Elizabeth Lazar and Lindsay Giovannitti

00:03 My name is Lindsay giovannetti. I'm 30 years old today is August 27th, 2014. I am in the great City of Chicago, Illinois at the cultural center. And I am Liz's work colleague at Rotary International.

00:20 And my name is Elizabeth Lazar. I go by Liz. I'm 35 years old. Today is August 27th, 2014. We're at the cultural center in Chicago, Illinois. And my partner is a colleague of mine at Rotary International.

00:39 I am so interested to hear like why did you decide to do Peace Corps? Okay, so I think I've told this story before and I always start like way back in high school actually.

00:51 And I started studying French right in middle school and then in high school my parents. I really wanted to go on the the French trip. You know that you'd go on the weekend High School moved up with the front clasp. And I knew that I probably won't be able to go cuz we didn't have a lot of money and I found out actually later on that my parents got a mortgage on the house to pay for my trip. So I went to France in high school and that trip totally of course as a seventeen-year-old blew my mind open and when I went to college I decided to minor in in French and in college again, I

01:37 Studying in France for a semester came back from that experience and study decided to major in it because it blew my mind open even further and I loved it so much and I think what I but what I really loved was just living among other cultures and learning something different than myself. I wasn't really taken with French literature or anything like that. I just loved living and learning from people different than myself.

02:04 So I decided to major in French and minor in business remember and then there was another opportunity for me to study abroad again. So I went to Poland for a semester came back from that experience and decided to double major in French and international studies. So from there, I had my degree it took me five years to get through school cuz I studied abroad twice but I had my degree. I'm from Wisconsin. I don't know what I was going to do with a French degree in International Studies.

02:45 In Wisconsin, I don't think there were a lot of opportunities for me plus those experiences had already planted these great seeds for me to really live abroad now. The semester is were great. But I wanted to spend an extended amount of time abroad and Peace Corps seemed like the best option for me because

03:08 Walk away the government was going to pay for my two-year stint. I'd be totally immersed in the culture and I knew that that was really appealing to me.

03:19 And I wasn't necessarily ready to join the workforce yet. I bartended through college. I bartended after college and I knew I needed to get out of that environment as great as it was in my early twenties. I knew if I didn't really just leave and start fresh that I could potentially have stayed in that environment and that would have been good. So yeah, I had a long story short. That's how I decided to join the Peace Corps. So going into it. I knew like

03:54 My expectations weren't that I was going to change my Village or that I was going to make even life for them any better and I went in for very selfish reasons and though it was just a change myself. I always tell people it's the most selfish selfless thing you can do because you do it for you a lot. But a lot of the times like you're going there to do things for other people, but you're also trying to get something out of it at the end definitely definitely. So tell me some of your story about so you ended up there. I always my family was really into educating us culturally and both of my parents had medical background to like very educated smart.

04:34 Individuals and they wanted us to learn more and I did the France high school trip back that way too. But I feel like I didn't really get as much out of that experience as I could. I'm more like I think there was probably a bowling ball that a crush on or something really like surface-level and not important but I went to college I grew up in Texas and then I went to college at Indiana and I never felt at home in Texas and then when I got to Indiana in the midwest, I finally thought oh my people out that I got it my parents grew up in Pennsylvania. So I was never like we had Texas Pride but it was not like a bread in me so much that I like I didn't know anything else. That's a lot of those same Midwestern values in Pennsylvania. If so,

05:21 I went to school at Indiana and was so happy and got out and I studied business at Indiana and was really into it. But you're laughing because it doesn't even make sense for who I am at all and I deduct for a year-and-a-half and it was very very miserable like wanted to transfer and Jen when I was doing so to sort of like backtrack a little bit and fifth grade. I took we had a graduation song and it was in sign language and I just became like obsessive the song and I could still think it to you. Now if you want in Sign Language probably not helpful for the radio, but I just was really into sign language and when we got to IU, I saw that there was a sign that an American sign language classes I could take and get my foreign language credit. So I signed up for it but there was a waiting list and I've never thought about it again when I was after that summer before I was a freshman and when I registered for sophomore year. Weightless. Granted and I was like, oh, yeah, that would be great to do when I'm in.

