The final stretch

            Our COS dates are announced and we’re only a measly 50 days away from the COS conference! Of course, I realize that these both mean very little to anyone who hasn’t been turned into a Peace Corps clone. So, for the people out there who haven’t adopted the collective identity, COS stands for Closure of Service and the conference is a sort of “fyi debriefing” and explanation on “how to leave the country” (paperwork, visa stuff, official PC reports, etc.). It’s a big deal, okay?

            What the whole thing really means, though, is that the 60-some other Americans and I who came here in 2012 are about to be released back into the American population. I know how that sounds. Like we’re a bunch of genetically mutated dogs about to be loosed into the wild to spread our mutilated genes. I won’t lie; I’m looking forward to it and have been for a while now.

            My reasons may not be exactly what are expected. I mean the obvious ones are there, of course. Family, friends, Idaho. What surprises me is how little those reasons have a physical draw on me. Don’t be offended. I miss each and every one of you to death. But I can’t lie and say that every day away from my life with you has been agony. In some cases, actually, it has been enlightening. It’s in the nature of my relationship with you that is so fascinating. I compare my relationships with all of my friends and family at home to the friends and “family” I have here. And I just don’t get it.

            There are people here whose names I don’t know, whose jobs I have little comprehension of, and whose lives will continue without me. The time I have spent must seem meaningless to them. Yet they say I am a part of them, that I have become Mongolian. They tell me they’ll cry when I leave. They ask if I’ll remember them and when I will come back again.

            It’s truly touching, but I can’t help wondering: can two years in a life of seventy really mean something? I guess I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I won’t change anything. Not on my own, at least. I’m here simply making foreigners visible to a country that has spent the last century in isolation, both by its own choice and by the indifference of the outside world. Yet here they are, drawing the eyes of many foreign powers due to discoveries of unutilized resources. And now they pay the price for choosing isolation. Their lack of relations, either good or bad, leaves them susceptible to being muscled about by the rest of the world.

            And so, they call to America, whose philanthropic endeavors are well enumerated, to ask for a helping hand. America, in turn, sends people like me and says “Go help them develop!…and make sure whatever you develop is sustainable!…oh, and here’s a bunch of strategies the big wigs at Peace Corps Washington dreamt up to make you an effective volunteer. Because, you know, they served in Somalia back in 1978 and that’s pretty much what it’ll be like for you in Mongolia in 2012…see you in two years.”

            So I spent two years here. I tried to spearhead projects and failed countless times. I got exhausted and frustrated. I sometimes feigned sickness to escape and pretend I never left America. Despite those times, I have remained in the eye of many Mongolians. It’s like a bad reality TV show experiment. But it works, and that’s why Peace Corps remains a prominent government entity. Because I will go back and remember not my failures and not my desires to disappear, but my incidental stardom.

            It’s a problem returned Peace Corps volunteers tell all of us still in country. “When you get back, no one will care about you anymore. Nobody will want to work with you. You won’t get invitations to eat with the governor. You won’t matter. You’ll go back to being a face in the crowd.” Well…maybe I will feel that way. But I’ve always been more of the disappear-into-the-woods-Walden-type. That’s actually what I wanted from my Peace Corps experience. My mom even expressed her concerns before I left. She told me she didn’t want me to just wander off one day, sit in the woods, start contemplating life, and never come back. Well, mom, you needn’t have worried. I can barely make it into the woods before a Mongolian wanders by and asks me what I’m doing. I can’t make it more than one kilometer on a run out of town without a motorcycle coming along to “give me a ride back”.

            So, I know why I am ready to go home. I get to retreat into myself again. I can live an independent life. I’ll come out of my shell by choice and not necessity. And I won’t have to explain why I am the way I am.

America 2.0

So the school year has started and life in Mongolia is the same but entirely different. That may seem strange, but of course it isn't. The place is the same. The people are the same. The students (other than some new 5th graders and some graduated 9th graders) are the same. The weather is the same. The daily routine is the same.

