Peace Corps Book Club Part 2: River Town

On a Valentine's day unlike any other, I spent another ninety minutes with the CRPCA book club, this time in the welcome company of Peter Hessler. He is author of River Town, a book about the time he spent teaching English at a college in China's Sichuan Province. As I began to read Hessler's book, it's understated charm slowly began to infect me until the reading of it became a careful indulgence, something to be savored. I found myself poring over it's pages, often re-reading sentences to be sure that no edifying morsel of stark, expressive prose was left unexamined.

Perhaps what stands out to me most about Hessler's stories in River Town is the compassion with which he manages to capture the people and events of his time overseas despite countless baffling, often humorous examples of what makes the Chinese culture so inscrutible to the American mind. What makes the book even more interesting is the fact, we learned, that it was written in just eight months during Hessler's difficult reentry period following his time in the Peace Corps.

In a delightful turn of events, my good friend Stephanie Austin turned out for the book club and we proceeded to have a Valentine's day evening, conspicuously free of flowers and lovers' sighs.

Taxes, and Flight Plans, and Cars, Oh My!

Well, as my March 1 departure looms ever nearer, it's beginning to seem as if this Peace Corps thing isn't just something I've been hallucinating for the last year and a half. The first thing that really made it seem real was getting rid of my car. I've had my '93 Toyota Camry since about 2003. As of last week I no longer have it. It's an odd feeling knowing that a constant, faithful presence in my life for 7 years is gone and I won't see it anymore.

I did my taxes on February 1 so I'll have time to receive my refund from the IRS and mail a check to the Oregon Revenue Department before I leave. I have to give my mom the power of attorney so she can do this for me while I'm gone. Even after spending more than 3/4 of my AmeriCorps education award (which counts as earned income), I still have a refund larger than what I owe the state (hooray for not finding work!) such that my net refund is $371. That get's me most of the way to buying a ticket home for Mom and Rich's wedding!

What really made me reckon with my future, though, was an email I got yesterday saying it was time to call the government contractor that would make my travel arrangements to staging in Washington, D.C. A phone call later and I was booked on a flight out of Portland on the morning of February 28, bound for the capital via Chicago. Yet another threshold crossed.

The Peace Corps has given me a document to share with friends and family who wish to keep in touch with me during my service. In addition to hosting it here, I'll be attaching it to a big email I send out when I'm about to go:

Development Salon

Yesterday was the date of CRPCA's monthly happy-hour get-together. This month it was timed to correspond with an informal gathering organized by Global Sistergoods. Arriving near the beginning, I had the pleasure of chatting with one of Sistergoods' founders and her husband while RPCVs slowly trickled in.

My next conversation was with an RPCV from Ukraine and another from Jamaica. The woman who served in Jamaica expressed the interesting opinion that the 60 people serving there when she went were far to large a group for such a small island. After a while, I finally saw the DR RPCV who I had arranged to meet there. She and her partner, another former DR volunteer were able give me an interesting overview of their experience and offer some advice.

Some interesting tidbits that emerged from our conversation included the fact that the mosquitoes will bite me like crazy for about the first month I'm there until my blood assumes the same character that as everyone else's. They also recommended that I bring a headlamp and that decent new clothing will be hard to come by during my time there so I should invest in some nice clothes now and avoid the hassle of trying to track some down in the future.

Northwest Returnee Conference 2011

Spreading the good word: Me at my WWOOF-USA table at the Northwest Returnee Conference



On Saturday I had an opportunity to meet and swap stories with many other international travelers and hear from a number of people about their international careers and graduate studies at the third annual Northwest Returnee Conference, where I was a volunteer. The conference, organized by a committee composed of staff members at AHA international and IE3 Global Internships, is held every year to help students returned from internships and study abroad integrate their experiences back in Oregon and connect with others in similar situations.

This year I had the privilege of running an information table to spread the word about organic farm volunteering on behalf of the nonprofit, WWOOF-USA. I did so with the aid of a poster made using a web application I put together last year with that organization in order to display all the farms on a Google Map. Presently we hope to integrate it in the WWOOF-USA website with the help of a Premier API grant.


A screen capture of a prototype I produced for WWOOF-USA



Imagine my delight when I discovered, on the very same day, the Oregonian published an article telling the story of some others who recently seized the opportunity to volunteer on some organic farms. Another highlight of the event came when I met another WWOOFer who, like me, was also an IE3 alum. She is organizing a IE3 alumni group and has even planned an event next month for us to get together and socialize. I was relieved to discover that it will take place before my Peace Corps departure date.

