Interruptability

An Armenian woman looks me in the face and tells me that I’m her daughter. She sets out a feast that she can’t afford to pay for and tells me to eat until I’m full, then eat some more.  

A woman in plastic orange glasses stands on the same street corner selling nuts and beans every day of the week and never moves. She reluctantly takes her shivering hand out of her pocket, despite the bitter cold, to shake my hand before I enter the store.  “But where’s your dog!” she asks in Armenian, surprised to see me alone.  I march confidently into the store, knowing exactly what I need, exchanging courtesies with the workers while I shop.

I pass a parade of smiles on my walk home and casually strike up a conversation with several of them along the way – some in English, some in Armenian, some half-and-half.  Children literally gather in packs to follow me down the street, eagerly shouting out to me in broken English as I walk.  

I know the night will be a good one, because I’ll be spending it with people I love, singing Armenian songs to guitar accompaniment and sharing our lives with one another over delicious music and food.  

Every day there are so many tiny moments, known faces, and meaningful interactions that indicate that, after two years of living in Sisian, Armenia, I am more than just a guest in this community.  I’m not just someone passing through, or a tourist who can barely communicate with the locals.  No. This is my home. 

It’s really hard to say why I feel so secure here, or when exactly it all started to feel that way.  I know that it wasn’t easy, and I know that at times I would have said it’s probably not worth doing at all. 

A mixture of learning Armenian, slathering my footsteps all over the village and town, and just hanging out with people has definitely helped.  But one factor flashes neon in my mind when I think of what has really helped me to feel so integrated in this community:

Armenia has taught be to be interruptable. 

Interruptability means waking up each morning and surrendering the day to service. No matter what my plans are for the day, I promise to allow myself room for interruption.  It's not always easy, and I'm not always good at it. 

So on any given day, this'll mean something different.  If a friend is in pain, that’s where my attention goes. If a student wants to hold a conversation in English outside of class with me, that’s what I do. If my host mom’s porch needs to be swept and she doesn’t have the energy to do it, I sweep right on in. Whatever stands in my path, I work to be fully present with it.  

This concept has driven me to drink over a million cups of tea, to socialize with people I never would have had I been more attached to my agenda, and to trust that life and people are more important than time and schedules.

There have definitely been times when I’ve forced needs onto others and held far too tightly onto my own expectations of what service should mean in Armenia.  But each time I did that, I missed out on something beautiful.  So I’m constantly working on being more receptive and responsive,  and allowing life to move me instead of me moving it the way I want it to be.  While it’s not appropriate in every situation, it feels important to allow life to fill us up occasionally rather than try to cram it with our own conception of fullness.  

Happy Peace Corps volunteers always have at least one thing in common: strong relationships with Host-Country Nationals.  If relinquishing control and giving myself fully to wherever service points me to each day means developing better relationships, then that’s what I’ll continue to do.  

Run for a Better World

“I miss our village runs. Will you come one day this week and we’ll do our usual mountain?”

“Ampayman, Meg Jan. Let’s do it.” 

Some of my friends describe the gym that they go to back home every week as their church.  They say it’s like a watering hole; people gather there, build community, and worship life through exercise.

Talin 5K with my Dog

Like the endorphins it produces, exercise emits a sort of sanctified sublimity and attracts people into community wherever it lives.  My Peace Corps service in Armenia has been no exception to this phenomenon.  

Last fall, for example, a good friend of mine named Hasmik asked me to train her because she wanted to climb Mt. Ararat (16,946 ft.)  by the end of the summer.  Hasmik had never trained seriously for anything before and her experience with fitness was fairly limited.  

So we created a six-month training plan that included trekking down long river trails, scaling mountains, sprinting hill workouts,  and pushing endurance runs on the track – dodging haystacks, snow, and plenty of cattle pies along the way.  

I’ve never been in better shape in my life.  More importantly, Hasmik was second in her group to reach Mt. Ararat in August with suprisingly little chaffing, barely sore muscles, and tremendous success.  

