Light at the End

“What is to give light must endure the burning.”  -Victor Frankl

Victor Frankl wrote the book Man’s Search for Meaning, which is separated into two parts: the first is his personal account of being in a concentration camp during WWII, and the second is his own mini psychology textbook.  Both parts are worth the read.  I haven’t read that book in several years, and I only came across this quote from it while looking through an old journal of mine from a couple years ago.  It’s funny how time works– sometimes we are wiser before we are blind.  Reading through past journals helps me both to understand myself and to learn from myself in times I have regressed or am simply seeking.  But I would say that it is the seeking that is most crucial because I can be regressed and still not ready to be challenged.

In many ways (here’s some self-disclosure), I was in a regressed state during my time in Mongolia.  I craved the experience, the edge that a present moment can bring when my inhibitions and doubts don’t stand in the way.  I wanted it, and I got it.  And it was making me into a person I barely recognized, someone I wouldn’t like if I met her.  It, in combination with the difficulties of living and working in Mongolia, brought me to my lowest low.  I knew I would come out of it; I knew that because I remembered, however fuzzily, how I was before and all that I used to rely on both inside and out of me that helped to sidestep bad choices and selfish motivations.  The change that I underwent here confused me, led to anger and cynicism, closed off others.  But I knew, deep down, it wouldn’t last.

So, the other night, after I finished the book Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, I was in a mood.  Something in me was stirring, whispering, It’s time.  I couldn’t get the book out of my head, particularly the character named Corrigan, an Irish Catholic priest living in New York, caring for prostitutes and the elderly.  No one knew he was a priest, but everyone was drawn to his humility and inner light.  His faith was so real to him, so troublesome in a way, that he wrestled day and night with God.  He wasn’t struggling to figure out if he had faith; he was just trying to figure out what his faith was asking of him.  I felt like one of those prostitutes, standing outside, using his toilet, but wanting just to be in the same room as him in the hopes that some of whatever he had inside would rub off on me.  In a way, I guess it did.

“There are two things that change people: great suffering and great love.”  -Richard Rohr

I started going through a couple old journals I have with me.  I read quotes from Leo Buscaglia’s Love in one and then passages of my own thoughts on what I feel is the work I am made to do in another.  I was hungry for all of this, eating it up, but I needed more.  So I opened the small Bible I have on my bookshelf, the same one I’ve had and used for years, to Ephesians 4, the chapter I bookmarked after my sister included a verse from it in her last letter to me.  All of the sudden, these words made sense.  They weren’t preachy or pompous; they weren’t begging for a skeptical eye.  I finally saw the wisdom that could easily have come from living in the world: being patient with others, knowing that we’re all in this together, being renewed, making decisions that are healthy and not just for me but for others– because others are affected by my decisions, too.  Of course, I’m sure I read my own experiences and emotions into the words, but what are words if not breathed with life?  It was as if I was gaining back some footing that I had lost when I arrived here.  Maybe I was already slipping before I even arrived.

In a survey I recently took for Peace Corps, I was asked what the best part of my service was.  My answer: the difficulty of it.  I hated it while in the midst of it– looking back, it felt like I was wrestling with an angel of God and that some bones were broken in the struggle.  Who likes having their bones broken?  But it gave me new perspectives.  I have those innumerable moments of anger, frustration, sadness, regret, and desolation to thank for building a thick skin, for building boundaries, for knowing just a little more about what it’s like to be the target of harassment, for understanding the feeling of having no one but yourself on whom to rely and the futility and vulnerability and utter loneliness of that, for learning finally, finally that where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to do is not here but there, back home, back in the States that I left and that I criticize so harshly and that I needed to eschew in order to know what I’m coming back to and why I’m staying.

I guess Victor Frankl doesn’t have much to do with this.  His words were just a kind of blessing for me to go forth with a life similar to what I led before Mongolia– listening to my own intuition, seeking the advice from others– but doing so because I am choosing it, not because it was handed to me.  I have been in places that made me feel so much energy for life and for the work I do, and I want to get back there because, truth be told, I haven’t had that here: I have been dry and only sporadically charged with the electricity of doing what I love; I have seen only rare glimpses of the niche I long to fill.  Yet being here has made me realize all of that.  I think that I needed to be thrown into a pit and torn asunder (burned, if you will) for me to come to terms with my life up to that point and after it.  I have changed, if only to come back to who I truly am.

Perhaps the biggest lesson in all of this is that it is not something that can be told to someone who has never had such an experience.  I can’t preach the lessons I’ve learned to make others learn them.  If anything, the experience of it all has shown me even more that without living, there is very little learning.  I’ve internalized so many lessons here I had heard or read previously, and while those words may have laid the groundwork, it was the experience that hammered them home.  Thus, having stayed in this country through all of the trials and errors, the cold and the sandstorms and the heat, I can leave with a sense of calm for having clawed my way through some of those days and for making it out in one piece. I can go home whole, and that is very important to me.  I know there will always be more to learn, but I feel a sense of fullness now, something I want others to know for themselves.

I wonder what would have happened if I had gone home early, before this small revelation.  Would I have put it all together, or would I still be in that low place?  I don’t really want to know.  I’m just thankful I made it to this point at all.  It was hard, and maybe many people don’t need life to smack them in the head to understand their place in it.  But I’m clearly not one of those people.  I suppose that which was hardest was, in a way, just the tilling of soil for rich growth.  But even something growing needs to be cared for; it is an ongoing process.

“I keep inching toward the point where I believe that it’s more difficult to have hope than it is to embrace cynicism…. I also think the real bravery comes with those who are prepared to go through that door and look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.”      -Colum McCann

My hope is that this tiny light I’ve unearthed from the ashes of what I became here will continue to give light now that I’ve found it.

