My Life After Peace Corps
For those of you lacking the time or inclination to run your eyeballs over the unabridged version of My Life After Peace Corps, I have also prepared this more reader-friendly, abridged version:
NM, NK: QAF
And now! For those with the stamina and the attention span, please enjoy the unabridged, unauthorized yet somehow official version of MLAPC. While definitely not the whole nine yards, there's definitely enough here to set sail with, lol
After two years teaching English in Bossangoa, sharing a 3-bedroom house with Karen McKay, Mike Boennighausen, and hundreds of bats ... and after traveling all over the country with Mark Lynd, Mary Jeannot, Joe McCright, Tom Akin, and two Central African teachers of English (Bernard M'Beguida and Benjamin Kpaina) while writing a textbook for teachers of English in the C.A.R. (no way we could've written it while sitting in one place) ... and after paddling a dugout canoe that someone christened the Cadillac of the Oubangui from Mobaye to Bangui with Messrs Trager, Zuniga and Akin (with thanks, James and Tom, for hiring one of your students, Georges Pompidou Ko'Ouzouda, to be our guide, needed even more greatly through the rapids above Bangui. Georges was golden, and a delight to have along; a couple of great photos from that trip are below) ... and after working as a logistics coordinator for that year’s stage in Bambari, then and only then did I fly to Marseilles, where I shipped off a trunk and began hitching to Paris, where -- at dinner in the home of French stagiaires Elizabeth and Jean-Baptiste LeFoulon (who had befriended all of us Bossangoa PCVs) -- I was asked by one of the LeFoulons' guests what I’d done before arriving in Paris. I replied that J'ai passé quelques jours en brousse, at which they began laughing their asses off! I soon learned the difference between the countryside and the bush, which until that day had meant to me anywhere outside the capital city.
My main objective in Paris, aside from connecting with Craig and Alison, had been to book a one-way flight to India, when I discovered that tickets to Thailand were cheaper! and so flew instead to Bangkok (with stops in Rome and my first glimpse of Riyadh), happy at having less ground to cover on the way to Christmas at my brother's home in Manila.
So with my bags I arrive outside Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport, and quickly peg 3 older women standing nearby as likely to be helpful. They laughed and laughed, realizing I'd assumed they'd know some English, until one of them pulled over this handsome young man in a Thai Air Force uniform. People knew that, since the Vietnam War, members of the Thai military studied English; this kind and big-hearted airman possessed the marvelous and unforgettable name of Vichan Poompuang.
I explained to him I wanted to take a bus to Khao San Rd., and he began giving me a long list of what were fairly complicated directions, involving I think two bus transfers, and so when he was half-way through repeating them, he stopped and asked: Would you like to stay with me?
Now given the circumstances, to western ears that might either sound sketchy or like a come-on, but an official at the Thai embassy in Paris where I'd gone to secure my visa had told me about Thais' legendary hospitality (although my notion about the widespread use of English had not been disabused), and so when I confirmed with Chan that his offer was sincere, I gratefully accepted.
The cross-cultural skills I'd acquired while learning to speak a 2nd language after 3 years in the CAR were priceless in this new country. I spent a week at Chan's place learning, among many other things, how to order what came to be my favorite dish (pad-thai), but after a week I'd gotten antsy, and was eager to savor life outside the capital. When told that I wished to avoid more touristy places, Chan recommended an island frequented by Thai students and backpackers. He also said that if I returned by Saturday, I was welcome to accompany him on a visit to see his parents in the distant village where he grew up.
It was great to finally get outside Bangkok; the island was idyllic, and another funny thing I'll never forget happened there. I'd befriended two young guys camping nearby: one knew quite a bit of English from having listened to a lot of music on the Voice of America, but was difficult to understand; the other had only Thai. Anyway, over a campfire one night, I made my first and probably only joke in Thai. This was no mean feat, since my Thai vocabulary at that point consisted of about 25 words.
I pointed first at one guy, and said Thai! I pointed at the second, and said Thai! I indicated myself, and said farang! Than I repeatedly jabbed my finger in different directions, exclaiming yung! yung! yung! -- the word for mosquito -- over and over. That's it! Those whining, six-legged fuckers were everywhere, and even near the fire tormented us. Now go ahead and say I guess you had to be there, but know that my reply would be, Either that, or you had to be stoned on mbangui smoked from a freshly carved bamboo bong.)
Along with being in Thailand to see and to celebrate Loi Krathong (during which people light and set afloat tiny candles, to give thanks to Buddha or to thank the goddess of River and Water), getting back to Bangkok in time to go with Chan to his home village was one of the most delightful experiences I've ever had.
From one bus to another, finally to a bus-stop en brousse far from Bangkok, and not far from the border with what was in those days called Burma, then from the bus-stop, a ride for the two of us on the back of a motorcycle to Chan's home. Dropping off my things at his home on stilts, we set off on an old family motorcycle for the fields where his parents were at work. They were so nice: very welcoming, and very sweet. After I'd had a tour of the fields and nearby forest, Chan planned to help his parents with their work, asked did I know how to ride a motorcycle (yes, thanks to Crystal Brandt! who I'm sure to this day wishes she'd never let me near her bike, but that's another story), and gave me the key to drive home. This time by myself, cruising along a tiny road through lush landscape thick with coconut and palm trees, passing a smiling girl leading a water buffalo ... I felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.
Clearly there's lots more to tell, and I regret like hell I won't be in Monterey to corner some of you. So in a half-hearted attempt to wrap things up, here's the abridged version of MLAPC: the Last 478 Months.
