Lonely Hearts Club

Peace Corps volunteers are a lonely bunch. When I first arrived in country, I viewed my Peace Corps trainers as strange creatures indeed. They hung all over one another. They were always giving and receiving impromptu massages. They were constantly hugging. They held hands and played with one another’s hair. “What’s wrong with them?” I would wonder. I had never seen so much PDA in my life, much less among people who were not romantically involved. “Is that what we’re going to end up like?” my friends and I would ask.

Well, here I am fourth months later and I can say, definitively, that excessive PDA is in my immediate future. You see, the Peace Corps is a lonely venture. You leave everyone behind. Everyone. And with them, you leave behind every casual hug and squeeze and touch that you don’t even think about from day to day. No more kissing the fat cheek of your little niece or receiving the obligatory hug from your mom. Instead, you land smack dab in the middle of a foreign country on a foreign continent where no one knows you well enough to love you. To make matters worse, when you land in Uganda, you land in a culture so vastly different from your own that you sometimes feel like an alien. Sometimes I picture myself as E.T., that wrinkly, adorable alien, dying in my bed with my plant shriveling next to me. “Stephy phone home?” I think, before realizing that I’m out of long distance phone credit.  

And so, when we are together, united for some sort of training, we become one another’s Eliot. We reach out. We connect. We give and receive affection, and we hope that it’s enough to last us until the next time.

I always thought I had a secret weapon when I joined the Peace Corps. You see, I’m really, really good at being alone. As long as I can remember, I’ve relished my alone time. It likely stems from growing up in a household with eight wailing children. Sixteen years of sharing a bedroom and never having a single quiet moment (including late at night when my dad would practice playing his instruments) and I left the house, determined to carve out a quiet space for myself. Two years of peace and quiet in Uganda sounded fantastic.

I’m also incredibly good at being lonely, which is an entirely different skill set. I think this skill comes from lots and lots of practice, and, as anyone with any real talent in this area will attest to, has nothing to do with the number of people who are around you. With these two hidden talents under my belt, I anticipated wild success in the Peace Corps.

Here’s the problem: I’m changing. Much like the daydreams I had of running away to the mountains on my pink sea shell bike when I was ten, I now daydream about cuddling with someone in a room with electricity and sharing a drink (any drink) that contains ice. You see, just like I was saturated with sound and people as a child, I am now saturated with alone time. It drips off of me. Without even a computer or phone to distract me (when I haven’t been able to find a place to charge them), I have way too much time in my own company. I like myself and all, but enough’s enough.

And so, here I am, back at site after a week-long training and a  little bit of cuddling, wondering how to keep my plant alive until the next time.