Departure

Disclaimer: The content of this blog is mine alone and represents my own views and opinions and does not necessarily reflect the views of the US Government, the Peace Corps, or the Ugandan Government. Furthermore, the intention of this blog is not to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, injure, defame, or libel.

Part one: Pre-Departure

Departure

Summer

Two rows of driers cover the wall and hum in unison. The soft thud of the loads of wash, spinning and falling, spinning and falling, creates enough background noise to almost drown out my own thoughts, almost. I continue going through the check list in my head of all we have to do before departing for Uganda: power of attorney, backup all my files on an external hard drive, register for absentee voting, finish selling our car to my aunt, move out of our house…The list goes on and on. And here I am sitting in the laundromat prior to making a trip to Goodwill and Woodman’s for some last minute items. The normalcy of these activities, going to the laundromat, going to Goodwill, going to Woodman’s, clashes in my mind with the upcoming move. I try to drown out the check list and the sound of the driers by getting lost in Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux…But I just end up staring down at a page full of letters, which do not convert into words with meaning in my head… Four more weeks.

Those last four weeks flew by in a blur, we had a garage sale and finished selling nearly everything we owned until we were the proud owners of nothing but an air mattress. There were whirlwinds of goodbye parties, and a long road trip, first to Canada, then an accidental detour to Niagara Falls, then to Syracuse, Boston, Chesire, New Haven, New York City, Princeton, and finally to Terre Haute, Indiana.

Finally, on Thursday the 26^th of May we left Beloit. It wasn’t simply a “bye Beloit, see you later.” I first went to Beloit in the fall of 2007, visiting on and off until moving there for college in 2011 and making the move permanent, until now. I went to college in Beloit, I paid my first rent in Beloit, Beloit is where I became not just independent, but autonomous. And while without that autonomy I wouldn’t be ready to go into the Peace Corps, I will miss Beloit deeply for all the relationships and home I built there. Leaving Beloit meant saying goodbye to a part of myself. Thus, saying goodbye to Beloit wasn’t simply a “bye Beloit” it was closing an important chapter of my life and starting a new one. There is a strange morbidity in saying goodbye. When babies are born people celebrate, when it’s someone’s birthday people celebrate, when someone gets a new job people celebrate; but when you join the Peace Corps, while there is a lot of celebration there are a lot of goodbyes, tears, words of good luck, and a lot of “are you sure?” With the Peace Corps you aren’t going for a simple road trip or a short flight; in some ways departure is connected, maybe to death, but more so to a closure of sorts. I think that’s why I have such a hard time saying goodbye, accepting the end of something is hard, and saying goodbye is a very firm end. In many ways I think that’s the reason I avoided saying goodbye to a lot of people.

We’re closing one chapter in our lives and opening another, a set of blank pages, and some parts of yourself do die, change, and other parts grow; a lighter example of this would be my relationship with rice. Before moving to China I passionately hated rice, but within a few months my hatred of rice died. My hatred of rice died, a love with rice grew, I changed.

So, on that sunny and pleasant day in May we left Beloit and drove to Shorewood, my home town, to spend our last day and a half before departure. Shorewood is a suburb slightly north of Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. An affluent, liberal, community, famous for its intense Midwestern niceties and excellent public school district, Shorewood was a great place to grow up, and a great place to branch out from. I love Shorewood, but it’s been a long time since it has been my home, so in some ways returning for the final day before departure felt like having one foot in the door and one foot out, while being able to say goodbye to more friends and family.

During that last full day my mom, husband, and I went to Atwater beach, small Chihuahuan vase in tow. The tan and brown stripes on the woven vase were an unusual receptacle for the contents: some of my father’s ashes.

At Atwater beach, the bluff drops rapidly, and a young man completely drenched in sweat runs up and down the stairs. My mom, husband and I make our way down the steps, and finally to the beach were I ask my husband to stay on the beach while my mom and I walk towards the water and we eventually walk out onto one of the water breakers. The lake is calm and it is a pleasant 65 degrees. My stomach is in knots. My mom says a few words in Spanish and I throw the ashes into the calm, cool, clear waters of Lake Michigan.

