San ban oh!

Apparently that's Mongolian for "hello" or "welcome" or "how are you?" or something like that. I'm sure I'll be able to tell you more definitively after a few months. If you're reading this blog, you probably already know who I am and why I'm writing it, but just in case you don't, my name is John, I'm from Maine, I'm a recent graduate of Oberlin College (B.A. in Comp Lit and CRWR), and I've just accepted an invitation from the Peace Corps to serve in Mongolia for twenty-seven long, cold months, from June 2010 until August 2012.

So why Peace Corps? I don't entirely know the answer to that. Of course, I hope to be able to use what skills I have to help others, and I'm eager to learn about other people, to see the ways in which we're similar as well as those in which we're different. I'd be lying if I said that much of my motivation isn't somewhat selfish: I love to travel, I love to experience that which is totally different from what I know, I crave culture shock. I seek what these things show me about myself, to see which aspects of my character are strengthened and which are abandoned after wrestling with who I am and what my place is in the world.

I've known I wanted to do the Peace Corps almost as long as I've known what the program is. Paul Theroux deserves a great part of the credit for that. Theroux is, in my (somewhat unpopular) opinion, one of America's absolute greatest living writers. He hails from Medford, Massachusetts, and was a volunteer with one of one the first ever Peace Corps delegations, serving in Malawi back in the 60s. Amusingly enough he did not complete his Peace Corps service in the normal manner. He was discharged, or "separated," as the PC euphemistically calls it, for supposed involvement in an attempted coup. As I recall, a professor friend of his fled Malawi (then called Nyasaland) when he could no longer take that government's increasing violations of liberty. Theroux agreed to drive his friend's car to Uganda, the professor's new home. This greatly irritated the government of Nyasaland, which viewed the professor as an enemy of the state, and they subsequently declared Theroux persona non grata. Hopefully my experience will go a little more smoothly than did that of my idol.

It's been a long wait. I applied at the end of January 2009. Normally it doesn't take this long, but there was some substantial bureaucratic SNAFU which slowed everything down. No need to get into that. I'd wanted to go to sub-Saharan Africa (just like Paul), but that's a pretty coveted region, and PC doesn't send as many people there as they used to. In terms of places outside of Africa that interest me, Mongolia is, believe it or not, at the top of the list. I have a tendency to develop fascinations with somewhat random regions of the world (they often share the attribute of frigid isolation). Newfoundland, Iceland, Svalbard, Mongolia. Additionally, a large part of my attraction to Mongolia can be attributed to the way in which, eight hundred years ago, this culture managed to conquer an area so enormous that it remains the largest contiguous empire in all of history, yet then somehow proceeded to all but vanish from the world stage. Craziness.

Things I'm less excited about include but are not limited to:

• the weather: temperatures regularly drop below freezing seven months out of the year
• the remoteness: I could be placed as much as a thirty-hour bus ride away from Ulan Bator (the capital and largest city... by a long shot), and even if I'm not so far away from that one real urban area, Mongolia is still one of the most isolated nations in the world
• the housing: I'm likely to live in a ger (more commonly known as a yurt), which is basically a souped-up tent, usually having mediocre heat and no running water... forget about internet!
• the language: I've heard it's incredibly difficult to learn, to say nothing of pronouncing it... needless to say, English speakers tend to be few and far between outside of the capital (and even inside of it), so I'm gonna be struggling for a while
• the ocean: I love it, aaaaand even the part of Mongolia that's closest is still four hundred miles away, and that's only to the Yellow Sea!!! WHATAMIGONNADOOOOO

Of course, I'm excited about dealing with each and every one of these challenges, and if I hadn't considered them before I applied, well, I suppose I wouldn't be a very good Peace Corps volunteer, now would I?

As you can see, already I'm not doing so well with the whole brevity thing. I'll try to keep these posts concise and readable (something which, if you recall the days of Pete and John in Cairo, can be a bit difficult for me), but even if internet isn't tough to come by, I'm sure I'll have lots to write about. Please don't be afraid to comment on them! Or to contact me in some other way. I tend to get very homesick, so any form of correspondence with all you lovely people is going to be much appreciated. I'll post info on how to send me snail mail closer to my departure.

So yeah, I hope you all enjoy the blog! Through it you'll be able to monitor my gradual transformation into this guy:

P.S. If you want more info about Theroux and his experience in the Corps, check out "The Killing of Hastings Banda." It's an article he wrote about the whole ordeal in 1971, eight years after his service. Not only is it interesting for its discussion of the deportation debacle, but it's also an excellent portrayal of the struggles a volunteer encounters while serving, albeit in a very different region from where I'm headed.