Running to the Finish Line

Salut,

Yes, it’s been a bit of some time, but spring has been slow. In many ways, I’m glad. This time last year was a whole lot busier, being full of Manas practice and spring cleaning. This year is more subdued, quieter, rainier, and more melancholic. This blog post is super delayed due to reasons I'll address later, but I'm sorry!

The last week of fasting felt like a fever dream. Returning to eating was jarring for the first day or two. I hid from the school cafeteria that entire month, and I missed my nearly daily potato Samsa run. 

During actual Eid and the end of fasting, I predicted my family would not do anything for the holiday; they didn’t last year and they rarely ever do for holidays in general. This is why I scowled when they said they hosted a large Norwuz party when I was gone on break, as it’s something they’d never done before. Sometimes they have their most fun when I’m gone. Anyway, realizing my host mom and dad dipped early in the morning of Eid, I decided to not spend the day wallowing in sadness like I did last year and instead went to the city. I was so glad I did. 

I have never really celebrated Eid, and in Nigeria, it was a holiday I didn’t know much about when I was super young. My mom said while we were there that she knew when it was Ramadan time and Eid because she would often see animals being killed on the road during drives into the city. I wrongly presumed that Eid, would be much like Thanksgiving or New Year's in Kyrgyzstan, where families stay at home, eat together, and shops close and whatnot. With it being the most important religious holiday in the country, it made sense in my head that not much would be open and I’d have to scour for something. I could not have been more wrong, and I think had I celebrated Eid more, I would have known that. Jalal-Abad city was alive and open, streets packed with groups of kids and teens and families. The restaurants and cafes were teeming with people, the parks awash with kids in toy cars. The central amusement park was so crowded it caused long traffic on the road coming in and out. In the village, you might not have known that where aside from the village center, it felt eerily quiet. I met a lovely American-South African couple in my favorite cafe, who mistook me, like everyone does, for Kygryz at first. The bazaar was also alive and open, and I was so happy. Aidana and the kids didn’t go out, because poor Alihan was down in the dumps. The sick season came and went. Nearly everyone in my host family has gotten sick. I got sick twice. 

Last year, Gullai Eje, the informatics teacher participated in a local teacher competition. This year, Rakhat Eje, one of the primary school Russian teachers, competed. Our raions (district) hosts competitions where teachers give presentations about themselves, their teacher strategies, lesson plans, etc. Last year’s competition was at Frank’s old school, and this year’s was in some random village down the street. Competitors film one of their lessons and present it. Due to the school project I did, my classroom has become the hottest new thing. Teachers regularly use it (and the SMART board) to teach open lessons the director observes, and Rakhat was no exception. She solicited Baktygul’s help and they decked out our classroom in balloons. The young female teachers were extremely extra in helping her; they made an entire skit with dress costumes to introduce her. 

We still have a cat at our house. My family are cat people. She has a name, Moeiza, and she has stuck around longer than any dog or other cat has. Adelya feeds her leftovers from dinner, and she comes into the house at least once a day. Aidana and I force the kids to wash their hands after touching her. The littlest ones do not know how to safely pick up cats, and so we have to watch and monitor them, lest they strangle the poor thing or break a rib. Speaking of the kids, the new strategy from my family to get the kids to cooperate is to threaten to send them to the doctor if they don’t behave. I don’t understand the threat fully, nor do I think the kids do, but they behave regardless. My host father said the other day that whoever didn’t finish eating their lunch would be sent to see the doctor. 

My host family invited me to a kudai, which I learned is essentially a Kyrgyz potluck or cookout. All the kids and the adults and I got in our Sunday best and visited a neighbor’s family a block or two away. I’ve seen some of my students at various gatherings in the past. A regular gathering, a gap, is usually held and hosted by one family and usually results in a collection of money from the guests. My host parents go to these quite often, and the host rotates. My family hosted some gaps a few times last year. A kudai, on the other hand, is just a general hangout, where everyone brings food and cooks. A kudai also is more of an open invite. Like other gaps I’ve heard about and seen, they do gender segregate eating and dining into a men’s and women’s room. At the cookout, the kids have their own table, and the young women and men do most of the cooking. My sister-in-law Aidana sat around the fire and makeshift stove with at least ten other 20-somethings and cooked a ton of meat. It was a large course meal, at least 3 different entrees, and lasted around five hours. 