06:21 Always horrible business classes and when I got to that class I found myself like thinking about it all the time. I was so curious to learn. I didn't mind stunning. It's just something clicked about it and it was so miserable and all these other business class. And so I was talking to a girl behind me one day and cannot describe in that to her. And she said you need to major in speech and hearing sciences, right? I did not know that was a major. So I went to my advisor in Switched and it was night and day. I just like love school and I love learning and I took two years of American Sign Language. So that's all to say that when I was done with school. I knew I didn't want to go and get my Master's in speech and language pathology because it's interested as I was I felt like how am I supposed to know? What I'm going to do with the rest of my life like if you get your Master's in speech and language pathology, that's that's like what you're doing.

07:14 And so I decided to I need to do something cuz I wasn't going to go back and move into my parents house and be 22 and living in Dallas. So I applied to the PS4 at the beginning of my senior year of college and the day after I submitted my application. I got a call on the phone and this whole time and peace were there telling you like the application process takes forever. If you don't hear anything from us and even then in 2006 it was or 2005. It was still paper application or like these weird online forms in like they haven't quite figured it out yet. And I got a call and he said, you know American Sign Language the we only have one. Education program it in Kenya. And so I said, I guess that's where I'm going because I really wanted to join and I felt like that was such a great fit. Then I left in September of that. I applied in September of 05 and I left in September of 06. Would you have gone to peace car had you not get that in that assignment? I feel like they would have I've sort of

08:14 Gone and been accepted. I think I'd like to know I still went to the rest of the application process and like had the interview with the recruiter and it all the time and I had to do all the checks like everyone else but I think I remember them saying like, you know, we choose where you're going. So I felt like I could have gone anywhere but because I had that language school. I sort of got pigeonholed. Yeah, I'm happy about it because it was when you think of Africa like that's what you think. I like all those pictures of the women in the caves with the necklaces or Maasai women from Kenya if I didn't know what the time but I saw a wild animal wild mountains and beaches and just beautiful safaris in all of that. So I thought happy about that, but I guess I could have gone anywhere interesting.

08:58 You get off the plane?

09:02 So when I got off the plane, my final destination was getting in West Africa and I was taking their because I had the language skills and their official language language is French. So the plane doors open and literally this humidity that struck me while I was still in the plane still always remember that feeling always remember that like,

09:31 I was absolutely shocked by that level of humidity and that it could reach me that far back in the plate. So we walked down the runway on this huge Air France plane into this tiny little airport that

09:47 Had to get a 1 baggage turnstile and we're in the capital of the country. And from that moment on actually, I remember that same day Peace Corps came and put us on these kind of like large minivan buses took us through the capital city to where we would be spending the next few days to start raining out and that drive through the city was the the most amazing the most like I don't even have words for it that that drive-thru in what I saw and the people and the environment and everything and all of us were literally plaster to the windows with her mouth to the game. And I told this girl friend of mine that I just obviously met another volunteer at this is the best day of my life. This is the best day of my life it was

10:32 It was like nothing I had ever seen or could have ever expected. So then from that point on it was you know, we had of course the three months of training in like I'm assuming you yeah, we had three months to in the Capitol years in this kind of suburb of the city and it ended up being the paternal Village of my husband's family. So my I met my husband

11:02 When we were only two months into training and he was there hanging out with his grandparents his dad's parents and that was their Village so that of course changed my experience as well. And I think really in the long run like the foundation that we built there was Untouchable in amazing, but I also leaned on him in so many ways and there's so many different situations especially when times got really really hard and loneliness excetera excetera. So so yeah, that's those were my first few days in months in Guinea.