Anywhere you step foot outside your door in small-town Sisian, Armenia, you can point to a new mountain you’d like to climb and proceed with the ascension without seeing another soul for miles.  The lakeside views, mountain chains, and wide-open landscape is ideal terrain for any adventure runner/fitness fiend. 

Hasmik Atop Mt. Ararat

Running hoisted Hasmik to the top of Noah's Biblical mountain, solidified our friendship, and attracted the attention of many curious Armenians as well.  Women in this community rarely exercise, especially during the day, so to see two crazy “aghcheekner” plus a dog jogging through the muddy swamps (roads) of Sisian is quite an anomaly.  

Throughout our training, we’ve accumulated several canine companions, a beautiful athletic family of new friends, plenty of offers to come in for tea or hop in someone’s car to avoid the heat/cold, and lots of awkward stares. 

But running bridges cultural gaps because it connects our bodies to something real and euphoric – something that transcends the frivolity of language and culture.  Hasmik and I connect through strides when we trudge through a snowy field or release our legs to tumble ourselves down a mountain.  No words needed.

Exercise is like church for me because it directs our attention to greatness and liberates us, if only for a workout, from the monotony of triviality.  It chizzles the fat from our bodies and the excess from our minds.  

Hasmik and my experience in Armenia remind me that exercise invites community and disciplines our minds and bodies to create better people for a better world. 

As long as I have my sneakers, then, I’ll never run out of ways to create meaningful relationships and celebrate life in a brand new community. 

Gnatsek vaselu (Go out and run)!

Students Define Happiness and Education

Teaching teenagers, especially in a foreign setting where earning their respect means warring against their conception of you as a classroom pet or play-toy requires a very special, high-potency brand of patience that I can only sometimes barely muster up.

But then occasionally, like in the eye of a hurricane, you get to observe a provactive thought intoxicate their minds and change their hearts, if only for a grain-of-sand sized moment.  

The senior (high school) students, my Armenian counterpart and I converse about the meaning of happiness and education on a random Monday afternoon in our freezing cold classroom with its dilapitated walls and desks. Half of them are half-way present in the conversation, but truthfully (despite my smile and dramatic commitment to the topic), half are not.   

The girls in the class offer their definition, albeit reluctantly, of happiness: happiness means having family, friends, health, etc. (where the et cetera only includes circumstantially-based satisfaction).  We ask them if there is a way to be happy without any one of those things, and they say no.  

As the conversation then shifts to education, we find that the students mostly agree that education means learning to become better people.  But how? And why? 

Not a whole lot of input.  My counterpart then bravely posits her own feelings on education:  “Education is freedom,” she says, and elaborates.  Everybody’s listening now.    

It’s the perfect segue into discussing mental freedom, or the ability to think for yourself, so we bridge the discussion with our previous ideas about happiness.  “Isn’t it possible then,” we argue after a few students' comments, “through education, to gain the skills necessary to experience a kind of happiness that is entirely independent of circumstance?”

Mental wheels begin to move, engines begin to stir.  

We want them to understand that education doesn’t only mean “schooling.”  Education can mean developing an agile, resilient mind that enables us to imagine and create happiness that depends on nothing but our inner world or inner spirituality to bring forth peace.  Education teaches us to think.

I think maybe next time we’ll re-enact the “walk against conformity” scene from Dead Poets Society to get them observing where their ideological thoughts really come from.  This is just the begining of our discussion, but already they’ve proved the value of the topic being discussed.  After this discussion, for example, one of the students came up with the following definition for the concept of love:

"Love is the sense by which we either love or die." She then went on to explain how love can either figuratively kill us or bring us life.

Beautiful! They’re thinking, transcending, wondering and questioning, and it’s all just a pleasure to witness.

