Alright, so, it’s pretty obvious that I haven’t updated this
in quite some time. Quick recap:
1)
ET’ed (early termination) myself from Peace
Corps for reasons that go far beyond what I will write about in here.
2)
Left Kyrgyzstan and moved back to Anchorage, Alaska.
3)
Scored my old job back and have been spending my
days passing time as a well paid admin assistant. Even though management swears that isn’t what
my job is, I’m not yet convinced.
(I’m sure there are a few more details, but I mean really,
that about sums it up.)
Why am I starting this back up? Well to be cool like all my other friends of
course. It seems that blogging has been
brought back from the dead in the past few weeks and now I have numerous
friends who post to their own blogs and I am constantly amused. In an attempt to bring even part of that same
level of joy to you, I am going to try and get back into this blogging
thing. That is until I get bored with it
again. Stay tuned to find out when that
will be.
My first post after over a year of silence? I figure I’d better make it Kyrgyzstan
related since that’s what this whole blog is supposedly dedicated to. I’ll have to figure out how to update this
thing since apparently I did buy some vowels get out of a country that has
none.
So, I’ve decided to write up my Top 5 grossest and most
memorable experiences from PC. In true
countdown style here we go:
5) Peeing myself on a
walk home. So, we’ll start this list
off pretty tame with just a little pee trickling down my leg. I am still not sure what happened to my
bladder control while living over there, but it was quite a change from what I
am used to. Most people who know me can
confirm that I rarely have to get up and run to a bathroom. In fact on long car rides, I hate the idea of
having to stop to let other people take a pee break. They’ve all informed me it isn’t normal that
I go for the full 6 hours between Anchorage and Fairbanks and never need to
stop to find a restroom. This fact just
adds to the oddity of me almost peeing myself on numerous occasions while in
PC. Then the day finally came that it happened. I was “downtown” Kant with a
group of friends when we left the café we were at to all head home. It was about 25 minutes from there to my
house, so I didn’t put too much concern in the fact that once we left I realized
that I needed to use the bathroom. I
mean, 25 minutes? Shouldn’t be a problem
at all. WRONG. At one point I was scoping out the woods
wondering if I would be better off squatting behind a tree than risking the
next 10 minutes of pure bladder exploding pain.
But I told myself, ‘no, you can do this Sweeney. Keep walking.
Just around that corner is your street.’
So, I stuck my hands in my coat pockets and held under my bladder and
hoped that my futile efforts would help me make it to the outhouse waiting for
me over yonder. Little did I know that I
was going to round that corner and literally be on the home stretch when it
happened. In all fairness it was only a few drips. But it was enough to get me running
wondering what was about to happen.
Yeah, there I am, holding my bladder, pee drips running down my leg
(THANK GOODNESS I WAS WEARING A SKIRT) in full pee dance “jogging” down my
street. I just turned into my yard when
to my unfortunate discovery my whole family was sitting outside waiting to
greet me. Gritting my teeth through the
pleasantries I threw my bag down near the front door and took off in full
sprint to the outhouse. I knew at that
point it really didn’t matter if I let it all go, cause what was the worst that would happen? Thankfully I made
it into squat position and breathed a sigh of relief knowing that I made it in
time. Then I looked down and realized
that laundry day wasn’t for a few days and just sorta shook my head at the whole
situation.
4) Scrubbing a full week
of dead skin off. Going into Peace
Corps, I knew that showering wasn’t going to be top priority on my daily
agenda. Heck, I knew there’d be a good
chance that it’d rarely happen. I came
to terms with all that. No biggie. What I didn’t realize was the repercussions
of not bathing. Sure, I knew my hair
would be greasy, my acne would rear up again, and that I’d likely be surrounded
by a cloud of smelly funk at all times.
No one had told me about scrubbing off dead skin. The first time it happened I didn’t quite
know what was going on. For anyone who
hasn’t been in this predicament before, let me break it down for you. We didn’t have real showers. We’d bathe in banya’s, which is really just a
sauna. You have hot water that comes from
a pipe that is heated by fire and you bucket bathe with a group of other
people, or if you’re lucky maybe just yourself and one other. So, picture this. Banya time is upon you. It’s been a week of pulling your hair back
into a ponytail that’s greasy enough to make a used car salesman jealous. You go in and as the sauna heats your skin
up, you start to notice it’s turning a slightly different color. Out of curiosity you sort of rub up your arm
wondering what is going on. Not only
does the skin start to flake off in your hand, but it balls up into oblong
shaped skin pellets. Multiply this by
scrubbing your whole body in the same fashion and you’ve got yourself one big
pile of skin bits. Yum.
