Köpet Dag Days: The Letters

Click on a link below to be taken directly to a letter. Once at the letter, click on its link to hear the accompanying song.

The Dharma Bum (Sept 1995)
Chuli Blue (Oct 1995)
Turkmenbashy Blues (Nov 1995)
An American in the Karakum (Dec 1995)
The Know-mad (Jan 1996)
Chiggydem (Feb 1996)
Desert Tides/Convergence (Mar 1996)
Rabbit (Apr 1996)
I, Spy (KGB) (May 1996)
Acha in India (June 1996)
Broken Calendar (July 1996)
My Camel Lot (Aug 1996)
Men Pikaremi Utgetdim (Sept 1996)

Appendix (about the music)
Album

The Dharma Bum
September 1995
Excerpt from a Letter to Self

…you got this. Sure you’re about to throw yourself for two years out into some forgotten corner of the world that you know nothing about, but improvising is your thing – you know how to be attuned to the players around you and pivot with whatever outlandishness is thrown your way.

Outlandishness…Outlandish…Outland…
You’re going to the Outland.

So what if the letter from the Peace Corps country director said: “…bottom line is that Turkmenistan is a difficult post…we strongly encourage you to consider, reconsider, and then consider again, your commitment to serve for two years…”

Hah! Bah! Does he know who he’s talking to?
You got this.

Think about all the things you could have put on your Peace Corps application that they didn’t want to know – things that would have made you freakin’ over-qualified. Let’s bullet-point it:

>you hitchhiked all over the place in an age when no one does, traveling the equivalent in miles of an entire loop around the U.S. (and then some). Most of those travels were solo. You slept on the sides of roads; were run off by the highway patrol; accepted the hospitality of misfit truckers and other strangers again and again. And you learned to deal with the cold indifference of people: standing hour after hour on highways, as thousands of cars passed you by.

>while making your public access TV show, you hung out with the homeless almost like it was an anthropological study. And you actually enjoyed their company, learning from their life experiences.

>you took an aboriginal survival course, going out into the wilderness with just a knife, blanket, and the clothes on your back. Not satisfied with the group experience of the course, you went out for a ten-day solo, sleeping tent-less while hoping the pack of cackling coyotes rollicking in your vicinity every night weren’t suddenly going to decide they’d like to try some human flesh.

>you built a wiki-up in the woods and slept in it every night one summer. At the end of the day, you’d go out sometimes in complete darkness without a flashlight and be able to find it even though it was hidden and no one could find it during the daytime.

>you’ve also lived in: an unheated walk-in closet with no mattress, a greenhouse, a tent hidden in the forest, and a tiny shed.

>why all those extremes? Because you’ve been broke – you know how to get by with little or no money.

>and that’s not the only broke you’ve been: you’ve had your heart broken many times – you know how to suck it up and carry on despite the gaping holes in your gut.

>you started eating meat again. Shit, you’ll eat just about anything anyone offers you now. So what if the Turkmen subsist primarily on sheep, you’ll eat what they eat and be thankful.

>in college you made easy friends with students from Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Russia, and Japan. You like foreigners and the differences in perspective they carry.

>you’re not Christian anymore, you’re open to all kinds of religious ideas, so you won’t be clashing with all the Muslims.

>you understand that the U.S. ain’t a perfect union yet– you’re not going to be out there preaching the “gospel” of American superiority.

>you’ve worked with children for years, including starting your own unique, successful after-school and camp programs – the kids adore you.

Shall I go on?
Well…actually that’s all I can think of right now, but that should be more than enough.
I’m telling you: you got this…

Chuli Blue
October 1995
Excerpt from a Letter to Brother

…well, Brother, you know of course I’ve gotten more eccentric over the years. I think even among my co-volunteers (who all have to be a bit out of their heads to sign up for this) I’m an odd fit. You should have seen me with my big weather-worn backpack; we volunteers were only allowed to bring two bags and I think some of my cohorts were a little shocked I only had the one (and half of that was my sleeping bag and Sorrel boots).

Once arriving in Turkmenistan (after brief stops in Germany and Turkey), they whisked us out to an oasis area called Chuli. I realize when I say oasis you probably imagine palm trees and camels drinking from a pool. This oasis was a lightly-forested area in a narrow mountain valley which had a stream running through it. There’s an old Soviet summer camp here. It looks like something you might see from a movie set in 1950s America: buildings of whitewashed walls, bare light bulbs hanging, and no plumbing. I don’t know when the camp was actually built but everything is a bit dilapidated.

The propagandistic billboards about the camp all seem to be encouraging the youth to be model Soviet (or now Turkmen) citizens.

Our group started with forty-six and we’re already down: one of the attractive young women decided not to get on the plane. Bummer. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’d have been better off not getting on the plane myself. I know, I know, it’s early, but my gut is wondering what I’ve gotten myself into.

There’s a black, collarless lab(?) dog that kind of hangs about the camp. Back in the States I somehow started wrestling with dogs – even letting them chew on my arms mid-bout. I guess I liked the wildness (usually repressed) that it conjured up in me. One day this dog and I got into it and one of the locals (a man hired to chauffeur around our staff members in his Soviet-era zhiguli car) kicked the dog, quickly putting an end to my match. I felt pretty bad for the pup. I suppose the kicker thought maybe the fight was real. It feels like a bad omen – like part of the wildness in me got kicked – that the rules of engagement are going to be very different here…

Time has passed since I last wrote.

After a week sheltered at that camp they’ve brought us to a town called Buzmein to continue our training. This is no oasis. A cement factory here seems to churn out clouds and gloom. We volunteers have been separated from one another and spread throughout the town, staying with host-families. The family that was supposed to house me never showed up at the “giving-away” event. I ended up getting adopted by a family who resisted taking on one of the more senior members of my group (a woman who is the eldest in my group, I think she must be close to seventy. Most of us are twenty-somethings). This family apparently worried they couldn’t take care of my elder colleague. They seemed happy to get me in exchange and whisked me back to their apartment. And thus my host-family for the next three months (during training) is comprised of Mama Reba who must be in her early sixties, her son, Vlad, and his bride, Nadia. Mother and son are “Kafkaz” as they say. As far as I can understand they hail originally from the Caucasus Mountain region north of Azerbaijan. They encouraged me to play my guitar for them so I busted out with a rendition of Stray Cat Strut while Vlad pulled out a metal canister and carbonated a glass of water for me as if it was some special treat (which I guess, upon reflection, it kind of was).

They’re all nice enough, but it’s hard not to be a bit depressed with the surroundings. The Soviets really seem to have been into drab. Concrete without frill is the style. Evenings after training sessions (which are mostly tedious), I end up back at the apartment where the TV is always broadcasting the one Russian station that is still allowed in country (the other couple stations broadcast the country’s leader/dictator for what seems like 24/7).

When I wash my clothes, I need to use my host-family’s hand-cranked-roller mechanism to squeeze the water out. Then I have to hang them out the front window on a line to dry. Reba insists I sit by the window and wait for them to dry or someone will likely steal them. The apartment where we live is in the very center of town, right across the street from the town market.

When I told them that I’m to be posted in the town of Gazanjyk after training, Nadia and Vlad both felt sorry for me. Vlad and his friend tried to talk me into demanding a different post, warning me that Gazanjyk is the “shit hole” of the country. The friend said he’d been there recently and there was nothing in the market.

Perhaps to counteract some of the negativity, Nadia told me of a place in Turkmenistan that I should visit: an underground cave that has a lake of steaming sulfuric water one can soak in. Kov-Atta it’s called. I asked the training staff if I could visit it and they arranged a trip for the entire group (maybe they were going to do so anyway). Following the line of mountains through the desert, one could easily miss the cave as there’s just a small entrance and almost no infrastructure built up around it – despite it being a tourist destination. A crude stairway leads deep down into the cave where the hot and rather sulfur-stinky lake awaits. A few electric lights keep visitors from being in total darkness. In the center of it is a small island, reminiscent of Gollum’s home in The Hobbit.

Upon another occasion, my host-family took me to their friend’s apartment building on the outskirts of the capital city, Ashgabat. I mention it because the elevator was broken (I believe permanently) and we had to climb something like fourteen flights of stairs. There was nothing spectacular about this, but the view from the balcony stays in my mind: more Soviet-style apartment buildings huddled next to desert wastes. That view combined with feelings of empathy for my hosts who had to make the climb up and down every day left me feeling depressed.

One night a co-volunteer and I decided we’d meet in the middle of town at one of the small outdoor bars they have here. My host-mother tried to talk me out of it, saying only blatnoy (thieves) go out at night. I went anyway and sat at the empty bar, which seemed to have the only working streetlights in town glaring down on us. We had a can or two of lousy beer. We were trying to act like young Americans, going out, having fun – this the great adventure of our lives – but I think it only made us more depressed.

And again I ask myself what am I doing here? I think, I had it in my mind that the Peace Corps was huts and smiling Africans teaching how to live in harmony with the Earth and oneself. This ain’t that…

…hey, Bro, I meant to mail this letter to you, but since I haven’t, I guess I’ll add some more. Almost a month has passed since I last wrote. Another three volunteers have left. One of them was a fellow I’d bonded with playing chess on the long flight across the ocean. The Peace Corps staff just announced one day that he was gone – apparently there’s a policy to not let volunteers say goodbye to their colleagues once they decide to leave. They just ship them back home asap. I don’t think I like the policy…

Also one of my fellow Minnesotans told me he’s leaving. He’s going to marry one of our instructors (a local woman who perhaps had taken the job as a way of hunting for a husband and way out). He asked me to keep his impending departure under my hat. He told me he’s going to leave a lot of his clothes behind. We volunteers all like and support each other, but when someone terminates their service and leaves behind any of their belongings, it’s every peace-loving man and woman for themselves. I’m hoping to take advantage and get some new clothes. As mentioned, I didn’t come with much.