Change of View, Change of Heart

As my About Me page says, I joined the Peace Corps to fulfill the internship for a Master’s program in Intercultural Youth and Family Development.  After two years here and a pretty big paper, I have graduated.  This is quite exciting for me, but it means something different than what it did before I came to Mongolia.  Before, I thrived on discussion, even of things I had never experienced.  I have always been an observer, living vicariously when I couldn’t gain experiences firsthand, so when I spoke, I was speaking out of a combination of conviction, observation, and whatever I had learned from the little experience I actually had.  There was so much to be learned; there were so many questions left unanswered.

I will admit that I was a bit spoiled for my first three months in country: my host family was both well-off and quietly generous, so I received top-rate food, accommodations, and attention.  They didn’t drink or smoke and rarely had people over, so I never saw pieces of this culture that are severely ingrained, like the overindulgence in alcohol or the crude lasciviousness.  I remained unaware, lost in a world I felt was safe and welcoming to me.  It took many months for that to wear off and for me to understand finally what so many other volunteers understood immediately by living with their host families.  I wouldn’t ask for a different experience during that time; it’s just that a person doesn’t learn as much when things come easily.

When I got to my site down here in the Gobi, I thought I had the perfect view.  However Sarah Palin-y it may sound, I really could see China from my yard.  Just the desert in all its sandy glory and then China, where development seemed to have already happened.  It was another elsewhere, similar to where I found myself yet also so different, a wide expanse before me where all the unknowns of my life could spread out.  I was living in a ger at the time, so the juxtaposition felt surreal, like I was finally getting the stuff books are made of.  I liked the sense that I was living in a land still not overtaken by paved roads, high-rises, or even indoor plumbing.  It made me feel like I was on the edge of something, like I could make a positive difference before it was too late, before every action would be a reaction.

That was before I learned.

Slowly, it hit me that I was already a little too late.  This country took a fast turn in the ’90s and hasn’t really stopped.  Alcoholism is high; domestic violence is high; the ger district outside of the capital of UB is growing, despite its lack of infrastructure, which results in poor sanitation, overcrowding, high crime rates, and general malaise.  (How many places around the world tell this same story?)  Of course, I don’t live in that ger district.  I live here on the Chinese border.  But I see the leftover effects of communism and the strange grip that capitalism has, and the result is a system– or systems– that make it difficult for one person to stand against.  I chose small holes that I could address in my time here, but they are nothing compared to the wall that is these systems.  Moreover, I was facing both a lack of knowledge and the culture in general when I tried introducing ways of dealing with children in a positive way and of positive youth development.  Even in the States, some of these ideas are hard to convey, so trying in a place that has no foundation whatsoever in this realm felt insurmountable at times.

Yet the systems with all of their frustrations were not as wearisome as the small acts that occurred every day, often multiple times a day.  I won’t spend too much time on them because I touched on them in my last post.  But I have those to thank even more than living in a ger for helping me to build a thick skin, for building boundaries, for knowing just a little more about what it’s like to be the target of harassment, for understanding the feeling of having no one but yourself on whom to rely and the futility and vulnerability and utter loneliness of that, for learning finally, finally that where I am supposed to be and what I am supposed to do is not here but there, back home, back in the States that I left and that I criticize so harshly and that I needed to leave in order to know what I’m coming back to and why I’m staying.  That which was hardest was, in a way, just the tilling of soil for rich growth.

Moving out of my ger and into my apartment changed my view.  It gave me some distance from a major source of stress and even fear, and it shed some light on my experience as a whole.  The two windows in my apartment look out onto the train station, allowing me to see the trains come and go every day, multiple times a day.  I only moved here a couple months ago, but it was at a time that was close enough to my date of departure that I could hope but far enough away to keep me pining.  The trains are consistent.  They are my means of entering and leaving this city; no other form of transportation is really feasible nor reliable.  I rely on that consistency now: it will, one of these days, take me away from here for the last time, and that day is quickly approaching.  

One day, it hit me that my change of view meant I was no longer looking elsewhere; I was looking toward home.  Having stayed in this country through all of the trials and errors, the cold and the sandstorms and the heat, I can leave with a sense of calm for having clawed my way through some of those days and for making it out in one piece.  I feel like I wrestled with an angel of God and that some bones were broken in that struggle, but it’s given me some new perspectives.  I can go home whole, and that is very important to me.  It’s as if my words from before now have some experience to give them life, to stand behind them and speak through them.  I know there will always be more to learn, but I feel a sense of fullness now.

My views have changed and inverted, torn each other up and taken solid form, but I’ll give up my China to let Sarah Palin keep her Russia.  I’m coming home.  

 

Dorothy Counts and The Look

Someone posted this picture the other day, praising Dorothy Counts for being one of the first African-American girls to attend an all-white school.  I looked at it briefly and tried to move on, but the look on her face brought me back to it; that look was so familiar that it gave me pause.

In the picture, Dorothy Counts is sitting in the front of what I’m guessing is a filled auditorium with an empty seat beside her.  She’s looking to her left, intent on something other than what her eyes are seeing.  Her mouth is set, as if she’s holding something back, and her eyes look tired.  If she were the only figure in the picture, I might have thought she was thinking about something outside or at home or anywhere, really.  But because she’s not the only one shown, and because the other faces reveal much more, I have a hunch her mind was bracing itself against the constant bombardments of ignorance she has put up with her whole life and that are in the room with her.