Leaving out the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos, and leaving out holiday celebrations with my brother, his Italian wife and my niece and nephew (neither not yet five years old), and leaving out as well my getting stoned for the first time with my older brother on his roof with a view of the Indian Ocean at sunset, I then flew (man, were my arms wrecked) and hitchhiked (man, was my right thumb toast) to Joe and Sandy's wedding in Galena, Kansas, where I reconnected with Alan "Luu-therr" Yu. There must've been cake, certainly good times.
Leaving the newlyweds behind, I rode shotgun with Alan, on his way to start grad school at Berkeley, on my first trip west of the Mississippi. A short time later, after a brief visit home in Rochester, NY, it was off to DC for me, where I found work first at PCHQ/Medical Services, later at the DC Area Recruitment Office (nearly five years there, while occasionally hanging with Sharon Rayball), and then managed to produce an MA in TESOL at the most expensive grad school in the United States (then called the Monterey Inst. of International Studies), and thank Goddess for a half-tuition scholarship, awarded for an essay I wrote about how my Peace Corps experience had changed me for better or for ill (mostly the former).
My next stop was the only country on earth named after a family, where I ended up teaching EFL over six years for Saudi Aramco. The luck of the employment draw landed me with a contracting company who (in order to win the oil company's bid to supply workers) may have promised Aramco more than they needed to: in any event, two weeks' vacation every four months was peachy; I traveled widely, and re-visited Thailand more than once.
Sandy, a dog I'd adopted in Saudi Arabia, accompanied me to Amsterdam where, on the day I landed (the first of April, 2001), the Netherlands became the second country, after Denmark in 1989, to legalize same-gender marriage.
One summer, Sandy and I took the train from Amsterdam to the coast, then boarded a ferry before disembarking on the largest of the Frisian Islands, Texel, where I rented a bike, a hitch and a cart to pull Sandy around in. She was at first hesitant with this arrangement, but I urged her to go with it, and she soon settled down. Biking with my beloved pooch, hitting beaches by day and putting up a tent at night, we thoroughly enjoyed Texel, returning the following summer as well, this time in the company of a tall African-American man who'd become fluent in Dutch.
Quite
the transition, moving
from one of the world's most
conservative countries to one of the world's
most liberal, but
I loved it, and
lived there for
three years: taking Dutch
language classes, walking Sandy
in parks and on paths all over,
playing chess in coffeeshops
and reading two or three times a week the International
Herald Tribune, later doing
volunteer work at a non-profit called Music Mayday. My advice: If you decide to play chess in Dutch coffeeshops, it might be a good idea to use some kind of a marker that would serve to indicate WHOSE TURN IT IS.
I returned to California to go back to school a second time, in 2005, to obtain over six months a 200-hour certificate in Swedish Massage, not knowing until I got there that the Heartwood Institute was located smack-dab in the center of the world's largest concentration of outdoor marijuana gardens: the famed Emerald Triangle, referring to where Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties meet. While living near the Humboldt redwood forest, I got involved with Redwood Community Radio, at first answering phones, and soon - and for the next eleven years! - hosting a music program 1st and 3rd Saturday afternoons called What It Is. As DJ Jack Frybulous, I called it the most unpredictable music on the FM dial (view playlists here). I also served a 3-year term on its Board of Directors.
The manner in which California legalized cannabis (which many of us favored) in November of 2016 was a major factor in my decision to leave the Golden State; with the requirements and red-tape that new regulations imposed, the business was turned into one in which only the wealthy could play, and I witnessed the beginning of the sad hollowing out of little towns I'd come to love.
I re-located to Austin, and among other things, provided pandemic response with Austin Public Health (APH) in different capacities over many months.
I currently work as a server at the Café Fuller, located inside the historic Stephen F. Austin Royal Sonesta Hotel, four blocks from the state capitol building (which, in true Texas style, was built to resemble the national capitol, and they made damn sure that it'd be taller -- by 15 feet -- than Washington's)! When I was about six, an adult leaned down asking what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said: a waiter! And I've always imagined my mom standing behind me, rolling her eyes. Anyway, there's one life's dream made real, lol
Never married, no kids, queer as fuck. So I'm tickled to add here that I've been talking for six or seven months (well, not just talking) to a Texan, who's 44: ex-Texas college football player, ex-Navy, but still in the reserves. His 6'2" frame is a temple, and you'd never guess from looking at him that he hasn't played with a pigskin since the late 90s. He recently became aware that I don't really even know the names of all the NFL franchises (which I've been known to confuse with basketball teams); he's said that it doesn't make a difference, and I've chosen to believe him, although I've also noticed that he hasn't followed up on my suggestion that I come down chez-lui to watch Thursday Night Football.
It's a good thing for me he's into older white dudes, and as for me: well, he's as compelling on the inside as he is hunky on the out, and things so far seem pretty copacetic. I've got one dog, he's got three, and we're both taking it a week at a time, while I continue to practice keeping expectation in check.
Speaking of my one dog, it's hard to believe I've written this much without yet mentioning him: the current canine love of my life, a half chocolate lab, half pittie named Drake,
At first Drake was super over-protective, lunging at passersby, and reacting aggressively to most other dogs. But after a few months, strangers at my apartment complex began approaching me, saying they couldn't believe how much he'd mellowed into the smiling, tail-wagging pooch he is today. He makes me laugh just about every day. Most of the 110 videos I've posted on TikTok are of this Wonder Dawg, but my own mug pops into the frame every now and then. Check 'em out here. (FYI, with laptop or phone, and for viewing only: no download, and no account-creation or registration, is needed.)
Happy Reunion, my fellow RPCVs!! Lift your glasses of Mocaf or whatever's on hand, and remember those of us who didn't sensibly plan the long-term finances and retirement strategies that would've facilitated our attendance! Big love and warm greetings to you all!
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