Meg and I: a Peace Corps Legacy

I wrote this story for our diversity newsletter, and it received some attention from our PC training director who wants to publicize it. Unfortunately, I was not able to upload pictures of Meg without having them being sideways. Maybe someday they'll find their place here.

My name is Anastasia, and I am a 1^st –year Agriculture volunteer. I’m stationed in Western Region, in a little village surrounded by cocoa groves. I am a naturalized American citizen, and what makes me unique is that a Peace Corps volunteer played a prominent role in my education, back when I still lived in my native country, Kazakhstan.

Me circa 1995

Peace Corps Kazakhstan started its mission in 1993, and volunteers participated in such programs as Community Development, Education, Health and HIV/AIDS and Youth Development not only in small towns and villages, but also in big cities like mine, Almaty. Many moons ago, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Peace Corps English teachers started to frequent my high school – an austere concrete building with rusty monkey bars sticking out in a deserted playground.

I remember one volunteer very clearly. Her name was Meg, and she was from Chicago (later on I had to find it on the world map, which was wall-papered in my room). During lessons, she used old issues of Rolling Stone and SPIN and snapshots of her friends to teach us such important and exotic-sounding words and expressions as “awesome,” “mashed potatoes,” and “cool stuff.” She had curly hair, bright smile and clear voice. To us, teenage “lost generation” of the 90s, she was very cool. She was also very brave. Coming to a crumbling post-Soviet republic half the world away to live in an old apartment, take a rickety exhaust-spewing bus around the city to teach a bunch of gloomy teenagers in a gloomy unheated classroom took a lot of bravery, sense of humor, and determination.

Looking back, I realize how lucky I was to have Meg as a teacher. Not only did I have an awesome* opportunity to speak English with “a real American” (as many of us would proudly tell our families), she also showed us her own version of America, which differed from Hollywood movies, music videos and commercials that flooded our ascetic media channels. Meg’s lessons helped me to improve my English and gave me enough confidence to apply for a coveted foreign exchange program, as well as college and, later on, graduate school.

Thanks to those Rolling Stone magazines read in our unheated classroom, I am a Peace Corps volunteer myself… My experience is very different from Meg’s: instead of living in a big post-Soviet city surrounded by mountains, I live in the African bush surrounded by cocoa farms. On a typical day I fetch water from the well, go to the farm with a cutlass, hand-wash my clothes, take a nap in the shade, greet neighbors and let local kids draw on my courtyard walls with crayons. However, based from our correspondence (we still keep in touch), both Meg and I have similar emotional ups and downs, little victories, frustrations and epiphanies. Back in Kazakhstan, Meg also felt different (even though her shade of skin was the same as ours). She also craved American foods (which is why she sends me care packages now). Moreover, she didn’t think that her presence at our school made any difference in our lives (it did!). And even though I’ve only been serving for less than a year, I am hoping that my presence in the community will also make a small-small impact – even if it is teaching a local kid to draw or speak a little English (other than the sing-songy “I am fine, how are you?” chant).

We are also a family now – a Peace Corps family. I am honored to be part of this great legacy, and passionate about its mission which, for me, started about 20 years ago when one sunny but cold winter day Meg came to our classroom, smiled and started talking to us in American English with her clear voice. 

  

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*Thanks, Meg.