Wandering Through Time

Salut,


Disclaimer: The following represents my own views and do not represent the Peace Corps or the United States government.

Where does one even start? Especially when everything seems to have upended itself, and everything I once had planned spirals out of reach. Of course, I’m not unused to this, being in the Peace Corps has taught me the value of patience and adaptability, all the while knowing nothing will go to plan. Yet I write this blog, both for myself and my family and friends, and for potentially anyone else interested in the Peace Corps and wanting to serve. Or just to learn something about Kyrgyzstan. A sneak peek behind the curtain to daily life. I have never tried to be grandiose in these ambitions, and I’m thankful for everyone who continues to read my blog.

Coming back to Kyrgyzstan after being in America, having had just a taste, it is so very easy to miss everything and everyone back home. In other ways, it creates a necessary distance from overreacting, overthinking, or over catastrophizing about everything that is currently going on back home.

At home, my Kyrgyz family had been sick with the flu for the last week or so. Adelya’s classes have been canceled to prevent the spread amongst the little kids. Poor Alihan has been in incredibly low spirits since he caught the flu. In good spirits, he’s the most amicable, cutest, sweetest, most smiley while also the laziest, most ill-behaved, and spoiled little boy I’ve ever met. While sick, he deflates into a crying mess on the floor. He usually never eats, par for the course, but his mom and grandparents force-feed him food when he’s ill which leads to hysterical sad crying and tantrums. Alternatively, he spaces out and falls asleep on the couch during mid-day.

If you have been following the news at all, you would then be well aware of the current presidential administration’s new policies and orders on foreign aid, and more specifically, USAID. Peace Corps is not directly funded by USAID but it has historically worked in conjunction with the organization. Peace Corps also has a tiny budget compared to USAID (half a billion vs. 50$ billion). I am not unaffected by USAID’s slashing and perhaps, inevitable shutdown. Separate from the Peace Corps, I see USAID’s impact myself around Kyrgyzstan, and I have referenced the organization in a previous blog post or two. In various local schools and universities, I see English and Kyrgyz language books bearing the USAID logo. I see it in the school cafeterias on large posters discussing nutritional diets. During my project work in November and December, we were asked to slap the USAID logo sticker onto the new equipment I bought for my students. I see the logo every morning now, adorned on our printer and SMART board.

Directly, the new administration has frozen all foreign aid, which has suspended all work being done on Peace Corps grants and projects. It has not stopped our own work related to teaching or conducting clubs. I was basically finished with my first one when I got the notice. The pause means all work related to our grants, which includes spending money, even if already acquired, or planning. For me, it has been devastating, because I promised our school PE teacher I would implement a second grant to fix the sports gym floor. The floor has been caving in and is mildly dangerous for the students to use. The grant was going to be in surplus of 1 million som (over 10k$). When I came to my director and told her that we needed to pause all work on our second grant, she understood. Baktygul did, too. They had read about it on the news and could connect the dots that it would apply to us as well. When I told her, they were knee-deep in planning already. Nurlan, our PE teacher, had written up a budget, and my director had met with our local government to ask for some money to fulfill the community contribution. I had to tell them to stop, and also that most likely the grant would probably not happen at all. We are scheduled to leave in July or August, and the pause lasts 90 days. If it resumes in April at the earliest, the whole bureaucracy and grant approval system will be inundated by volunteers around the world. In addition, grants usually take 2-3 weeks from application to receiving money and depending on the grant, 1-2 months to complete, and we must finish and submit our grant completion 1 month before we leave. So we’d be looking at an April-July window in the best-case scenario to apply, sign the paperwork, receive money, buy/pay for equipment and labor, collect receipts, and write up a report. That’s also assuming in April that the freeze will be unfrozen. It’s a lot of unknown variables, so I told my director to hang on to the budget and paperwork, but perhaps I only said that to keep optimism up.

I am lucky. Extremely lucky. I was fortunate that I completed one grant project before the freeze. My community is better off for the grant I think, with new technology and new printers, new books, new posters, etc. Our jobs are in underfunded schools, which by nature, don’t receive as much care or attention. I’ll use the buzzword, but yes, we strive for equity. I’ve been asked by other Kyrgyz people and tourists why I don’t work in Jalal-Abad city or Bishkek, why I don’t teach students in large schools who are supremely motivated and hard workers. Bishkek has enough expats and private teachers for that, I think. We work in rural, underfunded areas, to strive to give rural students in schools with fewer resources a chance. An opportunity. Motivation. I do not have the right answer about how much aid is enough aid, and in which forms aid should be (technical, monetary, etc.), nor am I distinctly qualified to even say that aid is 100%, completely solely justified to give by the US government. These are intriguing questions that are beyond my pay and scope that the new administration is attempting to parse through.