Surely she can hear the two boys in the row behind her, laughing and trying to catch glimpses of her face.  There’s nothing hidden in their expressions: they are wearing the ridicule they spew.  Whatever whispers they might have whispered to get them going were probably not as quiet as they think, or maybe they assumed she wouldn’t hear them if they spoke out loud, or maybe they didn’t care if she did, so they spoke their comments for all– including Dorothy– to hear.   The dad in the row behind them is laughing along– with them? at something different but just as funny?– and even if his laughter isn’t heard, it’s felt.  She feels it.  All of it.

At one point or another, most of the people in that auditorium (and probably in that town) have stared at her, made comments to or about her, pointed at her, and whispered behind her back.  She is seeing it all right now in her mind, and she can hear their voices.  Though she cannot fight back at the moment (in fact, she can’t fight back ever, not all of them at least, not with her fists), some could argue that her intimidating and threatening presence in that school is a way of fighting back, fighting a system rather than individuals and, as a result, changing individuals along the way.

But I would argue that her face tells a different story.  She is not feeling particularly courageous right now, but neither is she scared.  She is simply fed up with it all, with the tireless taunts and the unending spotlight on her: her difference and her presence.  It’s not new to her.  In a way, it’s her life.  And she’s sick of it.

I don’t know if I would have recognized that before coming to Mongolia.  I don’t know what I would have noticed in this picture, to be honest.  I can say I know that look so well now because it is mine every time I leave my apartment.  People yell things at me on the street; they talk about me behind, in front of, and next to me; they speak to me and then laugh with their friends as they walk by.  The comments are rarely unique: I could guess what they will say before they even say it.  They are commenting on my Otherness.  Before, I used to walk on by, unfazed, but eventually, somewhere along the way, it started to get to me.  My Otherness became my prominent feature, and my awareness of this and of the effect it had on others gave me The Look, the same one Dorothy Counts has.

This is more than just a case of being different.  Different is nothing new to me and, for most of my life, has not been a problem.  People can be different and respectful of each other; I know because I’ve seen it.  What happens here cuts out respect and leaves me feeling like the brunt of a joke or like a showcase item, only here for the entertainment of others.  To them, I am a freak with no feelings.  And I can’t predict what they will do with that.

So when I saw this picture, I saw it in Dorothy Counts’ face: the look that says, If I could just live my life, just get on with it like they can, I could focus on more important things than who’s looking at me and what they’re going to do…

Before seeing this picture, I had never heard the name of Dorothy Counts, so I did some research.  She was 15 at the time she enrolled at Harry Harding High School in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1957.  After just four days, her parents withdrew her from the school because the harassment was so bad.  Apparently, the wife of the leader of the White Citizens Council told the boys to “keep her out” and the girls to spit on her.  Kids threw rocks and trash at her; teachers ignored her.  Two white girls attempted to befriend her, but the others harassed them and successfully prevented the friendship from coming to fruition.  Her locker was ransacked, her brother’s car was smashed, and her parents received threatening phone calls at their home.  The parents loved her too much to let this continue, and after withdrawing her from that school, the family moved to Philadelphia where she attended an integrated school.

I have not been spit on.  Trash has not been thrown at me.  I won’t pretend that I completely understand the struggle she dealt with on a personal level, and I know that what I have to deal with here doesn’t come close.  My experiences with racism aimed at me are of a different sort than hers; I realize that mine are smaller in degree and shorter in duration in some ways: longer than four days, sure, but shorter than a lifetime.  And I feel indebted with gratitude for the hardships that she (and so many others) faced to make this world more livable for those after.  But, as is becoming more and more clear to me all the time, this world isn’t there yet.  People continue to mistreat others based on arbitrary differences.  Far too many are left hurting and isolated.  The lack of understanding can be enraging.

Still, I don’t think it’s impossible to be both in the wake of the devastation and in the lead of taking action against it– the two aren’t mutually exclusive, strangely enough, for we can both be affected by the world and by those in it and affect it.  I would like to learn how to do this with grace, and Dorothy Counts gives me a clear example of that: the boys behind her in those seats hurt her, but we don’t remember their names.  We remember hers.

My four days (more like two years) in Mongolia are almost up, and, as I hope some of my previous blog posts have shown, my time here has not been all harassment and hurt.  Everything is a lesson that will come in handy later in life; I’ll return to these experiences when I need to.  For now, I will try to focus on the good to maintain some balance in my life.

But perhaps I’m learning one such lesson already, that reading a look on someone’s face is a way to recognize my own and that sharing this can be a way to cope with the emotions that are not mine alone.

For that and for so much more, I thank you, Dorothy Counts.

Ode to a Training Manager

All summer, they had prepared us for our jobs.  We were told that our directors would have little time for us, that we would need someone to be our go-between with them, that we would be but mere bugs to the giants that were to be our bosses.  I prepared myself for that; I expected no emotional returns for what I gave and therefore didn’t plan on giving much.  I would be respectful and humble.  But I would not be friends with this person.  Who could be?

Then came the week we were to meet them, the last week of summer as we knew it.  We would fly, drive, ride the train to our sites across a country that does not make it so easy to do any of those.  We didn’t know when we’d see each other next, and we had been trained for a job with people whom we had not met.  And here we were, standing in a big line across the room from another big line made up of our new supervisors– the most important people in our jobs-to-be, yet the most enigmatic.

One by one, they called our names and theirs, and we met in the middle in a sort of procession of which neither was sure of the steps.  More names, more awkward greetings with all eyes watching.  Soon enough my name was called, and as I walked up, I saw a woman in tennis shoes– in contrast to the heels most of the other women were wearing– walk up to me with her arms open.  It was the only hug a supervisor gave to a volunteer that day, and that hug was mine.  I haven’t forgotten it.