I often lament about not going out to guests or going out in general, but events like these quickly remind me why I love them and also find them tedious and long. After an hour or two, it’s difficult to keep your attention, especially because the women I’m around gossip and exchange news, and keeping track of it all after an hour in a foreign language is tiring. 

Regardless, I presume I got food poisoning from the event because less than 12 hours after it ended, I vomited nearly all the food up. I didn’t go to school for a day. Contrary to a perfectly rounded work-life balance, established sick leave is not a thing here, you take it when you need it, and there are no set days. Before April, I had only taken one sick day in my entire service. With essentially part-time work, it never bothered me, plus because of the chaos of school schedules, I get free periods off all the time. So I’m not in want or need of a ton of time off, even if that’s the productive grind mindset part of me. 

Anyway, I felt awful after the cookout. I told Aidana, who sympathized, and then when I mentioned it to my host mom, and that I thought it was due to the food, she loudly said I was wrong. She countered that if that were true, all the family would have gotten sick. I mean that’s not entirely wrong logic, but then she said that it must, in fact, have been because of really cold wind. Vomiting can be caused by lots of things, so perhaps I was making a false attribution, but I also didn’t take her super seriously either. In the very beginning, I had some hangups, but now, I just nod along regardless of the superstitions or suspicious science they tell me. 

I was able to celebrate Emir and Kuz Saykal's birthdays this spring too. It is so crazy just how big they've both gotten. Kuz Saykal was 4 months old when I first arrived in August 2023, and we just celebrated her 2nd birthday. She's gone from being a baby everyone passes around like a hot potato around the house to walking on her own, talking, calling my name, hitting her older siblings, crying endlessly, and falling constantly. 

Peace Corps has been keeping me, and I presume lots of other volunteers, at least some I’ve talked to, on edge about our next consolidation drill. Last year, it was April 25-26. It’s usually around spring, because the winter is too cold and it gets dark early, and in summer, volunteers are super busy on break, traveling, or with camps. I know it’s supposed to be a surprise, but it can be extremely disruptive to all of our plans. Not knowing which week it is makes it difficult for me, because whenever it is, we lose that day of school (last year, it was on a Friday, so I lost that day of classes). Last year, I know it disrupted the other Jalal-Abad cluster’s Manas competition, and to this day, I still feel sorry that they missed it. May is a very hectic month, as we will go on break again, and then there are two weeks left of school before graduation. The last two weeks of school are immensely chaotic but also tedious, with final grades being put in, older students prepping for their summer exams, graduation ceremonies, etc, etc. 

Almaz made an unannounced site visit to my school and village. He stealthily showed up at my school and visited my classroom. He then stole Baktygul to go interview and speak to potential new host families for next year. They anticipate this year’s new cohort, K-31, will be about the size of this past year’s, K-30, around 20 or so. Due to budgetary constraints (see the mess surrounding government funding everywhere), Peace Corps here is interested in reusing sites from my cohort for the next one. I have personally mixed feelings about this, as it could be extremely beneficial for my counterpart and the school and community, to have another 2 years of a native English speaker. On the other hand, a volunteer could be a much-needed resource at a different, equally needy and underfunded school. Additionally, I worry about an immediate successor to me and comparisons being made. Lots of villages around Kyrgyzstan have had multiple volunteers in Peace Corps’ over 30 years of work here, some as many as 4 or 5. Comparisons are inevitable, and I had some minor comparisons to the previous volunteer here in 2019. 

He was evacuated due to COVID-19 early in 2020, however, I think having another volunteer immediately after me would lead to even more direct comparisons. I don’t pretend to be a perfect or amazing volunteer, and I know that I have some qualities or things I’ve done that a successor might not and that whoever it will inevitably be, next year or in ten, will do some things better than me, and some other things worse. I am reminded of that when I think about the next volunteer in my village. Then, I am reminded even further of what I was told at swearing-in. The nature of this job means that once I leave, I will have no control over what happens next and how they will remember me. We plant seeds that we hope grow and bloom but whose fruit we may never get to see. As I and the rest of my cohort hurtle towards the finish line, it feels easy to become apathetic or at least give up on caring as we are about to be gone. Homesickness and alienation can do that. 