I’m going to try to get this link translated into Armenian because it is a wonderful depiction of how choice can determine our circumstance, instead of the other way around:  

 http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/this_is_water/

Close-Knit Beauty

Sitting inside a live portrait of cross-cultural bliss beside my host mother, I contemplate just how “right” everything feels. 

I mean, look at this design!! 

Between teaching class and English conversation club, I sit wedged between a pleasantly warm wood stove to my right and my beautiful host mother, donning her everyday house dress, to my left.  In the wake of a delicious Armenian meal – a savory mixture of beans, canned tomato-juice,  potatoes, and rice  – Anush sips her tea and teaches me to knit a hat.  Meanwhile, an Armenian television drama fills the silence in the background.  Anush oscillates between patiently explaining the meaning of several words I can’t understand from the TV and tolerantly fixing my knitting errors whenever I clumsily drop a stitch.  

Anush has been knitting and crocheting since she was five.  She can now sit and thoughtlessly create a handmade skirt of consummate skill using only her thick, clearly-spends-a-lot-of-time-gardening fingers and a tiny crochet hook in just one evening.  

Incredible Pattern

Together we’re going to try to sell some of her best work, because it’s simply fantastic.  And, after she had taught me several new stitches and a really interesting new design (if you can teach me to knit you can teach anyone), I realized that she could be sharing these skills with other young villagers who would like to learn as well.  If fact, she could do some knitting lessons with other villagers to make extra money to buy more yarn for her own work, which she could then sell  in larger cities or towns.  Anush loves the idea. 

This moment captures the beauty of cross-cultural, or even just cross-person, relationships.  We've all got a set of skills just waiting to be shared with the world; sometimes, we just need some outside support to begin to recognize those gifts. Anush, for example, didn’t realize how special her talent was until she saw how painstakingly slowly I struggled to stitch two simple knots together.  

Now, she feels empowered by the idea that she has something extraordinary to share with others, and I’ve got a nice new winter hat.  

A Man and His Lemon Tree

Our Peace Corps Security Officer is a large, strapping, gentle Armenian man who simultaneously comforts and intimidates but whom everyone loves.  Vahagn is the volunteer “daddy” who we look to for guidance, protection, and stability.  

The man has won awards for his safety and security practices in Armenia because he not only fiercely defends his volunteers from harm but also shows genuine concern for the welfare of those whom he protects.   

You would not, however, want to be on this guy’s bad side.  He’s enormous, and I’m betting he could tactfully disarm a perpetrator without even trying.  

All that said, he does have one definite soft spot: his little lemmon tree.

One day I was sitting outside on the Peace Corps office patio, when Vahagn made his daily trip outside to monitor the growth of his tiny little tree.  He sauntered outside and we engaged in conversation as he sheapishly approached his  germinating friend.  

“What’s that, Vahagn?” I asked, wondering what could possibly evoke such admiration from a man of his stature and girth.  

“Dis ees my lemon,” he said, matter-of-factly.  “Eet ees finally getting big.”

And so we continued to discuss the growth of this single lemon, which apparently Vahagn had been checking on every day for a year.  He nurtures it and loves it with little regard for the fact that there is only one lemon on that silly little tree.  He delights in his citrus child, and it slowly but surely bares the fruit of his nurture and care.

Vahagn and the lemon reflect a shift in my focus as a result of this weekend's Peace Corps Conference. 

I love going to Peace Corps conferences because they often reinstill passion in and redirect the purpose purpose of a group of idealistic Americans who have come to this foreign place to better themselves and to better others but who have often stumbled over the lumps and bumps of the rough ground of reality in real-time Armenia.  

During our conference this weekend, I was reminded of the importance of relationships in our service.  

One memory in particular stands out.  Richard Byess, a USAID employee in Armenia whom I deeply respect and admire, dazzled the volunteers with words he barely had to think about but which moved me to my core:

“The only real struggle you’ll endure throughout Peace Corps is the internal struggle to stay commited to what you love no matter what happens.”

Amen.  