Part of me wants to be resentful toward my cohorts who have left/are leaving – it feels like they’re abandoning us. Truthfully, any resentment is probably because they’re doing what I want to be doing: leaving because they know this is not the place to be for any right-minded-twenty-something-American in the prime of their life…

Turkmenbashy Blues
November 1995
Excerpt from a Letter to Friend

…I know we’ve had our political differences, but I don’t think we would have a problem agreeing that the politics here, where I am, are not to either of our tastes. The Turkmen government claims to have free elections, but the leader here, who calls himself Turkmenbashy, is a dictator.

I’m not a journalist and don’t speak the local languages so well yet, so some of what I’m about to report might be factually inaccurate, but even if it’s only 25% true, I think you’ll agree…yikes!
Now it’s one thing to be supreme leader and make all the decisions, but it’s another to have your picture in almost every room in the entire country (okay, truthfully, I don’t see his picture much in private homes), but he’s everywhere else including large billboards, the sides of buildings, and all the denominations of money.

He’s not scowling in the pictures, I think he’s trying to present himself as the benevolent yet stern father guiding his people righteously. He’s on the TV constantly giving speeches, I presume expounding what he feels is his profound wisdom to everyone. There’s tell he’s having a monument built in the center of the capital which will feature him as a gold statue atop a tall spire, arms raised to the heavens, rotating to always face the sun.

You and I have the Pledge of Allegiance in our country, but here the students have to speak an oath. It’s been translated into English so in my classes that are co-taught by one of the Turkmen teachers, I get to hear the students recite this oath (I paraphrase): “if I do anything against the country or leader, may my hand be cut off – if I speak anything against my country or leader may my tongue be cut out.” And other sentiments of the like.

It’s my understanding that Turkmenbashy didn’t even want to break from the Soviet Union. He was the leader at the time the Union dissolved and I think only broke after all the other republics did. I suspect he was/is a coward at heart.

He wrote (or it was attributed to him) a book called the Ruhnama that is becoming required reading. I haven’t read it and so can only assume its essential purpose is to illuminate himself as a kind of prophet. I seem to recall hearing that a glowing monument of the book is being erected in the capital. I’ve also heard mention that the names for the months and days of the week are to be changed; for example, I think the month we call April will be named after his mother.

It’s also my understanding that many traditional Turkmen songs have had their lyrics changed to be about him. (Imagine a song like Yankee Doodle being sung about a new president we elect or perhaps God Bless America being changed to “God Bless Bill Clinton” or whoever our president is.)

Places are being renamed after him too: the entire city once known as Krasnovordsk is now call Turkmenbashy.

He claims all these ideas and changes aren’t his idea but those demanded by the people, out of their love for him. Needless-to-say, there is no opposition to his rule. No freedom of press or speech. Though people are afraid to say anything against him publicly (and often privately) there are small ways to show their disapproval. There’s no toilet paper here so some folks stock their latrines with the daily newspapers (which inevitably feature pictures of him). Also, someone demonstrated to me that if the money with his image was folded vertically across each of his eyes, an optical illusion is created, making him look happy if tilted one way and angry if tilted the other. Not especially subversive, I know, but it brings some small satisfaction turning the folded bill up and down and watching his face transform while saying: “Happy Turkmenbashy. Angry Turkmenbashy”.

The worst part of him and his legacy of course is his corruption, leaving most the country in poverty while amassing wealth in foreign bank accounts and building monuments and buildings of excessive grandeur in the capital. Who do these impress?

Sadly, probably too many people…

An American in the Karakum
December 1995
Excerpt from a Letter to Mother

…well, I really did it to myself this time – I’m out here alone.

Of course, I’m not really alone, there are 20,000 or so people who live in my town. But I feel alone. When it came time to part from my colleagues after training with them daily for three months, I realized they’d become a support system I hadn’t felt like I needed. I miss them now.

When the Peace Corps staff had sought input on what my preferred post was, I had told them to send me to the most remote site they had and that I didn’t want to be stationed with any other Americans. That was easy for them to accommodate – I think most of my colleagues wanted the opposite. So I’ve been sent to the town of Gazanjyk.

What did we used to say: “God punishes us by giving us what we ask for.”

It’s not like I’m in a war zone or on a relief mission for famine victims. I’m a minority here but one who the locals are friendly to. No, I’ve got it quite easy compared to some. Yet, it doesn’t feel easy.

My group (T-3) is the third to serve in Turkmenistan. No volunteer from the previous two groups (T-1, T-2) had been sent here and it’s probably fair to say no Westerner has spent much (if any) time in this place.

I remember a few weeks back when I was sent out here for a couple nights on a “site visit”, the train pulled into the station around 3:00 a.m.

Nobody was there.

I mean nobody.

Someone was supposed to be there to greet me – that’s all I knew. I didn’t know where I’d be staying, I didn’t have any contact info, and I barely spoke the language.

Then, emerging from the fog (real or imagined) at the end of the platform (making me think for some reason of the film Casablanca) came a solitary figure. In rather sleepy fashion he introduced himself as Mergen. He was an English teacher and would be serving as the liaison between me and the town’s education department. I ended up staying with him and his family that weekend.

A few weeks later, upon rolling once again into that Gazanjyk station – this time to stay for two years – I was feeling a bit annoyed with the Peace Corps as they’d encumbered me with a large, heavy box of books that was supposed to be helpful to me. Other than the medical guidebook, I was certain the rest of the books would prove fairly worthless to me. If not for these, I could have managed my gear fairly well by myself. Once again Mergen was there to meet me and helped me haul the box of books and the rest of my possessions to his home.

Mergen, somewhat diminutive, had been a submariner during his mandatory service in the Soviet army. He told once how he and his crew had put under in northern Russia and hadn’t reemerged again until they were in Cuba. He now lives with his parents and sister in a tiny house with a tiny yard. Despite these close quarters, he offered to house me (I had no sanctioned housing through the Peace Corps). I was having a fit of claustrophobia just thinking about living there. I thanked him but insisted I was really looking to live in a yert. It’s amazing that he didn’t laugh in my face. It would be a bit like turning up at a Dakota reservation and telling them you wanted to live in a tipi.

Mergen told me of a doctor he knew on the edge of town who had a yert. He took me to meet with Dr. Berdish who did in fact have a yert–

In storage.

Still, that was something. More importantly though, the house’s position was on the very edge of town. There was room to breathe. I agreed to take up residence there. All Berdish asked was that I teach his two youngest sons English.

Let me describe the family compound where I now live. I call it a “compound”, but I’m not sure that will conjure the right image. The brick house we live in is a modest, one-story building. Right outside the main (and only) door is a small, veranda of sorts where our shoes and sandals are kept. Also on the veranda is a metal ewer of water and bar of musky-smelling soap for washing one’s hands.

Entering the house puts one in the tiny kitchen. There one finds a gas cooking stove and a refrigerator. (There is enough electricity running to the house to supply the refrigerator, lights, and the small black-and-white television which is left on throughout the day.) The fridge is mostly used to house all the various parts of the most recently-butchered sheep or goat. It certainly isn’t a place to go looking for a drink or snack. There is a plastic canister of water next to the fridge with dipping ladle that can be used for drinking.

On either side of the kitchen are larger matching rooms, each attached to smaller rooms on the back side of the house. The smallest of these back rooms, which serves as a library (books shelved along one wall) and a storage room for large sacks of dried pasta and rice, is the one that has been given to me for a bedroom. Unfortunately these sacks of foodstuff bring the mice. The family has the classic snap traps and during outbreaks there are daily deaths in my room. One evening one of the critters decided to climb in with me in my sleeping bag. As I recall I awoke with it on my chest and its first effort at escape was into the feet of my sleeping bag, that not working, it and I raced to see who could shimmy out of the sack the fastest.

Still, I prefer to have this room and some privacy. Though it has a door, there is no lock (none of the doors have such except the main entrance). Each interior door has a small rope of woven camel hair extending between each of its respective doorknobs. Thus when a door is shut, it’s held snugly.

As the Turkmen do, each morning, I roll up my thin sleeping mattress. As the Turkmen don’t do, I then store my sleeping bag (they’d never seen one before) into its stuff sack. My sleeping bag has really proven useful because my room is far from the heat source. Each of the two main rooms off the kitchen have square metal boxes with a couple bricks inside. Flaming gas blasts directly into these and the heat emanating from them warms the rooms. If I left the door of my little room open at night, I would be able to benefit from some of this heat, but I guess I like the quiet and privacy with the door shut. I think my host family finds my sleeping arrangement odd, as none of them sleep alone; my host parents sleep in one room and all my host-brothers and sisters (and baby Maktum) sleep in another. Anyway, when everyone’s bedding is stashed away each morning, the rooms are transformed into open spaces. The Turkmen don’t utilize furniture and I have to say, I’m quickly learning to appreciate the versatility and openness this brings to a room. Sitting and lounging on the floor is comfortable enough due to the handwoven carpets that fill each room. I believe my host-mother had some hand in making many of them.

Now I’ll get back to the description of the compound: the house, with it’s back to the Köpet Dag Mountains, is on the south side of the compound. The back of the house serves as part of the compound wall.

In front of the house is the open space (yard?) of the compound. A tapjan (wooden platform about two feet off the ground) is just outside the house near the center of this open space. This is primarily used for sleeping in the summer. Occupying almost the entire east side of the compound is a long, thin building divided into two rooms. One room I have never been in – it’s used for storage. That’s where the gara oi (traditional yert house used by the Turkmen in their pre-Soviet days) is folded up and stored.

