Ups and downs

Anyone who has gone abroad at the behest of an educational or service organisation will be very familiar with the culture-shock ‘W’, a graph that shows that culture shock tends to take a sine-wave form: the honeymoon phase descends into initial shock, and an initial adjustment is made, after which come further shocks and further adjustments. I’d say this week I hit my first real trough on the ‘W’ - though oddly enough it wasn’t the local culture to which I’ve had trouble adjusting so much (that comes in different ways and produces different reactions) but the Peace Corps culture and my fellow Trainees. It is vastly different from what I experienced of AmeriCorps (though I’m sure if I had been in AmeriCorps from the beginning, since North Carolina, I might have thought differently). Even though I wasn’t particularly close with my fellow college guides during my AmeriCorps service, there was a palpable sense of camaraderie in that group – we faced similar challenges, we had a common outlook on our service and we trusted each other with our problems (even though we routinely only saw each other once or twice a week). I still consider my fellow (former and current) NCAC college guides to be my friends; I expected that I would get along as well with my fellow Trainees in С—, but I haven’t found that to be the case at all.

Part of the problem, of course, is the time limitation. We spend a lot of time studying, preparing lessons or just preparing ourselves for the next task ahead of us, so there isn’t a lot of social time full-stop. Another part of the problem is that our reasons for serving in Peace Corps seem to be wildly different, and our attitudes toward Peace Corps service and toward the people we’re working with seem to be wildly different, to the point where it is sometimes completely incomprehensible to me exactly why they are here. It was a culture shock of a much different nature than I was expecting, and perhaps that’s why it hit me so badly: I’m not in Providence anymore, I’m not in AmeriCorps anymore, and my fellows in my language group aren’t at all the intellectual, idealistic, open-minded Yankees I’m used to dealing with – like Leah, Afshan, Miranda and David – around whom I could more or less be my normal self and needn’t beware being sized up, judged and belittled. So I withdrew and didn’t talk about my problems with anyone in the group – until I went outside, lost my temper along with my Mennonite upbringing and punched a schoolyard tree over a relatively minor problem. In hindsight, I am quite ashamed I did it, and it will never happen again, because a.) I gave my word on it to Nagima, b.) my right hand really freaking hurt afterward and c.) I know there are far more positive and effective ways to relieve stress.

I’m not trying to say that they’re bad people, on the whole. They’re not. I think it’s simply that I wasn’t expecting fellow Americans to be more deeply alien to me than my local hosts, trainers and neighbours. (Of course, there are other factors to consider, such as the fact that the lack of a language barrier lends itself to a kind of ‘uncanny trench’ in which relatively minor cultural differences within American culture can be grossly exaggerated.)

So yeah, it’s been a rough week. But talking with Nagima about the problems I’d been having really helped, and I feel much better now – more secure, confident and positive. My lessons are getting progressively better and my relationship with my counterpart is good - our teaching styles are drastically different, but I think given some more time and experience we could complement each other well. Also, I've got an awesome host family and an awesome language teacher watching my back; I've got a lot to be thankful for. As the Qazaqs say, ‘жақсы сөз, жарым ырыс’. (Literally translated: ‘a good word is half your fate’.) And the local flora can breathe easy now; they’re safe from me. Instead, I’m following up on my theological interests: I checked out Dame Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love from the Peace Corps HQ's library in Almaty and am currently reading it. So far, so good – but I’ll write some more about it later. Көріскенше, folks.