The Peace Corps has three goals:

• Provide countries with skilled workers
• Teach host nations about America

and

• Teach Americans about the host countries

To further the third goal, during Peace Corps Week (this week,) former volunteers are encouraged to speak to their local communities about their service. I just got back from the Lewiston Public Library where I gave a talk to three hardy individuals who braved the snowstorm that has moved in upon us. Although the turnout may have been greater had there not been a snowstorm, I was extremely happy to talk with those who did come.

My friend Sarah always said that if we touched at least one person, we had done our job well. Perhaps none of tonight’s audience members will themselves join, but at least they will have a better understanding of the Peace Corps and be able to speak about it with others.

As the snow falls outside and I pray for a ski day tomorrow, I also hope that a few Lewistonians will make that leap and perhaps themselves have the luxury of enacting this 3rd goal a few years from now.

It has been a strange week. For our last few days in Uzbekistan, Peace Corps (perhaps out of pitty,) put us up in a 4 star hotel in Tashkent. I was able to re-connect with my friends from PST and spend some quality time over good food food and good beer. Although we were in the big city, something I had been looking forward to, the whole event was tinged with a mixture of sadness, anger, and confusion. What to do when you you’ve spent three months learning a very foreign culture and then another two actualy working within it? How to say good bye to those people who had taken you in as family and welcomed you as friends? What to make of your experience? Success, failure – Interruped Service – who’s to blame?

So I check the news today and the future seems dire for Uzbekistan. Experts say that further destabilization is likeley and words such as: bloody, rebellion, unrest, civil war and others are thrown into the mix. What to think about the families who are just trying to get by and get ahead? Who will have to pay and will there be any winners or will everyone lose at least in the short term? All unanswerable, only conjecture.

So these thoughts race through my head as I’m trying to process yet another new culture, yet another new language, yet another group of 60 plus Americans. It’s too much but there is no turning back. I’m coming to the realization that I can only talk about Uzbekistan here for so long before I become just another PC Romania volunteer. Not that that is a bad thing, but it just leaves me thinking about what exactaly those last five months were. I wouldn’t give them away for anything but what do I take from it?

Its raining today in Transylvania, and I went out for a beer with a few of the boys from my language class this afternoon. So far another very smart group. I’m Matt number 3. My host mother is a kindly woman, poor but talking to me nonstop in Romanian. Maybe I’ll understand one day. Tomorrow I go see the rest of the group again at hub. It will be all right.