Peace Corps Book Club

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a book club hosted by the Columbia River Peace Corps Association (CRPCA). The month's book was Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle by Moritz Thomsen. While Moritz's grasp of prose is undeniable I think any review of his first book is incomplete without the added perspective of other returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCV's).

As I discussed the book's (and indeed Mortiz's) strengths and weaknesses with about eight returned volunteers the consensus seemed to be that Moritz's service, while profound and largely unprecedented, by today's standards was deeply flawed. In particular everyone disapproved of the author's mingling of finances with his host community, and his blind devotion to his projects.

However, we also agreed that it was very accomplished in expressing certain undeniable realities of class interaction in the third world and, in general conditions endemic to being on outsider in a foreign culture. Passages like the following one prompted lively discussion that helped to bring to life for me the shared vision of these veteran volunteers.

I had always been aware of the jealousies in the town, but now I began to see that I had underestimated the power to order the live of the people. It began to get through to me. Ramon Arcos, drunk, buttonholed me on the street. He wanted ten sucres to get drunker and when I said "No," he said I was a bad man who helped only the rich like Ramon Prado and Alexandro. "Rich?" I cried. "They're the poorest people in town." But, of course, it wasn't true anymore. Ramon was about to get his hundredth chicken, and Alexandro was up to seventy. A year ago they had been among the poorest people; now they were about to be the richest. There was real dissatisfaction in Rio Verde about the job I was doing, and every day I heard reports of my favoritism. Rumors reached me that a couple of old wise guys who knew all about the Peace Corps were telling everyone that I was making money off the people, that the chickens I sold should be gifts, and that the loans I was making did not have to be repaid. It was part of my job to give people money, they said.

For more excerpts, check out this link:

http://clipboarding.blogspot.com/search/label/Living%20Poor

Putting Things on Hold

I get a variety of reactions from people when I tell them that I will be spending two years in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer. Many ask questions. Some express admiration. I even hear remarks concerning how difficult it will be and how it's something the person I'm talking to could never do.

Of all the reactions people give me, none is less welcome than the infinitely obnoxious, "maybe you'll meet a nice Dominican girl there," invariably accompanied by the kind of affected grin or nod somebody might give when offering an ice cream sundae or a backrub. To say that when I hear and see this I am profoundly annoyed would be an understatement.

My disgust takes many forms. Firstly, I almost feel that implicit in this response is the assertion that if I go there and don't meet the love of my life, my two years will be wasted. "After all," their statement seems to suggest, "there couldn't possibly be a better time or place to look for a mate." Then there's the idea that the highest possible reward that the experience could offer would be to get a girlfriend. Not the satisfaction of knowing I may have improved someone's standard of living or helped someone provide for his/her family. Oh no, it has to be the girl.

If, at this point, you're reading this and you've guessed that I'm bitter, you may be correct. After many years of painstaking deliberation and caution where romance is concerned, and careful consideration of my values in life and how to pursue them I am almost religious in my dearly-held hope that I can have both. That is, I want believe that I can both follow my own path to personal fulfillment as an individual and find a partner.

If I am bitter, it is because twenty-six years of loving, observing relationships, acting on my hopes, acting on my fears, and consulting with people I admire, have imbued me with a single resounding tenet of faith: When I have figured out my own happiness as a single person, I will be better-equipped to find a mate and it is more likely that my potential mates will have done likewise. When I react adversely to someone's remarks it is likely that I think they don't see things this way.

I do not oppose the idea of finding a special girl to spend time with in the Peace Corps, but it raises my hackles to have my decision to join be regarded as enrollment in some kind of singles club and I would be lying if I said that it would be not without relish for me to crush anyone's dire hope that this be the case. It wouldn't be the first time in my adult life I went for two years without a girlfriend.

Oregon = Peace Corps Love

In a recent Willamette Week article it was mentioned that Oregon ranks 4th, per capita, in Peace Corps volunteers with the Portland metro area alone supplying 151 volunteers. I wonder how many are out there right now waiting, like me for their service to begin...

In 2009, Corvallis, home of my alma mater, was also home to the second-greatest number, per capita, of volunteers.

Downtime

It's hard to believe that less than two weeks' time has gone by since I slogged out of my trailer through a foot of water with fifty pounds of luggage in tow, bound for home and family and holidays. In the time since then, I seem to have retained my will to remain in the moment and to take things as they come.

In an interesting turn of events, some windfall income during my WWOOF tour allowed me to offset most of the cost of the adventure, bringing the total of my net expenditures during the two months to $262.12.

