It has been
almost six months since I last wrote a blog post. I’ve been to America and back—for
six weeks in July and August-- where I sold my house and all my belongings save
for one box of outdoor gear, one kayak paddle, my cross county skis. Now I have more stuff here
in Crimea, though that isn’t much—clothes and a few books. So far, that feels
very good—when I think of something of mine that I had grown to love, or so I
thought—certain clothes or books or souvenirs from my travels—I feel no sense
of loss but only a kind of fond memory of something I once appreciated. Perhaps
when, or if, I try to reestablish a home for myself in America, I will miss all
those things, but I think not. When I envision a future home, it is a small
place—a single room with a kitchen and a bathroom—with few possessions. I have learned to live with very little
here—I am hoping the comfortableness with that way of life will carry forward
into whatever my future brings.
I feel now
that my time here is starting to wind down. I know I have talked of possibly
staying on in Crimea after the end of my Peace Corps stint, but now I am
feeling that is less of a probability. I think that more than anything, for as
long as I am mentally and physically able, I want to continue to do productive
work in my life, but I feel the opportunities for that here in Crimea are
dwindling. The major part of my work at the library is drawing to a close. Most
of the grant work I have done at the library has been through the Peace Corps,
and now I am no longer eligible for any of those grants. I will continue to
search for other grant possibilities for the library but I know those are
limited.
But I feel
the major reason for my sense that my work here has little future is the
language barrier. Though I feel competent in getting around and having
conversations on a surface level, the language fluency necessary to have deeper
conversations—to discuss project ideas, to process successes and failures, to
just be creative—continues to allude me.
I do feel there is much I could continue to do here if I could work with
English-speaking people, but at least in the Crimean Tatar world, they are few
and far between. It feels like I have come up against a wall—this is as far as
I can go—or maybe as far as I am willing to go—without the language to
thoroughly understand and partake of the conversations around me. Recently I
learned a Russian verb that in the negative means to “not take part,” and in
the example, referred to someone who could not take part in a conversation
because he didn’t know English well enough. And I thought to myself, “Yes, that
is me exactly.”
In my home
life, too, I have come up against this wall. Lately, Lenura has asked me
several times “Am I sad? Is something wrong?” obviously picking up on the
current turbulence of my feelings about my life here, despite my belief that on
the surface, at least, I am carrying on as usual—I guess “body language” doesn’t
have that lost-in-translation problem. But despite my desire to talk with Lenura—to
try and find the words for what I am feeling—I shy away from doing that, the
memory so fresh of the last time I tried to talk about my feelings and her
ending being up hurt because of something I inadvertently said, and I not even
realizing how hurt she was until she told Serdar about it and then he told me.
So I am
beginning to think more about what my future will bring and trying to trust
that the path of my life will open up before me and that I will recognize the
steps I need to take. And to not feel discouraged or depressed by my changing
circumstances here and continue to be present to the abundant joy in my life.
And towards
that goal, I have made an effort to get out hiking practically every weekend
since I have been back from America. It is getting harder to do that now as the
weather turns colder and the daylight hours have shriveled, but what a glorious
autumn it was. In the next few blog posts, I will try to post some photos and
highlights of those tramps around Crimea.
Once again, with love from Crimea.
Once again, with love from Crimea.