Not everyone has been lucky. I know of several volunteers, who I will not name, within Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan, who had to stop their grants at the beginning and middle stages. Who likely will have to wait months until they have the okay, if at all, to complete it. My first project was a mixture but mostly focused on equipment and resources. Others focused on building new English classrooms or bringing in much-needed chairs and tables to replace the Soviet era and decaying ones. Others like me, had second or even first project ideas that may not come to fruition. One who wanted to bring clean water to her village. Another wanted to buy new books for their students. Some volunteers have money in their accounts, given by the government, and some donated by family and friends (Peace Corps has two grants, one uses crowd-funding as a source and is not government money at all). Money sitting there, which they are not allowed to spend. Perhaps there is rhyme and reason to all of it. But here we will wait in the silence until the reason makes itself known, wandering aimlessly as everyone else in the government bureaucracy is. (I also would like to add that I am not really an actual government official, so I did not receive the mass “deferred resignation” offer letter).

With that being said, everything else feels to me as if I’m in a holding pattern. Like I said, wandering aimlessly, trying to figure out what to do. The freeze also paused two major trainings set to happen this month. PDM (which I discussed last year) aka Project Development and Management training and also a climate change-related workshop were both delayed (and we are unsure if they will ever happen). I had heard that the Peace Corps briefly considered adding climate change resilience volunteers to the country to help the building of climate resilient infrastructure. I’m less well-versed in the ways climate change is affecting the weather or agriculture here, but I’ve been told it is. Again, I was lucky that I got to go to PDM last year. Now, I worry on behalf of K-30, the current cohort. Will they ever get to do projects to help their community? The sole silver lining is that a future volunteer in my village may be able to help the students at my school and finish what Nurlan envisioned. One can only dream. Then, I cannot help but worry about K-31, the next cohort coming this summer. On and on and on. With those two trainings delayed indefinitely, February, which originally was full of plans and life and holidays, now feels dreary and empty.

The weather too is adding to the dismay and misery. It snowed over the course of 3-4 days, snowing for a few hours at a time. My students and I built a snowman during a free period. After that, lots of the snow receded and melted away, leaving mushy dirt along the road. Cold, cold, and more cold.

Alongside Vanessa, I went with her, her sister, and her brothers to go bowling. In the winter, the power on occasion goes off, and we happened to be in the city when it went off near the bazaar, rendering a whole congested block without power for some time. It even turned off the traffic lights, which deeply worried me. We got lunch at a restaurant with power and then bowled. It was all of Vanessa’s host family’s first time bowling. It surprises me considering the bowling alley is just 20 minutes from their house, though I think it’s relatively new.

In other news, I’ve been on a full Oscar film swing, trying to watch all the nominated films before the ceremony in March (though several are still in theaters and unavailable online). In addition to trying to watch old movies from the 90s and early 2000s, I’d never seen.

Finally, my host sister-in-law, Jumagul, recently came from Russia to visit with her youngest son. My host parents have two daughters and then two sons, all of whom are married, and whom I’ve all met. Aidana, my first and in-resident sister-in-law is the wife of their youngest son, Merder, and the mother of the four recurring adorable kiddos. Jumagul is the wife of their eldest son, Merlan, who I met briefly back in December. Jumagul brought Amir, a little 2-year-old, along with her. He joins in Adelya, Alihan, and Emir’s eccentricities with ease. I’ve discussed house gender roles only briefly, but the daughters-in-law of a family usually do the most housework (a teenage daughter doing the second most, but there aren’t any here now). Luckily for me, when Jumagul showed up, Aidana was outranked as the younger daughter-in-law (the term is Keelin). So she picks up whatever work Jumagul doesn’t do, which in turn means they don’t allow me to do much of any work. My host father and mother refer to me as their “daughter” but oftentimes I exist in the empty space between their children and their grandchildren in their expectations, because at the end of the day, I am really neither.

So the house, with me, means 11 people, 6 adults and 5 children. I am lucky to have a house always brimming with energy and chaotic vibes. When everyone fell ill, I came back from the city and the house felt deathly silent, everyone was asleep except Aidana. I feel alive alongside the kids, even in their grumbling and screaming and crying and shouting. We sometimes copy Tiktok dances off the TV or I spin them in circles until they grow dizzy. That’s how it all feels, wandering through time. Next time, we’ll know where we’re going.

À Bientôt,
Grace

Films I've watched I've loved: The Favourite, Wonka, Rocketman, Conspiracy, Inglorious Basterds, Love Lies Bleeding

Oscar specific: A Real Pain, Memoir of a Snail, Flow, The Apprentice, September 5, The Girl with the Needle