Well, as they say, all’s well that end’s well. And if our Close of Service (COS) conference was any testament to that saying, then I must be vindicated when I write that: all has gone very well.
That’s right, folks, this past week saw the final closing ceremony for my class of Kyrgyzstan volunteers. Now, we’re not finished yet, not by a long shot. However, bureaucracy dictates that we must have our big bash sixty days before anyone can actually leave the country. That being that, we had a total ball.
This conference, folks, was the last and final hurrah for my group of volunteers. We haven’t had a group-wide meeting in over a year, and this one rivaled them all. Instead of trainings, the sessions were mostly geared towards ra-ra and feedback. We told Peace Corps what we liked overall, and Peace Corps told us what they liked about us. We also had “cultural readjustment” sessions, where we were told about how even if we had no “reverse culture-shock,” unless we take preventive measures, our friends at home are going to quickly tire of the phrase, “Back when I was in Peace Corps…”
And beyond the sessions, we also just got our last and final chance to hang out as one big group. And this was, perhaps, one of the greatest strengths of this whole Peace Corps thing. For this one last moment, we were totally surrounded by the very small group of people who, considering the whole experience, we could be totally comfortable around. We had all seen our friends go home early, and we all knew what it was like to see projects totally crushed by revolutions and violence. We could make off-color jokes about the place around us, and everyone knew they were coming from a place of respect and love.
But the honeymoon couldn’t last forever, and, as always, there is more work to do. And in my case, the work is among the most exciting kind.
That’s right folks, welcome to Composting with Farmer Dan. See, I have a friend in America who works as an organic farmer. He’s been reading my letters these past years, and by the time he saw the Camel Video last fall, he knew that he needed to make the experience real. So, we talked with each other, we talked with volunteers, and we talked with the locals; and then decided on something quite serious: if Farmer Dan wanted to come out and teach the hardworking farmers of Kyrgyzstan but a fragment of the things that he knows, we’d all show him the time of his life.
And that, folks, is where we are today. Dan has seen the grand and majestic mountains of Sunny Naryn. He got to see the first formal meeting with the villagers of Emgekchil, as we lay a (much more substantial) groundwork for the Trees for the Kyrgyz project. To boot, he’s also staying with my homestay family and I. The girls are using the opportunity to speak a lot of English, my host-Grandmother is using it to tell dramatic stories of her childhood (“Life was great up until WWII started,” she said), and my host mother harnessed Dan’s cooking skills to make a huge pile of steamed dumplings. Furthermore, when Farmer Dan haulled out the little American gifts he brought for the family, the whole crew lit up. Between the drawing books, the work gloves, and a little tiny Spider Man tshirt for the youngest boy, there isn’t anything but a smile to see.
Perhaps, however, until we start the compost trainings in force, Farmer Dan’s strongest contribution has been to the local volunteer community. His first night in town, as he went on about Wisconsin politics and the depth of beet roots, he caught himself and said, “feel free to stop me guys, I could go on about this stuff for days.”
“Oh, please continue,” said Anne, ” it doesn’t really matter what you say, since it is essentially the first new thing anyone in this group has talked about in years.”
