Now I Know

Last week the staff announced the site placements for the Youth Development and Community Economic Development groups and this week the TEFLs will find out where they’re going. After weeks of build up the last few days before announcements were the worst. The day before, our program officer came into a technical session and told us that she had finalized where we would be placed and even worse, she was bad at keeping secrets. Naturally we began offering her everything from monetary bribes to gifts, and threatened to barricade the door until she told us. The YD assistant director said he would be willing to tell us if we bought him tickets to the US. Lest the Peace Corps read this, I, hopefully needlessly, will note this was all said jokingly (at least on their end, we were dead serious).

I’ll be going to Ismayilli, near the center of the town, but near the mountains. Most everything I’ve heard about the site has been positive. I’ll have at least one site mate, another YD from my group, as well as a TEFL from AZ7 in a nearby village.
As excited as I am to know where I’ll be, it’s scary in a way to have the next two years set. I think of how I felt when I’d decided to go to Gettysburg College, and how that was a four year commitment. This is only two, I tell myself. But it’s different. College is full of breaks and opportunities to come home; holidays, vacations, weekends even provided a chance to escape. I know I won’t be in Ismayilli, or even in Azerbaijan for every day of the next two years, but the prospect of taking a break is a bit more distant. I feel claustrophobic on occasion during PST, as almost every day of our lives is planned for us. We’re either at language class or technical session or spending the day in Sumgayit for a HUB day. We only have Sundays to ourselves.

I know part of my worry for the future is a reaction to the way we live now, and that life will be different in just a month’s time. It’s just hard to fight it when it’s all we really know. The best parts of PST are when we glimpse the future through questions and answers with visiting volunteers, but these glimpses are brief and unfulfilling and the future is still such a mystery. We know next to nothing about our sites, our organizations and our living situations, all of which are fast approaching. Basically all the guidebooks say about my site is that the hotels there are decrepit and have questionable toilets. What will I do day-to-day? That’s up to me. Scary. What will the town be like? Is it pretty? Is it disgusting? Who lives there? Why does the town even exist? Some towns are known for apples or fish or some other export.) What will my new family be like? What will I eat? Will I be able to move out?

Knowing the name is such a relief, but, like an episode of Lost, one answer opens the door to a hundred new questions. Hopefully, that comment didn’t undermine the mood of the post too much. Of course I want to get to the answers right away, but training still has a couple lessons up its sleeve, even when it feels like a waste of time. I can’t keep myself from asking these questions about a future that I’ve committed myself to, without knowing everything about what I would be doing, but I know they will be answered in time. What do I know? Now I know I have questions.