The other room in this building is a summer kitchen. Similar to the main house, there’s an above-ground gas line (maybe ten feet in the air), connected to this room so that a cooking stove can be used. It was in this room that my host-mother, host-sister, and host-sister-in-law once worked relentlessly for sixteen hours a day over two or three weeks to weave a carpet. Their loom does not rise vertically, but horizontally across the floor, thus they all squat side-by-side at one end, banging each thread into place with a metal hammer-sized tool designed for the purpose.

Next to this building is a small chicken coop which houses the family’s scrawny chickens (and one rooster). These birds spend much of the day pecking through the yard.

In the north-east corner of the compound is an area my host-father wants to transform into a vegetable garden. The property we live upon I think was converted into a living area less than ten years ago (we’re on the very western edge of the growing town) and so the ground is gritty and sand-like with lots of small stones. I’ve spent hours with my young host-brothers breaking apart the earth and shoveling it through a screen mesh to remove the rocks. All these bits of broken mountain are then put in a wheelbarrow and dumped out of the compound. The soil doesn’t really seem suitable to grow anything, but other homes have managed to coax life from it so we’ll see.

Continuing along the north wall, one comes to the tandori-like, round, outdoor oven where my host-mother bakes bread. The cooking fuel is primarily dried camel dung. She wraps herself up, covering all her skin and thrusts her arms through the opening atop the oven. She slaps loaves of dough onto the sides as fast as she can and then puts a manhole-like cover over the opening on top. The resulting bread is flat, pizza-shaped, and has a smokey, grassy (camel dung) flavor. It’s great for a day or two but quickly stales.

Along the north side of the compound is a small pen for the family’s seven or so sheep and goats. Next to this is another narrow, low building. One part of it is devoted to storing feed for the animals.

Next to that storage room is the bathhouse. That’s the room where I bathe myself with the dip-and-pour method and also where I wash my clothes. Though it’s considered women’s work, I insist on washing my own clothes and do it all by hand in a tub. A clothesline extends across part of the compound to hang the clothes for drying. My host-brothers are mortified to see me do this, afraid passersby will see me doing women’s work.

My first night with the family, I insisted on doing other women’s work: washing the dishes. My host-sister tried gently to stop me, but I was not to be deterred. I told them I’d been paid to wash dishes back in America – I was a professional! After dinner, I took the load of dishes out to the only tap we have: it extends straight up out of the ground, perhaps two feet high, in the middle of the compound. It’s generally reliable, though upon occasion is shut down by the local municipality for hours at a time. Of course, there’s only one temperature of water: cold! As I attacked the dishes, I discovered they were all coated in sheep lard/grease.

I never had a chance.

Any grease I managed to get off was that which was now smeared across my hands. After scrubbing ridiculously with a bit of rag for fifteen minutes, my host-sister finally rescued me. I retreated, having lost all my hot air. It was the last time I tried to do the dishes…

Continuing now our tour of the compound, we come to the northwest corner. Here is where the outhouse is. A simple dirt-floored room with a hole in the ground to squat over. In the corner is a pile of old books and newspaper – this our toilet paper.

Just past the outhouse is the simple wooden gate, secured by hanging a hoop of wire over a fence post. Outside the gate is where the camels are tethered. There’s usually only one mother and her baby in our care, but occasionally we keep more.

The western wall of the compound is comprised of cement panels, maybe 5′ x 5′. They seem to have been set in a trench without precision and now lean and sag with poor posture. As these panels round the southwest corner and connect with the house, they manage to perform their duty well enough.

Against the windowless west face of the house is another smaller tapjan platform. This is where I like to hang out to hide from the sun in the morning and midday. It looks directly west and so I see the sun set nearly every evening. I’ve made this little corner of the courtyard my haven, and will spend many hours reading, writing, and playing guitar here. As I said, we’re on the very western edge of town, so I can gaze out at the wonderful nothingness of the desert plain.

Well, do you see what your wild thing has done to himself? The whirlwind created by my adventure-seeking self has flung me to this far corner of the world. On the night of my birthday, my host-family thought it a little odd that I wanted to walk out onto the desert plain alone. I was endeavoring to follow a ritual I’d started a few years back: to be out in nature at the exact moment of my birth (which was in the morning in the States, thus in evening here). There in the dark, on my twenty-fifth birthday, I came face-to-face with the uncomfortable reality that I’d signed on to this for two whole years (and that the epic three months of training I’d already slogged through, didn’t even count yet)…

The Know-mad
January 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Friend

…you should have seen me in that long line at the airport in D.C. as all 40+ of us waited and waited to get checked in. I pulled out my guitar and started fielding requests from my new colleagues. I just needed you crooning in your free-wheeling way, hitting breaks with your sax and we would have had the whole airport stomping. When I finally got up to the check-in counter, the clerk there looked exhausted but told me the music had helped. He said there wouldn’t be room for me to carry my guitar onto the plane. I started pleading with him – all I had was my soft case. He half-kidded that if I sang him a song, maybe I could. Sensing an opening, I asked what his request was. He replied: Bob Marley, so right there I sang an abridged version of No Woman, No Cry and he let me keep the guitar.

Fast forward to a lay-over in Turkey: we had about eight hours to kill so I went with three other volunteers into Istanbul. I’m not sure why I brought my guitar, but when we came across a large outdoor bizarre, I pulled out my guitar and started busking. I can’t remember what I played, but I attracted a crowd of close to thirty people before someone waved them away. As I started to play again a bottle sailed over and smashed near my feet. I think I’d probably been missing hints from some of the vendors that I wasn’t welcome. I took the few coins that had been tossed in my case and departed. (I did earn enough to buy a few, small, tasty loaves from a Turkish bakery. Not understanding the coins, I trusted the baker to take the proper amount.)

Fast forward to Turkmenistan: during our first week of training, we were at an old Soviet summer camp. I jumped up on the little outdoor stage there with my guitar one evening after dinner and started fielding requests. In front of my small audience of fellow Americans, a group of younger Russian-looking fellows – who seemed to be in their cups – decided to start engaging me. One of them was brashly calling for various tunes/bands I’d never heard of or had never learned any songs of. Eventually he shouted out “Freddie Mercury” and I was able to give him a rousing (if not altogether accurate) rendition of Another One Bites the Dust. The interaction up until then had been a little tense, but I think the song brought about some good feeling. The next day our director of training said he’d witnessed this interaction (unknown to me) and commended me for my efforts in cross-cultural relations. It was nice of him to say, but I was really just trying to connect with myself and the music and whoever was in front of me. It wasn’t so different from when you and I would be out there busking on Whiskey Row, willing to connect with anyone through the music, even if boozing had made some of them a little belligerent.

Later during the three months of training when I was in a different town with all my fellow volunteers, I found out about a local theater building. I managed to convince the director to let us use it a couple nights (or maybe when the Peace Corps found out about what I was up to they offered him some money or something). Anyway, we had a couple “open mics” which seemed to go over well with my group (and some of the locals they brought to watch).

At one of the events I took a page from your and my book and told the crowd to “give me a title and I’ll make up a song”. Someone shouted out She’s Got Rings on Her Toes or something like that. Of course it would have gone better if you were there, but I managed alright – I’ve had enough troubling experiences with women that there was plenty of material to draw from to weave a story – of course, with the usual slightly-humorous-slightly-serious-find-the-inner-truth-of-the-matter touch to it that you and I always seemed to reach for in our spontaneous song-craftings.

Fast forward again to the present this time: I’m living isolated in my remote town, trying to keep that musical spirit alive, but it feels like it’s melting away. The Turkmen are curious, sure, and many love to hear me play. In fact, the children often demand that I get to strumming. Sometimes several neighbors gather round me as I play on the tapjan (small deck platform) in the yard. I’ll pass the guitar around and let whoever wants to take a turn. That’s all good and as it should be, but I have no musicians like you to collaborate with. When I requested this remote outpost, I hadn’t counted on the need to keep connected with other musicians/singers.

The most common request I get from my new neighbors is to play a “halk” song. Halk, I think, is a national folk song. Well, I’m not gonna sing The Star Spangled Banner or even This Land is Your Land. The only halkish” song I ever think to play is Melloncamp’s Little Pink Houses. It has that line “ain’t that America”. I figure as long as they hear me say “America” they’ll think it’s a folky song about America, little guessing the satirical nature of the song (as I see it anyway).

What’s called “world music” has fascinated me for some time, but unfortunately, the Turkmen music I hear on the TV, at weddings, and on the small tape recorder my host-family has, doesn’t really excite me. I mean no offense to the Turkmen – there’s very little that has more variety in this world than musical taste – some people like some genres, others like another. The twanging sounds of their two-stringed traditional dutars often accompanied by a one-string violin and/or singer-storyteller belting out words doesn’t connect with where I’m at. Modern music from Turkey, which is popular here, with it’s techno flavorings, also seems miles from my musical zone.

My least favorite is when a trailer rolls into town for an outdoor wedding (there are no halls in the town large enough to accommodate a wedding party). They string colorful lights up on the makeshift stage inside the trailer and hook the one keyboard they have up to speakers. That keyboard pumps out its pre-programmed drums while the keyboard player creates the music for the very (to my ears) nasally singer to wail out the latest hits. (Or traditional hits. How would I know?) I realize most people here don’t have the money to hire a full band, nor are there the resources/instruments for enough musicians to be trained. Makes me feel like a bit of a snob to berate the music…

I have tried. I learned one popular song called Jennidym. The Turkmen are delighted when I sing it. You remember the feeling when we’d connect with the crowd around us – it’s a great high. I’m glad to make that connection with them, but it’s not the same as when you and I would just pull songs from the air. (How can anything match up to that, really?)