11:43 I walked off the plane it was at night and they had I don't know if that was just our trainers a 10 cuz we flew to DC first for 3 days and then went to Nairobi so they just told us like no one wears flip-flops in Africa, like no one wears flip-flops and Kenya. Are you need you need to wear nice shoes and went to the store to go buy these shoes leather platform. Like it's like regular work shoes. Like we're in America, right? And I was also 22 Sebastian was a little weird, but I remember on the plane like changing into this outfit to greet like whoever was going to agree to us and to not embarrass myself. Like I really wanted to do well and who creates us but a woman in a business suit and wearing a really nice to flip flop and I was just like you guys lied to us, but

12:43 Everyone were bought bought those was the brand which actually means Doc in kiswahili. So I thought that was weird. But it was the name like the brand of the flip-flop name, but we got off the plane and it was that night. So we didn't really see anything. We just drove like drove to this little hotel Lee and it was a nice hotel, but I never I mean when I look back and see now that you have seen all those hotels I've been in and Kenya it was so nice but like as a time and place it was one bad and like a room full of tile without one door and one light bulb and a mosquito net and I have never slept under mosquito net before either and everyone to sort of like when their rooms and I just remember sitting there. Are you alone in your room alone in my room my gosh, I got to sew weave

13:43 Three days there and it was very interesting. Cuz two of the volunteers were married like to volunteer as a married to each other already and the one wife had served in Peace Corps Malawi before by yourself, so they were serving together. And and I remember her husband came up to me. He's like, I want to give you some advice but I like don't know how to say it to you when I said just tell me he's like, you're probably going to get like a lot of attention here. And I said, what does that mean? He said you have the like perfect ideal body paid for Kenya cuz I was I was not like the style Kirby but I was definitely like not then like small girl and I just thought oh, we're having these conversations like this is a little when did you start like probably before that, but I still felt like this is more.

14:37 I'm glad to give you that warning but when we drove when we drove to koteewi, which is the site we Trina and that's about 3 hours from Nairobi. Okay, we drove down the highway and that's when I had my same kind of but what you did like, they're zebras unlike the other side of the highway and there was all these colorful towns and women selling things out of their buckets on their heads and kids smiling and running after you when like, I was just I mean, it's everything you see in Those ads difference at

15:10 But awesome or awsome. I don't know it was amazing. And then I got to my site and my Homestay sisters were there and their names are Miriam and Florida spell Florida, but I pronounce Florida and they're these tall beautiful Kenyan women and they just sort of like embraced me and took me into their house and this this Village have no electricity which has prepared for but was very still talking to be in that environment and they had so many it was a compound so that the husband and wife who were grandparents buy that timer named Miriam and David everyone is named Miriam David, but happy Grandpa, Mary and David were there and then they had 10 kids at all of those houses were on their compound or so and then they have those kids had kids in themselves as just like this hold little village in the village and that's the night when I was in my room by myself, and I don't like pee in a bucket cuz he's going to go out into the the show was outside like the bathroom at that little Outhouse and so

16:10 Didn't want us to go out at night like by yourself the family and that was pretty much every Peace Corps volunteer. I don't know if it was animals or there was a lot of rats around there was a lot of like so they didn't go out either God either. So I remember being in a bucket and a spider like crawled out of the bucket which now I just feel but at the time it was terrifying and half the night. I cried. I don't I don't know if I can try to leave I try to talk to my trainer and like I made a decision like this is horrible and she said stay another week stay another week. Oh my God. I didn't know that. I was glad you didn't know and I think I thought about going home pretty much the whole time. Yeah every week. It was one little thing that happened that made me think like I do this for 2 more years, but that ain't got to be can I do this for one more year and then I got to be can I do this for 10 more months and then did you notice that the days?

17:10 Goodbye, the days drag by but that weeks flew by but the days were long and I felt like that was the I've been really into the shed. And then I kept listening to that song cuz I felt like you guys know me when I first got to my training village and we're in a Muslim country and but more so it was a polygamist country really is what I should be stressing my and I had no idea because at my little adoption ceremony that we had where the families came and they took us home.

