Notes from the Edge / April 2001

It’s where I live now, out here on the edge, somewhere past the butt-end of nowhere—or so my stateside friends are happy to inform me. It really doesn’t seem that isolated to me—after all, I share Alaverdi with somewhere between 30,000 and 15,000 Armenians (depending on whose count you believe), and Matt even shows up from time to time.

I have a phone, I get my mail at the post, I’m an hour from Vanadzor, and three to four hours from Yerevan. I have running water often enough, I have a working toilet, I have electricity and a television and a VCR - as any Armenian could tell you, ‘This is not Africa’. Where I am doesn’t seem hard to me, it’s not a difficult place to live - it’s a sort of extreme low budget resort or maybe a rest cure for the terminally idealistic.

I wasn’t planning on taking a rest cure—I didn’t think I was all that idealistic—but I can’t say I wasn’t warned After all, I did my research. I have my friends. Beverly spent her service in Togo, and she told me of sitting around counting mosquito bites to pass the time. Sixty-seven on one leg. She also taught herself German, which to me implies that self-motivation was perhaps not the problem. Melanie simply left Bangladesh once her lack of job became apparent to her. Bryn was an A-3 volunteer right here in Alaverdi, and he said no matter what I was doing, my main job would most likely be ‘American on Display’.

I read the statistics on failed Peace Corps projects. I heard time and time again that the reason Peace Corps volunteers always say that they get so much more than they give is that they really don’t give that much. There was more. I was warned. Of course, I was convinced I would be different. I wasn’t sure exactly how, but I knew I would be. I’d be given all the information I lacked in PST, there would be a job once I got to site, and I’d pick up the language somehow.

How I wasn’t sure—my family remains firmly convinced I’m dyslexic, and had no such hopes for me—but I thought total immersion might do the trick. From small beginnings things would proceed apace, each success building on previous projects, until my particular area shone like a small and perfect jewel. I’d be off on the sidelines somewhere, having adroitly worked myself out of a job in perfect Peace Corps style. Somewhere along the way I’d acquire a beatific smile—a sort of younger and cuter Mother Theresa, if you will. I didn’t expect to meet the Pope, of course, and I wasn’t really interested in fame—though I’m not saying I would have refused had it been thrust on me—I just expected to change a small corner of the world. I’d be making a difference with my two years, really I would. Well, we all have our dreams, and the sin of pride will get me every time. Give it up to Jesus, girl, give it up to Jesus.

But what do you do when Jesus doesn’t want it? I knew better, of course, I knew better all along. Reality is always waiting around the corner, and there are such a lot of corners in Armenia. My reality is that I have no job here—the polyclinic I was assigned to has no use whatsoever for a non-health professional, and the maternity house feels much the same way. You don’t know how I’ve envied the TEFLs, with their classes of unruly children and abusive principals. They have jobs - why can’t I? After all, it’s hard to work yourself out of a job if you don’t have one to start with.

My resemblance to Mother Theresa may have actually waned in the last six months. This is not exactly what I had planned. I’m holding out hope. Things may not be going exactly to plan in my life, but when have they been? It’s early enough yet that there’s still hope that some of my projects will coalesce, and my previously noted resemblance to Mother Theresa will return. Unlikely, perhaps, but still possible. I’m not obsessively folding paper cranes just yet; I got my orange belt in karate in the last month (which is progress of a sort, if not exactly the sort Peace Corps is likely to reward), and it’s still early.

Or so I keep telling myself. And—who knows?—maybe I’m right. Seventeen months should be long enough to get something accomplished. If not, well, I can always re-up for another year. After all, I've always been fond of life on the edge—especially when it comes with all the amenities.