writing

September 24, 2010

We arrive in country and we’re transported, through the depth of night, from customs to a garden surrounded by walls more than twice my height. The thick and dense enclosure consists of stucco chunks held upright by mud, doused in grandmother pink. That same shade of Pepto-Bismol enveloped the three-story complex, which will house my 62 fellow volunteers and me, along with 15 staff members, for the next four days.

From time to time, I could glimpse intermittent gusts of tumble-dust popping above the walls, hinting of somewhere yonder. My second story hotel window, which faces the center of the hotel complex, fails to provide any further intelligence. Every hour and every meal of the four-day orientation period has been meticulously planned. Inside the gate, we spoke English. Outside, they spoke a language kept alive by its 8.5 million inhabitants. I note how this is the size of the population in the city where I had grown up, spread over a land the size of Maine.

September 28, 2010

By day four, I could count to ten in Azerbaijani, but only in sing-song. 19 volunteers and I pack our 27-months’ worth of possessions and ourselves into a bus slightly more spacious than a hummer limousine, and roll into the dust beyond the gate.

The bus, called a marshrutka (mar-shroo-ka)[1] rumbles along, stopping every 10-15 minutes, which feel more like hours. On the road, gusts of dust combust upon impact with the windshield. We squint and smear our foreheads against the dirt-stained glass. My seatmate, Jenna, lets me have the entire window. When she’s nervous, she drinks water. She really cannot hold her pee in any longer. I offer to alert the bus driver of her situation. She insists no. She is determined to hold it in until her stop. I cannot imagine meeting my host family[2] for the first time with an overflowing bladder, but to each her own, so I share some soothing words and turn back to the window.

Volunteers descend stop by stop, one or a few at a time. In my head, I debate the pros and cons of descending with pals or solo. Solo loses, solidly. I let out a sigh of relief for Jenna’s bladder as they call her name for this stop. There are only eight of us on the bus now and the bus is moving farther and farther away from the region that swallowed our friends.

They call my name, but there is no one on the street waiting for me as there had been for every volunteer before me.

The bus had stopped in front of a silver gate, the kind I might have seen fencing off a dilapidated scrapyard driving through the Midwest or buried in some junkyard in the part of Brooklyn where the trains do not go. The warped metal had been dipped in silver paint, some time ago. Jutting out of the center of the left gate is a moon and a star. I make a mental note to avoid their frilled edges for fear of cutting myself. The roof of the house, some discolored corrugated metal, peaks over the crumbling concrete walls. I swivel my head to catch sight of the adjacent house, a smooth two-story structure dressed in flamingo pink with a smooth roof that glistened. Perhaps this silver gate is not mine.

One of the Azerbaijani language cultural facilitators (LCFs)[3] is rambling away in Azerbaijani on his cell phone. After some time, a girl, no more than 4’ 6”, no older than 16, comes sprinting from around the corner. The LCF tells me that this girl, Arzu, is here for me.

I cannot help but think wistfully of the fathers and brothers of my fellow volunteers who, I had watched from the bus windows, picked up suitcases with ease while the female volunteer held hands with the matron of the family as they walked away from the marshrutka.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

I turn towards the thudding behind me. The driver is tossing my belongings off the shrut. My family of two suitcases and a slightly than larger carry-on-sized bag had gained another member: a 10-liter water filter from Peace Corps. Put all water through this filter if you don’t want to get sick, they’d advised.

The teenage girl lifts one of my bags a few millimeters off the ground before letting go and exclaiming sentences in Azeri that I could not comprehend. I take a deep breath, wipe the dust off my face with my forearm, push back my already oiled and caked hair, and heave my 52 lb. hiking backpack on my back, my 40 lb. carry-on daypack on my front, and squat down to lug my 60 lb. suitcases through several inches of dirt and rocks. The girl gestures to take my bags. I shake my head, hoping this gesture for ‘no’ translated. She picks up the water filter, kicks the door of the gate several times, and manages it open.