18:00 I get home and they have a compound as well and I had for mothers and 26 brothers and sisters and my father introduced it as his population of friends, but that's what it translated to. So, of course I was like right away just trying to process all these different emotions and feelings and everybody was very sweet and I was shown which mother would be my mother and they were great. They the kids were wonderful my host father was quite overbearing and never really let up but everybody else was fantastic, but that first day

18:43 They sat me down and we don't all have dinner together because that just wasn't really how they showed respect. It was he and I sat at a table and we shared a plate of food. That was them showing me respect. Of course. I had a very hard time with that. I wanted to sit down and be with everybody and what I wanted at all to sit together and chat and that's cuz that's what we do. I forgot about that. They always made us take food first and I thought like I just want to be the same right? There was no way that was going to happen, but I wanted to integrate and they always see how they always made you take food food because later I didn't write a service when they didn't show me the excuse me, but then at the same time to was like, hey just come and eat with us, you know yet that I really kind of felt like I was being accepted and and seen as a pier and not somebody that they have to put on display but that for

19:43 Like I was when I sat at the table with him, and he and I shared a meal out of the same bowl with our hands which you know, I obviously had done nothing that even resembled that before and then then they showed me pictures of they had like cheesy postcards from Florida that maybe a former volunteer had sent or really old pictures.

20:07 From their family, you know, I knew that this one stack of pictures that they had were the only pictures that the whole entire family had so it's a very big deal for them to show them all to me. And one of the pictures was one of their sons. He was probably about 12 years old and he was lying there dad and and his head was bloody and they are. They had a picture of that and they explained to me that he had fallen out of like a coconut tree had tried to climb the tree to get coconuts and he fell and he died.

20:38 And that story on top of 26 brothers and sisters and for mothers and you know eating out of the same Bowl. I reached my limit and right at that time of Peace Corps trainer came and stopped through to see how we were doing and I just saw this girl that I just started running.

21:03 I didn't want to go home, but I didn't know how to process any of it. And she just said, you know, it'll get better it'll get better and in your doing fine in these emotions that you're feeling are totally normal and and you'll be okay about those moments, but I feel they must have been my son and they were all just different and what did you do when you're there like what was your assignment? So I was a public health volunteer know I'm we were called.

21:41 But I forgot the word now, but it wasn't like a teacher extensionist. So every year to a group of teachers would come in and then the next year extensionist would come in and then teachers and then extentioniste. So the Dungeness working at the same site know it's only rarely anybody ever worked at the same site. We all usually had her own village and extensionist would be either a public health volunteer a small business Enterprise volunteer or a Negra forestry volunteer. And basically we were just kind of told to go out do it needs assessment. We were assigned a counterpart and we were told we could really do whatever we wanted as long as it's kind of fell within the guidelines of for me public health. So I had many many options which ended up being quite a struggle for me. There were many times where I was very jealous of the teachers because they got to get up every morning. They knew where they were going they had an assignment.

22:42 They did it. They came back home by 4. I mean there were days and days that I spent probably really not leaving my hot other than to go to the bathroom and pump water and I would just read and read and read and I think those are some of the hardest struggles with like loneliness that we dealt with because there wasn't a lot of structure. We really had to create it all on our own and if you're not motivated to do that, you can fall and slip pretty deeply and quickly into some serious depression and it was hard. It was tough. And I ate you know, like I said, I went in for myself I didn't go in because I had this great plan about how I was going to make

23:28 The life of of these people better. So I waited for them to come to me with a plan and I found out that they were waiting for me to come to them with a plan. I'm so I definitely spent like a good six months doing nothing except for integrating socially and culturally you were still talking of people are getting to know people and get dinner at their house. That's right, but that's the extent of it and that I would go kind of maybe everyday or every other day to my health center, but there was really no work for me to do there at all. Like as a Peace Corps volunteer we treat anybody nor did I have training in how to do that? So it was eventually I figured out that I could do some kind of prevention classes. So I did some prenatal postnatal kind of like seminars for women, which was a very interesting experience because while they listen to me, they've also been doing things the same way for thousands of years.