I had often allowed obstacles to distract me from my dedication to create meaningful cross-cultural relationships throughout my first year of service.  I wanted my tree to sprout thousands of little lemons and look really impressive but failed to nurture the single seed that mattered the most.  This year has already been so much more enriching for me because my service goals have become, once again, entirely relational.  

Lemon trees require an ample amount of light, warmth, and affection in order to thrive.  They also require plenty of time to grow properly.  In fact, a lemon tree can take up to several years to grow its fruit under certain conditions.  

This is what a relationship needs, and this is what volunteers are here to do.  

Pride and Joy

It’s kinda rare, but when you feel it you want to bottle it and save it for a rainy, grumpy day. 

As I watch my students during English club, I feel overwhelmed with maternal pride, warmth, and affection for these kids who have made such an impact on my life.  

Several Armenian teenagers sit happily clicking away on their new Rosetta Stone programs that were generously donated by a friend of mine and finally installed after much hard work.  They are so focused on the task at hand that they barely notice that I’m in the room.  

“The woman,” one of them says to the computer. 

“The WOOH-man,” The girl ardently repeats, hoping her voice will register this time.

“THE WOOOOOH-MAN!” She cries, and the soul-affirming Rosetta “woosh” sounds its beautiful tone as the screen lights up green.  The girl beams with self-satisfaction and proceeds to the next activity. 

It’s so simple, but Rosetta Stone excites these kids and significantly alters the way they learn languages.  They engage with the material, track their progress, and satiate their natural curiosity while gaining technological skills as well.   I watch them become responsible for their own learning and see them laugh while doing it.  

On days like this, the burden of teaching is light and the yoke so very easy. 

Carpe Diem in the 12th Grade

One day in my twelfth grade English class I decided to try something completely different.

The twelfth graders in our school have absolutely no interest in learning anything at all.  They concern themselves with typical teenage drama, and that’s about it.  Up until a few years ago, twelfth grade didn’t even exist – the school only went to tenth.  So basically, they try to fight the system by rejecting the twetfth grade altogether.

Needlesless to say, these students are particularly hard to reach.  But one day, instead of trying to teach them English (which many of them feel no need to learn because they will never use it), I decided to talk with them about fear.  

“Do you fear what other people think of you?” I asked them in Armenian, thinking they would probably just ignore the question and secretly text on their phones. 

Instead, I was answered by a chorus of “no’s,” followed by some passionate assertions like “I used to, but I don’t anymore,” etc, etc. 

At that point it became clear to me that the most important thing in the world to them was also the thing that they fought most to pretend that they didn’t care about: They would go to any length to prove that they didn’t care what other people think of them because they care so deeply about what other people think of them.

So I invited them, one by one, to come to the front of the class and do something absurd in front of everyone to prove that they didn’t care what others thought of them.

One kid had to close one eye and shout the word “tree” (in English – there had to be some English component), close one eye, and spin in a circle hopping on one leg.  Another had to tell us his deepest secret. Another had to close his eyes and tell us, without thinking, what he wanted most in the world.  And finally, someone just had to dance.  They all did it.

Then it was my turn (I couldn’t get out of doing something if I was about to preach about fearlessness), so I told them they could command me to do anything they’d like and I’d do it.

The class asked me to do an Armenian dance for them, so I did it.  They loved it – they laughed, clapped along with the moves, and one of the boys came up and started dancing with me. 

After that we had a real conversation about where fear comes from and why it is such a big part of our lives.

Their homework was to think of something that they had always been afraid of doing, and then do it.  They could write about it and tell no one, or they could tell the class when they come back. 

Some of them conquered their fears, and some did not.  But all of us learned something that day.  And for the first time, I felt a real connection with these students who put up all sorts of walls when it comes to learning and authority figures.  

Now, when we see each other in the halls, we say “Carpe Diem,” because I told them it means “Seize the day” and that every day we should remind each other to live without fear. 

 They liked that, and so do I.