So part of my way of dealing with the huge disconnect I have here is to retreat with my guitar into my little sanctuary-bubble and search with it for new ideas, new sounds, new territory. If I sat you down and played for you the songs I’ve been conjuring, you might expect to hear the influences of my surroundings creeping unconsciously (or consciously) into my sound. But I don’t think they’re there. For example, I’ve got one where I put the guitar into an alternate tuning, lay it on the floor and play it like a drum, smacking the strings at times and the wood at others.

A couple months ago, around Thanksgiving, we had a big party to celebrate the end of training and we were also celebrating the completion of service for the group that had come two years earlier. For the occasion, one of my cohorts had enlisted me to write a song with him about our experience thus far. It was called Camels in the Backyard, Chickens in the Shower and we performed it at that event. Afterward, one of the volunteers from the group who’d come ahead of mine asked me what I was doing there – why I wasn’t back working on a career in music. She meant it as a compliment, but it stung – it hit a little too close to home.

Not long after, a friend from my group decided to return to the States. One of his poems got published and he wanted to get back home to pursue his art there. He knew there was nothing for him here (artistically).

Just as I know the same for me.

What have I done? Why am I cursed with such a restlessness? Why had I felt so compelled to get out and see the world? Why did I let this take precedence over making music?

I really, really wonder…

Chiggydem (Out of the Compound)
February 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Grandpa

…so that’s a bit about the compound where I live. Does any of it remind you of what you experienced in any of the places you visited in the Asian Pacific during the war? I’m sure most of it is different, but I thought maybe, just because this place and where you were are so removed from what we’re accustomed to in America, that there might be a few things that overlap.

I mentioned chiggydem earlier in the letter – I’ve taken to hiking in the mountains on the south border of my town. I say hiking, but really I’m just kind of wandering, enjoying being alone in nature. There’s a real emptiness to the landscape. I’m not sure what it would look like if the sheep and goats hadn’t been grazing it for generations – who knows – maybe a tree or two would have been plucky enough to grow here, but really there’s not much. A lot of days that suits me just fine. (People who’ve traveled across the Dakotas and Montana often complain about the great nothingness there. When I traveled across those vast spaces, I liked it – I felt like there was more room to think. It’s somewhat similar here. Don’t get me wrong though – I love trees and forests above all.)

Occasionally, when I’m out in the mountains I’ll run into young shepherd boys tending their flocks. These children intrigue me. What must it be like for them to spend entire days out there? The person I am now, I’m sure I’d grow bored out of my mind, but another part of me feels these young souls can’t help but know a kind of peace so many of us long for. Sure Nature has its violence, but serenity seems to be the more dominant aspect of its character.

One day, I was out wandering and a couple of these young shepherd boys found me. They knew who I was. I’m a celebrity here. The American.

There were some preliminary questions, chief of which was probably: “What are you doing out here?” (To which there is no explanation easily understood by people who don’t go for hikes simply to go for hikes.)

“Chiggydem, iiyangmy?” one asked. I didn’t know what a chiggydem was and doubted I’d ever eaten one (as he was asking).

The boys immediately started ascending the nearest hill, hunting along the ground. They moved out to the steeper slopes where the sheep and goats seemingly weren’t comfortable to go. One of the boys held a metal rod. He beckoned for me to come to him. From the ground protruded a rather ordinary looking little plant. He drove his metal spike into the ground next to it and started half-digging, half-prying until the roots popped out. He set to cleaning the dirt away and there revealed was a tiny orb very similar in size and shape to that of a green onion. The boy handed it to me. I bit, severing the orb from its stem and let my teeth crunch into it. The dirt had left an earthy taste and the texture was like an onion’s, but mixed within was a sweetness.

“Gowy (good),” I said, letting them know I liked it – which I really did.

They seemed pleased and weren’t satisfied until they’d found and gifted me two more. They then encouraged me to find and dig up one of my own. After a short search, I did spy one. Feeling like I’d just found a vein of gold, I dug it free and clasped it in my hand to eat later.

Unfortunately, these chiggydem don’t grow in abundance and we’d soon exhausted the area.
Then it was time for us to part ways. They went back to their flock and I climbed the highest peak in the vicinity. I sat down to look at my town far below, surrounded on three sides by desert. I popped the chiggydem into my mouth.

I’d been feeling glum, but those shepherd boys and their chiggydem treasure really helped lift my spirits.

So what if the rejuvenation would only last for a day? I’d take anything I could get.

Funny though. This encounter with the boys and chiggydem – so simple and unremarkable – is the kind of little experience I sense might very well stay with me for the rest of my life…

Desert Tides/Convergence
March 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Sister

…some time in the past thirty years (I think), the Soviet Union dug a canal between the town where I live and the nearby mountains. The reason for the huge effort, as I understand it, was to bring water so that they might grow cotton here. I read somewhere that it was our Civil War that contributed to the Russian Empire’s decision to push south (and a couple decades later arrive in Turkmenistan). I believe the cotton that used to be traded to Russia from the Southern states was cut off during the war and the Russians needed a new supply so they turned to this region. I myself have yet to see a single cotton plant here, but supposedly the fields are out there. Sometimes they shut down the schools for a time and send all the children and teachers out to pick cotton. I’m exempt from this. They never even gave me the option to join in the picking, otherwise I probably would have tried it for a day (the relative luxury of my position would theoretically allow me to have a “novel” experience like being a cotton picker for a day, while my co-teachers would continue to experience it as forced labor…)

Let me get back to the canal: there are only two small footbridges across it and they’re about a mile or two apart from each other, one at either end of the town. I’m fortunate to be living in the very southwest corner of the town, not far from one of the bridges. I say fortunate because I can easily slip away into the mountains without drawing much attention. That may sound like I want to be secretive, but really I just want to be left alone – I’m always in a fishbowl here.

Between the canal and the first craggy hills of these mountains is a continuous stretch of about three hundred yards of gravelly plain, rising in a gentle slope.

These mountains probably aren’t what you’re picturing in your mind. There are no trees, no grass, not much green of any kind. Occasionally on a hike a kind of mystical fog rolls in, but most times I’m left with the sun and wind. I came to Turkmenistan bearing as few things as possible. I have no winter coat. I did bring a turtleneck, sweater, and a sky-blue windbreaker, so I layer up and cinch the hood tight over my head on cold days. Even though the winter is much milder than Minnesota, that wind (relentless at times) bites to the bone in the colder months.

The first time I told my host-family I wanted to set off on a solo hike in the mountains here they had a very hard time understanding why I wanted to go alone. My host-brother Roshan was determined to join me, but finally I convinced him to stay behind.

And this has become my escape, once or twice a week. Sometimes I bring my guitar, strapped across my back. I never meet anyone else out there on a hiking excursion – I don’t think hiking is in the Turkmen consciousness as an activity they might engage in. There are shepherd boys and their flocks of sheep and goats, but they are usually too far away to have any contact with. One day I did spend quite a bit of time with a couple boys (aged maybe ten) and their flock.

“Jerry!” had called one of the boys, beckoning me over. (Neither he nor any of the townsfolk who call me Jerry realize how much I dislike that iteration of my name.)

The boys seemingly didn’t go to school, otherwise they surely would have added a loud “Hello!” in English and called me “Mr. Jerry”. That was about the extent of many of the local children’s grasp of conversational English. Conversation with the boys didn’t follow the usual patterns. They didn’t ask me much about America or if I knew Jean-Claude Van Damme, Schwarzenegger, or Stallone.

“Chilim barmy?” asked one of the boys, wanting a cigarette.

“Yok (no),” I replied. This boy was way too young to smoke.

The quieter of the two boys started a tiny fire nestled next to a boulder. They didn’t have much in the way of fuel or food, but they took what solace they could in the small blaze as they warmed some water for tea. Both boys wore clothes with holes and were obviously tougher than me, as they didn’t seem to have nearly enough layers to stay warm through an entire day of being in the hills on such a chilly day.

After a couple sips of their tea, I bid the boys farewell and continued on my solitary way.

Once on a different day, I was following the derelict dirt road that runs parallel to the canal. I decided to forego taking one of the narrow paths that break away from the road – these scratched into the earth by the hooves of countless sheep and goats. I set off from the road on no path. After traveling for a time, I stopped to rest, sitting upon a boulder. I looked at the hills, closer now. On this day, they looked like a city out of science fiction – an ancient metropolis half-melted by the superior technology of an alien race.

Ancient metropolis.

That seemed like a joke in this vast stretch of nothingness. But the history books did tell that on the other side of the country, was once the largest city in the world: Merv. Though surviving hundreds of years into its peak in the 1100s, it could not survive the Mongols. I found this passage about it: “The Mongols ordered that, apart from four hundred artisans… the whole population, including the women and children, should be killed, and no one, whether woman or man, be spared. To each Mongol soldier was allotted the execution of three or four hundred…”

They estimate that perhaps a million people living there, including hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the Mongols – were wiped out.

Where does all that misery go? Wouldn’t it be trapped in the surrounding land and air for eternity? Could the restless wind here actually be driven by some of those ill-fated souls killed 800 years ago..?

…I have to watch out for my overactive imagination – especially when it takes a dark turn like this. I think the only tortured soul in the wind was whatever part of my own I was exhaling into it…

After shaking off these thoughts, I stood to continue my journey, but something off to the right caught my attention–

It looked like a rectangular slit about three feet tall and ten wide carved into the earth.

I peered across it back toward town and could see I was almost directly across from the army base (about a mile away in the distance). Could it be? Had I discovered an underground bunker?