24:28 And at the end of one session they asked me how many kids I had of course. I didn't have any and that really put a lot of it into perspective for me. So, you know, I just kind of learned that I could spread and share information but I wasn't going to get hung up on whether or not I changed any kind of habits because I felt very humbled by all of it. I ended up focusing with elementary students on like basic hygiene. That's something I totally could get behind and felt like everybody in the world should could benefit from basic hygiene. So, you know, if you have the means to have soap use it to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom for the kids think of you do, you know, I know the mamas were sort of like for the kids more accepting or into what you were doing.

25:24 They were I think there were some language barriers with the kids because so even though the official language was French and I would be teaching my classes in French. Their French wasn't very good yet cuz they were still speaking the local language. I think they kind of got the gist but I think they were just more enthralled that this American Girl was standing in front of them and trying to explain something to them. Yeah. I definitely had like my little, you know favorite. So yeah, I'd come over every day and we play and stuff and yeah, yeah. Yeah and then you move villages in the middle, right? Right. So in the middle, so the guy was the first volunteer ever in the first Village that I lived in.

26:11 Of course, no running water or electricity excetera excetera. We were in a very isolated part of the country but in a town where some of the main roads met so in Guinea there were probably only a few main highways and that was kind of when I say highway I mean we're talking about dirt roads in with you right? So there may be only like four or five main roads in the whole country. Maybe maybe there's more but to me, that's what it seems like and so I I was way up North probably a good to three days away from the capital by car and I was in this Tiny Town where two of those roads met. So there were there it was very kind of transient town to her people in and out of that little village all the time because they would be staying there for a night or two because they would be traveling somewhere else. So part of me had a tough time because every time I left my house

27:11 These Torrid these people traveling would see me and be like, hey girl. Hey white girl, you know, they loved calling at me and I would kind of be like no you're the tourist I live here. So I don't with that kind of every day. I had this great host family. They took me in they loved me. I get actually pretty emotional thinking about them because

27:36 They were

27:40 Like saying goodbye to them lips.

27:43 What about his things I've ever done.

27:48 So I got my heart got broken into while I was on vacation once and I came back and nobody could really figure out who had done it and

28:00 I kind of sat with that for a while and I thought well was us an opportunity to look for me to leave this Village because there were so many hardships that I that I face there. I mean it was hard for me to even get hard boiled eggs there. It was a very isolated Village. So I thought is this an opportunity for me to to see a different part of getting into do work somewhere else in a place. I could potentially be easier and in part of me did kind of feel like my safety maybe was at risk because we didn't know who did this to me and was a personal was it just a thing that happened yet. Well could have been any right me. We hope that it was just somebody passing through and had heard that there's an American girl living here. So

28:50 We decided and when I say we was me decided to to leave the village actually and so I worked with Peace Corps. They were not happy that I before I was not happy that I left because their goal was to keep somebody in the village for two years so they could fully Implement all of their projects and or the like the whole cycle of the 10 years or she took plan there is supposed to be don't happen for each other, but I did end up leaving and I went to another Village and yeah, the weather was nicer there there was more food there. It was prettier there. I had a better house there, but I never ever had the type of warmth from the family and the and the

29:39 Just kind of the way that the village took me in. They didn't do that like they did in that first Village. So I always just kind of Wade both sides and I thought this was right that I get both experiences, but that was at first Village was always like my that's where my heart is what I think about Peace Corps. It was me in that Village definitely tell me about where you live. I was a deaf education volunteer, which I sort of the teacher that you were a little envious of right and I went so when we got our assignments, they told me I was going to on this island and like going to live in that this really like like I was saying before when you see pictures that's the pictures and then something happened with my housing there. Apparently I ever went to the site and then I was told I was going to go to bustillo which is a Border Town between Kenya and Uganda and Border towns are just sort of like

30:39 Crying for like what you were saying with the even the stopping over for night just really sketchy and then something fell through with that and I didn't go to that site either and they put me on the coast of Kenya which everybody secretly was praying for the coast when they got there say assignments and I was so happy and I'm like you guys can't change me again, right? I'm just going to the coast. So I went to this town called got a and the next biggest town besides Nairobi is Mombasa and my boss is on a coat that's like an old port and get a is about 3 hour or two or three. It was a couple of hours North on like the other one Highway that like one of the coast and Getty was really interesting because the coast of Kenya they have some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and there is these Italian resorts on the beaches that were maybe 4 km from me and so my dad's Italian background of his parents are from his grandparents are from Middle East.

