people actually wash their hands with vodka – a testament to both the lack of clean water and the copious amounts of alcohol that line the shelves in every dukon.

Almost every household chore begins this way, with a trot down to the nearest working pump, a 40 liter container and wheelbarrow in tow. Often in winter there is a line. Usually it is the grade-school-aged boys that are sent on this task and so I would find myself, a tall shoot waiting my turn among the donkey pulled carts and two or three boys wrestling on the ground over who would get to go next. The rate of flow was enough to turn any man into a philosopher – or maybe just turn him mad.

 Patience is a virtue

 

And it takes intelligent men to control it, pushing it around in little spade-deep canals in half-acre fields, scribbling down the household gardens to receive water in daily schedules, pouring tea kettles down the pumps to break the sheet of ice that had formed the night before. Water is managed like money, stored like a second car, doled out like a paycheck and portioned out to the last drop. A song may be stuck in your head for twenty years, but some things you just have to see before it sticks.