The rest of the day is spent finishing last minute errands, having supper with one of my aunts, my uncle, and some of my cousins, and later having pie with some friends. At about 8pm my stomach started gurgling. I had gotten terrible food poisoning a week prior, and had spent a full 36 hours throwing up, and several days after that with the feeling that my stomach was doing back flips. Now, the night before departure, needing to pack, needing to say goodbye, needing to be present, I was feeling terrible. I spent the rest of the evening maintaining a close relationship with a porcelain God, or sitting on the couch, clutching a bowl, giving my husband directions on what to pack in my bag. So you may be asking, nerves? The stomach flu? Well, several hours earlier I received my last Hepatitis A vaccine, and the mild side effects can include, nausea and vomiting. Still better than having hepatitis. So, I woke up at 5am the next morning to frantically finish packing and get both my bags under 50 lbs, I did it, and we departed for the airport on time.

We departed for the airport early on the morning of the 28^th, and I crying, left my mom, step-dad, and Wisconsin. As my husband and I were sitting at the gate, terror slowly started to consume my thoughts: what are we doing? It would be so much easier just to stay in Wisconsin. What on earth are we doing? I can’t believe we’re joining the Peace Corps. I remind myself about the growth we will go through, how much Peace Corps will challenge us, and how many new things we will learn, however myself talk soon devolves into blah, blah, blah…People keep saying they’re proud of us, but am I proud of myself? Moreover, I had purposefully looked up very little information on Uganda. Paul Theroux talks about the joy of discovery and how much the internet takes away from the surprise, and I had been trying to attain this. I had avoided books on Uganda, I didn’t look up photos on facebook. I wanted to be surprised. However, in this moment, surprise was sounding very terrifying. Thus, with my self-talk failing I decide to focus on my surroundings instead.

The black pleather airport seats are uncomfortable. I look to my left and maybe 20 feet away a pale woman sits slouched and yawns repeatedly, is she tired or trying to fill the silence? The terminal is nearly full and no one is speaking. My husband is sitting next to me looking at the one small Uganda guide book we bought. The button on my purse says, “Peace Corps, Redefine Your Future” Well this is definitely redefinition…

Eventually we board the small plane bound for Philadelphia. We first met with a recruiter and began our Peace Corps application in June of 2015, now, a year later, we’re finally leaving. Step one: Get to Philly, step two: complete staging, step three: get on a bus at 2am for New York, step four: catch and 11am, 15-hour flight to South Africa, step five: occupy ourselves for six hours, step six: get on another four-hour flight to Uganda, step seven: get on another bus to our staging site.

As the plane ascends over the Midwest, the farms look like they’re stitched together like a patchwork quilt.  As we fly over Appalachia the small mountains look like green waves. Finally, the Philly skyline comes into view and we land. Step one complete.©

Part One: Pre-Departure, The Peace Corps?

Part One: Pre-Departure

The Peace Corps?

Spring

When I think about the Peace Corps, the name captures my attention as a different font in a book, suddenly it’s The Peace Corps, or, THE PEACE CORPS, and the concept enters my thoughts and abruptly seizes all my attention with startling enigmatic deference. The Peace Corps is, at this point, an abstraction, rather than a palpable reality. Images dance in my mind and I don’t know if they are eidolons or well-grounded wanderings of my thoughts.

My family and friends extol me and my husband for our decision, saying things like “you’ll make a difference”, “I could never do that”, or “You are going to do so much good”. Yet, I personally do not believe that these statements represent the ethos of the Peace Corps, it’s about mutual understanding and growth, right? For the sake of bettering ourselves and those we interact with, right? Thus, why are these thoughts so inculcated amongst some of my friends and family? They are not malicious statements, they are said, I think, out of a want to praise, but at the same time I find myself wondering whether the sentiments are leftover wanderings of an antiquated era. While I understand their encomiums are meant to make me feel good about the decision to serve I find myself in a lengthy argument in my head about whether or not my decision to serve is cogent or whether I am patronizing and the embodiment of colonialism. When someone says to me, “you’re going to do so much good and help so many people” I am teleported into my nightmares, I picture myself, the white, blonde, foreigner, in central Africa, surrounded by poverty porn -images of sad looking African children of an unnamed country- on the cover of the next Paul Theroux, or William Easterly, book, titled, “Why Colonialism is not Dead”, I need to continuously remind myself that I believe that the Peace Corps is not this.