31:39 You look very much like a lot of the tour the Asheville Tourists were from Italy and coming there and saw the store the same problems and issues that you did like him is so moved means white girl and you know how to say hi in Italian and I thought the same thing like I don't live here. I teach here. No, no being in get a I thought I'd get a special school. I taught the first year. I taught fourth graders are great for passport at those called and I told Matt English Arts and Science in Kenyan sign language that I have been trained in for 3 months and I'd only have the two months or the two years of American Sign Language training. So I don't know and I guess I had no clinical real-world experience and I have done nothing except for being a student myself and I didn't really know how I was going to teach math and candy in sign language.

32:39 No curriculum, I was given the book and sort of had to make my own curriculum the education system in Kenya is sort of I mean like many countries just

32:49 I just was it was horrible and they were doing things about it. But it wasn't it wasn't it was very much at the beginning of the change and I got there. So I lived on the school compound and my students were all boarding students because deafness is not seen as something positive in Kenya and many of the developed much of the developing world. So it was a special school so they caught so there was a deaf side and then there was a side for students who had a mental illness or polio and a lot of polio students soon as opossum physical disabilities. Yep, and then they didn't have to worry about them to school went or deal with them. Right? I mean, that's more what I came down to this going from January to December was a school year and then they had off in April August and December impressed by my kids were there from January to march with me like we were all together. I live in different house and we were in the didn't like sharing of the same things, but I know I can never Escape.

33:49 The students would sometimes I just wanted peace to myself in you would think of that school is in a quiet, but they were allowed as a really loud and deaf people in general and they went they would laugh to hear me say that probably but it was it was very loud and I shared a house of my supervisor actually the principal for the Headmaster of my school and the house Had No Ceilings, like it had a roof but didn't have the ceiling so we could hear everything that the other was doing even though we didn't share any of the same thing. That's so interesting cuz he could not be cut if there was ceilings. But like that was the only house and car was not about to build a ceiling unless piece of paper the funds in the materials we did but I I didn't realize when the introvert I was until I got to Kenya and I wanted to just be by myself a lot and was locked and sort of like you were saying just read and sleep. I mean

34:49 Compunction I wanted to cook by myself and read more reading but it's funny to think about if I went back now, I would hope I'd push myself to be out there a little more and I'd like to do so much more stuff, but I did spend I mean, I went on lots of field trips field trips of my kids went to the death games, which was when all the schools from the state Province. All the decimals came together at one location and it was like a big field day, but very taken very seriously and that was really neat. I started a knitting club at my school and feel like. Some of the girls to knit and then of course. Them to weave I love talking about hygiene and like like, you know what changes in the body and stuff cuz a lot of our girls were teenagers in like the endeavor used like a sanitary pad or there was just or they had but there is a lot of questions of

35:49 The body so teaching that in sign language was just super fun because the signs were all the sexual reproductive organs are just amazing and I've taught them to people here now to just cuz they're just very visible and you don't really have to like explain what it means to be pretty obvious alarm for my sight to a month early. So I taught for one whole year and then I was in my second month of my second year and there was a presidential election that happened in December of 07 and there was a lot of unrest as a result of tribalism concerns and the the person who technically one was from the tribe that had not been in power ever. But so that are they having the power was like know that guy didn't win and they just signed they just like voted in the sky who was already the president and it just became this whole thing and there was a lot of violence I didn't experience.