And that is exactly why things are so different. I am experiencing all of these things again, but (dare I say) this time with savvy. I'm no longer the outsider here. Not completely, at least. I can express opinion and laugh at certain idiocies in Mongolian culture. It's not intolerance. It's like laughing at Miley Cyrus licking a hammer. When you think about the culture that allowed that shit to happen, you have a bit of a crisis of belonging. Like "do I really consider myself a part of that?" And as much as I'd like to share some of the idiocies I've seen here, it doesn't seem fair to you or to Mongolian culture. And that's the point, I think.

I don't belong to America anymore. Which is really strange to me. I can laugh about America with my American friends, I can laugh about Mongolia with my Mongolian friends. But if it crosses cultures, if the laughter is directed at the other, I find myself easily offended. If one of my friends here calls me a "rich, stingy American" in a laughing way, my mind descends, my palms itch and I look at him silently.

Well hello there, American Ben, nice of you to show up. What's got you so offended? You are a rich American. At least compared to everyone around you now. And no one would be at fault for calling you stingy at some point. Well that's not the problem. He doesn't belong to that culture. He has no right to criticize it. But you have a right to criticize his because you've lived in it for 18 months? Damn straight, I do! I've earned that as a PCV here. That's the nature of belonging to a culture. So. The nature of belonging to a culture is...being able to criticize it. That's right.
Hmmm.

This is certainly true for Americans. We are a self-deprecating culture. Why else would we create shows like "Wipeout", get the fattest and dumbest Americans to participate, then air it all around the world? Did we think "Wipeout" would make us look smarter? Did we think it showed us in a better light? No, we wanted to make fun of ourselves and knew we could make money doing it.
But that deep sentiment isn't true of all cultures. Mongolians may laugh at themselves, but they don't ridicule themselves. Their idiocies lie in tradition. Sure it doesn't make sense to share a cup in celebrations. We know all about health and the spread of germs. But this is our culture. They laugh at themselves with pride. We know the world does it that way. We know it makes more sense to do it that way. We know that's smarter. But our parents and their parents did it this way. It may be antiquated, it may be more dangerous, hell, we may look stupid doing it. Whatever, still gonna do it.

I have to ask myself, do I make fun of Mongolian culture with pride too? When they tell me that eating sugary, dried milk is good for my teeth, do I decline laughing at their foolishness or do I accept laughing at our foolishness? And do I sometimes actually believe things that I know are wrong? Truth is, I'm American at heart and Mongolian in reality. I can't help sarcastically deploring my culture, but I can't ignore it's influence over me either.
Hey Ben, when was the last time you used your foot to move something? When was the last time you stepped on someone's foot and didn't shake their hand? What?!? That shit's bad juju, man. Dirty. Rude. Freaking dirty rude...God, who came up with that brilliant idea? I'm a runner. My feet are as useful a part of me as my arms, maybe more so. And since when did accidentally tapping someone's foot mean you were mortal enemies? It was a freaking accident man, sorry. Welcome to socialization, round two.

The Summer

A lot has happened in the past three months...Kanye released his new album, to receive incredible peer reviews and totally flop in the public's eye. Kendrick Lamar proclaimed himself king. I'm certain something happened with Lady Gaga. Justin Vernon, after leaving Bon Iver behind, released a new album with yet another side project (look it up, he has like 5+ including a whole lotta cameos on Yeezus). Plus, Avicii got his shit together and released another song that literally grabs you by your bumping heart and pulls you to the dance floor (and he's featuring some R&B guy you've probably never heard of). And a whole hell of a lot went down on the other side of the world...after all, it only took a couple of weeks for Avicii's song to make it all the way to Hennesey's Club deep in the heart of UB.

Mongolia's a teenage boy going through puberty. A lot of stuff is changing how things function, new things are being produced, but the body hasn't learned how to respond to these new stimuli. So I often find myself confronted by people with exciting goals, but no realistic idea of how to achieve them. How do we start a night club in our soum? Well, we only have about 1000 people in the actual town... Ben, I want to build a man-made lake. A what?!!... Managing expectations is a bigger part of my job than I originally thought.
But the most rewarding part is planning something with Mongolians and seeing the twisted smirk of achievement on their faces. It's the most beautiful form of greed in the world, this greed to fulfill one's dreams. And I can see the mirror of their looks on my face as I witness their success. All of us sitting around, grinning like fools and smirking at one another. Like we've been in cahoots all along, bridging our fingers, and whispering in dark corners of a bar, obscured by a haze of smoke.