She and I didn’t speak too much during the three days before we took the train to my new home.  She wasn’t confident in her English; I wasn’t confident in my Mongolian.  Neither of us seemed the type to fill the air with words anyway.  We weren’t uncomfortable.  We just were.  I attributed it to her being my supervisor and to the beginning of a relationship in which I would not see much of her.  Little did I know what my life would be like…

It turns out she wasn’t my director.  She was my ‘supervisor,’ but her role in my school was the training manager.  The director– also the landlord of my ger— was nice and responsive to my needs, but she was, as they had told us, much too busy for my day-to-day quibbles and questions.  That’s what the supervisor was for.  If I had a work-related question, I’d ask her; if I needed more wood for my fires, I’d tell her.  I’d go to her with ideas for projects, and she’d come back with her own.  She made them happen, too, without which my work record here would have been quite bare.

And it turns out she was much better at English than she originally let on.  I barely spoke a word to her in Mongolian because she understood me so well in my native tongue.  Our relationship didn’t take long to move from acquaintances to familial, with her being a maternal, aunt-like figure in my life.   She told me of her life, of the lives of other teachers, of the goings-on in school.  I never felt judged, and she always shared freely with me.

At some point in my first fall here, she invited me over to her home.  I think it was for me to show her something on her computer, but she ended up feeding me dinner and talking with me.  That night, she asked her husband something quickly before turning to her calendar and telling me that I would visit her home once a week.  From then on, I went to her home for lunch every Sunday afternoon, sitting in her apartment, watching her daughters play, talking with her.  She and her husband even took me to his work so that I wouldn’t have to pay for a shower at the public shower house.  During her spring cleaning, she gave me several items of clothing she simply didn’t want anymore.  She was– and has only become more so– my guardian.

When my life went to pieces on a small-scale this winter by having problems with safety and security, by becoming homeless for a brief time, and by feeling useless at work, my supervisor came to the rescue.  She didn’t swoop in heroically or coddle me.  She merely did as she does, and things fell into place.  I moved into her old apartment that her family had serendipitously vacated just a month earlier, and she became my new landlord.  She worked out times and places at work for me to get some projects done.  And she continued to invite me over every Sunday for dinner.

She no longer comes to work because she is on pregnancy leave; her baby is due in early June.  I leave mid-July.  My time with her is quickly coming to an end, yet I feel like I owe her so much for all she’s done for me here.  If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here anymore.  I would have given up, would have packed up and gone home.  But here I am, quite content in my new home and filling my time with those consistent visits to hers.  She is the person I will miss the most and remember the fondest.

So, whatever anyone says, I know now that I made a friend in this person I was told would have no time for me.  She was both my go-between and the last word.  The respect between us was mutual, and I would risk my emotions for the connection we share.  For as little as I may be, she made me feel like I’m not.

An unexpected turn of events

My life in a ger has come to an end.  I am, once again (as of yesterday), an apartment dweller– though still in Mongolia.  The reason is, simply put, a safety and security issue that made my living where I did not the best option for me.  Thankfully, Peace Corps and my beloved school manager worked together to find me an apartment in town for me to spend my last few months.  It is closer to my school, to stores, to the train station, to everything except to my old hashaa.   I am quite content with the convenience of it all.

Yet the sudden transition has brought to mind a lot of contrasts–namely, between a ger and an apartment.   Just to make it clear: living in a ger is completely unlike and is not at all living in an apartment.  I have only seen one apartment that contests the difficulty of ger life, but most do not.  In fact, living in a normal, pretty standard Mongolian apartment with mediocre heat and cold running water (with no access to hot water) is far, far easier (and, in many ways, better) than living in a ger.

For example: going to the bathroom.

Going to the bathroom no longer requires the internal process of weighing the costs and benefits of making the necessary trip outside to the outhouse.  It doesn’t require walking past two other gers and potentially ten people, repeatedly, just to relieve oneself.  It doesn’t require a change of footwear or an additional layer of clothing.  It merely requires the acknowledgment of a bodily signal and the taking of but a few steps before relief comes.  That is all.  No makeshift toilet made out of the dry sink bucket for those times the costs outweigh the benefits of leaving the ger (example: sandstorms, too many people outside, too many visits already that day, too cold, too dark), no squatting over said bucket, nothing.  Just some steps, and relief.

I’ve also come to realize that ger life requires the reverse of taking things for granted.   For example: running water.  In a ger, I would have to ration out my water use, conserving some for a hair washing or that ever-so-rare clothes washing moment, washing my hands and dishes with as little water as possible, not cleaning my ger and everything in it to keep my water longer.  No more!  I didn’t realize it was so much a part of my life, this rationing, until I had running water again.  It feels like a small miracle every time I turn it on.  I can finally be clean again!  My dry hands are bearing the consequences of that, but I don’t care.

A kitchen! With running water!

Fires, too, have become obsolete.  Now, the only fires in my life are those from the scented candles in my apartment.  My morning alarm is set to one time rather than to two because I don’t have to worry about making a fire and giving it an hour to warm up my ger before I can leave my bed the second time.  I don’t have to sleep in my sleeping bag and in layers of blankets and clothes for when the temperature inside the ger dips to approximately the same temperature as outside.  And I don’t have to worry about maintaining the warmth of the room throughout the day, even if there are times when I can’t help but feel the urge to add more coals to the fire– the fire that isn’t there.  I was compulsive about it for so long that such an compulsion is hard to shake.  This is an apartment, I have to remind myself; it’s already heated.  Everything’s taken care of.  But I had gotten so used to taking care of everything.

Honestly, I never had any desire to live in a yurt.  I once read an article on a couple who lived in the Yukon in a round yurt with no electricity and a fire to stay warm.  They chopped and collected wood for fuel and somehow made it into a nearby town through the thick snow to restock occasionally.  It made an impression on me.  How could anyone live like that?  I thought.  They lived off the grid and so in touch with their surroundings.  I was both awed and intimidated.  I didn’t think I could ever live like that.