36:49 Give myself a lot of my friends on the western side of Kenya. I like witness some horrific horrific things like people burning alive in a church. And one of my friends was dating a canyon and he was from the wrong tribe. So she had to get helicoptered out of her sight and he had to hide in an ambulance and they like pretended that this woman was in labor so that he could like sneak in the ambulance with her and so it was necessary for Peace Corps to pull out but when I was at my side, I don't really feel like that. So I got the call like it was very poignant because when I hit my phone rang and I never kept Toonami, but they told us to keep it with us like that because things were going down I was spinning one of my little girls in a circle on the yard like just like one of those very happy moments and I found my phone ring and I saw who it was and I just felt like

37:41 Shut down this is going to suck and they said it was a Friday and they told us that on Monday. We need to be in Nairobi and I lived like a two-day trip sort of like you and they said don't tell anyone in your village and they said like pack everything. So course the first person I told was my headmistress cuz you got to be kidding me if I want. I'm just not going to show up on Monday like these people know me and would worry about me if I just wasn't there and that's not respectful. They thought that perhaps there could be some repercussions like depending on what are you were in or they could be like no she's staying and it could be this whole other sort of thing in our country's find, you know, we're not worried about the sir. I think they just weren't sure how people react but everybody like you said, it was very when you left your first alleged cuz it's very sad this very strange party. That wasn't did, you know the party that I would have had when I left for real.

38:41 In December would have been this really fun thing, but it was sort of just thrown together and it was beautiful and meaningful but

38:48 It felt very unfinished in like I didn't have closure and I just you know, I don't know who taught my kids after I left. I was the only and I taught class to my second year, so I'm pretty sure class to stop there for

39:02 Maybe the whole year without a teacher Earth moved into another class or your I don't I don't know what happened to them. You don't know because I know I couldn't talk can't talk to any of my students because most of them are, you know, you're not connected to technology. I can't call them on the phone starting. None of them have FaceTime for us to do, you know to have a conversation that way in sign language. But yeah, so that was pretty unsettling and then I came home and March I travel for a little bit in Zambia and Tanzania with some peace were friends and then came back home and

39:41 Sort of fell into that same pair of like depression and my mom's house in Dallas is just very opulence and beautiful and it was the house I grew up in and it wasn't that it was very similar to one that I grew up in and just sort of felt like why is this and why the heck do a study? Yeah. Why am I what is a grocery store? When I did freak out with the amount of cereal you could act like I was all I know there's not just one choice.

40:13 No, it's very it was very sad. I was very weird to be back. But now when I reflect on my life, and I remember there was this woman who had been evacuated and when we had a 3-day closing just like everybody else said at the end of the service but it was more like an emergency closing and this woman came in and she have been evacuated. I think 20 years ago from her country and the way she talked about it seems so very she was very sad about it still and I just remember thinking to myself like I'm never going to get over this. I don't know and I still feel sad about it. But when I reflect on what my life would do if that hadn't happened like I don't know because I came home and I moved to Chicago and I found Americorps and I found teaching at a school here in Chicago and working with all like I can't imagine not knowing any of the students that I know now who talked for like six or seven years before I came to Rotary and like the important work.

41:13 Average weather in Chicago sell

41:16 It all came full circle for a reason but I wish it hadn't of happened like that.

41:25 No, man's sky.

41:27 When you were there.

41:29 Where you just kind of like weren't sure about things and you know, there was a motion is going on at the moment when you realize everything.

41:42 I don't think I ever really got to that moment when I realized everything would be okay if I

41:51 Almost took it like David are week-to-week. I think ultimately I I mean in a sense I made my mind up that and I realized why Peace Corps works is because Americans don't quit for you to say I give up and to go home took more nerve than it did to just sit there and stick it out. And I thought that's why I really was so successful because so many of us were, you know miserable like we knew that what we were going through was the experience of a lifetime but getting through it was the hardest thing that we've ever done and ever will do probably again in our lives, you know have unfortunately not had to lose anybody in my life, but I can imagine that that would be maybe the first hardest thing.

