January 19, 2004: Headlines: COS - Nepal: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Censorship: First Amendment: Free Speech: Blogs - Nepal: Recruitment: Personal Web Site: Scott Wallick says: I had 3 months left in Nepal. I wanted to finish my work and leave knowing that I hadn't failed in any way. So I agreed, perhaps too quickly, that I would suspend publishing to my website publicly until I finished my remaining 3 months.
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January 19, 2004: Headlines: COS - Nepal: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Censorship: First Amendment: Free Speech: Blogs - Nepal: Recruitment: Personal Web Site: Scott Wallick says: I had 3 months left in Nepal. I wanted to finish my work and leave knowing that I hadn't failed in any way. So I agreed, perhaps too quickly, that I would suspend publishing to my website publicly until I finished my remaining 3 months.
Scott Wallick says: I had 3 months left in Nepal. I wanted to finish my work and leave knowing that I hadn't failed in any way. So I agreed, perhaps too quickly, that I would suspend publishing to my website publicly until I finished my remaining 3 months.
Scott Wallick says: I had 3 months left in Nepal. I wanted to finish my work and leave knowing that I hadn't failed in any way. So I agreed, perhaps too quickly, that I would suspend publishing to my website publicly until I finished my remaining 3 months.
It was the day before New Year's Eve 2004 and I was checking my e-mail after visiting a school. I got an e-mail from the Peace Corps' office saying that I needed to call immediately. When I called I was forwarded to talk to to the #2 in the Peace Corps office, a woman with a title like "Senior Training Coordinator." I thought it was about her upcoming visit to Birganj.
"It's about your website," she said and my stomach sank, "We're a little concerned about some of the things you're writing." I immediately remembered the story of a Peace Corps volunteer in Samoa who'd been sent home because of what his personal website. "They said that Al-Queida could use it to track down Peace Corps volunteers in Samoa. I told them if Al-Queida wanted to, they'd just come to the island and ask where the Peace Corps volunteers lived." He'd left the country 72 hours after being contacted.
I had 3 months left in Nepal. I wanted to finish my work and leave knowing that I hadn't failed in any way. So I agreed, perhaps too quickly, that I would suspend publishing to my website publicly until I finished my remaining 3 months. Then I could say whatever I wanted, granted it wasn't libelous, which I'm not worried about since the Peace Corps office was concerned about the truthful things I was publishing.
Seems that people coming in the soon-to-arrive intake had been chatting and reading web journals of volunteers and were concerned about the security situation. This phone call had occurred exactly two weeks after I'd written a piece called "Bombs Over Birganj" about something like half a dozen bombs in the Birganj area (where I live) and a massive attack by the Maoists on my airport, which was by any account a failure.
Two people had called Peace Corps' Washington, D.C., office and said they weren't coming based on this and stuff they'd read in chat rooms about the situation in Nepal. I was a thorn in the recruiting office's side.
When I got to Kathmandu I knew things were going to be different this year. We gathered at the Hotel Ambassador on New Year's Even, ordered pizzas, and brought in wine from a store down the road. Kathmandu was cold, but the staff built us a bonfire in the hotel's garden that we gathered around, telling stories, meeting the Nepali friends that we'd met in the past year.
That's what made this year different. I wasn't a solitary bideshi walking through the dirty, foreign streets of Birganj in search of a corkscrew. I was just a guy with a kaleidoscope of friends enjoying the fleetingness of the moment. Since Thanksgiving, my days were filled with lasts. My last impromptu Thanksgiving with curries. My last Christmas with second-hand gifts. My last New Year's Eve with more than a dozen close friends.
Nothing about finishing my Peace Corps service frightens me, except that in leaving Peace Corps I'm parting ways with some of greatest people that I've come to call close friends. As our close-of-service conference in late January, I was rushing around in the computer lab at the office trying to get together materials and curriculum for a training in Dharan.
Kara was sitting at a computer and I went by before I left, since I wouldn't have time to go out that night and I was leaving bright and early the next morning for Biratnagar and from there Dharan. I said, "See you later," but for a moment neither of us really knew when. There was a pause, looking at one another, really, for the first time in two years, uncertain of what would come next.
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Story Source: Personal Web Site
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Nepal; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Censorship; First Amendment; Free Speech; Blogs - Nepal; Recruitment; Blog Censorship
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