So yeah, the summer went pretty well. I got a break from being a part of Mongolian culture, and got to see it from the tourist side with the parents. It's funny seeing the other side of the coin, when Mongolians are outnumbered by foreigners and how they act. Where I'm normally forced to sit on the fringes of a conversation, eyes darting from one speaker to another, guessing at what's being said, I can see my Mongolian friends trying to guess at our conversation and trying to guess the appropriate response to any request. Most of all, I just appreciated how well they managed to navigate being with my parents. It makes me feel as though I might just have taught them something about being around people from another culture. Through experience, of course. I could never claim that I enlightened them to anything, unless by accident. It feels good nonetheless.

Now the second school year starts, and I'm already feeling more comfortable with my position in my school. What I do this year is more in my hands, which, in turn, puts more power in Peace Corps's hands. It's like any other job. The first year, you're the freshman. You're everybody's bitch, but you have no idea how to do anything anyone tells you. Then the second year rolls around and you know the ropes. You know the patterns of the rises and falls. You know what you're supposed to do.

Then again, winter is coming...

In the Middle

My school year is winding down. And with it I find myself anxiously awaiting change. There was a time in my life where a sequence of coincidences kept occurring to me. Though, certainly, they may be said to be nothing more than the exaggeration of memory. They held no meaning to me at the time. I simply found the coincidences a game. Shortly after realizing that this thing kept happening to me, I kept trying to make it happen. Not because it felt good, not because I enjoyed it, but because I could. So I did.

            The first time it happened, I was in Math class. Around 10:30 in the morning, late in the school year. Pre-calculus. That level of math wasn’t required at any public high school in the state, but any kid hoping to go to college knew he’d have to at least make it there by graduation. And so I spent those mornings seated close to the front, on the far right side of the class. A place to stay engaged when needed, and close enough to the fringes to disappear when needed. I sat behind a short, redhead. She was a soccer player; athletic, thin, but not overtly muscular. She had soft features piercing green eyes and, as is the case for most redheads, was plastered with soft brown freckles. A perfect distraction for when derivatives lost conscious hold.

            But the year was coming to an end, and, being advanced students, the teacher had finished the requisite lessons for the year. The class had become a breeding ground for polite leisure activities: chess, drawing, quiet gossiping. I chose to occupy my freedom listening to my iPod and staring vaguely into the hair of the girl before me. “American Girl” was blaring through my headphones when I felt a desperate impatience to check the screen of the iPod. Not knowing the exact reason for the disturbance in my emotion, I flicked off the “hold” switch and the screen lit. One minute, 46 seconds. Exactly halfway through.

            I discovered Tom Petty around my freshman year, and became obsessed with him ever since. Every album, every live recording. But this was early on in my discovery. My heart was nowhere near filled. Yet there I was, listening to one of my favorite tracks, desperately hoping for the end so I could move to the next. Like a zipper track had suddenly appeared along my front, someone were unzipping me and had just reached my middle. Each side of my brain screaming to be torn from the other already.

            The agony I felt in that moment was fleeting. Soon I was sitting comfortably again, staring back into a deep bronze and feeling my heart settle. But the moment was not lost. In the weeks following, I found myself, always unsuspecting, torn from the middle of a song, staring at the progress on the iPod screen, praying the next half of the song was already over. But the tear I felt through my center opened more and more easily with every instance, like two pieces of over-used Velcro, the two never quite sticking back together. But, with their overuse, the scream of separating them quieted. Each side of my brain numbed from the other. Then it became a game, tearing myself apart consciously while listening to my favorite artists. I was indifferent. The tear had already occurred, my nervous system already frayed. What did it matter if I started tearing it myself?

            And now, here I sit, halfway through this experience…staring down at the face of the iPod screen.

I don't know what any of these mean anymore

The weather has started to get a bit warmer in the landlocked, dark world of Mongolia. And with the weather shift comes a strange little release. Like I curled up for winter, folding myself over and over like a piece of paper. Maybe I had hoped the layers of myself would keep my warm. But now I can spread myself out, run my fingers over the creases to half-assed iron them out...I can embrace the sunlight again.

