What It Means To Be A Peace Corps Volunteer (In Azerbaijan)

What it means to be a Peace Corps Volunteer (in Azerbaijan):

When traveling (or if you live in a city and discover new people on a daily basis), you will meet people who want to know your life story.  They will be charmed (or dumbfounded) by your speaking of their language (little known by foreigners).  If you're sociable, a bus driver might ask you to be his guest and buy you lunch.  You will be invited to strangers homes and be their guest while you eat (and eat and eat).  When you think you can't eat any more.  You eat some more.

While in classes, you will laugh.  You will find happiness when students discover an "ah-ha" moment and you will find frustration or sadness when you need to ask a student to leave or tell a student they cannot attend a class.  You may be haunted by that moment for a few more days (weeks/months).  You will find sadness when a female student stops attending classes because she recently became engaged and no longer has permission to attend.  You will find excitement when a student leaves for a program abroad they applied for and were accepted to.

You will find harassment.  People who follow you home or invade your personal space.  You will discover moments of fear and uncertainty. 

You will encounter moments of pure bliss, when after months of engaging in a conversation on a certain topic, finally, (finally!) a moment awakens an awareness in the individual you were trying to reach.

You will attempt a project and fail.  You will start again and attempt a project and fail.  You will attempt a project again. And fail.  You will attempt a project again and fail, miserably.  You will attempt a project again.  And succeed.  You will learn persistence.

You will be loved and you will love.

You will listen to the advice from others and follow it.  You will listen to the advice of others and defy it.  You will begin to discover your own way in your community and the boundaries you can push and others which you follow to the letter.  

On bus trips, depending on the amount of tea and coffee you've consumed that day, you will find yourself in a situation which requires you to use a public rest area.  Rest areas consist of a few bricks over a hole in the ground.  If there's a line, you'll be able to hang out while other people take their turn squatting over the hole.  You will learn how to pee while being observed and the subtle art of looking anywhere other than at the other person who is peeing while you're waiting in line.  You will learn to get over any onlooker stage-fright and learn to pee quickly, mostly as a form of self-preservation, because the smell will, most certainly, kill you.

You will find there are either not enough hours in the day or far too many.

You will find generosity.  People who are willing to help you find a street or escort you to a place you cannot find.  You will discover people who are willing to come to your home when you have a leaky pipe or have been harassed by men who have frightened you so wildly, you called someone to come over.  You will have people who invite you to their home for dinner or lunch (repeatedly).

You will cry.  Sometimes for no reason. And you will feel stupid.

You will work with amazing people.  People who are excited and eager to listen.  Sometimes these aren't the people you expected to work with or the people you are initially assigned to.

You will work with people you secretly pray will be promoted, because if you secretly prayed they'd get hit by a bus and publicly wrote about it, people would judge you.

You will learn how to do laundry by hand, to unplug anything that uses electricity before leaving your house for the day, to heat your home with the stove, to live without dependable electricity, central heating or window fans.  You will learn how (very) much you can live without.

You will be angry.  At situations you have no control over, at situations which are particularly delicate and frustrating and in which you cannot express your anger. Which will make you angrier.

You will take great pleasure in having English novels in your possession.  Holding that book and reading in bed will be one of the greatest experiences of your life.

  

You will find new members of your family.  With them you will laugh and hug and share in each other's lives.  If you have host siblings, and you consider them family, you will both love them and be frustrated by them.  Especially if they are 17 year old twin boys (who you adore! but argh!).

You will discover a difference in the person you were during your first months at site and the person you become after a year, and although I don't know it yet, most likely after two years.  You will find confidence and assurance in your site or in your work and begin to feel less trepidatious or anxious.  You will find changes in yourself, mostly for the better, but you constantly wonder.

You will laugh.  Sometimes at silly (SILLY) things you see people do.  Sometimes at yourself.  Sometimes with other people.  Sometimes in someone's general direction.  Laughter and humor are paramount.

You will lose some of your English and you will have occasions where you speak to native English speakers in a slow English which you typically reserve for your non-native student speakers or friends (perhaps while on a Skype call or Gvideo chat with someone you find particularly good-looking or attractive); in these moments, you will feel especially idiotic.

You will wonder about the work you're doing (or lack of work you're doing).  You'll wonder if it's serving a purpose and if you're doing what you came to do.  You'll start to wonder what exactly it was you came to do.  

You will make incredible friendships.  These may be with people in your community or with other Peace Corps Volunteers.  They will provide you with incredible support and kindness.

You will discover, when you love what you're doing, the hours and moments of your work fly by and in approaching each month of service will exclaim "It's ______ already?!"

You will find moments of true, unadulterated, embarrassment.  Embarrassment which you feel so keenly, its effects are felt long after the moment has passed, especially if you're lucky enough to have someone around to remind you.

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is a challenge.  It is a blessing. A curse.  It is opportunity and defeat.  It is learning and teaching.  It is happiness and anger and frustration.  It is joy and love and elation.  Being a Peace Corps Volunteer brings out our best selves and has the potential to reveal our worst.  It challenges our patience, our views and beliefs.  It gives us hope.  It gives us sadness.  It is humbling.  It is the discovery of our world's corners and crevices; areas of light and darkness we didn't know existed.  It is humility.  It is embarrassment and awkwardness.  It is development; those of friendship, community, business and family.  Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is a series of memories, moments and lessons which are guaranteed to last a lifetime, for both those who have touched our lives and for those whose lives we have touched.