The core values list for the Peace Corps states, “In working toward fulfilling the Peace Corps mission of promoting world peace and friendship, as a trainee and Volunteer, we ask you to do the following: ONE Prepare your personal and professional life to make a commitment to serve abroad for a full term of 27 months. TWO Commit to improving the quality of life of the people with whom you live and work; and, in doing so, share your skills, adapt them, and learn new skills as needed. THREE Serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go, under conditions of hardship, if necessary, and with the flexibility needed for effective service. FOUR Recognize that your successful and sustainable development work is based on the local trust and confidence you build by living in, and respectfully integrating into, your host community and culture. FIVE Recognize that you are responsible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your personal conduct and professional performance. SIX Engage with your host country partners in a spirit of cooperation, mutual learning, and respect. SEVEN work within the rules and regulations of the Peace Corps and the local and national laws of the country where you serve. EIGHT Exercise judgement and personal responsibility to protect your health, safety, and well-being and that of others. NINE Recognize that you will be perceived, in your host country and community, as a representative of the people, cultures, values, and traditions of the United States of America. TEN Represent responsibly the people, cultures, values, and traditions of your host country and community to people in the United States both during and following your service.” (Peace Corps “Core Expectations”)

Nonetheless, my mind wanders and the statements raise more questions: will I be making a difference? What does “I could never do that” mean? I could never live abroad? Live without the amenities we are so accustomed to in the US? I don’t work well with others? I have a mortgage, car payment, and young children? What does it mean! However, underlying these statements is an unspoken patronization, no one has said “You’ll learn so much from Ugandans.” And the want to learn from and with Ugandans in the country and my host community is the primary reason I am so thrilled to serve in the Peace Corps in Uganda. I want my service in the Peace Corps to represent what the Peace Corps values already mean to me, mutual respect, mutual learning, mutual room for growth; a bilateral, multifarious, collaboration. That is my aim. A memory that imbues this dogma is one from my year studying abroad in China in high school. Unable to raise enough funds through their local religious institutions, they enrolled in AFS or NSLI-Y obtained all the scholarships those institutions entail through and spent the entire year proselytizing, with no intention to engage their host communities in an equal relationship. Observing my own peers caused me to reflect upon my own intentions, why really was I there?

Several years later, and in a different space, which challenged me in different ways, I wrestle with that question and also with a broader hermeneutic: Outcome in life has little to do with the individual, yes we all make choices, but outcome has more to do with opportunity. I am not better or smarter or more mature because I have a four-year college education from a terrific institution, my degree represents some good role models, but more so it represents opportunity. How do I engage with the world in a way that facilitates opportunities for people alike and different from me? Working at the Beloit Domestic Violence Survivor Center (BDVSC) is challenging and rewarding in extreme ways, but what really crawls under my skin and tears at my soul are those individuals who are competent, capable, intelligent, and who had none of the same opportunities presented in life that I, or many other Beloit college students, have been fed. There is no difference between me and some of the individuals I work with other than opportunity largely rooted in circumstance of birth.

Individuals will make their own decisions but that does not mean that everyone should not be given the opportunities and the ability to have agency in their lives. I have been at BDVSC for over four years, where, we, as a service provider uniformly try to advocate and empower, while understanding the difference between the two. Advocacy is the active support and speaking on behalf of a person group or cause (BDVSC Training Manual); it is a method of problem solving. Empowerment is defined as authorizing and enabling (BDVSC Training Manual). You aid someone in navigating the incredibly complex set of systems that overlap in domestic violence and intimate partner violence situations, while supporting what they want, and offering information on a range of different options. You support their decision even if it differs from your own. My job is to make the process limpid, and to be an exponent of human rights. I want to engender success in the program participants I work with based on their definitions of what success means to them. Now, I am wanting to take what I have learned at BDVSC, everything aforementioned, and the patience, hopefully halfway decent listening skills, and community and individual-based problem-solving skills to the Peace Corps. I cannot begin to express how amazing the BDVSC team is and how much I will miss them, but I am also excited to begin a different challenge and form of discomfort thousands of miles away.

Finally, I ask, please, do not lionize me for serving in the Peace Corps. I am ebullient about the Peace Corps, even if the tone of this post is abrasive. I am exploring my own thoughts as I write, and more than anything, I am excited for the ways I will grow and the things I will learn that I do not yet have the imagination for or the words to describe.

