Books of the Bible read: 17
Blog posts: 60 or 78 (depending on what you call a post)
Letters received: 206 (keep them coming!)
Trips outside of Tstan: 2
Different clubs taught: 8
T-18b’s who have left PC Turkmenistan: 10
It’s this last statistic I want to blog about. This weekend on our exact one-year anniversary, Andy flies out. He makes the 10th T-18b to leave for one reason or another. It puts our ET rate at 34%. The way things are going more will leave. Andy’s departure means two things. First, it’s further proof of what a “special” assignment Turkmenistan is. Some people leave because they choose to, others are forced out for one reason or another. The point is, a 34% ET rate (and we’re only halfway through) seems awfully high to me. I mean, if I owned a company, for example, and a third of my employees quit, I’d quickly try to determine what the problem was and remedy it. Losing that many workers is bad for business and it’s bad for the Peace Corps. Maybe 34% isn’t a big deal in countries like Ukraine that have hundreds of volunteers. But when you start out small, every person who leaves is a big loss.
That leads me to the second thing. For me personally, Andy is the fourth good friend of mine to leave. I have pretty much no support network here now, so I must be an island, as it were. Other volunteers have experienced the same thing with various friends leaving and creating a void where they once had emotional support. I’m not blaming the volunteers who leave, by any means. Quite frankly I’m envious of those who were able to leave and still get RPCV status and benefits. I consider them lucky and it tempts me to walk out in front of traffic so I can be done with the whole thing but still get to go to grad school for free, even if I do have to use crutches for the first semester. I don’t do this, of course, because I can’t guarantee I would only break a leg and not get killed. In fact, my fear of being hit by a car here is such that I wrote up a will for my country director to give to my parents in the event of my death.
At any rate, most things are easier and more fun when you have someone to do them with you. That’s definitely the case with serving in PC Turkmenistan, and as volunteers drop like flies, those who are left are more likely to continue the trend because service gets rougher and lonelier.