Yet here I am, having lived just like that through two Mongolian winters.  That couple still have me beat because a) they chose to live like that, whereas I had no say in the matter; b) they lived in a snowy place, whereas I live in the desert; and c) they chopped and collected their own wood, whereas I relied on others for both.  Still, I didn’t survive just because others made me.  I had a part in my own survival, too.

I even grew to love my ger.  I loved it because it was so different, so particular to this part of the world and to a unique way of life.  It was open during the warm months for my hashaa kids to run in and out, keeping me company.  It was a good experience.  But I can’t say I would choose it for the rest of my life.

I’m grateful for that experience.  It taught me so many lessons about life, about others, and about myself.  I think that, usually, I am one who prefers ease over hardship and luxury over challenge, which is perhaps why the ger experience was all the more necessary for me.  I had to learn that, deep down, I can do it.  I can muster an inner toughness when I need to, and I can adapt to a more difficult lifestyle of living with less and of working harder for it.

Now that I don’t have to, I will count my blessings.  I have windows!  I have so much space to practice yoga!  I don’t have to rely on people for wood and for coal and for water!  I know how to keep things clean without worrying that the coal soot or sand will settle on everything two minutes after I clean it.  I feel safe and warm and secure.  I am happy.  And there are always more reasons to be than I even realize…

An apartment just happens to be a pretty big one.

Speaking of the New Year…

The Lunar New Year just passed.  The Old Lunar Year was replaced by a New Lunar Year.  This one is called the Year of the Snake (as I wrote in my last blog), which happens to be my year because I was born in a year of the snake.  I would warn you all that this is the year I will really get going, the year I do BIG stuff because it’s MY year, but it hasn’t started on an auspicious note.  So I will tell you all about its start instead.

The ending of the Old Lunar Year was pleasant enough: my friend Chris visited me from his home in the capital of UB for a few days, during which we took turns napping on my twin-sized bed, ate from the limited selection of restaurants in my town, and otherwise spent time how we would if we were in his apartment, which is to say, we read, checked our emails, and talked occasionally.  I think we both would say it was a visit well-spent.

On his last day there, we took the train together to UB so that he could go home and so that I could get on another train in UB for my host family’s home up north.  The train from my soum to UB is 15 hours, and the train from UB to my host family’s is 10 hours.  After 25 hours on the train, I was picked up by my host father (Aav) and taken home, where my host mother (Eej) told me we would be going to UB the next day to her mother’s.  Feeling only slightly cheated of information that could have prevented my spending so much time traveling, I went to bed, determined to enjoy what I could of the experience.  (Having my four-year-old brother narrate his actions on the Lego Star Wars video game he was playing in my room helped with that.)

We spent much of the following day going to my Aav‘s parents’ home in our town and to my Eej‘s brother’s.  Only late in the afternoon did we get on the road in a packed microbus for the capital.  I was wearing my Eej‘s coat because, although oversized, it apparently looked better than my own fitted coat which was covered in coal soot.  Also, my Eej had given me some of her own non-insulated, undersized boots for me to wear to UB because mine were ripped and dirty.  Ger life is hard.  Just look at my clothes.

Despite the discomfort of sitting half on the seat and half on the air beside the seat, the micro ride wasn’t so bad.  Until the micro broke down.  The five hour ride took about 8 hours because the gear shift stopped working, so after a couple hours of trying to fix it, we had to drive in first gear the rest of the way to Grandma’s (Emee’s) apartment.  The woman in the passenger seat had already traded boots with me by then because either a) her empathy is beyond comparison, or b) my misery is not well-veiled.  It could be both.  Regardless, I arrived to Emee‘s with fairly thawed feet.

After they made sure I was fed, my Eej made up a bed for me in the apartment’s one bedroom, the space I would be sharing with my Emee and my Eej‘s only sister.  The rest of the family would spread out in the living room.  As the first one to go to bed, I was woken up around midnight by a bright light and much grunting: Emee was now getting ready for bed.  And clearly my comfort was not on her priority list.  Honestly, I just wanted to stay out of her way because I don’t think she’s ever paid me back for a major misunderstanding that happened over Pre-Service Training two summers ago.  First, there was the pinky leg massage.  She seemed to like that, though, so I consider myself acquitted for any cultural faux pas I committed at that time.  However, not much later, there was a second much more serious offense.

Allow me to digress:  I was in my room (two summers ago) when Emee walked in, carrying what looked like a notebook.  It had a stamp on the front and words in Cyrillic that didn’t mean much to me at the time because I was still learning my alphabet.  She was saying a word that sounded like, ‘Kart!  Kart!’  I thought she might be practicing a surprising knowledge of English by saying an accented, ‘Cut!  Cut!’ but simply didn’t have to materials to carry out this request herself.  Just to make sure I was understanding correctly, I made scissor-cutting motions with my hand, raised my eyebrows inquisitively, and asked, ‘Cut? Cut?’  She nodded.  I took the card.  She left my room.   I took out my scissors, wondering how she knew I even had some, and started cutting.  But before I did, I noticed that the stamp on the front of this item looked pretty official, and official things should not be cut sloppily.  So, I proceeded to cut it like I would a credit card: into small, thin slivers.   And then I went on with my life.

The next day, Emee was yelling something to me from the kitchen.  I had no idea what she was saying, especially when she started drawing rectangles on the kitchen table, so my sister had to come in and translate, which, in our pidgin language, meant looking up words in the dictionary and pointing.  The first word she pointed to was the one for ‘card.’  Yea, I don’t know what she’s talking about.  I don’t have cards.  And the second one was ‘hospital.’  Right, what hospit….  And this is when I realized my mistake.  She hadn’t been practicing any English, and she certainly hadn’t asked me to cut anything.  She had simply been telling me in Russian that she what she was holding was a card.  Her hospital card.  (At least I was right in thinking it was official.)

