September 16th was the 1-year anniversary of the
beginning of our Peace Corps odyssey, so it seems like a good time to reflect
on what the first year of service has been like. It’s been a whirlwind to say
the least: three months of intensive training in Ukraine followed by a brief
two and a half months of service before being evacuated. Next came two
nerve-wracking months at home, waiting to find out our fate: would the
situation in Ukraine be resolved and allow us to return? Would Peace Corps find
a transfer option for us? Or, after years of planning, would our Peace Corps
service simply be over less than six months after we began? The transfer to
Guyana brought some relief about our immediate future, but it also brought
another ten grueling weeks of training and the realization that we were
starting over completely with a brand new 27-month commitment. Now we’re two
and a half months into our service in Guyana, about the same amount of time we
spent in Ukraine before we were pulled out. How do the two experiences compare?
During training (both of them) we heard about the “cycle of
adjustment,” which is basically a prediction of when, on average, Peace Corps
Volunteers find service to be particularly challenging. There are four such
times: 1) midway through training, 2) the first couple of months at site, 3) the
mid-service blahs, and 4) preparation to transition back to life in the U.S. at
the end of service. Although the timing of these challenges can vary from
person to person, the standard “cycle of adjustment” has held true for us in
two completely different countries. (You’d think it would be easier the second
time around…)
In both Ukraine and Guyana the six-week point in the
training program was marked by fatigue caused by a hectic schedule and “brain
overload.” This was especially true in Ukraine, where learning a brand new
language was a major component of adapting to life in a new country. Likewise,
arriving at site was at first frustrating in both countries. Anyone who has
ever moved to a new city realizes the time consuming process of finding all the
places you need to make yourself comfortable in your new home. (For example, on
the first day at our new apartment in Ohio we drove around for 45 minutes
looking for a Panera to buy breakfast for the family members who had come out
to help us unload the moving truck. Eventually we gave up. It wasn’t until a
couple of months before we moved that we noticed there was a Panera located
only 30 seconds from our place!) Getting your bearings takes time, and so does
figuring out what you need or can even get in your new location. The products
that are abundantly available are different (bora, carila, passion fruit,
mangoes), and even items you’re familiar with come in unfamiliar brands (Big
Foots, coconut Shirleys, Fernleaf powdered milk, Digicel credit, Mak-C). The
prices are all given in different currency (four mangoes cost 100 Guyanese
dollars!), so you try to convert them to US dollars (oh, that’s only 50¢) until
you realize that it doesn’t make sense to convert them anyway, since you don’t
make as much money as you do in the States. And the town goat follows you to
the post office and stares around you with its eyes pointing in different
directions in that way that goats do, but you’re not sure if that’s normal or
if you’re being singled out for being a foreigner.
On top of learning our way around new towns we’ve had to
internalize different cultural norms, and in the case of Ukraine, struggle with
the language as well. Actually, it’s in some ways more challenging being in Guyana,
since it’s an English-speaking country. It sounds counterintuitive, but because
you can understand so much more of what people are saying to you, it’s easy to
forget that you have to interpret the meaning of their words through a new
cultural lens. For example, when a Guyanese person says that something is being
done “just now,” they don’t mean that it’s happening right at this moment.
Instead they mean that it will get done at some indeterminate point in the
future and perhaps, more likely, never. In Ukraine the cultural differences
seemed smaller, maybe in part because the language barrier made us oblivious to
what was going on around us! These periods of frustration, bewilderment and
disorientation eventually pass, but given the success of the “cycle of
adjustment” in predicting challenges thus far, we are prepared for similar
feelings in each of the next two Junes…
Another challenge that has permeated our Peace Corps experience
in both countries is the helplessness we’ve felt towards the political events
unfolding in Ukraine and the uncertainty those events have triggered in our own
lives. While in Ukraine it was impossible not to be touched by the concern and
passion of Ukrainians regarding the fate of their country. Even after the
evacuation it’s been unsettling to watch as Crimea was annexed, fighting has
raged in the east, Russian troops have massed along the border, Cold War-style
tensions between Russia and the West have reignited, and nearly 300 innocent people
lost their lives in the skies above Ukraine when a civilian airliner was shot
down. These events are all the more tragic because Kathrina and I associate their
impact with the faces of Ukrainians we know personally and came to count among
our friends during our short time in the country. And there’s nothing we can
do.
There have been more prosaic adjustments, too. Although
winter in Ukraine was mild this past year (especially compared to the
mega-winter in the States!), it was still chilly. There was a cold snap in
early October that happened before the city’s centralized heating system was
turned on for winter. I remember feeling especially grateful for the survival
training I had received in Antarctica. There wasn’t enough snow for me to
construct an igloo, but I believe our host mom, Vira, would have objected to
having one built in her apartment anyway. (The heat was on by mid-October, just
in time for the unseasonably warm weather!) Additionally, Ukrainian roads and
sidewalks are notorious Volunteer safety hazards: they are covered with sheets
of ice that we would carefully totter over while making our way through town. Ukrainians
would pass us in apparent aggravation at the delay. They couldn’t understand what
the big holdup was about! Compare this to life a few degrees above the equator,
where we look forward to the “cold” nights when pulling a sheet partially over
ourselves is necessary to keep warm (or, more precisely, to keep “not cool”).
And of course the nearly constant 100% humidity means that even standing stock still
results in sweat streaming out of your pores in a futile attempt to cool off
your body. How come there’s no Peace Corps San Diego?
One of the unexpected similarities between the two countries
is the transportation system. In Ukraine we travelled around in minibuses known
as marshrutkas. In Guyana there are also minibuses (known as minibuses) that
are even mini-er than those in Ukraine. They’re more like vans with rows of
bench seats that require you to crawl over people while hunched over like
Quasimodo in order to reach an open seat. When the bus starts to get full,
you’re asked to “small up,” which means, “Make room, three more people are
squeezing in!” One of the trainees attempted to “small up” during our first visit
to Georgetown. In the process he ripped the bar out that separates the driver
from the passengers. Someone yelled from the back, “Is that an American? What
do they feed that boy?!”
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