Cautiously I approached and discovered that part of the outer dirt wall had collapsed into the opening. It appeared as if no one had been in there for some time. After shouting out and receiving no answer, I slipped in. It was cool and dark with just a hint of mustiness. A narrow corridor not wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side ran around a curving metallic wall in the center. I traveled full circle, but found no door into the center structure.

I poked my head back through the opening. Surely if I searched the surrounding area, I would find other bunkers like this – all part of a defense system set up by the Soviets to protect their southern border from an attack coming up through Iran.

I peered out at the nearby hills, imagining myself with a rifle, defending the Motherland, firing at the hordes of enemy soldiers…

…once I coiled up my imagination again, I realized that this place was no bunker; my guess was that it was a holding tank for water probably used by the military. Perhaps this predated the canal, when the army could more easily come directly from the base out to this area to do exercises – I had after all found spent artillery shells of various sizes in several of the mountain valleys.

I felt some disappointment at the realization that it wasn’t actually a bunker, but that bit of glum was soon replaced by the realization that I’d just found a sanctuary from the wind and sun. More than that, it would be my bunker where just me and my guitar could be alone, shielded from the ever-pressing eyes and ears of the world…

Rabbit
April 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Friend

…remember when you went through a phase of dressing kind of goofy just to defy obsession with fashion? Like that brown fake-fur hat you wore around all the time.

You should see me now.

I’m sporting the cheap, blue, polyester sweat pants that all the locals wear. These sweats are mostly what’s available and affordable here. It’s not so much that I dislike the fashion of them (which I do), it’s more the insanity of wearing a fabric that doesn’t breathe in a hot climate like this.

One day I showed up to lunch where I live and sat on the floor around our plastic table (without a table) cloth with the rest of the family. I had my new sweats on, rolled up into make-shift shorts. My host-mother wagged a disapproving finger at me and told me to roll them down past my knees – I was in the presence of a young lady (my host-sister). Oddly, my host-mother had no objections to my copying another local style: I was sporting a “wife-beater” t-shirt. Many men wear these around their homes. Apparently it was okay for my host-sister to see my elbows but not my knees. (Yes, I do get it that there’s a difference.) These shirts aren’t a great look with my scrawny arms, but with this heat, I don’t care.

The family I live with like their hot tea 3-4 times a day. It could be a hundred degrees outside and stuffy as get-out inside, but they’ll still drink the steaming stuff. My host father claims it makes one sweat, which has cooling affect. I feel like my body (or is it my mind?) works differently…

We all have pairs of shoes, but utilizing slip-on sandals to scuttle across the yard in our little compound makes better sense than getting in and out of shoes. My host-family employs several pairs of poorly-molded plastic (I believe manufactured in Iran) that serve as the sandals. Several are falling apart. I bought a nicer, cushioned pair while I was in the capital and brought them home. I was sprouting horns one day when they were gone. My host-mother had taken them, and over the following days continued to do so. When I returned from my next monthly trip to the capital, I brought her a nice pair of her own. She was confused until her sons explained I got them for her so she’d stop taking mine all the time. She was confused, I believe, because she has no sense of individual possession when it comes to sandals – whatever is there is to be shared by everyone.

So who was in the wrong? Me or her? I’m not sure it matters – both pair of “diva” sandals were soon destroyed. They weren’t made for the hard use they get at this homestead.

I suppose something should be said about the main reason I need those sandals: heading out across the yard to do my “business”. This requires squatting over a hole in our outhouse. There’s a basket of old newspapers and books for us to wipe with. I’ve actually come to appreciate the “restroom” in our compound compared to others. In the public shit-houses, no one seems to be assigned to maintain them. These have multiple holes many of which get filled to the top. People then shit anywhere in the outhouse. Once I went into one with some desperation and saw the floor covered in mud. Too late I realized it wasn’t just mud.

For people who live in the city in apartments, flush toilets are available, but frequently the water is shut off. The tenants know to fill their bathtubs and keep a bucket handy to pour into their toilet to make it flush.

If I’m being honest, it’s not as bad here as I make it out to be (except when it is). I could choose to fill this letter with positive things about life here. I guess when I get down though, it’s easier to gripe. If I’m not taking my troubles to a letter, I’m usually taking them to my guitar. A few weeks back, I was having a “therapy” session with my six strings when my host-mother came and told me I had to stop playing: my host-father’s uncle had just died – no music would be allowed in the house for forty days. Of course, out of respect for the culture, I had to comply, but I don’t think she understood what she was asking me to give up. Getting through those weeks made for a particularly rough patch. More often than usual, I was taking my guitar out to play in the mountains.

I’m sure you’re curious about the situation with women and the potential for cross-cultural romance. It’s not going to happen for me. Where I live, the culture is very conservative in this way. Mostly I’m okay with this. Sure some of the Turkmen women are quite beautiful, the problem is they’ll smile and too often reveal a mouth full of gold teeth. I used to think they actually preferred this to synthetic white teeth, but I don’t think there’s a choice available to them – it’s either gold or gap. The gold is a look that just doesn’t work for me. My apologies to the women for this bias. Truthfully, having any attractions diminished is probably a blessing in disguise.

I’ve lost a lot of weight during my first year. This isn’t intentional. There are things here I really do like: the melons for example are better than any I’ve ever had. I honestly try to remain open-minded to all food options, but I just can’t get myself to stomach certain things. Sheep and goat parts, including lard and flavorings of, are the main problem (and also a big part of the diet here). My medical officer warns that if lose much more weight he’ll have to “med-evac” me back to the States.

I recently had my first taste of rabbit. A man I’d never met before, came to visit one day and apparently was gifting us with a rabbit he’d hunted. My host-father told me he’d had the rabbit shot for me.

This upset me.
Why?

Probably it was one of those days when I was feeling surly about everything, not least of which my choice to join the Peace Corps. Still, getting upset about the rabbit seemed highly disproportional. I’ve written a four-part limerick about it, trying to better understand what was upsetting me:

Did You Really Have that Rabbit Shot for Me?

Did you really have that rabbit shot for me?
I’m finding that a bit hard to believe
I don’t mean to seem like I’m begging
But all you’ve given me is a leg and–
–did the rest of him get up and flee?

Did you really, for me, have this rabbit shot?
If so, might there be more in the cooking pot?
Sheep and goat parts are nice
But as they say: variety’s a spice
Did I point out that one leg was all I got?

For me did you really shoot this rabbit?
If so, may I now declare dang nabit!
Maybe if it had been fried…
I might have been satisfied
It’s just, you see, eating used to be, for me, a habit

Saying you shot the rabbit just for me strikes me as funny
Finished now, I’ll sip my tea with thoughts of cream and honey
Seems I’ve made sour grapes, bitter pills, and humble pie my usual fare
Want some? I’ve got plenty to spare
Today they all taste a bit like bunny…

I, Spy (KGB)
May 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Friend

…so here I am in the big, bad Soviet Union – or what once was. I’m actually not too far from the border with Iran, which might explain why the second largest army base in the country is here. The base can be seen across the open plain about three hundred yards from where I live. Oddly, there’s virtually no presence of soldiers in the town.

But the army’s presence can be felt in another way: things of metal once used for military purposes can be seen throughout the town. For example in the homestead/compound where I live, there’s a large metallic hunk of metal that surely had once been used by the military. Perhaps attached to some vehicle of war? I can’t figure what its purpose had been nor what purpose my host-family hopes it might serve them some day. One of the more successful salvages I’ve seen was of treads that looked to have once belonged to a tank – these have been converted by several families into fencing surrounding their compounds.

I’ve been on the army base. I can’t remember why we walked over there, but my host-brother knew about a place where the wall was broken and we could slip in. It was virtually deserted inside. I saw one lowly soldier washing an article of clothing in a murky swimming pool probably once reserved for the officers. I’d been made aware that the life of the soldiers is difficult here (all young men have to serve for a couple years). Apparently there’s not much money in the budget to care for the soldiers. I could believe it after what I saw at the base. Turkmenistan has declared itself neutral (like Switzerland). Probably a shrewd move if you don’t have a well-trained army.

You and I of course grew up during the Cold War and so were constantly shown films that included intrigues about the Soviets and the K.G.B. I’ve heard some talk here about the K.G.B. Supposedly the new government has some equivalent to keep people on their toes, but if its transition from being under the umbrella of the Soviet Union is similar to that of the army, I can’t imagine there’s much surveillance going on.

Still, it has occurred to me that I might be under watch. Here I am, the first American to live in this town. I think some have the idea that the C.I.A. plants operatives within the Peace Corps. Surely what remnants of the former K.G.B. that still operate here might be interested in what I’m up to, especially as my activities could be considered a bit unorthodox.

And so, to amuse you (and me) I’ve decided to write a bit as if I was a K.G.B. operative spying on me, this American, in his town. The K.G.B. agent in my mind has a bit of ridiculousness to him (a touch of Inspector Clouseau perhaps). This ridiculousness isn’t so much because he’s a fool as because you and I know how far from being a spy I actually am.

Here is his report (try to imagine him talking with a bad Russian accent as if from a 1970s film):

I have been following Roth. He has not a clue that I’m watching him. I join the boys and other neighbors in the yard with him as he plays his guitar and sings to us. Surely he figures, based on my youthful appearance, that I’m right out of secondary school and hanging about because I’m lazy and have no prospects. I even ask for a turn on his guitar and play a song or two – he’s not the only one who can employ the cover of being a harmless musician – I’m beating him at his own game.

Once I trailed him out to the army base, where he sneaked through a break in the wall and started snooping about. Our esteemed president is of course doing all he can to improve the conditions at the base, but I’m afraid Roth has observed the state the Soviets have left us in.