My eyes got big.  I looked from my sister to my Emee to my trash can.  I pulled out bits of the paper I had cut and asked, ‘Do you mean this hospital card?’  My sister gasped, Emee looked upset, everyone stood aghast.  They ordered me to bring it into the kitchen.   I bundled up all the slivers I could into my arms and carried it like I was walking a death march, putting it carefully onto the table, afraid that I could start crying at any moment.  No one breathed.  As I straightened back up, my Emee let loose loud, undeniable laughter, allowing everyone else to giggle what they had been holding in.  I laughed, too, but still felt incredibly guilty.  Later that day, when no one was around, I saw my Emee weeping at the table alone, and while I hoped beyond all hope it wasn’t my fault, I still have no idea what the reason was for her tears.

For this reason alone, I will allow my Emee all the ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘cultural faux pas’ she can muster because maybe I am partly to blame for her bad back and leg.  So, last week, after much ado, she finally went to bed in our shared bedroom, but she was up before anyone the next morning, when the light came back on, more grunting ensued, and things started falling at my feet and hitting my head.  I really don’t know why she was throwing stuff, but even if she was only getting even for my cutting up her hospital card, I could live with it.  She left soon, and I got to sleep in in peace.

The rest of the day went uneventfully.  People grazed on food, the cousins played games on smart phones, and it felt more-or-less like holidays spent with my family back in the States.  I liked the feeling.  My sister, Eej, and I took a bus from UB that evening back to our home, where I slept my last night there before heading back to UB the next morning.  I only had to return to fetch my embarrassing coat and boots.  And I also just wanted to say goodbye to my parents without feeling rushed.

While I got to spend two nights in UB, more in one place than I had spent in the previous week, I still had to leave UB relatively soon to head back south.  A trip that I had intended to be low-key and low-stress was actually the opposite with all the back-and-forth and on-and-off of public transportation there was, but I don’t regret going.  I spent the time with people who have meant something to me in my time here, and I was taken care of the whole time.  If last week at all resembles the rest of this year, then I am in for a ride.  But if I’m in good company, I won’t have to worry.

Year of the Snake, which is what I am

Sometimes, all I really need is for someone to tell me that it’s ok– that I’m not a bad person–if I don’t open my door to let my hashaa kids inside.  That I can take break every now and then for myself, to regain peace of mind, centeredness, clarity, patience.   But what if I do it all the time?

Earlier this week was New Year’s.  [For those of you still recovering from the shock of the Doomsday-that-never-happened to notice that 2013 is here.]  I was planning on spending it inside my hashaa, mostly (sadly) inside my ger.   Last year, while I spent it between a few people’s homes, I was so worried about my ger’s getting cold the whole time that I kept running back and forth between my ger and whatever home I was visiting at the time. (Thank goodness all the homes were close to where I lived.) This year, I didn’t even aspire to stay up until midnight.  I didn’t feel much in the mood to celebrate, so I didn’t do much planning.

However.

The woman who had me stay till midnight at her home last year saw me walking on New Year’s Eve day this week and, inevitably, told me to visit her home that evening.  Hoping to make an appearance and dash, I wrapped a deck of Uno cards as a gift for her daughter, went over as early as I could, and left with the excuse I was visiting more homes.  Which wasn’t a complete lie.

I also had gifts for my hashaa kids, so I had to visit each of their gers to give them.  The gift I had for the girl in the farthest ger (who’s 6) was a big bag of a lot of little things that I was re-gifting.  I am pretty darn good at re-gifting, much to the chagrin, I’m sure, of anyone who’s ever given me a gift.  There was a toy mask in there, a bottle of face wash I didn’t like, some watercolors I had never used, and some fake nails that a friend had given me for Christmas.  Come to find out, the nails were her favorite thing.  That helped lessen the guilt for re-gifting them in the first place just one week after they were given to me.

The boys (7 and 4) got watercolors, too (I bought too much at one point for a project that went awry), but instead of re-gifting (people don’t tend to give me boy-friendly gifts, not that I’d want them to), I actually purchased gifts for them: two storybooks each from a local food store.  I knew the older boy just learned to read last year, and the younger one likes pictures, so I hoped that there’d be some redeemable quality for each of them, no matter how weak (unappreciated?) I though they might turn out to be.

I shouldn’t have worried.  Though I thought their mom was just being nice by exclaiming how nice the gifts were, the boys also took to them.  The young one held the books up and excitedly started telling how they were the same ones that so-and-so had or that his classroom had or that something else I couldn’t understand had coincidentally happened, too!  The older one was less expressive but immediately bent over one on the floor and started sounding out the words aloud.  After the young one finished ‘reading’ (making up stories while flipping the pages), he decided to use the watercolors I had given.   All of my gifts were being used right in front of me!  It was better than I had expected.  I felt like I had chosen well.

The solidifying moment for my ecstasy happened a little later:  I went into the far ger to spend a few more minutes before the big year-change, and the second ger’s family came in.  While the rest of the family brought only themselves, the older boy had brought one of the books I gave and was still reading amidst the chaos of celebrating.  I can’t describe exactly what I felt in that moment, but it was a mixture of pride, nostalgia, and something sweeter and more tender than I’ve felt in a long time.

I know that I don’t always have the energy to have kids in my ger or to engage with the people in my community, but rarely– maybe not all the time– I may do something pretty ok.

I can’t be that bad of a person, right?

