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.
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