Lately, I've devoted a lot of focus to my ASUS Eee PC 901. Basically, I'm transitioning from a computer that cost $1,000+ in 2007 to a computer on which I spent $168 last August on eBay. The purpose of this exercise is to prepare me for the coming time when this is all I have to rely on.

Homecoming: Part 4

All the way to LAX, traffic on the freeway fairly crept. At check-in it was 6:45, almost an hour and a half after my planned departure. When Southwest was able to give me a ticket for a flight that was delayed, I was inspired to reflect on an event happening in the sky that night which was unprecedented in the last 372 years. I scrambled to the gate only to learn that the flight had been delayed again and wouldn't depart for another hour or so. Finally around 9:00 we boarded and departed shortly thereafter.

Though we arrived in rainy Las Vegas well after the scheduled departure of my connecting flight, I was relieved to find that it was also mired in long delays. During my layover, on the video poker machines I managed to turn 50 cents into 5 dollars, but there was unfortunately no place still open where I could spend it. By the time I stepped into Mom and Rich's car at PDX, it was after 2:00 the next day, but I couldn't complain. I was home.

Homecoming: Part 3

Having determined that I was on the wrong road, heading in the wrong direction, I decided to ask around about the bus that I was on. Other passengers assured me that it was indeed going to Los Angeles and although it would use up all the slack I had accounted for, I guessed that could expect to arrive with enough time to make my flight. So, warily, I settled in and endeavored to read my book in spite of the din coming from a neighbor's earbuds.

Before long it became clear that it was going to be an even closer call than I had thought; in order to make my 5:20 flight, I was going to have to catch the four o'clock Flyaway bus at Union Station and three o'clock hour had rolled past while we idled in Palmdale. My hopes were finally dashed when, winding through the San Gabriel mountains, the Antelope Valley Freeway became a parking lot. A call to Southwest Airlines revealed that I would have two hours after my scheduled departure to show up at the airport and make alternate arrangements.

As if that wasn't enough, I discovered next that the bus I had boarded wasn't even going to Union Station as my itinerary stated. It's last stop would be 7 miles away in Hollywood. Not knowing what to do, I put in a call to Max who advised me to take the Metro. Luckily, there was a Metro stop three blocks from where the bus stopped in North Hollywood, so I got off and rode the entire length of the Red Line to Union station where I boarded the 5:30 Flyaway bus.

Homecoming: Part 2

I arrived at the Greyhound station with plenty of time and, after presenting my itinerary and receiving my ticket, I settled in for the customary hour-long wait. I was a little antsy about the limited buffer of time I have given myself to make my transfer at Union Station in LA and to take my mind off it, I made conversation with a nice lady from Oklahoma over hot cocoa as I hovered in the meager shelter of the Barstow Station roof edge and eyed the curtain of heavy drops rolling off it.

By my calculations I was only going to have between half an hour and 45 minutes to check my bags and make it through security at the airport and that was if I allowed for 30 minutes of slack during either of my bus rides. Under normal circumstances I would have just camped out in Max's living room the night before, but I figured he was probably already in Portland for the holidays.

I watched and waited while my driver took a 45-minute lunch break (the same driver who gave me a hard time when I had to run in to LA to get my Peace Corps papers). 15 minutes after my scheduled departure we rolled out of Barstow onto the wet desert freeway and moments later were on some secondary road heading northwest. This was a troubling development when you consider that my itinerary had me going through Victorville which is half an hour southwest of Barstow on I-15.

Homecoming: Part 1

It rained for much of my last two days at Aquarius Ranch. The washes filled with water that flowed to low points like the one in front of my trailer where it was deep enough to cover my mid-shin. A small mote formed around the Avatar dome (the dome that was finished when I arrived). Nearly every trailer had at least one leak, and we spent an afternoon fastening tarps to the roof of Tonya’s trailer, fighting gusts of wind of up to 40 mph. It would have been easy to throw in the towel like some had done, and leave early, but I was determined to make good on my promise to stay for 12 days.

By the time Monday arrived, we were working indoors most of the day and what work was done outside focused on mitigating the ill-effects of water. We shoveled berms to divert its flow and piled mulch in walkways to avoid walking in it. It’s remarkable how quickly the stuff went from coveted resource to nuisance. When the hour arrived for my departure, Penny was vacuuming water from the basement.

The food was still excellent!

A Desert Drizzle

Tonya and Ceci take a break from gardening to drink some barley grass juice. Jugs of water have been placed in the rows to protect plants and regulate temperature.