3) Puking out my 7th
floor bedroom window. I spent a good
chunk of my days over there fighting a losing battle with giardia. This meant a lot of days feeling sick and not
able to travel too far from the safety of a bathroom. It also meant I threw up a lot. I hate, repeat, HATE throwing up. I grew to hate it even more during the middle
of the night when I would wake up with a rush of nausea that meant I had better
find somewhere to puke and fast. Most of
the time, I woke up with enough advance notice that I knew I could make it out
of my room and across the hall to the toilet, but one night I didn’t have that
luxury. There I was asleep in my cozy
couch bed and I awoke to the sudden pang of vomit rising in my throat. I jumped up and in my sleepy haze I threw open the window and started puking. I didn’t have the forethought to think about
how that puke would land. Or well, not
land. Since I heard it hit the side of
the building all the way down, being sure to hit each and every window
possible. It must have sounded like a
rain of upchuck to my innocent neighbors.
2) A full night spent in the outhouse. As I mentioned, I puked a lot. And this story comes from one of my first
real big bouts where it was me versus my insides. I had three separate infections that my body
was fighting and this left me in a pretty miserable state of despair. On this particular night, I was camped out in
the outhouse not able to leave its sight without having to turn and do the 'Kyrgyz shuffle' back to
it for another round. Enter Marisa into
this scenario. The best friend a girl
could ask for. The type who will laugh
in hysterics at you as you squat over the poo hole of the outhouse and vomit
out the open door. There I was shooting
various bodily fluids out of every which end when my phone rings. “Uh, hi, Marisa… You’d never believe what my life has come
to.” I chat with her on the phone while I finish up what I was hoping was the
worst of it and take a seat on the brick that holds up the sinking side of the
outhouse. That’s when things hit a new
low and I look over to the dogs have made their way over and are chowing down
on the fresh vom. I just shake my head
thinking that I never would have pictured this being my life. And I DEFINITLY couldn’t have guessed that
within the next 15 minutes I would be back in squat position finishing up
another bout only to find that the horses had made their way over to the party
and wanted in on the action. The thing
about that was while the dogs were small and easy to get around, I
can’t say the same about the giant horses.
They had squeezed themselves between the outhouse door and the fence in
order to really get a good meal outta the vomit. This meant that I was stuck in the dimly lit
outhouse until they finished their feast and went on their way. No amount of ‘scram horsey!’ was working on
them until they cleaned up on the meal I’d left waiting there for them.
1) Poo’ing in a bathtub. Coming in at number one on my list and possibly the best story I have to tell comes down to the time that I had no choice but to do my business in a bathtub. Yeap, bathtub. Let me paint a picture for you. Summer in Bishkek hits mid to upper 90's daily and sometimes rockets past 100*. And with no air-conditioning it's pretty terrible for anyone, especially the Alaskan girl. Often I'd lay naked on my bedroom floor open so I could catch the slight (and I mean slight) breeze that'd travel across the room. So, this particular day I was miserable. I'd been battling an intestinal demon for the past 24 hours and the heat was killing me. Having to get dressed each time my bowels were about to explode and run across the hall to the bathroom was getting super frustrating. In a moment of genius I threw on a skirt so that I wouldn't have to keep putting on and taking off pants. I crawled up onto my bed to take a break from the floor and that's when it happened. As I sat there I let out a small fart. But was it really a fart? I didn't know and I wasn't going to give myself time to find out. I jumped up and went running for the bathroom. Unfortunately it was occupied by my little brother and that meant I needed to think fast. Thankfully the host family I was living with had an apartment with a separate bathing room from the toilet room. I rushed into the bathing room and jumped in the tub. I think I may have even started laughing at the absurdity of poo'ing in these people's bathtub, but really, this was the best choice. Not to get into super gory details here, but at this point in my intestinal confrontation with Kyrgyz bacteria nothing was coming out in a solid state. This really worked to my benefit, because honestly, what do you do when you find yourself staring at poop in the tub? You can't flush that shit. Literally. So, I just turned on the spray nozzle and cleared 'er out. Ultimate low.
So, there you have it.
Top 5 grossest and most memorable experiences from PC. And before I end this here, I’d like to point
out that these are the things that happened to me in the mere half a year I was
there. Which means that I have friends
over there who are still racking up these sorts of experiences on a likely
daily basis. I have so much respect for
all of them who are sticking it out and laughing these sorts of things
off. I don’t know the count on how many
of them have actually pooped their pants yet, but I am sure at least a few
have. Congrats for becoming real
volunteers, guys. You all are awesome.
