Thought I posted this last week, but apparently I didn’t. Weird. Anyway, here we go…
Over a year ago, I updated my blog with some reflections about completion of service. My site-mate Tara had just completed her two (plus!) years of service and her departure got me thinking a lot about what we, as Peace Corps volunteers, accomplish in these two years. The lives we affect, the lives that affect ours, the lessons we learn, leave behind, and everything else that comes along with the intense, unique experience that is being a Peace Corps volunteer.
Now, I have been in Ukraine for over two years and will be here for another eight months. Many of my friends, including my other site-mate (Shelby) have left. And because my sentiments have stayed pretty much exactly the same as they did when Tara left, I’m reposting what I wrote here in June, 2010. Of course, some of the specifics have changed, but the experience of standing on the platform, waving good-bye remains the same.
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Two years come and go pretty quickly. That probably never feels truer than when volunteers climb the steep steps of the train that will take them to Kyiv one last time. I can’t say for sure yet—I’m still a few months shy of half-way through my own service—but when I watched my site-mate board her final train a few weeks ago, I saw my entire service so far and the year and a half still to come flash before my eyes.
As we stood on the platform, Tara kept saying “I can’t believe I’m leaving.” And I don’t think the rest of us standing on the platform with her could believe it either. When I arrived at site six months ago, I was more than pleasantly surprised to find out that I would have two site-mates—one from my own group, and Tara, from Group 33 who had extended until June. Tara was our first friend in Chortkiv. She sent us text messages the day before we arrived, she called, she was there when we needed her, and soon she became a real friend. Six months seemed forever away and Tara wouldn’t let us talk about it until a month before her departure, anyway, so her close of service was something we hardly even thought about.
But then suddenly it was the month before her departure. She started giving us things—blankets, kitchen utensils, sweaters, scarves, coats, statues of caricature-like Cossacks that had been gifted to her and she felt bad throwing away—two and a half years worth of stuff accumulated from the life she’d built for herself here.
And then she was boarding the train—a stuffed bear given to her by a student sticking out of her backpack, all her possessions whittled down so they could fit in one rolling suitcase. Her host-mother was keeping an eye on everything with a video camera, her host-brother was clinging to her host-father’s knees as the trains clanged and rolled by. Three teachers from her school were there, one with her daughter, the sixth-former who’d given Tara the stuffed bear. Her friend Vika, Vika’s mom, and their dog were there, and we all huddled around Tara until the conductor was blowing the whistle and the командант was yelling at the passengers to get on board.
And then she was at the window—waving good-bye. As the train was winding its way around the corner of the big hill that looks out over our town, her sixth-former, Olessya, leaned toward me and said in perfect English, “I’m really going to miss Tara. She’s my best friend.” Her host mother couldn’t stop the tears rolling down her face, and everybody, even her five year-old host brother, walked away from the tracks solemnly.
Parting ways was a strange affair—Tara, the link that had formerly connected all of us, was on a train headed to Kyiv. There was nothing left to bind us—an incongruous group of people who might have never known each other, if it hadn’t been for Tara. Her host parents insisted that I come to visit and the teachers welcomed me to come speak to their students. I had planned to walk home alone, but I was joined by Vika, her mother, and their dog. On our way, they insisted that I join them to visit a friend, an old man named Bohdan Edwardovich who used to teach English at one of the primary schools and is an amateur historian and painter.
As I fell into step with Vika and her mother, and after we stopped by Bohdan Edwardovich’s house for a quick visit and eventually parted ways, with promises to call one another and meet soon, I realized how naturally life would go on for all of us without Tara.
What then, is left behind when a Peace Corps volunteer says good-bye?
Do we leave our communities with more than memories? What is the most important part of the legacy that a Peace Corps volunteer leaves behind?
A friend of mine recently completed his service as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, and in his last blog post as a Peace Corps volunteer, he wrote,
In the work I have done as a PCV, I have had as many or more failures as successes. I have not made the kind of difference I thought I could before. But I have been able to do a few things well. A square is only a square because it has limits: There are four sides which surround its area, bounding the square and separating it from what it is not. People are no different, and we must recognize this: We must understand what our limits are, what we can and cannot do. We must know who we are not to understand who we are.
Although our experiences on opposite sides of the planet have been quite different, I would venture to say that this is a lesson that most volunteers learn at some point during or after their service. We’re all squares of sorts, testing the limits of our boundaries in order to do the most that we can, whatever that might be.
It’s the “whatever that might be” that’s sometimes the tricky part. We all know that we can’t fix the problems that brought us to serve as Peace Corps volunteers in the first place, but what can we do? As small squares, we are all part of a bigger picture, one that often seems blurry and out-of-focus when looked at from up close.
On the days that I feel like “just an English teacher,” I try to remind myself that this isn’t necessarily such a small thing to be, that I can do a lot, even by just being a good teacher. All of my favorite English teachers undoubtedly taught me much more than just English. A message I recently received from a Romanian friend, now completing a PhD in the States, helps me remember this:
Speaking as a former student of one such as you, I can tell you that you will never be forgotten. The sense of empowerment you instill in these students will fuel some of them forever. I learned about feminism, and races, and human rights, and Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” and how to survive an abusive relationship, and V day, and how to make your voice heard in a traditionally patriarchal society, and countless other things from Peace Corps volunteers.
If we’re lucky, this is our legacy as Peace Corps volunteers. Certainly we won’t change the lives of everyone we meet, and certainly we won’t solve all the world’s problems. But most of us never set out to do that in the first place anyway. We set out to make lasting human connections, to push the limits of our own boundaries and those of others. And if we’re really lucky, we get to see tangible results. But even if we never see the big picture from far away, we must believe that each small square is crucial to the whole.
In the end, it seems to me that the measure of a Peace Corps Volunteer’s legacy can be seen on the faces of the people who come to the train station to see them off, in the stuffed bears, Cossack figurines, and embroidered shirts squeezed into a backpack. The memories, the lessons learned, the boundaries pushed, and the human connections—these are the small squares.
