Peace Corps: The Video Game

Throughout my service I've had moments, and experiences, which made me imagine my daily life here as a video game.

It's totally a video game. Especially as an agriculture volunteer.

Like, you're just a little guy wandering the village, bumping into NPCs, clicking through the same dialogues, completing periodic fetch quests for villagers, and discovering new areas of the map. There's a lot of bartering in lieu of monetary transactions. When you wander into the jungle and field zones there's a random chance that you will get attacked by leeches. Sometimes it pays to go out of your way to visit villagers because you end up with mood buffs and tasty snacks in your inventory. You have main quests being tracked but you end up getting distracted with random activities and unexpected wanderings. And while you are doing all of this, you try to complete entries in your bestiary guidebook - encountering different species of animals in different areas, times of day, and seasons (it would be nice to get 100% completion but you're not hellbent on it, so you're going to casually play, occasionally go out of your way to look for new entries, but not try too hard, and see how far you get).

You know - normal video game stuff.

Leveling up my alchemy (making kombucha).

"Sometimes I feel like an NPC sitting in front of the house on a stool [with] players coming up to interact turn by turn"

I said this at the beginning of service when I had just arrived in village and was getting my bearings. Village life is open. Beyond the house fronts being rather open-air, there are always people outside doing chores, wandering, moving around, and visiting -- without appointments, or calls, or expectations.

It's also not uncommon to sit around in slow time. Which means you may not be doing much in particular -- for example, sitting on a stool in front of your house. And as I did this in my first weeks at site, the number of people who wandered up was interesting. Someone stopping by on a morning walk. Another villager coming through on their way back from harvesting grass from livestock. An extended family member dropping off a bag of tomatoes. And others, at that time unnamed, cycling past the house as a point in their day. Saying hey.

Villager NPCs in their usual spots - this game has kid models, too!

This open nature of connection and community is something I've come to not only appreciate, but live and breathe. (Part of why it works and feels good is that it is an open, visible, accessible, and walkable community, which are lacking in the States, and which I could go on about, but won't here). I know with certainty that this will be a sore point of transitioning back to Western society. You mean I have to go back to scheduling everything again? Quality time with friends? And phone calls?

"I left my phone in the other room," someone from the States told me after they missed my call one evening. I had called without advance. "No one really calls me unless it's an interview or something; I thought it was weird, so I heard my phone ringing and went back to check it."

I am reminded of myself, four years ago, moving into an isolated unit in a rural community and introducing myself to my neighbors with homemade baked goods. 

Bring back talking to friends on long phone calls! Bring back unannounced house visit culture! Bring back knowing your neighbors - like, at all?!

I feel like a boomer. But, you know, they are on to some things...

Peace Corps: The Video Game. Yes, you can pet the dogs!

"[S]orry man it's not personal [-] you just happen to be the 213th NPC in service and i need to skip this dialogue and get back to this quest aight"

Something you deal with as a host-country-language-speaking expat is rote smalltalk.

I remember reading the blog of a Peace Corps Volunteer while I was researching and applying to serve. The details evade me but it somehow lamented this reality of service - that is, having the same conversations with strangers ad nauseum. At the time I thought, well, that makes sense and can be expected. I can handle it.

And, well, I was right. I can. But the amount of patience I started with and the amount I have now to entertain these conversations... well, let's just say they differ.

It doesn't sound so bad. But after hundreds of iterations it starts to wear you down.

The second that an interaction with a Nepali stranger begins, a probability flowchart of conversation appears at the back of my mind in low opacity, waiting to be induced with one of the key conversation starters. There's the usual "Where are you from?" and "Where are you going?" or (equally probable) "Where are you coming from?" to break the ice; then, within the first two minutes, a 90% chance that at least one of the following questions/comments will occur:

> "Are you married?"

> "Take me to the US with you!"

> "How many older sisters/younger sisters/older brothers/younger brothers do you have?"

"Are you married?" Someone will begin asking me. Before they are halfway through my brain primes itself for their next response, which will occur after I inform them that I am not:

> "Well, you should marry a Nepali guy and then live here for the rest of your life! (70% probability)

> "Why not?" (20% probability)

> "How old are you?" (10% probability)

"Well, you should marry a Nepali guy and then live here for the rest of your life! Don't you think?" they ask me excitedly. Full of pride. The first 20 times I heard this, it was amusing. After 150 times a lot less so. I say no, with a number of expressions -- I don't have much time left in country; I need a lot of time to get to know someone if I am going to marry; in America you don't need marriage for a successful life.

No (no explanation)

> "Why? You don't like Nepali guys?"

> "You're right; don't do it. Nepali men aren't good."

I don't have much time left in country.

> "Well, if you marry a Nepali guy you can get Nepali citizenship, right?"

> "Can't you extend your visa?"

General

> "I'll look for matches for you, don't worry!"

