Hard Times Come, Hard Times Go

At this point in time, I have about 8 months left in my service. It occurred to me when I was posting Facebook pictures of the Areni Wine Festival two weekends ago that it was the last time I would be there. It's highly unlikely that I will ever attend another Areni Wine Festival. At the very least, I won't be gathering in the Field of Dreams with several other volunteers as the high sun moves west. And so,  I feel compelled to make the best out of what’s left before the time gets away from me. Yet, the following post is not going to be about the things that I know I will come to miss. I want to give a voice to my experience of hardships as a Peace Corps Armenia volunteer. I do it because it is the thing least spoken about publicly. I do it because I think shedding light on the difficult parts of volunteering is just as important as shining light on the positive ones.

I remember during my application process looking at an acquaintance’s pictures of the beginning of his service in Kazakhstan. While Armenia and Kazakhstan are not direct neighbors, they are in the same part of the post-soviet world. I recall seeing pictures of a television, cabinets, couches and rugs and I thought, “Are you kidding me? That’s not Peace Corps!” I was under the impression that hardship meant living in a hut under an oppressively hot sun. I thought Peace Corps was bare feet and eating with your hands. I thought it was reading by candlelight and going weeks without speaking to family or friends. That was what I wanted, that was what I felt I needed. I saw service as something cleansing, a sacrifice of values and luxury to get to the heart of life's meaning.

I definitely didn’t think that Peace Corps was electricity, Internet, a cell phone, or pizza and beers. I never imagined that I would become more self-conscious about the state of my clothes and the possibility of being seen without make-up in the Peace Corps than I had been in America. I wasn’t expecting to become obsessed with having as much privacy as possible, as opposed to spending time with people in my community or host family. I thought my heart was going to open, not close.

The reality that your expectations, your hopes and desires are probably not going to be met is hugely disappointing, even devastating. When does this realization come, if at all? I can’t speak for others but my moment of realization happened about ten months into my service. I had been feeling down and out for quite some time. I had been feeling confused and lost. I was angry a lot of the time. I felt isolated and misunderstood by anyone who wasn’t a fellow volunteer. There was so much I didn’t bother telling friends or family at home. They read my blog, they heard some stories but they could not imagine what it felt like. When I spoke to people back home it was to hear their voices, to smile at my niece and hear her high pitched giggle. It was to have a sense of normality, if only fleetingly. It was to not be gripped by the anger or anxiety I felt the rest of the time.

The moment this storm cloud, so to speak, moved on came while I was walking the Border2Border route in the month of June. Maybe it came from the strength I felt in my heart and bones, lungs and legs. Maybe it came from the beauty I was surrounded by and experiencing all day long. Because even though I was still being stared at and I was still not being understood fully, I inexplicably felt free. I remembered what freedom felt like in my heart and my head. I had been in a prison of my own fears and disappointments. I had been holding on to the idyll I had so badly wanted before arriving in Armenia. Over the course of that walk I was able to feel present and centered again.

As soon as I was done with the walk, I called my father asking him to fly me home at the end of the summer. I knew that if I was going to get through Year 2 in one whole, happy piece I was going to need to spend some time at the beach, and at my favorite place on earth - Lake George. At first, I felt somewhat ashamed of my decision. I felt weak for needing to go home FOR A SECOND TIME. Yet, as soon as I landed and was with friends the shame was gone. When I returned to Armenia, I knew I'd made the right decision for me. Sometimes as volunteers we get so caught up in this reality that in many ways we lose touch with actual reality. We tolerate treatment and behaviors that we would never stand for at home, in the name of respecting the culture and being a good volunteer. Sometimes this is healthy and appropriate but sometimes it's not, and it is SO difficult to know the difference between the two. 

What's my point here? I don't really know. It's not to complain and it's not to gain sympathy. It's to shed some light on the parts of being a volunteer that aren't so easy to articulate. It's so that if someone where to come across this blog while they're in their service, they know it's normal to feel unhappy. It's normal to be utterly frustrated and overwhelmed with the cultural differences. It doesn't make you a bad person, it doesn't make you a bad volunteer. It makes you a human being living in a place that you're not from, a place where you are constantly feeling the need to explain your self and answer for your country. It isn't easy and there are days I want to quit. But I won't, because the whole point in coming was to learn to live with discomfort in a healthy way. It was to see what I was made out of, and what I could endure.

And well shiiiiit, am I getting a lesson.

...and then sometimes you take the marshutnit home from Yerevan after a long night and the beauty of the country takes all of it away. You smile, because you know there's still room to grow and to love. 

Song Of The Week: Gin Wigmore- Happily Ever After