June 6, 2005: Headlines: COS - Uzbekistan: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Blogs - Uzbekistan: Working Definition: Personal Web Site: PCV Matt Barison says: What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure - Interruped Service - who’s to blame?
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June 6, 2005: Headlines: COS - Uzbekistan: Safety and Security of Volunteers: Blogs - Uzbekistan: Working Definition: Personal Web Site: PCV Matt Barison says: What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure - Interruped Service - who’s to blame?
PCV Matt Barison says: What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure - Interruped Service - who’s to blame?
PCV Matt Barison says: What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure - Interruped Service - who’s to blame?
And it rains…
June 6th, 2005
[Excerpt]
It has been a strange week. For our last few days in Uzbekistan, Peace Corps (perhaps out of pitty,) put us up in a 4 star hotel in Tashkent. I was able to re-connect with my friends from PST and spend some quality time over good food food and good beer. Although we were in the big city, something I had been looking forward to, the whole event was tinged with a mixture of sadness, anger, and confusion. What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure - Interruped Service - who’s to blame?
So I check the news today and the future seems dire for Uzbekistan. Experts say that further destabilization is likeley and words such as: bloody, rebellion, unrest, civil war and others are thrown into the mix. What to think about the families who are just trying to get by and get ahead? Who will have to pay and will there be any winners or will everyone lose at least in the short term? All unanswerable, only conjecture.
So these thoughts race through my head as I’m trying to process yet another new culture, yet another new language, yet another group of 60 plus Americans. It’s too much but there is no turning back. I’m coming to the realization that I can only talk about Uzbekistan here for so long before I become just another PC Romania volunteer. Not that that is a bad thing, but it just leaves me thinking about what exactaly those last five months were. I wouldn’t give them away for anything but what do I take from it?
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Story Source: Working Definition: Personal Web Site
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Uzbekistan; Safety and Security of Volunteers; Blogs - Uzbekistan
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