    So, I am writing this last section, and everything following this, late. I had originally intended to upload this blog post near the end of April before I left for the COS conference. However, my computer shut down and I had serious technical issues. It stopped charging, and only now did I get it fixed. 

Anyway, to cover the end of April, I departed alone to Bishkek for our final conference. COS, or close of service, is the last conference on the calendar. Everyone else in my cluster arrived early for medical or other work-related reasons. There was a surreal feeling to arriving and being around everyone for the last time. 

On the first night, I went with some of the girlies to a regular cafe where Michaela taught us (and Tolgonai) to embroider. Michaela is a woman of many talents, including baking and embroidery, and she taught us back during training in 2023, but I quickly forgot. My first night, I was exhausted as Bishkek was experiencing boiling weather. Not really, it was only 89 degrees, and that's just as hot as Texas back home. However, 89 feels different in Kyrgyzstan when you're in buildings or on transportation with limited or no AC. 

The first day of the conference was pretty boring, and I was told last year that in general, the conference is a bit of nothing. In the sense that it's discussions about going home, what we've learned, but next to nothing groundbreaking. It's always nice to be in Bishkek regardless. Early in the morning, they called all of us out to a medical lab to get blood tests done, part of our end-of-the-year medical checkups. Throughout the conference, we had our final LPI exams (language proficiency tests) spread out. We discussed how to say goodbye, and I know that sounds super simple or unnecessary. Yet I think it is more complex; there are so many people to say goodbye to in your village and community. Acting as a volunteer often means being a focal point or feeling like the center of everything. It can be really hard to say goodbye, especially doing so in a culturally sensitive manner, and allowing the space for everyone, even those we might not know well. 

We also talked about going home and moving on. Several volunteers are extending their service for a third year, and others are staying in Kyrgyzstan as private citizens (four are extending as far as I know, and two are staying as the latter). It's a strange thing to feel cultural whiplash. Several of us went home during breaks, and going home for only two weeks was so refreshing, but it didn't feel long enough to feel the real cultural shock. There are ways in which volunteers change. Two years can be very long, and back home, life didn't always feel that long for everyone else. I'll touch on this more in the summer as I approach my actual leave date, but it is nice to have it in the back of my head. 

On the first night of the conference, I joined several volunteers on a night out to a few bars. It was like a Tuesday, so despite everyone's wish to be able to dance, there wasn't much of it. I had KFC, which I had sorely missed being in my village. Nurzhan told us early we would be competing on the second and last day of the conference in the Kyrgyz Cup, an oblast versus oblast competition featuring Jeopardy trivia and a talent show to compete for a trophy. I had read in our weekly newsletter tidbits about it.  

During the final day of the conference, several former PCVs came to visit for a panel to discuss their own perspectives now having done Peace Corps over a decade ago. Several served in varying countries and different sectors; one was a Kyrgyz RPCV (RPCV- returned peace Corps volunteer, ie, a former volunteer) who is on the operations board of Sierra Cafe, a local favorite, another served in Ghana years ago as a deaf art teacher and is married to a staff member, and the third served in Ukraine and now serves as the Chief of Consular operations in the US Embassy in Bishkek. I'm so sad the latter could not stay behind for lunch, as had she, I would have picked her brain on her experiences and work. Despite going home, they all eventually went back abroad. Several of my other friends, not in the Peace Corps, can relate to the desire to go overseas, to move and not stay in the same place. I think what most resonated with me from what they said was the notion that we are all on paths of our own making. 

Despite being young, one can feel like you aren't doing the "right things" in your career, or "feel behind" in terms of what everyone else is doing. Yet people all the time "do the things they're supposed to do" and still become miserable. Some of us have the privilege to move at our own pace and do what we want to do, and that is a gift. Peace Corps is essentially a long gap year of sorts. Lots of volunteers in my cohort, many who are in their mid-20s or early 30s, and are unmarried and single, did not do everything in the "right order" and may feel out of step with their peers. They didn't go to undergrad, then graduate school, then start their career, get married, have kids, etc. You feel that even here in Kyrgyzstan, where my sister-in-law and counterpart both did what they were supposed to do: went to university, got married in their early 20s, had kids, and either started a career or became a housewife. It can work for some. My sister, Elise, recently got married and is finishing graduate school and is going to move for Adam's law school. Paths are winding and long, and it's easy to feel like people are happy on theirs, and usually they are, but that doesn't mean it should be everyone's. 

