Finding the Switch
An Uzbek Telling
After a time, I decided I needed to move out from the structure and security of my host family’s home and live in a space of my own. This meant being a grownup in a place where I maybe spoke as well as a 5-year-old. People were worried. I settled on the guest house of a family living near my work site.
My landlady in Uzbekistan stopped by my kitchen window frequently, at least daily, to make sure I was still handling basic tasks like feeding myself. She often would arrive with a steaming bowl of whatever she had been preparing for her family and pass it to me over the sill. This would happen even if I was clearly already cooking or sometimes even already eating. Acceptance was not optional. If her meal wasn’t ready yet, and it was not apparent that I myself had food actively in preparation, she would insist I come sit with her while she finished cooking and join her at her table.
There came a time when I was so ill that I did not emerge from my house or venture beyond the portion connecting the bedroom to the toilet for around two days. When my landlady poked her head through my window on the third day and saw me slumped on a plastic kitchen chair staring at a cup of water she worriedly, almost accusingly, questioned why she had not seen me leave the house in days. When told her I had been sick she ordered me to her kitchen table.
She took fresh leaves from a tree in her yard and steeped them in boiling water. She handed me this tea and urged me to drink. It was pink and very fragrant. I sipped without hesitation. It was a delicate flavor, a little floral. I became immersed in slowly emptying the cup. At the halfway point I noticed she was watching me very intently. I inquired and she responded off-handedly that some people have a reaction to the tea that causes them to run to the bathroom very quickly. After a moment’s pause I tipped the cup to my lips and drained the contents. We continued talking for maybe half an hour, and then I returned to bed to sleep and wake refreshed and ready to venture out in search of provisions.
There were many times during my Peace Corps service when I was confronted with this reality that I had lost control — or had never had control — of a situation. There were goats in car trunks, and unrelenting match makers, and door knobs I had to remove entirely if I wanted to keep anyone from entering a room.
Uzbekistan provided me with an internal switch to turn off the need to control my life, and the world in which I lived, whenever the loss of agency threatened to turn into panic. Complete reversal of a deeply seated behavioral pattern doesn’t occur; I haven’t lost the desire to control my world, but I built a switch to turn it off when reality won’t cooperate.
It can be very freeing to embrace, or at least accept, a sense of powerlessness. It allows one to redirect one’s energy and continue moving when previously a road block would have equaled paralysis. You simply have to let go and let things happen.
The Uzbek Tellings are true tales of my time living and serving in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps volunteer.
If you enjoyed this telling, let me know with a few hand claps.
Other Uzbek Tellings:
- Taxi Traveling — I wonder if anyone taking an Uber has ever had this experience.
- How I Became the Family Dog — You don’t always get to choose where you fit into other people’s lives.