I awoke this morning to the pitter patter of rain on the roof of my trailer. It was nothing much by Oregon’s standards but enough to give my freshly-washed clothing a light spattering on the clothesline. It’s Friday, only two full days before my December 20 departure, but in the Aquarius Ranch work week it’s a Saturday. Much has transpired since my last dispatch.

Tomas and Derrick help Tonya transfer the wood-burning stove from the house to her trailer

A couple of days ago Ceci left and yesterday Steven took off so there are now officially no WWOOFers here that were here when I arrived. Two more girls are here now one from the Bay Area and one from Sweden. They met in Colorado where they heard from someone else about the ranch here. Also, a guy from France arrived yesterday. So now the role call is Ohio, Ohio, Ohio, California, Oregon, France, Switzerland, and Sweden.

Keeping the house clean is a constant battle in the desert when you have so many cats and humans tracking dirt inside.

Yesterday we cleared land for an orchard and dug a trench for an irrigation pipe. I wax sentimental, savoring the smells of burning salt bush and chicken manure while I still can. I think about the Peace Corps every day and wonder what I’m going to do for two months while I wait for my departure.

The dome is coming along.

Catch-Up in Hinkley

I've returned to Hinkley and I work to exhaustion every day which is why the posts have become less frequent. Here is the cliff-notes version of the last few days. I walked several blocks with all my gear to the train platform in Ventura and helped others around me figure out the ticket-printing kiosk while they waited for the train. On the train I met a man who works for a company that provides data management for the BP spill clean-up. He was an interest fellow. Among other things he told about year he and his wife spent in an Alaskan Eskimo village 70 miles from Russia.

I rode the train all the way to Barstow where James, Ceci, and Steven greeted me at the platform with their new friend Kika (an English girl whose real name is Henrietta). Back at the ranch I met Dennis and Marije from the Holland. The next day we spread out some mulch in the driveway and went for a hike up a nearby peak. It was very windy at the top and we found a survey marker.

Yesterday, Kika, James, and the Dutch departed and we got a new guy from Switzerland. His name is Tomas and he is part of a team that designed and constructed a puppet that writes poetry. Today two girls arrived from Ohio and we're getting another guy tomorrow. Soon I'll be the only link to the last 7 or so people to have come through. Oh, and one more thing; I fixed my camera! It doesn't zoom anymore but it takes pictures. Maybe one of these days before I leave I'll work up the muster to start uploading pictures again. I'm so out of it. Life on the road.

Ventura: The Lost Archive

My time in Ventura was a whirlwind. I didn’t have as much opportunity to write updates because the bulk of my time was devoted to developing a website to showcase a few of the many sides of Lynne. The site is a simple gallery, but my design is such that changes can be made without ever typing the tiniest bit of code. It remains to be seen whether she will or not, but I know I have potential clients who are up to the challenge.

Since I didn’t stay current during the last week or so, I’m just going to list the highlights of my time to bring up up to the present, beginning with a night on the town with Roberto when I did some pub trivia (my impromptu team finished in second place) and then saw a band at a trendy bar where I met Sienna, the proprietor of nearby Wine Lovers. When I mentioned my upcoming Peace Corps services she told me about the year she spent living in Puerto Rico with family and in particular pointed out the scarcity of water.

The following evening Lynne had an art show opening in a little clothing boutique that was part of a trendy shopping alcove downtown. Afterwards, we caught the proprietor of nearby Kama Sutra Closet as she was leaving her appointment-only shop, and managed to get our own private, unscheduled visit.

Other things that happened included more yoga lessons, ecstatic dance, visits to Art City and The WAV, a rave-like dance party, complete with LED glove light show, and a sitar performance followed by a raucous Indian dance party. Never a dull moment.

My Third Day in Ventura: Part 3

Into the rabbit hole

Freshly departed from Currie and JJ’s with Angie now in tow, Lynne and I went to her house where we pooled cars and headed for the so-called “86 House”, stopping to get Carrie along the way.
The 86 House defies description. In the time I was there I saw many of the more than 90 pieces of underground art (mostly paintings) that were on display in nearly ever square inch of available wall space in the portions of the wall space that are shared by all the tenants. What unifies the pieces and gives the 86 House its name is the presence of 86 in some way, shape, or form (the actual digits “8” and “6” written or represented, 86 of something featured in the piece, etc.) in each and every one.

Lynne examines her prototype

Lynne had gathered us there that night in order to capture the bedroom of one of the 86 House’s residents for a creative project. Being an avid burner, she is working on an idea for a conceptual space to be constructed at the festival next year that involves wood paneling and 3D, wall-hanging beer adds. We came offering lasagna as a thank-you, and left after we had perhaps overstayed out welcome.

