Nicole, a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Kyrgyz Republic, is currently working on a girls’ empowerment through sports project. Saturday and Sunday afternoons, her girls play soccer at a gym in Bishkek. After an hour of practice, they spend a half an hour to an hour drinking tea and having informal conversation about different problems in the country.
“This was taken during my pre-service training. I was living in a town in Kyrgyzstan for the first 3 months of my service, until I moved to my permanent site. These were girls whom I made friends with when we weren’t learning language or going to hub site for technical sessions. We went on walks, played hopscotch, jump rope, and occasionally ran over to the soccer fields to take on the boys in a little pick up game. It was always nice to come home after a long day to these girls running down the street screaming my name and asking me to play with them.”
“This photo was taken in my village. In Kyrgyzstan they celebrate the spring holiday of Nooruz, which is the old Persian New Year (celebrated in Kyrgyzstan on March 20th). The traditions of Nooruz were lost during the Soviet times so we had some of the community elders come and show us how to make Sumolok (the traditional food of Nooruz). This is a picture of 3 of the elders who were helping us discover the lost traditions of this spring holiday.”
“Here is Azamat, hiking back up the hill with my snowboard for another run. Azamat was helping us collect firewood for a winter tourism project deep in the Terskey Ala-Too range of the Tien Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan. At the end of the day, our work completed, he started asking me about my snowboard. ‘You want to try?’ I asked him. ‘Of course!’ he replied. So I strapped him in and sent him down a mellow little hill, and he screamed with joy as he rode powder for the first time in his life. ‘Whoooooo!’ It was a moment that bridged our cultures and broke down barriers. He took five more runs that evening. He was hooked.”
“This photo was taken in a marshrutka in Kyrgyzstan. I had no idea who this man was until I sat next to him ready to go to the eastern region of Kyrgyzstan. We sat next to each other for 4 hours talking about his family, where he was from, why I was in Kyrgyzstan, if I liked Kyrgyzstan, and if I had found a Kyrgyz boyfriend yet. At one point during our trip he looked over my shoulder as I was looking through my phone, and he had asked me if I had any photos of my family. I immediately started showing him pictures of my parents, brother, and my house. I think it was his first time seeing how an iPhone worked. This was the kind of man who lived up in the mountains herding his sheep day in and day out. At this point we had become close enough that I thought it would be great if we could get a picture together, so I set the phone up as if ready to take the oh so popular ‘selfie’. So, meet my new friend!”
“This photo was taken my first fall in my village, Sept. 25th 2011. A fellow volunteer (Claire Oyler) came to visit my school one day and this was after my host brothers took us on a hike. Taken in Kyrgyzstan.” #PeaceCorps #PeaceCorpsVolunteer #Volunteer #CentralAsia #Kyrgyzstan #KyrgyzRepublic #hiking #hike #hostfamily #family #playful #fun via Instagram http://bit.ly/1QtXte0
A small lake is photographed at the base of a beautiful snow-capped mountain range in the Kyrgyz Republic.
There are 83 volunteers in the Kyrgyz Republic working with their communities on projects in education, community economic development and health. More than 1,075 Peace Corps volunteers have served in the Kyrgyz Republic since the program was established in 1993.
Congratulations to David Malana, a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, whose “Kyrgyzstan is Me” video was selected as the winner of our 2014 Peace Corps Week Video Contest!
His was selected based on its ability to increase cross-cultural understanding, the cultural richness of the video, and the quality of the video production. As winner of the competition, he will receive an iPad to help him as he continues to share his country of service with the world.
You heard me. Don’t do it. I’m telling you, it’s going to break your heart.
The Core Expectations for Volunteers states you are expected to “serve where the Peace Corps asks you to go, under conditions of hardship, if necessary…” What it doesn’t state however is just what hardship means.
Right now you’re thinking, “Oh. There’ll be no flush toilets or showers. I can handle that. I might have to squash a few spiders, but for the high calling of changing the world, I think I can put up with those things.”
But the truth is, hardship isn’t the quirky and fun hardship you’re expecting, where each new day brings adventure upon crazy adventure, more wonderful than the next. True hardship is much more sobering.
During your service you might have to bury a neighbor. Or watch helplessly as your host family is torn to pieces by corruption. You might show up to school to learn one of your students was killed by a classmate. Your host sister could be kidnapped and forced to marry a man she’s never met. You might witness abuse, violence and mistreatment. You may see your best student lose to a kid from another school because his bribe was the biggest. Your dog might be fed a needle, just to quiet it down, forever.
And if none of that happens, then something else will. There’s just no knowing how hard it will be or it what way. It could be dealing with other volunteers is your biggest challenge. Or that you can never live up to the expectations of your host organization. Or that the Internet is so accessible you spend your entire day trolling Facebook, jealous of all the lives continuing on back home.
And what about all the things you’ll give up? Your boyfriend might not wait two years for you. You’ll put your career on hold. Your familiar support networks probably won’t be around – there’ll be no gym, no fast food joint, no car to drive, no family to visit. The stress and diet could make you lose thirty pounds—or gain thirty—whichever you don’t want.
The Peace Corps uses phrases like, “Life is calling. How far will you go?” and in a breath you’re ready to sign your name on the line. But two years is a long, long time and in the middle you find the world you wanted to change is a confusing and complex puzzle of which you are just one, tiny piece.
So please, if you’re not ready for the heartbreak in the hardship, don’t join the Peace Corps.
Or do.
Because you might just find that all your blood, sweat and tears are worth it – worth the pain, worth the time and worth the investment in the people for whom your heart breaks. Because you might learn some of the most important lessons of your life – that a broken heart can heal stronger than it was before, that a softened heart has more compassion for the world, and that in between its cracks and fissures is the only place where true beauty and grace can grow.
I don’t know what it is about kids and the Peace Corps, in general, but I have the personal, but not always shared opinion that children are a volunteer’s best friend. As you’ve seen already, I have had the opportunity to befriend several kids so far. They help you adjust to volunteer life in so many ways. So far this guy, Erbol which means “be a man" in Kyrgyz, has been a source of laughs as of late. He has many different faces and is passionate about everything. His favorite word/noise is “da-dong!!“ which is a sound effect for pretty much everything he does. The best is when he runs to go kiss his baby brother on the cheek, and then takes his tiny baby hand to punch everyone within punching distance.