Leaving Mieko

Mongolia breeds dogs.  It’s something that happens when stray dogs roam the dirt walkways — I’d call them streets, but that seems a bit of a misnomer here — with no one to ‘fix’ them.  Hence, every other season or so, puppies start to join the veteran roamers, sniffing through trash piles to find scraps worth salvaging as food.  Families occasionally snag one of these scrap-sniffers to tie up in their yard as their new guard dog, but many are left to the elements.  This is how we found Mieko.

It was the middle of the day, but he wasn’t roaming.  He was curled up next to an apartment building, protecting himself from the wind and from the cold, a fluffy ball of fur that barely moved when we approached it.  We weren’t looking for a dog; in fact, we had just given up on a different puppy on the other side of town who consistently ignored us whenever we tried getting his attention.  We called his name (Yoda, in case you were wondering– one of us is on a Star Wars kick); threw bits of cookie at him; would have tried picking him up if he hadn’t’ve run away every time we got close; and even chased away the bully dogs who picked on him.  And still.  Nothing.  Not even a curious sniff.  So we decided against taking this scrawny, dirty, white-furred runt of a dog because our attempt at saving him may actually do more harm than the methods of surviving he had found for himself.  Maybe– by some strange irony– what we took for denseness may actually be resilience, a coping mechanism he needed to find food in that trash heap amongst the other foragers.  Thus, with heaviness of heart, we bade farewell to this creature who never even knew we had said hello.

Then we found Mieko.  I guess we were both still in puppy-mode because it didn’t take much discussing to decide to pick him up.  [The little discussion we did have was about his name: I thought a French- or Italian-inspired name would suit him well, something along the lines of Francesco, or Alfonso, or Nico.  I even suggested Kanye, after a recent hip hop kick we both went through.  But because one of us was against my suggestions, and because Nico was misheard as a Japanese-inspired name, we settled on Mieko.]  At least he noticed when we were around; this was a step up from the last one we abandoned.  And he was just so cute, all fur and little ears and a tail that curled just so.  We lured him back to the apartment with chicken bits, just arrived in a care package from the States.  Like the good pet-owners we quickly became, we bathed him, set up a doggy bed area (really, we just put cardboard on the floor), and designated two bowls for food and water.  And then we let him sleep.  In fact, that’s all he did.  He just slept.  He did pee a few times, pooped once (no worms!), but then he went back to sleeping.   But we couldn’t help but watch him, partly out of concern for potential health issues and partly out of infatuation.   He was so small and adorable, another living being in our living space, and dormant feelings of being needed and maternalism and nurturing and all that crept up so that we couldn’t keep our eyes off him.

And yet.  Morning came, and we thought it best to get him started on a routine early on: let him roam during the day (during school hours was our logic), and bring him in to the warmth of the apartment during the night.  Out he goes, and immediately we feel bad.  What if he freezes?  What if he doesn’t eat?  What if we ruined him by cleaning him and showing him good food and warmth so that now he can’t survive because he lost all instincts for survival, and it’s all our fault because we were greedy and selfish?  We didn’t have to speak these thoughts.  The mutual unease was enough to convey them.

Carrying our guilt, we searched for him that afternoon.  We found him right where we picked him up the day before, only this time he was scurrying around, perky-tailed and alert.  He even ran to us when we called!  We just wanted to make sure he was doing ok… because we wouldn’t be taking him back.  Perhaps it would be better if we left him, we thought.  We can get him next week, when our own schedules are back to normal.   

This was hard.  I wanted to say one last goodbye, so the next day, I made sure we found him again.  Bigger dogs were hanging around, along with the tiniest puppy and the weakest rat-faced dog.  Mieko was bouncy and chipper, playing with the bigguns and the wee ones.  He remembered us, and his spirit lifted mine.   I could leave him now because he would be all right.

…but is it really all right?  Was it right for us to want to ‘save’ or even to ‘help’ one of these animals in the first place?  Isn’t that the very language I hate when people talk about my service in the Peace Corps or international aid in general, ‘saving’ and ‘helping’ the people of other countries?  Is it really better to bring one of them (an animal, that is) into a warm apartment and to clean it up, to give it gourmet food, than to leave it outside, where it has what it needs to make it through the winter into spring?  Which would be better?  Is it out of selfishness that I long to take one in?  Or is it out of selfishness that I leave them all outside, out of my space and therefore  my realm of responsibility?  Where does that realm even end, and why do these questions resemble the questions I find myself asking about my time here in this country?  Is my experience with Mieko a metaphor for my experience in the Peace Corps?  I came here with ideas and a different way of living and some cool things, but the only change is that now I’m recognized whenever I approach.   Is that sustainability?

I don’t know what to do with these questions; I have no answers for them.  After years of being known for anything but for a love of animals, I found myself almost crying over a puppy — a once-dirty mutt found in the streets (dirt walkways) of Mongolia, no less! — because I wouldn’t get to pet him anymore.  I have no excuse, for these questions go much deeper than simple pet ownership.  I am left confused.  Confused, and longing, and sad.

All for leaving a little dog named Mieko.

Back to the Real World

Whatever that is.

During a Skype conversation the other morning, I mentioned that–usually– I’m supposed to be at school by 10, which sometimes (often?) means I get there by 11 or so.  Mongolian time, of course.  I’m integrated.   But the response was a laughing, ‘You’ll have a hard time when you get back to the real world.’  Ha, ha.  Funny, funny.  But then I thought about it:

The real world?  What is that?

