COS. Part1.OR."Ever Has it Been That Love Knows Not its Own Depth Until the Hour of Separation"

As my time in Azerbaijan comes to an end, I am left feeling like someone caught between two places--the familiar and the remembered. Somewhere over the past two years, Azerbaijan has become home in unique and surprising ways. At the same time, Minnesota has transformed into something wholly abstract and static in my day-to-day life. Many Peace Corps Volunteers spend a good chunk of their time fantasizing about the comforts and aspects of "home" that are familiar: dryers, grocery stores with products in English, seat-belts, etc. We think about our family, friends, professional/academic endeavors that wait for us to continue with when we return to "our real life."  I know this mentality has characterized a great deal of my Peace Corps existence. However, now that I am about to close my service, I am struck with a new and acute sense of loss. I realize that somewhere between landing in Baku in October 2009 and the present, I have acquired friends, experiences and ideas wholly unique sense of home. It is important to note here that I am not speaking literally in the strictest sense. For example, I never got used to the racial harassment walking down the street or the feeling of living in a place seemingly devoid of political freedom. The cultural and social differences were almost always palpable, whether in a work or professional setting. At the same time, I think of all of the relationships and experiences that have come out of my time in Azerbaijan--people and places that will continue to influence me long after I return to the United States--and I can't help feeling that, despite it all I will be leaving a home this week.

Peace Corps Azerbaijan has given me an opportunity to connect with people whom I would never have had the opportunity to meet otherwise. On a personal level, this experience has been an exercise in breaking down borders--those of race, religion, age, location, experience, etc. Talking to other PCVs, I discovered a wealth of experience and ways of living about which I had been wholly ignorant as a college student in Azerbaijan. Up until I came to Azerbaijan, the spectrum of lifestyles with which I was acquainted was limited to say the least. Most of my friends were generally my age and in a fairly similar place (literally and figuratively). Peace Corps challenged those kinds of borders. A case in point: For the past two years, one of my best friends and closest allies has been a 65 year-old woman from the east coast.

On another level, working as a youth development specialist in a cross-cultural context has allowed me to challenge the absolutes of the ideals I had so fervently argued for as an undergraduate and activist. In this case, it hasn't been that I have wholly reversed my views but rather that they have become more resilient in their expression. I have been able to see the concrete importance inherent to the debates we have in the public and private spaces of our lives, whether they be about gender, rights or the question of development. If you had asked me as an undergraduate feminist, "what should happen if a young woman finds her rights and agency curtailed within the context of her community and/or family?" I would have offered an innocuous and rather naive answer regarding the necessity of offering opportunities and empowering the individual in question to demand her own agency. Having worked with these young women, I now appreciate how complicated and nuanced our answers to these issues need to be. I have also been amazed by what Amy Tan calls "the invisible strength" of the young men and women with whom I had the chance to meet and work. My conversations with them has really been the motivating spirit of my work here.

It is an oddity to think that a week from now, I will be in Minnesota and attempting yet another set of transitions. Oruj and I will look for temporary jobs while waiting to hear from graduate schools, I will be attempting to reconnect with friends after two years on both ends, we may even be ambitious and attempt to plan our second/third weddings! As I prepare to go, I remember that I started this experience with a quote from Kahil Gibron's The Prophet and would like to end it that way as it still communicates my feelings about this experience:

"Then the gates of his heart were flung open, and his joy flew far over the sea. And he closed his eyes and prayed in the silences of his soul. But he descended the hill, a sadness came upon him and he thought in his heart: How shall I go in peace and without sorrow? Nay, not without a wound in the spirit shall I leave this city...A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence? If this is my day of harvest, in what fields have I sowed the seed and in what unremembered seasons?"