· Take bucket baths as your means of getting clean. This means standing in a tub (try to pretend it’s grubby enough that you would only want to touch it with your feet and no other part of your body) and filling a bucket of water to pour on yourself using a smaller pail or cup. Especially try shaving under these circumstances. Bonus points if you heat your water on the stove instead of using the tap.
· Walk everywhere. To work, to the post office, to the grocery store, to your friends’ houses. If you live in an area where this is simply not doable, try to hitch a ride. Here we take “taxis” which are just people picking people up in their Soviet-era Ladas and taking them where they want to go for anywhere between 60 tenne (about 25 cents) to five manat ($2). I walk 45 minutes to work and 45 minutes back every day.
· Only eat food that has been prepared in your house. This means no microwave dinners, no delivery, no take out, no restaurants. And no pre-packaged, prepared food like bags of salad mix or pre-cut fruit, etc. You can’t even eat sliced bread. You have to buy a whole loaf and slice it yourself. To be really authentic, only buy groceries you’ll eat that day or the next, no stocking up. Most Turkmen don’t have the room or money to stock up on things, and many things they buy (bread, produce, milk) are free of preservatives so they go bad a lot sooner. They don’t have pantries full of canned goods and freezers full of frozen dinners. If you want to live even more on the edge, thaw your meat on a plastic table cloth on the floor instead of in the fridge. Volunteers don’t do this if we’re in charge of our food, but if we eat what others make for us, (and all of us do most of the time), that’s how our meat was prepared. I should note that volunteers do sometimes go to restaurants, however, they are unlike the restaurants you have back home and it is not a daily occurrence.
· Go without the internet for six days. I’m lucky that I was able to score a modem and a site where I can now get online pretty much every day. But this was not the case for the first several months of my service, nor is it typical of a volunteer here. Most volunteers have to travel to a larger city to go to an internet café and they can only do this maybe once a week. So, no internet for six days. When you go on in your seventh day, avoid facebook and blogging sites wordpress and blogpress, these are usually blocked here.
· Go to your post office or mailbox every day in eager anticipation of a letter or package. Then be disappointed when you don’t have any. If you get a package, pay your postal worker $1.25.
· Buy everything with cash and don’t use an ATM to get that cash. We’re on a cash economy here. We can’t use plastic for anything, not even plane tickets.
· Don’t watch TV. At least not on your television. You can watch old episodes of TV shows on your computer and old or bootlegged movies on your computer. Just like volunteers! Be sure to wear headphones so your host family doesn’t hear the violent rat-tat of guns or the embarrassing moans of a sex scene.
· Carry toilet paper and hand sanitzer with you everywhere you go. If you use a public restroom try to imagine it doesn’t have tp or running water and soap or a toilet seat and do your best to hover over it, use the tp you brought and sanitize your hands while attempting to touch nothing (and hold onto your purse/possessions). Bonus points if you’re a woman and you manage to change a tampon while doing this.
· Read a book or two in a week. Especially books you wouldn’t have been tempted to read under normal circumstances. Same thing with magazines. Think you’re too intellectual and classy to read Us and Star? Not here, you’re not.
· Plan a vacation to another country, probably a second or third world country, basing your pick on geography, affordability and food. Sorry, bub, you can’t afford Paris. Keep in mind you have to pay for your ticket with cash, so you better be saving up well in advance. Plan to go with other volunteers because it’s safer and you can go in together on hotel rooms. Or if you’ve got parents with money arrange to meet up with them in Europe. Hey, you can afford Paris after all, but the other PCVs will hate you.
· On the subject of hotel rooms, get used to sharing a room with any volunteer regardless of sex or whether they’re someone you would normally hang out with. You’re all good friends now and you’re not shy about sleeping arrangements if it means you’ll save a few bucks. And get used to making reservations and having the hotel give them away so you end up having to sleep on the floor at the Peace Corps headquarters.
So, give it a whirl. Let me know how it works for you. As always, thank you for reading.