A brief side tangent, but during this conference, I was attempting to fix my computer. I asked our IT staff member for a recommendation, and he directed me to Notnik, a computer company. I went several times to their office, only to find he had directed me to an old, unused office. The new one was far, and I went, and they told me it would take a week to get it fixed, time I most certainly did not have. Also, during this, our Peace Corps doctor helped me get an eye exam and replace my glasses. The lenses had been horribly damaged and looked as if they had melted, which made seeing difficult (but not impossible). The exam lasted about 15 minutes, and not wishing to spend several hours trying on frames (Dr. Marat said he once spent 5 hours with a volunteer trying on new frames), I chose a simple and cheap pair, and the eye doctor got it fixed and all set within the next day. I spoke to Tess, who also got new glasses in Kyrgyzstan; back home, an exam and glasses can be horribly expensive (more than 200-300$ or more). Altogether, my new lenses and frames cost less than 80-90$, and it was entirely covered by Peace Corps medical. 

I had my language exam early in the morning on the last day of the conference. A volunteer told me that due to an inability to practice at home, her Kyrgyz speaking was only ok, but that she is a much better listener. I am quite the opposite; I sometimes miss basic questions my family asks me, particularly if they use a grammatical structure I'm unused to, or if they speak fast, but I can talk anyone's head off if given enough time and space. There is no great secret to it. I never once thought I would truly learn a language to the degree I have been able to here in Kyrgyzstan, and it came from necessity, repetition, and time. Talking to my host family, talking to my counterpart, learning and practicing with my Kyrgyz language teacher, the other teachers, and my itty bitty host siblings. I defer to using basic grammatical structures when I speak, as I have learned more complicated and colorful grammar, but am out of practice using it. 

Anyhow, Rich Rakhat was my tester, and it was good and mostly jolly until she gave me a scenario and asked me to defend a position on how student attrition rates affect their education and job prospects. My last scenario at the last training was about renting an apartment and negotiating monthly rent with your landlord. This time, I fumbled together a response about how student truancy leads to students not learning, which in turn leads to students not getting good jobs, and when they go abroad to Moscow for work, because there is little work in Kyrgyzstan, they can only be drivers or do retail, because they don't have university degrees. It was a lot more haphazard and nowhere near as sophisticated or fluent as that, but it got the point across. 

The last thing we had was the Kyrgyz Cup! During breaks in the conference and in the morning, our oblast was able to work on our talent show presentation. It had three rounds (four, but we didn't have time for the last), the first being the aforementioned Jeopardy, the second being an informational presentation about our oblast, and the third, a talent show presentation involving skits, songs, dances, etc. Chuy Oblast, being only 1 volunteer, Logan, was grouped with Talas, so it was 5 groups competing against each other. My oblast took the commanding lead of 248 points in the Jeopardy trivia section (compared to the second with 148), but it most certainly was not because of me. Ben, Tahmin, and Emily are well integrated into their sites and know SO much about Kyrgyz culture and language. Emily went on a 3-minute long impressive spiel about Kyrgyz weddings for the "customs and traditions" for 100 points question, starting from the proposal to the bride and groom parties to the morning of parties, to the wedding itself. 

For the presentation, Osh made an impressive PowerPoint detailing major landmarks, food, cultural traditions, and their villages and families. Naryn had an amusing skit where each member represented the stereotypes of each raion (district/county) inside the oblast and formatted it like a group sitdown meeting. Issyk Kul had a skit based on the creation myth of the famous lake. Talas and Chuy also had a short skit and PowerPoint, and our group made a trivial Kahoot over fun facts about Jalal-Abad. 

During the talent show, due to what I perceived as a lack of time, Talas/Chuy performed an old dance they did at Culture Day during training, Issyk Kul performed an interpretive dance based on "the wave" of the lake, which just made them look like those inflatable blow ups outside American car dealerships. Osh performed the famous song Kok Jiguli, set up like a fifties music video with the girlies dressed in blue like backup singers, Zachary as the suitor coming with his blue car (Kok jiguli), and Santi acting as the car in question. Naryn had Jacob perform a song on his komuz (a guitar of sorts) and sing a song. 