Roth has also taken to slipping out of town into the mountains with his guitar in a case hung over his back. But what’s really in that case? Why does he always insist on going out there alone? Who would go out to these mountains to play guitar? Is he expecting to give a concert to the shepherd boys and their sheep? I think not. He’s discovered a dry cistern abandoned by the army beneath the desert surface. He slips down there with his guitar, but why? I suspect he has a transistor hidden in his case and is submitting information. The Americans and Iranians are reputed enemies, but perhaps there is more friendliness than we suspect and they are considering a joint operation. We are after all, near the end of the mountain chain and thus more vulnerable to an attack from the south.

And what about this small recorder he suddenly has? He claims it was sent to him by his parents. I’ve seen him walking about town and at the train station talking into it. Why? Do his parents actually want to know details of the town? I think not. When he crosses paths with some student of his, he asks them to speak into the recorder: “What is your name?” and “What is your surname?” He’s interrogating them. Likely, part of his purpose in teaching English here is to begin finding recruits to work undercover for the C.I.A.

I am certain Roth himself is C.I.A. His cover of being a bumbling guitar player is a good one, but not good enough to fool me. I recommend he be brought in for interrogation. I doubt it will take much to get him to confess.

That is all.

Except for one thing: could you please acknowledge you are receiving my reports. I understand the need for secrecy, but I haven’t heard from you for some time.

So there’s my imagined K.G.B. agent report. Yes, my behavior is a little suspicious – especially if one has spent the past decades developing a worldview of suspicion toward America (as we have for the Russians/Soviets). Truthfully, I get the sense that the government (K.G.B. or otherwise) cares very little about what’s happening out here in Gazanjyk…

Acha in India
June 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Friend

…I know you’ve been captivated by certain elements of India. I thought you might be a bit amused by my recent misadventures in that country. I could go on for pages, but I’m just going to highlight one part of my time there (after giving a somewhat lengthy introduction).

The Peace Corps gives us twenty-four days a year of vacation. I decided I’d take all mine at once and wander India for a bit. It’s just a short flight across Afghanistan and Pakistan to get there and the plane ticket only cost me about $100 (I don’t think I could have afforded much more). We get a modest travel allowance of about $8 a day, so I was not going to be living large while there.

I suppose my fascination with India can partially be traced to the Beatles and ’60s rock – their love affair with India influencing my own curiosity. More fuel was added to the fire when I took the course Religion and Culture of India at Lewis & Clark College during my freshman year.

There’s a fellow volunteer in my group who is Indian-American and he has a grandmother who lives in New Delhi. When he found out about my interest in visiting, he wrote to her and gained permission for me to stay with her for a couple days upon arrival.

Before leaving I set to work preparing my soft guitar case to be my one and only piece of luggage. I had the foresight that traveling lightly would be a huge advantage for the spur-of-the-moment-off-the-beaten-track kind of roaming I wanted to do. So I added pockets to the guitar case. It started with my brown corduroy pants – the legs were sheared off and sewed onto the outer portion of the bag in two places. My parents had sent me a tie-dye t-shirt that I thought was on the ugly side. My host-family were a bit shocked when I took a scissors to it. The sleeves of that shirt went to create several inner pockets in the bag, including one with a secret slot to hide money.

Most of my co-volunteers find travel mates, but I didn’t even try. It was a little unnerving, the thought of going it alone, but I guess because I’d hitchhiked and camped alone back home, I felt I could manage.

I did have some misadventures trying to get out of Turkmenistan – I learned the hard way on an over-crowded city bus to the airport how adept professional pickpockets can be. They rifled though my pockets (pants and those on my guitar case) but didn’t find much on me. I don’t carry a wallet and all my money was strapped safely around my waist.

At the airport, two security guards pegged me for a drug dealer or the like and pulled me into a back room. One of the guards was Russian and one was Turkmen. I immediately turned to the Turkmen, speaking his language, informing him of my position with the Peace Corps. I could soon tell I was gaining sympathy from his corner – I mean, how often had he encountered a “white man” speaking his language? On top of that, a white man who spoke his language better than he spoke Russian. How could he not be on my side?

He eventually secured my release from his cohort (without any pay-offs|) and the rest of the flight passed without a hitch.

Arriving in New Delhi, I took my first motor rickshaw ride out to Ms. Mehra’s gated community (Ms. Mehra was my friend’s grandmother). I was a little surprised that a lower-caste shanty town was basically right outside the walls of the clean little townhouse neighborhood where Ms. Mehra lived. She was perhaps not as rich as some in India, but she was well-`off enough to have a maid to do the cooking and cleaning. She could also arrange for a car and someone to drive her about (though I don’t believe he was a professional chauffeur). The first night I stayed with her, the power went out. Apparently this was a common occurrence. As we sat outside to chat, the smell of sewage was strong. I would soon discover it was a constant in that neighborhood.

Ms. Mehra took pity on my state, especially my clothes and torn sandals. She told me where I might find a cobbler in the nearby market. He would sew my sandals back into usable condition while I waited. She also took me to a clothes shop with the intention of buying me a set of clothes. Though I was sorely tempted to have my very own set of Indian-style clothes, in the end I demurred, claiming the whites would just get dirty in Turkmenistan. She seemed to accept that. Truthfully, I just couldn’t see myself actually wearing them – though in hindsight, I might have. A part of me has always found Western tourists wearing the garb of the country they’re visiting to look a bit ridiculous.

During my second night with her, I had my first encounter with one of India’s monster cockroaches. This one woke me up by crawling on my face. Only after swatting it away, hearing its clacking flight to the wall, and seeing it crawling there did I realize what it was.

In her house, with the squatting toilet, was my first experience of the Indian paperless system of relieving oneself. As a child I’d been shocked to learn – while playing Trivial Pursuit of all things – that people in India wiped with their left hands (and no paper). I couldn’t believe it. Now, after a little adjustment period, I began to appreciate it more and more (water was always used). It certainly was preferable to using the coarse newspaper back in Turkmenistan.

During training, Ms. Mehra’s grandson and I had discussed Buddhism at some length and I think he wrote to her that I was keenly interested in it, though truthfully I was just as interested in Hinduism, Jainism, and any other isms they had there.

Ms. Mehra introduced me to a Buddhist family from Tibet who were living in a neighboring townhouse. In fact the man was a former monk of the Dalai Lama’s order who had given it up to get married. He and his family were quite kind, giving me Tibetan butter tea and a letter of introduction. The letter was for me to carry to the school-monastery where the Dalai Lama was living in exile in the Indian town of Dharamsala. Ms. Mehra had decided I should go there. Since I had no other plan, I accepted, promising to visit her upon my return.

Soon I was aboard a bus speeding north toward the Himalayas. It was a long journey but nice to get out of the city and be among farm fields and houses not much more than huts. Great big Asian cows lifted their heads at times as we sped past.

The bus, decked out in an explosion of color and kitschy religious icons blared its horn as it passed through towns, letting everyone know to get out of its way – that we weren’t slowing down. As we began to ascend higher and higher, the roads seemed to get narrower and narrower, but still we didn’t slow down, even as we blasted through peopled streets in mountain towns.

When we finally arrived in Dharamsala, I was pleased to see it was surrounded by forest. It took a little hunting, but I was able to find my way to the Dalai Lama’s monastery-school. I showed the letter of introduction to a monk of some authority who looked at it with obvious curiosity. I honestly don’t know what it said, but I was shown to a room in a humble little guest house. One of the two young men who took me there asked if I would play a song on my guitar. I had been told that the monks were not allowed to listen to music. The man who asked, I believe, might have simply been the caretaker, but the other with him was a monk. I told them it was not allowed and the caretaker told me not to worry about it. The monk agreed. I asked if they had any requests and they told me “Michael Jackson”.

Thriller was the first or second album I had ever bought with my own money, but that had been ten years previous and I’d never taken the time to learn any of Michael’s songs. The caretaker said that that was okay, just something like that. Now, pop music – of the style of Michael Jackson – was not a genre I reproduced with much frequency upon my guitar, but recently I had learned a pop song that was outside my usual comfort zone. You see, during training, we volunteers had been given permission one weekend evening to gather after hours at the school where we training. The alcohol (and certain degree of desperation for the social life we’d once known) were flowing that evening. Someone put the song Faith on the boombox and I remember several of my cohorts dancing to it. I had never thought much of George Michael, but I was amused and thought the song had a nice groove. Thus I’d learned it and now belted it out for these two at the Dalai Lama’s monastery.

If you’d asked me months earlier to guess what song I’d choose to play for some monks in India, I would have guessed something a bit more contemplative. Now I’m beginning to accept more and more that Life and all its players don’t necessarily fit into the mold my ideas and beliefs have designed for them.

The next day I was greeted by a young monk who spoke English. I believe he was probably aged nineteen or so and in his last year at the monastery-school. He showed me his small, unheated dorm-style room with view of the mountains and told of what life was like there.

He invited me one early evening to watch a throng of young monks debate one another. They were spread about a courtyard in pairs. Some sat, some stood; there seemed to be no official pose. One would speak fervently toward the other and finish with a clap (which if I remember correctly was usually directed toward his opponent’s face). Then the other would have a go. Again, if I recall correctly, I believe this aggressive clapping was meant to challenge the calm of one another. I think this was some kind of system that had been developed for the young monks to debate the tenets of Buddhism.

While staying there at the monastery, I was invited to join the monks to eat their rather flavorless meals of lentils and rice in the courtyard. I think under different circumstances I might have been more willing to take a deeper dive into life as a Buddhist monk, but I was not in that place at that moment. I had just been through months of hard times in which I’d been denied earthly pleasures; I was in the mood to take a few back during this vacation. Especially my sense of taste. I loved Indian cuisine and here I was at the source.

