នឹកហើយ

I wrote this when I was imagining myself going on this amazing trip--but going alone didn't seem right for me. I swallowed the ticket price and decided on other things for me that involved being with people I care about.


I'm sitting here alone, waiting for my flight to Indonesia. It wasn't even my idea to come here but I felt inspired by my friends’ energy here to go, go somewhere off my radar that usually includes cities and restaurants and nightlife to a place that has mountains and lakes and orangutans. I'm here alone because my friend couldn't make it with me due to some mistakes, rash decisions and bruised egos. But I'm here; pondering my life as a “volunteer” in an increasingly tense and dense world. I've had my fair share of discomforts from missing weddings, birthdays, holidays, deaths to sitting in 111°F heat wondering why my groin sporadically hurts thinking of everything from cancer to a bacterial infection, eventually settling down on a kidney stone diagnosis after getting a few uncomfortable ultrasounds on places I didn't know they could ultrasound. To countless colds and stomach aches. To a flesh-eating bacteria (?) behind my ear cured by antibiotics giving me vivid dreams of zombies chasing me while I wake up sweating in the dry season stupor. To yelling at kids smoking meth 10 feet from my front door. I've had to listen to tears and laughter from across oceans and time, distance paradoxically shortened by technology but blown out of proportion as I click “like”, lost in a different world only to snap back to reality after hearing the rats scurrying around my room chewing on god knows what at this point. I wonder about why our cat is so damn useless and how much poison is too much poison. We're not in Nebraska anymore, Liep (the cat).
I wonder what my students think of me as they scream my name and laugh at me across the school yard but many too shy or too scared to say anything to me. I wonder what they think when I unintentionally sigh in frustration because they can't read the words we just spent 15 minutes practicing. I wonder what I would think of myself?
I wonder what my coteachers think of me as I'm too shy to approach them and sound like an idiot in Khmer. Or not laugh at the several overtly sexual jokes. “No, I want to borrow your underwear now to get the real smell,” “John’s butt is so cute!” As I giggle and walk away from them in my soccer uniform I never played in because I was too shy to look like an even bigger loser as I see the previous volunteers’ work at my school like a museum of things I maybe could've should've done. The new buildings from the government and the new bathrooms from another NGO look down at me while I bike back home to lay down with a fan and peruse Facebook hoping for…. something.
It's not like I haven't tried, but that's not the point. I'm here now and trying to make it work, for mostly myself at this point and to try and develop relationships that are meaningful outside of them seeing me as a goofy white blob biking up and down dusty roads, sneezing and coughing and occasionally stopping to say ‘hi’ if I get over the social anxiety of it all--don't really want to be asked how many times I can have sex in one night again. Things seem different in different light and the brightest light often wins at the time.
These are all things that compromise a thriving, beautiful community with a sense of humor as they tell me about running from soldiers shooting at them or watching their loved ones die in front of them during the not-so-distant Khmer Rouge genocide. To motorbike accidents and fireworks exploding in homes. To dreams crushed and garment factories opening. Things are different here and I get that, but I'm different too and not everything is supposed to gel. And I don't want to force it either. I'm tired of fighting currents. Isn't that how you drown?
Regardless of how difficult things get here, we as a peace corps community have each others backs for the most part. We get our homies and we fight for each other and we support each other. Sometimes we need a break. Sometimes a family member comes to visit.
There are a lot of rules in peace corps, surprisingly, for how loose and free-spirited an essence it has. Especially being an education volunteer, compared to the health volunteers, we have a calendar that allows us a few weeks in April and two months in the summer to really travel. This is part of the job of course, but the more you're here and the more things slip into oblivion, the more this timeline doesn't make sense and seems more like a suggestion. There's a policy to ensure you stay in your village because that's your work and that's your commitment, but there's only so much embarrassment, so many projects and suggestions shrugged off or however many exploited insecurities you can handle before you look in the mirror and say “what the fuck?”
You begin to question what an “invitation” from the community as a peace corps volunteer really means.
And then your brother calls and says he can't wait to see you, and, although it's during the school year, you want to get away for a bit and be with someone who really, really knows you. Someone who can see how you've grown. Someone who can gape at your language abilities and your room covered in rat shit and cobwebs no matter how many times you sweep. Someone you have to teach to use a squatty potty and bucket shower. And tell them, “Fuck yeah, I do this every. Damn. Day.”
And they want to see the temples and see the jungles and the lake and the ocean and you say, “duh.” Because…. well, I think you know.
I wouldn't advocate ever for breaking the rules! These are obviously highly nuanced situations. Rules are rules. I get it. I do. But where do the rules get so tense they are bound to snap? Where does the sense of adventure and collectiveness of peace corps come in? And in what parameters and boundaries? How much does your effort overshadow the rest? What do you see when you think “peace corps”?
Things get tense here. As I've written here and there. Sometimes so tense, I lose myself. But I always manage to find myself again.
Rules are rules, and a situation similar to the one above came back to bite my travel buddy in the ass. But I think you could empathize. Maybe? I think you would see the shortcomings of the policy. Are there any? See the overall picture: I'm trying.