42:45 But I don't know I went through my whole Service never really knowing whether I would you know, get up enough nerve to leave. I think having met Omar my husband, you know back then and I had another really good best friend through my service to the two of them knowing like if I didn't have them, I don't know if if I would have made it through so so yeah, I think I was State all day till I think I every time I talk to my mom like I'm going to come home this time. She said you say that every day today and there was a lot of self-talk and and a lot of you know, this is a drop in the bucket in your life right that you can power through and

43:31 Look at all of the community members around you who this is. I mean, this is reality for a lot of people and it's not like it. It was just very hard to be away from everything and everyone that was familiar. And I think that was the hard part because I didn't mind would have been nice to have more choices of what I was going to eat for dinner or to not cook on a camping stove wasn't horrible. It was hard it was hard but you could still survive there and people survive there all the time. I think my hardest part was like that's why I made great relationships with people and we would talk about things and we talked about some pretty amazing things, but they could never relate to the person that I was like, I felt my sense of individuality and did not exist because you know things like I'm from the Midwest or I studied French Lick that doesn't necessarily mean anything to them. So I felt so lonely in that sense that I have never made a relationship with anybody who could who knew any of any

44:31 Play to my background in any way so that probably gave me my greatest sense of loneliness. So when I was able to get together with other Peace Corps volunteers, even if I didn't necessarily like that other volunteer didn't matter because at least we had that that common background in that shared experience validated and someone like you just don't have to talk to Flo and you can just say everything and did your poop look like that like and also did somebody tell you that you got bigger and also did somebody tell you that like just according to somebody? I don't know. I can't even think of it just all those crazy experiences like that are my best friend in the village did that same thing to I would tell her really personal stories about me and she would just sort of laughs and I felt like that wasn't a funny story that I shared something with you. Yeah. She her name is Mackenzie and she on this little shop right outside of our school, and I just

45:31 She called me over one day and then that was pretty much like that's why I went every day after school to stay in her shop in her shop.

45:39 Primatologist personal things and she would just laugh at me like that's funny. Right? I said just told you about my parents divorce like that's not very funny. But to me, you know, and it was sort of that same kind of cultural validation or not, perhaps

45:57 I was over sharing and that's not something Canyons dead or I would be really interested to hear what she thought about the whole thing. But then I don't know if she could put words to it either and it's not just cuz of culture cultural differences learning all that. I mean people would ask me like wasn't it hard to live without electricity and running water to get used to it is all the the layers.

46:25 10 layers and layers of cultural differences to weed through into learning to decide whether or not it was even important to stress about you know, I mean

46:37 My remember early out of my service this girl who was leaving and he gave us some words of advice and definitely not in an overbearing way. But she said just give up the war now because you're never going to win it in so many situations where you're fighting. You know, why isn't this why are we waiting in a line right now? You know, why are we waiting on the side of the road for 5 hours to fill this car up when we could leave right now. We're all these different things. Were you get so frustrated and you could just do nothing but focus on it, I would kind of go back to her words of advice and realize like I wasn't going to be changing anybody's mentality there and I needed to you get my the one to me to change yours there. Right? So easier said than done but this is awesome to continue this conversation later. I could feel like we could still talk for many hours. It is nice to talk to somebody who's I don't know if you feel like this.

47:37 When people ask how was your trip? What's the matter up first or second of all, I can really summarize of in one or two sentences and then you want it right and and if you try to talk more about it, it was a lot of the blank sort of stair. When is she going to be done talking about this? So I do appreciate talking to people have been there done that even if it's the same countries same, you know, what time and I felt drawn when I got back drawn to people who what did want to listen to me because I you needed to talk about it, you know.

48:11 And I mean as horrible as it was to say I couldn't I never probably sat my parents down and talk with them for hours on end about it. But this one aunt that I have she would love for me to sit there and talk for hours. So I I speak to people out to who wanted to hear because I needed to talk about it and then for a moment, I did not need to talk after 2.