I don’t recall if I was invited to continue following the “life of a monk” throughout the full day, but if so, I demurred and made my way out of the compound and into the less austere streets of Dharamsala. I wandered aimlessly around, trying to take in the place. Restaurants were small. Frequently tables were to be shared among patrons. In one, I sat across from a bearded man who appeared to be in his thirties. I introduced myself. He told me his name was Marco and he was from Italy. He was intrigued that I played guitar and that I was staying at the monastery. I in turn was captivated by the tales of his travels all across India. In particular, his stories of the sacred city of Varanasi captured my imagination. I was saddened to think how little of India I was actually seeing – or would be able to see on this short trip.

After our meal we went back to my guest house and traded the guitar back and forth. He amused me by playing Syd Barrett’s Bike. I had never thought much of Syd’s (and thus early Pink Floyd’s) music, but I was charmed by his simple rendition (the Italian accent helped).

I soon learned from Marco that the hills were crawling with tourists who would stay right at the homesteads of families. I was intrigued and the next day said goodbye to the monks.

I made the hour or so walk uphill to the community of Dharamkot. I found a family who would take me in for almost nothing (I think it was $2 a night). They set me up in a tiny room with bed above a barn that required a ladder to get in and out. At this homestead, they’d also set up a blue tarp roof in the courtyard, creating a little cafe where one could order drinks and simple meals. Across the valley were the forested mountains and terraced fields – the view was stunning. Perhaps those fields were twenty years old, perhaps they were two thousand years old. They stood before me a sight as magnificent and awe inspiring as any human creation I’d ever seen.

Meanwhile, other travelers would stop by the little cafe. I recall a German, Belgian, and Pole. At one point I enthralled them with my stories about Turkmenistan.

While staying there, I also bumped into a group of Israelis and was invited to join them for a gathering related to Shabbat. We sat on the ground around a feast. Music followed. My guitar was lent around.

One day I decided I wanted to just start down a path into the forest and see where it took me. I had my guitar upon my back and set off. Soon I was lost. I’d been trying to be careful but had got turned around. I discovered a small creek flowing down a rather steep ravine. I’d learned in past misadventures in American forests that when lost it’s often best to follow a water source.

I started down the ravine. It was quite steep at times and having my guitar made it precarious. At one point the guitar came down squarely upon a boulder and a new crack was formed.

I decided to slow down. I’d been moving too recklessly. Too afraid. I pulled out my guitar and there next to a long, tumbling waterfall sang Jimi Hendrix’s May this Be Love (“Waterfall...nothing can harm me at all…my worries seem so very small…with my waterfall…)

How to put in words the poignancy of that moment?

Here I was lost in India. But I felt lost in so many other ways as well. Lost for my decision to come to Turkmenistan. Lost in myself and my ideas on who I was on so many levels: as an American, as a member of my family, as a friend to those I’d befriended. Singing that song brought me no peace, but all these years later I still remember that moment. I think it was a beautiful – if not important – response to all that was swirling within me.

I then packed up the guitar and continued more calmly down the ravine. Eventually I came upon a path and soon was back at Dharamkot, having survived a crisis of my own imagination.

One day after descending back into Dharamsala, I was stopped in the street by the young monk who had initially been my guide at the monastery. He told me that the Dalai Lama was giving audience to Westerners the coming day and it was a very rare chance for me to see him. He showed me to the place where I could join a queue with other foreigners to get my passport checked and be put on a list. I thanked him, not realizing as he left that I’d never see him again.

The following day I gathered with several hundred other Westerners outside the Dalai Lama’s gated compound. We were told to sit right there upon the cobbled road. Meanwhile, stern-looking Indian soldiers kept watch with machine guns.

The wait was long. I conversed with those around me. A young Canadian woman was there with her six-year-old daughter. Just the two of them were traveling together. Bold.

When finally came time to enter the gates, we were paraded through. The Canadian and her daughter were right behind me as we were told to get into single file. Then we began to shuffle around in a slow-moving semicircle until we came to the Dalai Lama himself. One-by-one he was shaking hands with everyone.

Would he recognize me? Would there be a spark of something otherworldly as our hands clasped? I waited expectantly for my turn and when it finally came his attention moved to the little girl behind me. He may have been shaking my hand, but he was beaming at her.

A silk-like, white, khata scarf was draped across my shoulders by an attendant and I was shuffled away. Later we foreign visitors were sitting in a group in the courtyard. I discovered the Dalai Lama wasn’t even going to address us as a group. I’d been hoping for some kind of insightful, uplifting talk. I held the silken cloth in my hands and didn’t mask my disappointment. The Canadian spoke of how she’d appreciated the warmth toward her child. Another spoke of how amazing it had been to see the small group of Tibetans who’d also been given a chance to meet the man – they’d been weeping in joy and adulation.

But me, I felt cheated somehow. He hadn’t even noticed me.

A day or two later, feeling a touch of panic that my vacation was drawing to a close, I left to explore other towns in the Himalayas. There were more misadventures, but those stories will have to be for another time.

Descending from those mountains to return to Turkmenistan was one of the hardest things I ever forced myself to do.

The evening before leaving India, I was back in New Delhi staying one more night with Ms. Mehra. To both her and the Tibetan family, I recounted my travels. They seemed pleased that I’d met the Dalai Lama (I didn’t speak of my disappointment).

And so my time concluded in India. It was too short. I didn’t see enough. I feel I have to return…

Broken Calendar
July 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Father

…the room where I’m writing this is quite small and has bars on the window (most windows I’ve seen here do). I feel like I’m in a prison. Yes, the doors are unlocked and I can walk away anytime I want, and yet, I’ve put myself in chains. It’s all in my mind, of course, but something in me feels trapped here.

It’s strange that I should feel so. I’m surrounded by a very kind and patient host-family who takes good care of me. It’s not fair to them to equate their house with a prison and they as prison guards and/or fellow inmates…

I’ve never been a quitter – I made a commitment to this place, but I want out.

Letters have helped a little. What a joy it is to receive my bundle of letters when I go in to the capital once a month. I earned that bundle. I’ve written to so many people. This seems like something I have in common with a soldier off at war. From films and documentaries I’ve watched, I get the impression soldiers were always writing letters back home (and usually not getting as many back as they hoped). Obviously there is a loneliness when upon the other side of the world that finds some comfort in reaching out to family and friends.

Perhaps I made a mistake in going to India. This may have compounded my misery. I love Indian food: the variety and explosion of spices. And in India were travelers from all over the world who felt like old friends – they were on similar journeys of self-contemplation and discovery. The air itself there seemed to be vibrating.

Here there is no such buzz for me.

I think it would all be more tolerable if there were more entertainment options. There are no restaurants, cafes, playhouses, movie theaters, or parks where I live. There’s nothing on TV that I want to watch. I’ve come to realize that back home I actually needed all those things to distract me from me. Why can’t I just sit with myself and my thoughts?

Truthfully, I don’t really know anyone who can. Maybe the nuns and monks…but even they, I think, struggle with this.

There is a small lending library at the Peace Corps headquarters here in the capital. It’s got about six or so shelves of books other volunteers have brought. Books do help. I guess you know that from your experience – as much as I whimper for mercy here, it can only pale in comparison to what you went through.

At one point recently I decided to make a calendar and map out my remaining time here. I tried to shape the days and weeks on the various pages in ways other than the classic rectangular grid. I tried the weeks as diamonds, as a winding snake, as stepping stones…I was trying to conceive of time differently, hoping somehow that would make it pass differently – faster!

If there was one moment I could say has been the peak of my misery it was a half year ago, right around New Year’s. I still had two years of service staring me in the face. I had just gone through my first Christmas outside the States. It had been surreal being in a place where no one cared about or recognized the holiday. Can you imagine a place without Christmas?!

There was some kind of official school function that I was required to attend. We were sitting in the school’s outdoor courtyard under a cold gray sky. Nobody really seemed to want to be there, but it was an annual event, I believe left over from Soviet times. At one point the women staff were called upon (forced?) to dance. They seemed so stiff and awkward (later I would learn to accept, if not appreciate, that this was just their rather refined style of dancing, but at the time it just seemed lifeless, zombie-like even).

A man started coming around who was the Soviet equivalent of Santa Claus (Ded Moroz). This particular Ded Moroz was a thin man wearing a light-blue coat trimmed with white cuffs. He had a matching hat. He wore his regular brown pants and shoes. His fake beard hung limply beneath a chin and the hangdog look of him (he’d probably been coerced into the role). On his hat it said ‘1996’, except I could clearly see that a marker had attempted to turn the ‘5’ from ‘1995’ into a ‘6’.

More than anything, that small detail pushed me over the edge.

It was all so depressing for me, this sad vestige from Soviet times, a half-assed, half-hearted celebration of something that never really was part of the Turkmen culture. I think I was witnessing the final gasps of this event, perhaps insisted upon by officials who were recalling some spark of joy they’d felt as children back in the glory days of the Soviet Union.

More-than-likely I was projecting a lot of my own reality onto this event, but perhaps you get a sense of the state I was in.

Miserable.

I wondered again why had I thrust myself into this reality. And how I could possibly endure here for two more years?

Well, I’ve carried on seven months since then and I’m not much happier.

I think back to my high school years while you were away. Mom was usually off to work before sunrise. My alarm would go off and I’d lie there in the darkness of mid-winter with zero interest in getting up and getting myself to school (which was often followed by a miserable shift of bagging groceries and mopping floors at the grocery store).

Neither you nor Mom were there to make me get up and go. Yet somehow, for some reason, I got up every single morning and dragged myself to the bus stop and another day of misery. Some innate sense of duty forced me on.

