I love reading blogs written by other Peace Corps Volunteers. I like to learn how others handle life as a volunteer, and what they learn from their service. I recently came across
a really well written blog by a volunteer serving in Kyrgyzstan. Even though much of his experience is completely different from my my own, I found I could relate to a lot of his thoughts. Below is one of his posts:
I recently saw an article floating around my facebook newsfeed
disparaging America for refrigerating eggs. People were like, “What the
hell, America?! You are so stupid!” And I was like, if we have resorted
to criticizing America for refrigerating eggs, that is actually proof of
how great America is. “Oh, no civil war? No mass starvation? People
aren’t fleeing the country by the millions? Ok, well I guess everything
is going pretty—REFRIGERATED EGGS!! OH MY GOD! ALERT THE PRESSES!”
Just imagine: a country so incredible its affluence permits people to
spend hours arguing in weblog comment feeds about the proper
temperatures for eggs. Few places on this globe allow for such luxury.
What about turkey eggs?
It’s now after fall break at my village school, and our recently
settled schedule has been messed up again. An outbreak of hep A has
obliged our director to ban unnecessary movement throughout the school
and keep classes in students’ own homerooms. I suspect at least a few of
the absentees are cases of great acting rather than a crippling month
long illness. “I can’t go to school, mom. I’ve got that thing, I think,
that people are talking about, you know, the one where people get to—I
mean—have to stay home from school…”
In one particularly bad day of student attendance last spring, I
talked my counterpart into taking a little visit together to the
“troubled” students’ houses to talk with the parents. While several of
them were supportive and said they would do a better job encouraging,
what one mother said caught me off-guard. I asked if school was
important and she said yes, but that her son was needed to do the farm
work so the family could have food.
I know not everyone in America has it altogether easier, and most
people work very hard. But if I had to put a number on the average work
schedule here, 5am-9pm would be a little more accurate. People work
really, really hard, and especially the women since the lack of running
water and consistent electricity tends to hit the domestic chores the
hardest.
It’s not always the same kind of work we’re used to in the states,
assisted by all our time-savers. But people are doing what they need to
do in the moment to secure a future. That means when the coal truck
comes to town, you stop what you’re doing, go home, negotiate a price,
and then spend the next couple hours shoveling it into your shed.
Staying warm is kind of a priority in Kyrgyzstan. Yet this disrupts my
neat little 9-5 schedule I have all written out for myself, like I
thought I was still in the states or something.
We get up, we brush our teeth, we hit the office, take an hour off
for lunch, put in a few more hours and then go home to an evening full
of whatever we want to do. We press a button and the dishes are
magically polished. We flip a switch and are kissed by warm air. Our
biggest complaints are re-matching socks from the dryer or that minute
rice actually takes five. Now I scrub my clothes with a bar of soap and
that’s after hauling the water from a pump down the street. I never
realized what a precious gift I was being handed – that precious gift
called time.
Time gives us so many opportunities. We can get a second job, help
our kids with their homework, volunteer at a food bank, or even surf the
web for articles on eggs. Let’s just not forget what grace a 9-5
affords.
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