Spring has always seemed a lazy season to me, quite the opposite of all the messages that nature sends. Indeed, I even notice greater energy levels in myself with the resurgence of the Sun. People around me begin to prepare for the great "Spring Cleansing", animals slowly emerge from hibernation to begin preparing for the next winter, and the plants begin the hard work of thriving and reproducing. I feel myself get caught up in all the bustle, but my mind retains its wintering lethargy. Like it's the last thing to awake and admit to the change of seasons. And so, rather than jump-start itself, my mind grabs ahold of anything that shares in its fogginess.

Now, if you knew me at all (which you probably do...at least better than I know myself), you would know that music haunts me, no matter where I might go. No doubt, then, music is the first thing my mind wheedles through, searching for noise that seems profound at that moment. Of course, music and its meaning are entirely illusory. When was the last time you felt the same way about a song as someone else? And no, I'm not talking about the Taylor Swift bullshit you listen to with friends. I'm not talking about "Somebody That I Used to Know" (unless, of course, you actually listened to it at home and it moved you in some way, while you bobbed your head, headphones pulsing). I don't mean the music that brings us together...no party jams, no Bieber. I mean the music that sets us apart. The music that can actually mean something to us...personally. An association of noise we have with ourselves and no one else.

Well, I like to pretend that I go through 'musical seasons'. Like emotional seasons, but something I can visit and re-visit somewhat consciously. I was surprised to discover that I have gone through many musical seasons already, while in Mongolia. I went through a season of snow and hail interrupted by a month of sun and warmth, to inane joy and chanting, to an interesting season of violence and pacifism, to confusion, loss and desperation, and finally arriving at something akin to waking into a daze. Like a hangover from too much sleep. There's just nothing quite like sharing yourself with something so entirely that it begins to take on a part of you. Where you begin to lose yourself in it and it becomes lost within you. Something like love, but more powerful. Where the loss of one means the actual dissolution of the other.

Then again, this could all simply be a product of the current season. Maybe when I push the sky away, a new clarity will reveal itself in the light of a new season.

9 Months in Mongolia...in 4 paragraphs

When I first touched down in Mongolia, the view from the airport was something like staring out into an abyss. I hardly remember seeing the city, and can barely recall the people who met and greeted us out on the concrete sidewalk outside the terminal. There was one thing, however, that stuck in my mind and I have no idea why. I remember a raised road that went above the end of the taxi kiosk on the right-hand side. I remember the stone arch-way it created as a kind of exit for the taxis on their way to the city. I remember feeling at that moment that I was crossing something significant, though I was much too caught up in the chaos of the moment to really think about it. And, of course, once in the micro-bus headed to a tourist ger-camp outside the city, I hardly noticed even crossing over that threshold. But there was something about the arch that stuck in my mind long afterwards...

And so I went on transitioning into Mongolian life as a Peace Corps volunteer. I went through the first 3 months learning the language, adjusting to the culture, and sitting in these classes just praying for the end so I could go read my book. I tried to be "up-for-anything" as much as possible, but that shit is tiring when you're already emotionally fragile and physically exhausted. It was in those moments of desperate frustration that my mind would return to that arch. It began to represent the gateway to Mongolia for me. Like the next time I see that arch, I'll be going the opposite way through it. I'll be going home! It was like an illusory finish line at the end of a marathon. You're only about 2 miles in and already praying for the next 4 to 6 hours to be over already.

But it doesn't end, and soon enough those thoughts of the finish line disappear, replaced by insane kind of meanderings of someone who consciously put himself into this holding pattern. You get thoughts about childhood, and walking through stone piles created by giants. You get thoughts about snow drifting through cracks in windows and how they represent some weird metaphor for...wait, what was that entry about, again?