It’s apparently got me marching forward here as well.
But for how much longer..?

My Camel Lot
August 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Aunt & Uncle

…I imagine sometimes you’ve observed the softness of those of us who are a generation removed from the farm. What I’m about to write to you will probably confirm some of that. I know my situation isn’t really comparable to your life there, but I thought it might amuse you to learn about the animals that are under my care here. (Okay, truthfully none of them are under my sole care, but I have started to pitch in with feeding them.)

First I guess I’ll mention the chickens. My host-family keeps about a dozen or so. They also have one rooster (whose overtures of love with the hens seem rather violent to me). A side note about roosters here: it seems almost every family in the town keeps one. In the morning they can be heard calling from various distances all around. It somehow reminds me of a choppy sea with the calls of the birds as the throbbing of waves.

Our chickens are nothing like the plump ones I grew up seeing in all the cartoons and TV ads. Our emaciated hens here are set free to peck around the compound, but what they’re finding to eat, I can’t imagine. There really aren’t that many bugs other than the flies – I wish they could catch and eat those. I know you deal with your share of houseflies, but with no screens here, our house is filled with them. The worst is when I’m trying to sneak in a quick mid-day nap and their little legs’ ceaseless tickle-torture keeps me awake.

I told my host family I’d like to help out more around the house and one of the first tasks they gave me was feeding the chickens. I had immediate regrets my first day when I emerged from the storage room with a tray full of chicken feed – I was accosted by all the hens. In their half-starved state, they leaped upon me, trying to get at the feed. By the time I stumbled across the yard and slipped it under the net-door of their coop, I was ready to strangle all of their scrawny necks. Needless to say, I changed strategies the next day.

These deranged birds give us the occasional egg, but I’m lucky to taste one a month. And only once, when one of the hens unexpectedly died, did they cook one up. I might have got two small bits of dry meat off my portion.

Sheep and goat are the main part of my meat diet. My family keeps about six or seven of these at a time, held together in a small pen. Almost every morning they’re sent out with a shepherd who comes past the house with a huge herd of other sheep and goats. He takes them all out to graze in the mountains before bringing them back at the end of the day. How he keeps track of whose animals are whose, I don’t know (they’re not branded like cattle).

When it’s time to sacrifice one, a butcher is called to the house. I asked one day if I could watch the process and the man agreed. After choosing his victim and binding its legs, he pulled out his long knife. I won’t go into the gory details, but it was heartbreaking how the sheep just surrendered its life. Maybe staying calm and submitting was better for it than struggling to the bitter end. After the killing was done, the sheep was hung with a pan beneath. The intestinal track was given to our dog as a treat. Almost all the rest ended up in our refrigerator (pretty much taking up all the space).

Soon after a fresh kill, some of the choice meat is eaten. I like when they make steamed dumplings (called monti). There’s one concoction they eat in which sheep fat (looking a bit like a gelatinous version of the Crisco my mom used to use when baking) is put on the heating stove to melt and then a watermelon juice my host-mother made during the previous autumn is added. This then becomes a dipping sauce for our bread. At first I kept my distance, but hunger has a way of opening one up to new possibilities – I eventually gave it a try and loved it.

Next I come to the camels. I now help feed them as well. My family keeps one mother and her baby. Every morning the mother is set free and heads out across the desert plain in search of something to graze upon. Meanwhile the baby is left tied in the yard and cries in a pitiful and maddening way all day long until its mother finally returns around sunset. The baby is allowed a quick suckle but then my host-mother, with a strapped pail draped across her shoulder, milks the camel. What she’s captured in her bucket is transferred into a large ceramic jar, about three feet tall, that’s kept in the main room of the house with cheesecloth over it. This milk, called chal by the Turkmen, is kept at room temperature and I think ferments. It’s well-prized and guests being offered a cupful always seem very grateful. My first sips of the chal had me deciding the drink was best left to the Turkmen; it was watery, had a kind of silty curd in it, and tasted nothing like cow’s milk. Once again, it’s funny how hunger can make a person open themselves up to things they wouldn’t normally consume. Over time I have grown to really like chal. The Turkmen also will make a kind of thick cream from it for dipping bread into. Though I do eat this, it’s strong sour taste is less to my liking than the milk itself.

We live on the very edge of town, next to the desert plain. One morning I awoke and looked in that direction – about twenty yards away a stiff camel leg was extended straight in the air. Two men had killed the hapless beast and were in the process of slaughtering it. It’s the only time I’ve ever witnessed one being killed and if I’ve eaten camel meat, I wasn’t informed that’s what it was.

Though I never spent a great amount of time with the cows on your farm, they always seemed of a gentle disposition. Camels are a surly bunch though. Once I tried to help force one up a ramp onto a flatbed truck. I got to finally see some of the infamous “camel spit” as it howled and raged. Another time I was asked to help my host-brother escort our camel to the neighboring village that my host-parents are originally from. A meager lunch was packed and off we set across the plain. We each flanked the huge camel, forcing it to continue in the direction we wanted. I hadn’t realized what the extent of our journey would be – it took us an entire day to walk to the village.

Now the reason we took that camel to the village was that its baby had died. That death in itself is probably not so unusual, but in order to get a few more days of milk, the baby was stuffed to try and fool the mother. This was no taxidermy wizardry, the hapless creature looked like a skin hung over a workhorse. But the mother, perhaps with the despondent anguish any mother would feel, did come back from grazing for several days. Finally she seemed to accept the harsh reality – one morning she set off and didn’t return (until she was tracked down).

Sometimes, other camels that have been set free to roam by our neighbors, will attempt to raid our animals’ feed. That’s when our dog Garabash (“Black Head”) goes on the attack and chases them away. If he fails to frighten away the marauder, there’s a two-foot-long, rubber hose left lying in the yard to be grabbed by someone to assail the would-be feed thieves.

A side note about dogs here: first off, the Turkmen never let them in the house. Secondly, sometimes these dogs get barking in the middle of the night. Something sets them off and they all begin hollowing. This can easily go on for hours. Never do the owners come out of their houses to quiet their dogs down. Probably these people, having grown up with dogs barking at night, sleep right through the racket. Me, not so much. On several occasions these dogs have nearly drove me to madness.

Between the flies, wailing camels, and howling dogs, there are definitely moments where I feel myself breaking. But I suppose in another way, the animals here help give me perspective. What I mean is that I often see them dead. For some reason the Turkmen people in my town often aren’t quick to dispose (as in bury) dead dogs or cows or sheep or goats. I’ll see their carcasses with some frequency as I walk around the outskirts of town (often I keep to the outskirts to attract less attention – I stick out like a sore thumb here).

Any suffering I’m going through (most of it generated in my own mind) is preferable to lying in a lifeless heap as the desert sun and scavengers slowly take me away…

Men Pikaremi Utgetdim
September 1996
Excerpt from a Letter to Family

…I’ve tried.
I have.

I won’t call it a mistake, but it was a miscalculation coming here. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

I’m not a quitter.
I’m not.

I’ve vented enough to you about all the frustrations I’ve been experiencing so I won’t rehash them here now. It’s just not a good fit. I don’t blame the Peace Corps itself, it’s just bad luck that I got sent to a place that just doesn’t work for me.

Twenty of my colleagues have come to that conclusion and left (a few have taken ill and had to “med-evac”). So almost half my group is gone. There are only twenty-six of us left. I’ve been feeling like I need to stick it out as much to support my remaining cohort as for any other reason. But part of me knows they’ll be fine without me just as I’ve continued to carry on when others have left.

And maybe the country will be better if I leave too. There was a day recently when much of the school was absent. I don’t know why. There are days that the schools are closed because the teachers and students are all made to go pick cotton. It was some day like this and I had only one student who came to class. His name was Yusup. He was a nice young man, son of the postmaster who has always treated me respectfully. Another boy turned up. A boy who almost never came to class. He had no interest in English or anything I had to offer. He was bent on disrupting things until I threw him out of class. When he came back, I chased him off again. He then went to the window outside the class and began pounding on the glass and making faces – and this one of the few windows in the building that had all its panes of glass intact! I played right into his hands by bursting outside. He raised a stone to throw at me and I encouraged him. I actually wanted him to do it so I’d have an excuse to go throttle him (which I fully intended to do). It was Yusup who intervened and finally convinced the other boy to go away.

I wiped the rabid dog spit from my mouth and returned to class, defeated.

I’m not proud of this story, but it shows how low I’ve sunk from my ideals. I think back now to how cocky I’d been in training, thinking I was tougher and knew better than everyone else…

I think back to the year before I came here. First the Peace Corps offered me a post in North Africa. Then Thailand. I hadn’t felt ready at the time to accept either one of those posts. Now I wish I would have.

My sights are starting to turn toward Japan, I’ve heard there’s a program there that brings young graduates like me over to teach English.

Yet, even as I write that, I feel I’m betraying not only my volunteer colleagues, but also my host-family, teachers, and many of the students I work with.

It’s embarrassing to think of returning early to the States after the big going-away party you threw for me. Seems like the equivalent of a newly-married couple who has a big wedding and then get divorced within a year.

Some of the family will surely think: What? You couldn’t hack it?

I know everyone will understand and be sympathetic after I paint the picture of what it was like here, but on some deeper level they will know what I know: I wasn’t tough enough.

I recall in sci-fi stories and movies how time moves differently in outer space – years and years can pass on Earth but for the astronauts, less time passes. I swear you’re all out in outer space there: one year in American time equals at least two-and-a half years here. That’s how long I feel I’ve been here.

Time is truly warped for a young man like me in a place like this.
And young men are restless.
I want the world and I want it now.
I’ve decided to end my service.

Now all I have to do is convince myself to go through with it…

End of Part 1