I Feel Like A Peace Corps Volunteer

Although I am currently enjoying New Year’s festivities in Baku, I have been at permanent site for about three weeks now.

The details of my life here have been delayed due to the fact that my village is not exactly a telecommunications hub. (There are no phone landlines.) This means that I have to travel into another town to get internet access, and I can only manage that every other week or so. Therefore, I apologize if you have been anxious to know what I have been doing with my life. (Or would have liked to procrastinate on whatever work you were meant to be doing before the holidays.)

What can I say? I feel like I am in the Peace Corps. Which might seem like a bit of an obvious statement. But I think that’s the best way to describe my new surroundings and work situation.

I live in a room with a wood-burning stove and I have to filter my own drinking water. My host sister bakes our bread every other day. I can walk to school in five minutes along a road that isn’t exactly paved. There is a single village store and the post office is a single room. (The postman had to go into the nearest town to get me airmail supplies!) I do my laundry by hand in a giant washtub, and Shower Sunday is the highlight of my week.

In a letter last week I was inspired to compare the whole experience to what I used to imagine life was for Laura Ingalls Wilder 150 years ago. Given that when I was younger, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls, I am enjoying myself immensely.

It is weird for me to think that I spent 70% of my time conversing in a foreign language. A fact that I realized when I went to join other volunteers for Christmas last week, and for the first few minutes was a little overwhelmed by the fact that I could understand everything going on around me. (The added benefit of being the only volunteer in a village between two larger towns in the area is that I managed to get an invitation to both Christmas celebrations.) But I am very fortunate that two of the teachers at my school that have an excellent level of English, and I have a host family that is very patient with my limited (but improving) language skills.

The village school has been recently renovated and rebuilt. The school has a library and a modern computer lab. The English teacher that wrote the application for Peace Corps has been asking for a volunteer since Peace Corps arrived in Azerbaijan (2003), so she has had plenty of time to make preparations for my arrival. I have the luxury of a dedicated English classroom - something that other volunteers (in larger towns) don’t have, and there is a small collection of English language resources and storybooks. Moreover, what my role in the classroom and community is meant to be is very well understood. So I look forward to many productive partnerships in the future.

And on that optimistic note: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I can only justify a trip into town when I am in need of other supplies, so until the next time I run out of toilet paper…