Part One: Pre-departure, Erasure

Part One: Pre-departure

Erasure

Winter

The empty boxes and dust filled air consume my eyes and lungs. And, in the ears and head of this body I hear only silence.

The collapsed grey garbage bag sits in a corner, which has somehow remained free of disarray. Slow hands reach for objects: scribbled upon children books, childhood crafts, gifts from deceased loved ones, knick-knacks with no memorable origins, small notes from friends and loved-ones, and two flutes from the annual state fair. They are dropped with an audible thud into the trash bag.

The red-haired, pitbull-mix, Eddie, sniffs around the room in confusion; he looks up at me, scrunching his forehead, and then looks back to the floor until he finds his bed, crawls in and goes to sleep, snoring vociferously.

Next, the pile of college textbooks, novels, and anthologies, fall victim to the siege. Years’ worth of notes, and influential works, that I value as the constructors of my conscience; they are the lenses with which I view the world. Where would I be without, Edward Said, Amartya Sen, Franz Boas, Confucius, Wu Cheng’En, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev, Anton Chekhov, David Takacs, or Philippe Bourgois? For starters I would probably sound like less of an asshole, and secondly, I’m not sure I’d be the same critical thinker.

Again, slowly, and with an ever-growing knot kneading its way in my stomach, most of the works are carefully placed in a box destined for the local public library.

I do not need these knick-knacks or books to know, 1) that I had a childhood, or 2) that I attended college. So why is it so hard to part ways with them? Do I really need these things, to be me? The dust stifles the air in the unfamiliar house. Doorways low-enough that one of the bathrooms is inaccessible to me and my husband, carpets a foreign stained brown, and the trim obvious of a home constructed with love in its severe angles and unevenness. A move, beset by a Wisconsin winter, and grey spring, followed promptly by another move in several short months to Uganda, “Oh Uganda, Land of Beauty”, the national anthem is called…

Looking out the window now, snow blankets the horizon, and the more snow is being hurled through the air by a relentless northern friend.

The master-closet is barely visible through the growing mound of boxes; careful not to trip, I step delicately and open the door, the few professional items hanging in the space are a stark reminder to both stay checked-in for the next several months, and to prepare myself mentally. The impending prodigious move is a leap into the dark. Like a small-children upon arriving, my husband and myself will be blind, floundering to learn a new normal, and mute desperately trying to grasp the new language.

I was 16 when I moved to rural China to spend a year living with complete strangers that would become my family. I knew where China was on a map, and I could barely pronounce “hello”; so I dove, learned to swim, and in the process became enculturated and incredibly happy in my new home. About eight months into my time in China I remember thinking and writing, now I understand why the Peace Corps is so important, and now I understand why it is a 27-month commitment; it takes time to become both enculturated and linguistically competent enough to really begin to understand yourself and your role within the community. One of my host families came to the US for the first time in May of 2015 to attend my college graduation.

Now, at 23, I, along with my husband, are joining the Peace Corps and, starting in June, will spend the next 27 months of our lives in Uganda. When applying to the Peace Corps, our first choice was Kyrgystan, which seemed ideal as I am both a Russian and Mandarin Chinese speaker, second was Albania, and third was “anywhere”. Upon receiving an invitation to Uganda we had to look at a map. From there, our enthusiasm and excitement for Uganda blossomed. My mother and step-father loved Uganda so much during their first trip there five years ago they have returned to the region again and again, and at every opportunity sent us information about Uganda.

Before moving to China, all of my possessions resided in my childhood bedroom. Prior to my departure in 2009, I had a party during which my friends came over and took anything they wanted from my room under the stipulation, “if I don’t remember it when I come back it must not have been that important in the beginning, so keep it.” Now, seven years, one marriage, two jobs, and a fully-furnished household later, there are considerably more objects, emotions, and memories to contend with. Thus begins a process of erasure and adaptation. Erasure of objects and the familiarity of Beloit, Wisconsin, and adapting my condensed possessions and self to prepare to forge new aspects of myself I had never conceived of before. I am also very lucky because I will be going with my best friend, and biggest support, my husband. I cannot wait to see how the Peace Corps changes and strengthens us through the journey.