I’ve been of the opinion for some time that we as humans have an amazing capacity to adjust.  We adjust to the strangest or most uncomfortable circumstances because we have to– that’s just what we do.   When my sister and I traveled around Ireland, we got used to the transitory nature of living.  When I was in grad school, I got used to staying up late reading and writing papers and waking up early to make it to work before I had to be in class before I had to volunteer before I had to stay up late reading and writing papers.  When I moved to Mongolia, I got used to waking up early to make a fire to stay warm, to wearing ten layers of clothing to bed and to school and to the outhouse, to not having work to do after work (and sometimes during).  Things become normalized where before they were ridiculous, strenuous, unharmonious to our previous lives.  Where we are at the moment is the realest of real to us.  It is our world because– aside from our memories from the past and our visions of the future– it’s all we have.

So, would that not make it the real world?

My question stems from this: when I get back to what the questioner considers the Real World, I agree that I will have to make some adjustments.  For example, making it to work on time and (lamentably) earlier than I’m used to going now; staying at work later than I do now (even after dark!); being held accountable for work I do in a way I’m not here (am I, here?).

And yet.

I will also (probably) not have to leave my place of residence with enough time to walk through sand and glass and open construction sites to make it to my work; I will not have to make it home from work in time to make a fire to thaw the water that may have frozen while I was gone; I will not have to sleep in long underwear with a fleece jacket under 2 fleece blankets inside a sleeping bag zipped over my head underneath a camel hair blanket under another fleece blanket under a normal comforter just to stay warm through the night; I will not have to ask others constantly to buy my water so I can wash my hands and clothes and dishes, or my wood and coal so I can make those fires; I will not have to translate everything I hear in my head nor translate everything in my head that I want to be heard.  And work!  Having work that I feel competent doing, that I feel understood doing, that I feel is needed and called for and supported by someone… yes, I will welcome that.  I will wake up early.  I will speak in my native tongue.  And I will do something.  There will be challenges in that there Real World.  But, boy howdy, I’d be darned if they are any more challenging than what feels so real to me in this here world I’m living in.

So maybe life is just transitioning from one world to another, but I don’t think that makes any of them less real.  Each has its struggles, but, so far, I’ve found ways to deal with them, if not to overcome them, with every new turn and with every unexpected shift.

I guess all I’m saying is that, well, I’m here, so let me be here.  When I get there, I’ll do my best to be there.  But there’s no point in rushing, and there’s not much more point to comparing.

The real worlds.

That feels better.

Classroom Doodles

When I write, it’s usually inspired.  Not inspiring necessarily, just sparked by an event that happened: inspired.  I try to hone into the special moments, the ones that make me think, or cry, or smile, or wonder at the absurdity of it all.  But I haven’t written in a while (logically reasoning that I haven’t been inspired in a while) because it just seems like nothing is different anymore.  Everything’s the same.  I walk the same path, and the same boring things go on.  At least, that’s what I told myself.  But maybe I just got lazy.

Throughout this first school quarter,  I ‘co-taught’ English classes twice a week with my English teacher friend at the private school (I say ‘co-taught’ because it’s still her class; I just stand there and smile as I hear, ‘My father name Ganbold.  I am… 7… no… 17 years old.  I like play basketball.  I can… drive a car.  I can’t… smoking.’).  I can’t say I was ever too eager to do this, but I wanted to help my friend who is overworked and overpressured to have foreign teachers work with her.  I am foreign.  I am not a teacher.  But I help.

So here I am in a 4th grade class, dodging the two-toned ‘HI’s and the gawking stares as we all wait for class to begin, when I see in the far corner in the front row an eternal, tooth-bearing, wide-as-I’ll-get-out grin from one of the students.  (I say ‘eternal’ because it was there when I arrived and there when I left, and it was there the whole time in between.)  This smile was directed at me, and it had a different quality than the rest.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that the smile’s owner greatly enjoyed his lessons and that he had cerebral palsy (or something with similar characteristics).  When the teacher asked for volunteers to introduce themselves, his was one of the first hands to go up.  When the teacher asked for the whole class to sing songs, he sang out, loud and proud.  When he would lose the games and sit down, he would practice his English– singing the ABCs, telling me his father’s name, whatever– and smile.  I was so happy that no one made fun of his labored speech, and he did everything so cheerfully that it was hard not to smile with him around.

Already, I was in a good mood.  It didn’t matter to me that these kids didn’t remember the English words for ‘age’ or even ‘is.’   They were fun.  My face wore a genuine smile the whole time.  Even when I saw a couple kids in the back row drawing, I thought, ‘Look how creative this group is!  Boy, they are really something.’  And I’d continue to smile.   Between activities, one of the doodlers made his way up to me to give me what he’d been working on– a drawing of a Mongolian town with the various buildings labeled– and made his way back to his seat as his peers gave jealous stares.  It’s true, I thanked him.  And I smiled.  But I tried not to make a big deal out of it by setting it on my lap and pretending to pay attention to the task at hand.

Eternal Grin couldn’t bear it.  He started flipping furiously through his notebook for a blank page, and when he found a suitable one, he ripped it out and started writing.  Because I was watching through my peripheral vision, I couldn’t see what he was writing, but I saw him flip the page over and start over on the opposite side.  Then– still smiling– I saw him reach forward.  I looked and took what he was offering me: a white page with the word, ‘Hi,’ carefully written on one side and an ‘H’ started on the other.   I thanked him quietly, smiled wide, and gave him a thumbs-up as I mouthed the word he wrote.  The class went on and ended, and– smiling– I bade farewell to my new friends, sending a special wave to Eternal Grin.

Inspiring, that’s what that was.  I had been inspired.  It’s not the kind of thing that happens to me everyday.  Maybe I should get more classroom time (not likely).  Or maybe I should just sit in front of the private school, waiting to make young friends (creepy).  Or maybe I should just be more aware and present in the activities I’m already involved in (possible).

Regardless, this moment had broken the usual monotony: I couldn’t stop smiling the rest of the day.