Last day of teaching...

Guyana, by Kristen Hare

by Kristen Hare, Guyana, 2000-2002
... and a student comes up to me and says the following:
"Miss, Mommy says if you could please marry Daddy and take him back to America with you?"
I gently told her no in about 17 different ways.
Still, she seemed surprised.

The two-year summer

Guyana, by Kristen Hare

by Kristen Hare, Guyana, 2000-2002

     It’s Sunday. It’s hot. My fan blows directly on me. The sun hangs heavy in the sky today. There is no promise of rain. I woke at 5:30 and fought with sleep again until 8. I swept and made some toast. I went to market. I waited for my mom’s Sunday call. I made lunch. Took a nap. At five, I will go on a walk. Come home. Shower. Watch the news. Cook dinner. Go to bed. It’s Sunday.

     Each day passes here with eerie regularity. I work, take care of myself, sleep and eat. It’s slow. It’s hot. I do not notice the time passing.

     This is life without seasons, one steamy day into the next, one smear of sweat that stretches through days, then weeks, then months.

     I’ll probably be the only one to celebrate American Thanksgiving on Guyana’s Essequibo Coast and plan to dine on duck curry. A local night club recently advertised a “Thanksgiving Feast and Grand Dance,” with stuffed turkey and sweet and sour chicken. I am tempted.

     The minibus drivers have begun playing reggae Christmas songs already, and it’s too early, I protest in my head on each ride. It doesn’t feel like November. It’s not nearly winter. It’s just hot.

     So far, this has been the longest summer of my life.

     I have forgotten what seasons feel like, forgotten how they measure time. A friend who works for the American Embassy told me of the Barney Halloween video her mother-in-law sent for Kelly, a 3-year-old. Barney crooned about the colors of the leaves in autumn, and when the video finished, Kelly turned to her father and said, “Daddy, can you buy me some autumn?”

     Unlike that little girl, I’ve lived through seasons all my life. Until I came here. Now, the differences are slight. Are mangos in season? Is it time to harvest the endless fields of rice? Will rain fall soon?

     Here, life is sweat, work, eat, rinse and repeat.

     Here, I have postcard sunsets, cool, rainy nights, and a breeze that is sometimes benevolent enough to circle my house. The day is framed by the open, wide sky, and tiny frogs sing lover’s songs to each other all night. 

     It’s all making me forget that there’s any time but summer, and any place in the world for me but here.

     On a walk last Sunday, I wandered onto a dusty road that was being paved, newly covered with a white, powdery sand. It hurt my eyes for a moment, glowing brightly ahead for half a mile. 

     “Miss,” my walking partner and young student asked, “is this what winter looks like?”

     I nodded. I tried to explain snow days, snow boots and snow angels. I nearly plopped down on that road to flap and flutter in the white dust. My student chattered on, musing about a season and a chill she’d probably never feel. 

     For a second, I stopped and looked back at the faux snow.

     Then, sighing with some feeling that hoovers between content and discontent, I trudged back home, sweating all the way. 

The Road to Toktogul

Kyrgyzstan, photo by Madeline Stoddart

by Madeline Stoddart, Kyrgyzstan

     The road to Toktogul begins hot and flat out of Chui, and then suddenly you begin to climb. First through the green and purple folds of mountains around the silverwhite seam of the Kara-Balta river. The edges of the mountains are rough-hemmed by the closeness of the clouds that begin to collect in droplets on the windows.

     As you weave back and forth between the mountains and clouds, you reach an apex and begin a steep and curvy descent. And suddenly, the sun breaks on the west side of the mountains, and you can see the brilliance of Kyrgyzstan for miles and miles.

     Our driver, Talai-Baike, would click his lighter and fill the car with the crisp, sharp smell of freshly-lit tobacco, holding cigarettes between the gap of his teeth and sparkling gold molars, letting the smoke be pulled from through the open window, blooming indistinguishable from the clouds crowning the mountains.

     Occasionally, he would call back in Kyrgyz, asking questions and telling jokes to Max, our only Kyrgyz-speaking travel companion. Would we stop for kymyz, the traditional fermented mare’s milk that was served in yurts lining the road? Where did we work? Why had we come to Kyrgyzstan? Would Max play a song on the mandolin that bounced around on top of the luggage in the back?

Our car became a moving concert, songs spilled out in English, Russian Kyrgyz. Talai-Baike insisted on stopping for kymyz, bartering Max’s singing for free bowls of the sour, slightly carbonated, slightly alcoholic drink.

     The insides of yurts are all primary colors, dark and full of the smell of Kyrgyz mountains. Everything is slowed down inside of them, as if they prescribed to Kundera’s idea of slowness and memory. Max tuned his mandolin, Sara and I sipped kymyz, and Talai-Baike convinced our host that simple songs could pay for our drinks and our time in her yurt. And then, the music.

     As we climbed back into the car from the roadside yurt, among laughter and astonishment that yes, this is what our lives look like when we are surrounded by the mountains of this country, Max said, “This is the best taxi."

     Talai-Baike answered, “No,” thoughtfully shaking his head. “It’s the people in the car.”

     After following the fork south, you see Toktogul breaking on through the hills, all cornfields and mountains and clouds. The deep blue of the lake, hiding Old Toktogul in its depths, amplifies the mountains that surround the city, isolating itself from both the hot south of Jalal-Abad and the desolate north of Talas.

     Even through car window’s and the steep, poorly-paved curves, you can tell that Toktogul is beholden to this magical sort of light that filters through the birches lining Lenin Street or casts the surface of the lake in sparkling, blue gemstones.

     It’s the crashing of a million moments and colors together, and it hits you on the road to Toktogul.

This essay originally ran on Madeline's blog and was used here with her permission. Check out her blog for more of her stories, photography and videos. 

The shutdown...

Going to pause this week from storytelling to share some links out there explaining how the government shutdown impacts the Peace Corps.

-- The National Peace Corps Association is doing a great job covering this, and they shared this piece from 2011, looking at how that then-looming shutdown would impact volunteers.

-- Unofficial Peace Corps Handbook also shared this posting from Peace Corps Facebook page: "Apologies, but we will not be posting updates or responding to comments during the government shutdown. All overseas Peace Corps operations are continuing without interruption to ensure the ongoing health, safety and security of Volunteers and the protection of property."

-- Here's Peace Corps' actual plan in case of a government shutdown.

-- And CNN shares this full chart of who's impacted, with a quote saying that Peace Corps abroad is generally OK, but staff in this country are furloughed. 

-- Finally, one volunteer in Kyrgyzstan breaks down what it's like to be in service and watching all this from the sidelines here: "For the Peace Corps, that means hundreds of potential recruits who will have to wait longer for their process to continue, contributing to a higher drop-out rate of potential volunteers. New trainees will have to wait longer to begin their service. It means suspending new training for volunteers and staff that will make programs more effective or transitioning to evaluations-based development interventions. It means trying to explain over a chai break at my office why one of the most influential governments in the world can’t even keep its doors open."