Suddenly I See

I’ve sat down to write this end-of-summer-start-of-year-two blog post several times now, but I haven’t been able to hit the right tone. One day my writing was too whiny, one day too flippant or frivolous: weathering my moods lately has been like standing on top of Mount Monadnock. But I’ll spare you the drama, since god knows I’ve had enough of it, and tell you that there’s a happy ending before you read the beginning.

After school ended in June, I organized a summer camp in a local Uzbek village. After a year of masquerading as a serious professor, it was heaven. We played sports, had a cookout, did an egg-drop which made teenage boys shed tears of joy. The whole thing was hilarious. After that, I travelled around to help out at other volunteer-organized camps of all types (sports, English, girls’ life skills etc). It meant spending time with American friends, being outside, drinking beer, swimming, eating good food, and happily forgetting that I was in a country that can make life very difficult.

After two months of that, punctuated by a glorious trip to Italy to meet my parents & some friends, I came back to site. That was early August, and from then until a few days ago, I’d been standing on shaky ground.

The day I got back, I knew immediately that I couldn’t stand another year with my host family. My love and appreciation for them couldn’t outweigh the constant stress of crying babies, soup three times a day, and seriously restricted independence. I had waffled all spring, but being away had given me the kick in the ass I needed. I packed up all my things and moved to an apartment, where I reveled in the glory of walking around naked all day and eating grapes for dinner.

But still, coming back to site after a fun and relaxing summer was, as one friend put it, like staring down the barrel of a gun. Through August my thoughts were constantly marred by dread of the difficulties I knew I would face the coming year. Unlike when I first arrived, I knew exactly what I was getting into, for better and for worse.

And it was worse than I expected. One of the big problems I was loath to face was the situation at college, where petty and possessive administrators wield the iron fist (minus the velvet glove) to keep teachers in the office from 9 to 5, no matter their lesson schedule. It’s resented by local teachers who are actually paid by the college, but it’s been especially hard for me, since last year I wanted to do projects in other community institutions and was constantly getting myself or my fellow teachers in trouble for it.

Then, apparently, the Education Minister cut our lesson hours, reducing my schedule to between 2 and 6 teaching hours a week. I started ignoring the administration and going to teach at different local schools until the college director found out and… the shit hit the fan. People started getting yelled at and threatened, in the all-too-familiar Soviet manner, and I was summoned to her office to explain myself.

Only in a place like this, where ingrained clannish greed too often rears its ugly head, would I have to explain why I’d prefer to fill my days with useful activities rather than obediently drinking tea in the teachers’ room. Last year I respected and was even a little intimidated by the director, but this year I see her clearly for the narrow-minded fist-clencher that she is.

I’m not here for her sake. I’m here only for my students, who are more like my little sisters, my students whom I love to teach. I didn’t want to leave them stranded, but my regional manager from Peace Corps told me I’d have to find a new institution to work at. I felt trapped in limbo with less-than-appealing options on either side: leave the community I’d built up for a year, or stay in a situation that was sure to be miserable. And this was the culmination of two months spent worrying about how I’d manage to start a whole new year, one that I’d imagined would be a lot better than it was shaping up to be.

The bright side to all this darkness was that in my nomadic spurts at different schools in the area, I’d found a few situations that I was eager to work in: a big school in the Uzbek Silk Road village of Sayram (with the best English teachers I’ve met here so far), a Kazakh school in Aksu center that has accelerated English tracks starting in first grade (and, consequently, rooms full of 3rd graders who practically pee their pants with the excitement of saying I AM SEVEN!!!!!!), and the Uzbek school in Karabulak where I had held camps over the summer. Karabulak’s are some of my favorite students in the whole region.

On Wednesday last week, two trainees were sent to observe my site at the same time that my Regional Manager came to sort out my situation. I thought the poor girls would spend their visit to college surrounded by hordes of sobbing teenage girls and administrators angry about my site change. But my RM and I decided on the best possible solution: 2 days of work a week at college, and the remaining 3 at schools of my choice. An hour and a half of wrangling with the director and my RM came out of her office saying “I’m alive!”

Now I have the best possible schedule: flexible, varied, both familiar and new. I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be doing every day, but I know that it will be the most useful and productive thing that I can find to do. One year has passed by like lightning, and the second year promises to pass faster still. Finally, I’m out of limbo and on my feet again. I’m optimistic and excited about the rest of my second year, but mostly just relieved to be feeling that way and no longer drinking the bitter cocktail of dread, futility and frustration that I had been for most of August and September.

In my apartment now I have internet access, so email’s by far the best way to stay in touch. I’ll be better about posting on this thing now that my life is real again. And I promise not to post such serious newsy stuff in the future.