Now here I sit, about 3/8 of the way through, almost able to see the halfway point off in the distance. And suddenly I find myself running beneath that archway again. It doesn't process immediately. Like a double-take, but much more subtle. There's a nice Mongolian word for it...hamaagui. It means something like "it doesn't matter" or "I don't mind". But the Mongolian word doesn't have a subject. There isn't an actor in mind. It's more like that actual thing, that actual moment, has lost its own meaning. Not that the actor sees less meaning in it. So, on my return back from my short vacation, I passed beneath the arch once again. But I didn't feel that I had returned to this place, I hadn't returned to my Peace Corps life. I wasn't re-starting. I hadn't even left. Maybe it was like seeing a first love again for the first time. The positive and negative emotions had disappeared. There was only a last little string that held me to it. And there just isn't an emotion to describe it in English.

To the Winter

            I decided to write this blog for all of those people who are mad at me for not writing in such a very long time (which could, honestly, just be me). My lack of communication is for no other reason than I have not had the time. Which is more to say that a time for me to write just hasn’t come. To be honest, I have had more than enough time to be able to write something. It just hasn’t come from me.

            Maybe my mind has gone into hibernation with my body. The weather here is a high of about -20 Celsius, which is something like -4 Fahrenheit (today it’s right around a warm -34 F). Each trip to the outhouse is like a little bout of masochism. Each morning waking up like, I assume, a pig would in a butcher’s freezer…if it could open its eyes. It comes as no surprise, then, that my ass has suffered a minor burn from leaning too close to the stove during one of my morning fires. But I can’t really be upset with myself. In the end, all I get is a comedic story to tell about how I burned my ass on a Mongolian stove. Plus I avoided burning polyester and elastic into my ass by having my long underwear riding a little too low…phew.

            And that’s about the biggest news I’ve had since the last time I wrote. There have been plenty of ups and downs, plenty of drama, and a bearable amount of stress. Funny how everyday frustrations can disappear just through recurring every day. Lack of communication skills has not prevented me from meeting very interesting, friendly, and loving people. And it hasn’t prevented me from meeting the opposites either. Mongolia is not such a different world. Culture, seen one way, is a people’s way of dealing with the problems that the world presents. But most of our problems are the same. It’s just the interpretation and response to these problems that makes us appear different. Take the cold as an example. Americans still deal with the problem…just as much as Mongolians. The difference is that Americans have a different response to the cold. They leave an electrically heated home to go out and start the car 10 minutes before they leave so it can warm up so they don’t have to deal with freezing cold steering wheels and leather seats. Then they walk the, maybe, 100 yards to their place of work (which is also heated).

            Mongolians, however, do not have reliable housing situations where electric heating could be considered safe. So, they employ the strategy of making consistent fires, even throughout the night, and layering when they leave the house. A thick pair of Camel hair socks, fur-lined boots, two pairs of long-underwear, jeans, a long-sleeved undershirt, a dress shirt, a jacket, and a traditional del (basically an oversized, fur-lined bathrobe). But no hat, unless they have made it to UB where they can buy one of those traditional Russian hats for around $200 American, or a rip-off in the black market that’s made with dog hair for about $20. Then they walk to work, where, if they are lucky (like I happen to be here), the building is heated.

            Their difficulties have little to do with a lack of personal money. Many Mongolians have cars and could afford to drive to work every morning if they chose to do so (and some do). But it is seen as frivolous here (more so in small towns where globalized culture has less of an impact). After all, most residents of small towns live within a 15-minute walk of their workplace; and, those that don’t live in the countryside as herdsmen. Plus, the non-paved roads make it almost more time-consuming to drive from one side of town to the other. Fact is, it’s hard to compare America to Mongolia. The only things Mongolians can’t typically afford are American import items (here, an iPod that costs $250 in America, costs about $400). Another example. I bought a 1 TB hard drive for $100 in the US, but a 250 GB hard drive costs $150 here. Supply and demand, I suppose. It probably ends up being American ex-pats or tourists who buy these things in Mongolia anyways. It’s a very new experience living in a country that is developing so quickly. Peace Corps volunteers just 5 years ago must have had a very different experience. I often find myself wondering what it was like for them…I highly doubt many kept blogs or even used the internet at all. But here I am, sitting on Facebook, checking up on friends, Facetiming with my family. 3^rd world?? Huh.

Well, I think I’ve had enough for the day. Love to all, Ben