Ian Ruge returns from Peace Corps Service in Kyrgyzstan



Ian Ruge taught in a small private school in a Krygyz village. Schoolchildren played with sheep bones for lack of better toys. The nearest town, Talas, close to the border with Kazakhstan, was the only place Ruge could go to access the Internet.

Ian Ruge returns from Peace Corps Service in Kyrgyzstan

Greeley man returns from Peace Corps stint in Kyrgyzstan


Rebecca Boyle, (Bio) rboyle@greeleytribune.com
November 23, 2006

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When he arrives at his extended family's home in Nebraska today, Ian Ruge won't have to introduce himself, speak a different language or explain anything about being an American.

It will be a refreshing change after spending two years in Kyrgyzstan with the Peace Corps.

"It's going to be so overwhelming to be at a party with people I actually know," he said.

When Ruge, 26, of Greeley left in September 2004, he was ready to break through American borders and see how the rest of the world lived. He kept busy teaching English in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic that borders China. He befriended villagers and had conversations in English with the 16-year-old daughter of his host family, and he held music and reading clubs after school.

But he found himself having frequent dreams of home.

"I wasn't homesick when I wasn't asleep," he said.

Along with an itch for adventure, the Peace Corps is in Ian Ruge's blood. His parents, Marian and Alan Ruge, met and married in Papua New Guinea in 1977 while working for International Voluntary Services, a worldwide civil services group that had been the prototype for the Peace Corps in the 1960s. Before that, both had served in the Peace Corps -- Marian was in Morocco and Alan was in Peru, and later the Solomon Islands. Marian Ruge works for the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment.

Ian Ruge taught in a small private school in a Krygyz village. Schoolchildren played with sheep bones for lack of better toys. The nearest town, Talas, close to the border with Kazakhstan, was the only place Ruge could go to access the Internet.

He was in the country during a revolution last year, during which former President Askar Akayev was ousted. He heard reports of looting and fires in the capital city of Bishkek, but Ruge's village was tranquil.

"For some reason, I thought my first revolution would be a little more revolting," he said.

Peace Corps volunteers serve for 27 months and have a month-long window in which they leave the host country. People who can't wait to leave usually get out in the first week, and those who don't want to go grudgingly go home during the last week, Ruge said.

Ruge left in the middle. Does that mean he was torn between home and central Asia?

"Yeah, I think that's what that means," he said with a laugh.

It would be hard not to marvel at the differences between such a destitute country and the conveniences of modern, middle-class American life. But Ruge also was struck by the similarities.

"It was very different, but it was also really similar, and I suppose, familiar," he said of his interactions with Kyrgyzstanis. "It was good to discover that similarity -- that we're more alike than different."

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Headlines: November, 2006; COS - Kyrgyzstan; Early Termination

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