I went through another slump last week. Somethings happened not related to Peace Corps or my village per-say. I got back from a birthday party last weekend and felt really weird. The first thing is to obviously blame Armenia. Usually when that happens, I think, “what the hell am I still doing here?” and every time, I always get an answer that flips my world upside down.
Two things. The first. As some of you know, I am trying to find a house to live in for reasons that are understandable. I want to have some freedom back; as in, have friends come over and do what I want to do when I want. The thing that has gotten really old is when I am hanging out in my room and someone from my host family knocks on my door to tell me we have guests. Great. So I get to spend 2 hours sitting in the living room thinking about stuff because I have no clue what they are all talking about. Now, I think that my Armenian is pretty good at this point and I have no problems communicating. You have to understand though that there is what people call “clean Armenian” or “Yerevan slang”. This is the grammatically correct Armenian. The kind of Armenian that the educated group uses. In the village, they don’t use this Armenian and I have had to learn a bastardized form of the language which includes completely different words, shortcuts, and slurring of the words. For example, its like someone from Angola coming to America learning British English and having to talk to people speaking Ebonics...
Anyway, that is just one example of why I want to move out. I don’t want to say anything more about that. So, as I have been looking around, people told me that they didn’t want me to pay them, that they were just happy that I would want to live close to them. That is great to hear.
The funny thing about this is that sometimes people, as helpful as they are, doing really critically think. I was shown a house the other day without a roof. Yeah, without a roof. Not like the roof wasn’t there, more like the walls stopped and there were huge gaps between the top the wall and the top of the roof. I mean, you can’t help but just laugh.
It has been really difficult finding a house. Most of the homes that people don’t live in don’t have bathrooms. There is no kitchen. Its just a bunch of rooms. The windows are broken out and there are huge holes in the wall. Of course Peace Corps won’t let me more in unless the house meets some standard. I have one year left so its not like I need to have the most fancy house but the more comfortable the house is the better. Eh.
Something happened the other day that really changed everything. This was on Tuesday after my slump week and weekend. Tuesday I went over to my neighbors house. He had missed a lot of school because he hurt his back somehow. As an aside, let me tell you a side story. The organization, American Councils, is the one that is sending me to the Ukraine to train how to train the Armenian students who will leave to live in America for a year. Anyway, for the work, they will pay 350 US dollars as a sort of salary, but because Im a volunteer, I can’t accept it. I decided that I am going to give the money to the school. I asked my neighbor who hurt his back his ideas. This is what he said: He said that what we should do is by a nice cabinet and label it as the “health cabinet” where all the health supplies can be kept. Then they would take a picture of me and frame it and put it on the cabinet and when I leave, they will always be able to remember me and what I did.
When I heard him say all this, I almost broke down. This is a poor village. Not too much going on here. 350 dollars will go a long way and what does this man say? He wants to buy something to remember me by. I get caught off guard. What do you say to that?
I mentioned earlier that usually when I get in a slump, I am quick to blame Armenia and me being here... But it is always the Armenians, my family, neighbors here that have some way of making me feel really good about being here. That they really appreciate me being here and just being that weird American wanting to do something in their village. Its been quite a humbling experience.
Lastly, my host family is gone. It is just me and the Grandmother now living in the house. My host mom and youngest brother went to Germany. It was a weird talk that I had with my host mom. This is how it went:
HM: we need to talk (a great way to start any conversation)
we are going to Germany
Me: I know
HM: we aren’t coming back for a while
Me: I know
HM: we may come back in a year, two, three, four, we don’t know
Me: (blank stare until the translation hits me) WHAT?!
HM: you can stay here as long as you want. If you find a house you can move, if not, you can just stay here.
So that was a little hard to take in. Its one thing to move out of the house knowing that if I needed to I could always go back to see them. Its a completely other thing when they leave the country and probably won’t be seen by me again. I don’t know what they are doing there, or anything. Of course I wish them the best of luck knowing that they will be able to make a life there in Germany. It will just be a little hard at first for my little brother because neither of them know German. Fortunately, my host mom’s sister already lives there.
This upcoming week will be really good. Got a lot of things going on. I am planning on going up to Mike’s site for a couple days to help with some health related things. And this is right before I go to the Ukraine.
Its raining... again... but I guess that means that the snow has stopped. Good sign that the warm weather is coming along. Awesome
Until next time...
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