Our last stop for the evening was karaoke at Golden China. For a Monday night it was hoppin’, but I still got in a couple of songs. Both times, however, I picked the wrong song and had to improvise (then again, it’s kind of hard to screw up when you know the song and you’ve got the lyrics right in front of you).

Ten point to the first commenter who can name the song I'm singing in this picture.

My Third Day in Ventura: Part 2

Lynne had to make a work-related house-call on the way to the GSA dinner party at Currie and JJ’s and had also planned a photo-shoot after it with Angie and Carrie, so we set out early with raw Lasagna in hand. After our first stop, we managed to way overshoot the beginning of the dinner, arriving far before the hosts were even ready, so we found ourselves with about an hour to kill. We spent it shopping for household items in a 97¢ store (99¢ stores everywhere, hold on to your seats!), and dropping in on the comely folk at La Ancla to chat.

GSA Dinner Party. I'm in there somewhere.

The dinner party went splendidly. I felt a genuine affinity for the everyone I met there and everyone I remembered from the work party the day before. The theme of the dinner was comfort food, so my lasagna fit right in. I would even go so far as to say it was a hit. I made it with Roberto’s expert help in the kitchen (he’s a professional cook) and we substituted steamed kale from Roberto and Lynne’s CSA box for the spinach.

After a little while, Angie arrived and after a bit more hanging out, she, Lynne and I excused ourselves from the party after a fond farewell.

My Third Day in Ventura: Part 1

Having enjoyed Lynne’s hospitality for two whole days and only supplied rudimentary work, I decided it to was time to get down to brass tacks and really start coding. But first, as usual, there were dishes to be done. Once seated at the computer I was relatively productive in the milieu of Lynne’s and Roberto’s comings and goings, but really gained traction after Lynne broke away to the barn to work on some of the partner yoga ideas she had developed the night before. Her partner, it turned out, was a winsome chap by the name of Andrew who surfs and has flowing, brown hair.

Noble companion: Spookums

Having consulted with Lynne on several occasions and identified a plan of attack for helping her begin to realize her still-forming and ambitious vision, I proceeded to put in a few hours cleaning up a project I did a while back for Ryan Smythe. It involved a mashup of jCarousel Lite and lightBox for jQuery. Meanwhile Lynne finished and came inside, so I set her to task doing some parallel work. Somehow, I managed to reach a stopping point about halfway through the task at hand and find time to make a lasagna, ready to put in the oven at a moment’s notice.

Reflection

The crystals hanging in the window over the sink cast rainbows in the warm, late-morning sunlight. It is a welcome repose from the gloom, yet somehow no less comforting. The sounds of Espers and Avey Tare & Kría Brekkan drift drowsily into my living room office, accompanied by the sounds of starlings bickering as they muscle for territory on the fig tree in the garden.

My heart grows weary at the thought that my tour is more than halfway through. My December 20 return looms a mere 17 days away. It’s hard to believe six whole weeks have passed since my trip to Tillamook with the OMEN VISTAs. As I near the point of one week at the Artbarn, I feel great satisfaction in my progress, working decent hours from about day two onward at developing Lynne a tiny web application that will allow her to develop her web presence and continue to change an update it after I am gone.

A Garden Interlude

The day began with a visit to Lynne’s friend, Trinity for a crash course in newsletter layout with Constant Contact. After that, it was time to get my hand’s dirty again at Lynne’s lot in a nearby community garden known as C.O.L.O.R. Gardens, where I helped her transplant some chard. The local GSA was having a work party that day, so we helped them clear weeds and turn the ground, much to everyone’s delight. I was very warmly received by everyone and was even invited to join them for an informal weekly get-together which, it just so happened, would be the following day.

C.O.L.O.R. Gardens

After some time spent shopping for groceries and doing laundry at the local Laundromat among other things, I had an opportunity to meet Matt, a long-time friend of Lynne’s with whom she was planning a partner yoga routine. I sat and worked on my computer while they studied a yoga book until Lynne’s housemate, Roberto returned home.

More C.O.L.O.R. goodness.

I had heard a lot about Roberto, and I was excited to finally meet him. Roberto has worked in the high-tech sector, particularly doing something that involves auto-cad. Being a dedicated foodie, however, he recently left behind his old career to pursue his love of cooking, becoming a cook at a local organic market and restaurant. Early in life, Roberto alternated between living in the United States and living in Mexico which, it seems, has endowed him with unusual character and insight. In the time since I met him, it seems we’ve often found ourselves deep in conversation about careers, cultures, or even life in general.