Prepare Thyself

October is approaching quickly (well, quick enough) and profiles of the incoming group of new Turkmenistan volunteers are trickling in as we stalk them on Facebook, Yahoo friend groups, and MySpace. So as a message to them (and to any perspective Peace Corps volunteers to Central Asia), I want to paint a picture of what you’re in for:

First, prepare to go insane. And not just the eccentric uber-liberal, tree-hugging crazy that people expect from Peace Corps volunteers, I mean truly gaga insane. Like the girl in Bolivia who stabbed a cow with a butter knife after it ate her last pair of underwear (the cow liked the taste of washing soap, apparently). And how when I walk through a herd of sheep every day to go to school I imagine that I’m going to me medically separated for injury-by-ramming. Those sheep may look docile and sluggish sitting there all huddled in the shade, but I know that behind those black eyes lurks a devious intelligence that’s just waiting for me to let my guard down. But I’m onto their game: I won’t let any demon wool-walker get me.

Second, prepare to go ugly. Worldwide, the pattern for Peace Corps volunteers is for men to lose weight (think Holocaust-victim thin, poor fellas) and women to gain (like filling up a water balloon). I’m not going to describe what my feet look like right now. When I asked the Peace Corps doctor if I should be concerned with the discolorization and the morphed shape, she said I shouldn’t be concerned, it’s just the logical conclusion to walking around for ten months over dust and grime in sandals that tend to rub huge calluses in strange places. She assured me that ballerinas’ feet look much worse. I refrained from reminding her that ballerinas wear shoes to hide their feet while we PCV display our deformities to the world like a strange badge of martyred honor. And, of course, we have a wardrobe of approximately four (five if you’re lucky) outfits, so even if a shirt starts out cute, it loses its effect through repetition (and cursory washing) pretty quickly.

Thirdly, prepare to obsess. This may seem like part of the “go insane” prediction, but it is significant enough that it deserves its own category. Like the Victorian matron who sits in a darkened room cooking up new hypochondriac diseases for herself, PCV stew at site thinking over and over again about whatever pop culture has appeared in our lives recently. A TV show or movie that in the US might be “good” or even “really good,” is here the pinnacle of cultural achievement worthy of deep analysis, speculation, and life-changing decisions. Consider how in a recent email to my parents I spent a good page and a half comparing the relative merits of BBC Doctor Who vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the former has better guest stars, but the latter has a better all-around ensemble cast and more emotionally-provocative mythic parallels). See?

Fourthly, prepare to be given responsibility beyond what you feel capable of. This is a mixed blessing and is perhaps the reason why many of us join the Peace Corps to begin with. As 20-somethings coming straight out of liberal arts college with no skills except how to sound good on paper and subsist on Instant Mac-and-Cheese, our first jobs consist usually of grinding 9-5s where the most significant thing we achieve is getting the fax machine to work. But here you’re “the American,” the magical alien come from space with nifty toys and obscure skills (wow, how fast you type! But you can’t tailor a dress?), and they trust you to be the boss, not the intern. The first floor renovation is coming along (we have the money, as soon as the principal comes back from vacation we can buy the cement and start construction, then there’s just the paperwork) and the next project is all lined up: fixing/installing a new heater for the school. Installing and maintaining furnaces are services the local school system is usually expected to provide for schools (along with water, which we also don’t have at the moment), but it’s a bit like being on the organ donor list – there’s always someone else who the system decides is more “deserving” of the money that year. Our school is the newest in Baharly, but was built during a period of national turmoil in the mid 1990s and so is also the most shoddy. So although we need the most repairs, we’re the last on the list for funds and support because we’re still technically “new.” Nowhere but in the Peace Corps would they trust a book-worm academic anthropology/history major to over-see the assembly and funding of major construction projects. I’m learning fast.

Lastly, prepare to realize you had an adventure about a week after it happened. When answering questions from non-PCV Americans I realize that I live a rather bizarre life. There’s a new baby camel living in the neighbor’s yard, there are two dogs and three frogs that stare at me unblinkingly while I bathe over my bucket, I have a student who is an international chess contestant, cars drive over roads while they’re in the process of being paved (I was inches from getting hit by a steam-roller while in a taxi earlier today), and chickens poop on my window sill every morning. And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head and doesn’t include all the Turkmen human cultural eccentricities, of which there are hundreds. But it’s just life now and most of my anecdotal “adventures” were, at the time, just another problem to solve with as little fuss as possible. It means that any individual day just feels like another day and only when thinking about it later (or when I talk about it and someone makes a face) do I realize that, wow, I’m living in a really strange world and am having the time of my life.

Because that’s what it all comes down to: you think constantly about how you’re going insane, turning ugly, obsessing to a point where you feel like a stranger to yourself; you feel overwhelmed by the expectations of others and fulfilling a role you don’t feel qualified for, but ultimately the insanity is what makes it marvelous and I wouldn’t be anywhere else. :)