At any rate, I recently noticed that these themes are present in my life here in Turkmenistan. It came to me when I heard that my (almost) sitemate, Andy, is leaving. You see, he’s the fourth of my best friends here to leave. Number 4. As I said, the numbers 3, 4, 7, and 12 show up a lot of places. Here are some significant 4’s: four seasons, four gospels, four horsemen of the Apocalypse, four cardinal directions.
So, I got to thinking, what other themes can I find? Well, my first host mom in Bbat definitely counts as an evil stepmother. She was a crazy bitch. (Again, not to be confused with my current host mom who is great). Until Andy leaves, we have what I’ve always called the Bbat Triad (3). We had served 7 months before my very best friend left and everything went quickly downhill. I think I’m justified in saying I wear a disguise here. I’m not free to fully be me so I wear a mask or half a mask. Ok, I can stretch it with footwear. Footwear in fairy tales is significant to the plot or magical in some way: the slipper in Cinderella, the shoes in The Twelve Dancing Princesses, even in Snow White, the queen’s punishment is to wear red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies. Footwear is significant to me because I walk to work every day and it’s far and it’s on really bad roads, so the sandals I got in July from my cousin in India are already falling apart, and they’re a good brand.
One of the hardest things about being here is being separated from my parents and friends. It’s not the physical separation; I had that in Nevada. But here I can’t just pick up the phone and call them when I want advice on something or want to talk about something meaningful. I really miss having intelligent conversations. I had them with my parents back home and I had them here with my best friend before he left. Now it’s just who’s having sex with whom and who’s thinking about leaving and who got drunk and puked in the PCO lounge. I feel like I’m in college experiencing the things I so intentionally avoided when I was actually in college. I can’t really fault the other volunteers much for that because most of them are fresh out of college and Peace Corps is just an extension of their college experience, a chance to postpone being fully responsible adults for a little longer.
I’m definitely experiencing reversal of fortune, the bad kind. I went from having a good job in the US, being totally financially independent, with enough money to pay my expenses, tithe, and still eat out and see movies, to boarding with a family in Turkmenistan. Yeah, I wasn’t wealthy by American standards, but I had my own car, my own apartment and a savings account. Here I have no car, no house, and I live paycheck to paycheck.
One of the themes I didn’t mention is wolves. Sometimes these take a different guise depending on the story. It could be a dragon instead, for example. I won’t go into who or what I think are the wolves or dragons here, but you’ll notice I used them in the plural so there’s more than one.
I’m going to include the number 12 because that’s the minimum number of months I’ll serve here. Even if I decide tomorrow to leave, I’ll stay at least until October 1 so I can say I lived here a full year. Maybe that 12 will become 24 or 26 and I’ll stay the full time, but for now, it’s 12. I wouldn’t make my decision based on the fact that 12’s my lucky number, but it is an auspicious number. 12 months of the year, 12 apostles, 12 minor prophets, 12 tribes of Israel.
Needless to say, in this fairy tale, I’m still awaiting my happy ending, because I’m still locked in the tower. But there aren’t any magical helpers around, so I’ll have to cut off my hair and make my own ladder, whatever that ends up meaning.