I wasn't sure why but I presumed all other oblasts were going to be as extra as ours was in the talent show. We prepared narrators and a long script introducing each talent and song. I performed Manas, which I was so happy to do, it was the first time I'd performed it for most of the cohort and the staff, and as far as I know, I'm the only one in the cohort who learned to do it. After Tahmin performed a toi song, then Vanessa lip-synched to Janze, a dance party song, with the rest of us in the background wearing black sunglasses and waving our phone flashlights. Ben and Emily performed a small skit, where she rejected his proposal, and he sang a Kyrgyz song about heartbreak. Tahmin performed another song, and then we did a skit demonstrating the differences between Northern and Southern taxi drivers (Southern taxi drivers swallow a lot of their words and speak much faster). 

With all that said and done, our oblast won the Kyrgyz Cup resoundingly with 429 points! I wish next year's cohort the best of luck and hope our fellow Jalal-Abad volunteers will carry forth our victory. We didn't get to keep the trophy; it'll stay in the Peace Corps office, with our name written in spirit, but not actually. Afterward, I got my laptop back from the computer store, and we went out again to a few different bars. I really love cider, that's what I've learned. Still unable to find anywhere to dance, but we had a good time. 

PSN- our Peer Support Network, had been hard at work creating a Yearbook for all of us. Some volunteers got theirs professionally printed for a fee on hard and clear paper. The rest of ours was printed in the office. I'm so happy they prepared it for us, including pictures from our Swearing-In ceremony, culture day, our various trainings, etc. A few weeks ago, we also all voted on Superlatives. I won "Best Toi Dancer", which I think was well deserved, considering how much money I've earned from dancing at weddings and other parties. After the Kyrgyz Cup wrapped, we got the chance to have staff sign our yearbooks. 

Early in the morning of the day some of us were leaving, we had a big yearbook signing breakfast party in the hotel dining room. I got 80% of the volunteers to sign my yearbook before we left. Despite not all the volunteers being there at the breakfast party, I think it was a nice moment to say goodbye. We still have a long time until we leave, and even then, as I've learned and as this blog reiterates countless times, goodbyes are hardly ever permanent. But it was a goodbye for the conference, for I may never see some of them until the inevitable reunion, or possibly ever. Some I'll be alongside until the end. Life does that sometimes. 

To conclude and tie up the last threads, I was able to get my computer fixed, evident by now, very belatedly, posting a blog post. I went to a computer shop in Jalal-Abad manned by Russian expats, with whom I had to use Google Translate (an extremely uncommon occurrence because my Kyrgyz is usually enough), and they fixed it overnight. Boo for Bishkek, who said it would take a week. I had to cough up 6,000 com (~69$), but now I have a functioning computer.  

At COS, I reflected on just how much I got out of this service, and in some ways, how fragile it all is. Peace Corps HQ in DC is undergoing restructuring and layoffs as all other agencies have. I am so grateful that our cohort got to have a full service and a full and mostly uninterrupted time. K-28, the cohort before us, needed to stay in a hotel during training due to COVID-19 restrictions. K-30, the current cohort, will probably only get the grant training online, and their grants are already restricted due to the removal of USAID funding. I have heard already lots of restrictions having to be made for the next cohort arriving soon, K-31, due to budgetary concerns. In my service here, I got to have a full PST (Pre-Service Training), the subsequent IST, PDM, MST, and COS conferences (that's a lot of acronyms, but it just means conferences spread out throughout the two years). We got to jump between different hotels and try lots of food. We got wild antics and crazy stories. We are the reason every conference must open with a fire safety announcement due to the fire in ours 1.5 years ago. 

Staff said in our first week that they were impressed with us and that they hadn't seen such friendliness and camaraderie between a cohort in ages (and several of the staff have been at their posts for decades). I am so glad we have been able to carry that energy to the finish line. Not all of us are BFFs and close, but we are all friendly and kind and open to including everyone. On my last night in the city, there were at least 13-14 of us all sitting in a Mexican bar, because groups of friends just kept coming, and everyone was welcome. Six, that I know of, are staying in Kyrgyzstan, and the rest of us will make our way home. Kyrgyzstan has been a home, and for some of us, perhaps a permanent one. Some volunteers stay forever, and others may never come back. The days until we leave are flying, 2.5 weeks from now, school will be over, and then it is surely a race to the end. You do not know what you have until it's gone, and as we hurtle to the finish line, every moment until then needs to count. 

À Bientôt,

Grace