There's a secondary set of question-conversation chains that include "Do you cook for yourself at your house?" which sets off a conversation about diet and food in Nepal and the United States; and another - "Does your salary come from the American government or the Nepali government? (Alternatively, "Does your salary come in American dollars or Nepali dollars?") which kicks off another scripted conversation about the reality of my volunteer stipend. The latter also requires me to double down when I talk about money, because people go into the conversation expecting me to make a lot of it; and when I tell them how much I make in plain terms they assume my inferior Nepali is interfering with my ability to properly express myself (no, it's not - I am plainly and clearly expressing myself - yes, I only make that much).

Any comment of mine follows with its own cascading of probability responses from a Nepali resident, until, inevitably, another question gets asked from the top of the chart, which triggers another nested cluster of probabilities to expand. Again. and again.

For me, it's not the potentially private nature of these questions that bothers me - it is, quite honestly, the sheer repetition and predictability of them. I sometimes use humor to play with people, but it only gets me so far.

It's part of our job to endure. And part of it to engage. In the grand scheme of things, it's a small complaint to have. And it speaks to the openness and friendliness of the people here - quick to connect and bond. Certainly one of the things that makes Nepal so special. Just happens to make me a bit tired, sometimes, as well.

I suspect in two years' time it will mean very little; that I'll be reminiscing on these moments with nostalgia and amusement.

Wandering the forest zone with a dog companion.

Last week I was on my way home from a trip to the local market. I hopped into a minivan heading toward my local junction, sharing the passenger seat in front with an older woman. We had some chit-chat. She inevitably asked after my marriage status, and later, about my salary -- we covered that whole conversation. And that was fine, and we rode the rest of the way for the next 20 minutes. Then I got off at my stop and decided to visit a family who operates a shop on the corner - just to catch up and say hi. 

As I approached there were some strangers seated at the bench in front of the storefront; they eyeballed me with interest. After a while you begin to recognize the "who is this foreigner?" look in their face; and then they turn to their Nepali acquaintance next to them to talk about you. "Oh, she lives here! She speaks Nepali! She can understand everything," the shop owners exclaimed. Here we go. I kept quiet as long as I could, but someone eventually egged me to confirm that I was from the States when they weren't believed. "Where are you from?" the lady asked me. "America," I confirmed. Thus began another round of explaining my stipend situation, and again about my marriage status (which went on at length...). Even more exasperating is that I am certain that I had had this exact conversation about marriage with the shopkeepers before, and here we were, at it again.

I was agitated. With all semblance of a relaxing respite gone, I said goodbye and started the hike back up to my village. Feeling particularly affected that day, I pulled out my phone to send a frustrated voice message to a friend of mine about how tired I was. Tired of talking about my stipend, about talking about having a mother, father, elder sibling, and two younger siblings, tired of talking about my marriage status, and tired of entertaining people thinking they were funny and latching on to me as a visa card. Tired of all the same.

About ten minutes later an elderly man crossed paths with me on the trail. He stopped for a chat.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"The United States," I said behind a tired smile.

"The United States!" He exclaimed. "Well, take me to US with you!"

I wasn't sure what would feel more therapeutic: crying or laughing.

"Sure," I said.

On the Basis of Unproductivity

Months ago I was the in city one morning and decided I wanted to spend it having breakfast with tea, pastries, and my Kindle.

I found a nice, friendly-looking bakery, decided what I wanted from the display case in front, and sat down, eager to get lost in my book. But every time I tried picking it up I found myself distracted. I instead looked idly at my phone, flipping through various applications and checking on conversations with friends. And so it went: I would click open my Kindle, try reading a few paragraphs, put it down to send a text, look outside to the street… then, remembering that I wanted to be reading would pick up my Kindle again, only to realize that I hadn’t absorbed anything from the first pass... So then I would start to reread the passage, and then take up my phone moments later, and so on and so on.

Let me say that the chocolate croissants of this bakery are to die for.* I have developed the habit of eating them in a very particular and disassembling way, peeling layers of pastry off one by one to reveal progressively spongier and chocolate-dusted insides. It is a gutturally methodical, quiet-minded, and slow-twitch activity which, as I have come to realize, is why I like it so much. It requires two hands, periodic examination of the croissant, and careful decision-making; and inadvertently forces me to be slow and quiet and relaxed. I can perhaps talk to a companion during this time if I have one; or take moments between leisurely undressing golden pastry strips to gaze out the window; but I certainly, absolutely cannot rush croissant time.

*My friend Bradley says they are middling – but then again, so is his opinion. He also hates cheese. And that’s all I need to say about that.

One of the inaugural cafe croissant times.
My Kindle sits serenely on the table waiting to be read.

So there I was, struggling with my Kindle at the bakery. I had ordered tea, a chicken pastry and a chocolate croissant. (After several following visits to this bakery café this combo has now become “my” order. The cashier addresses me with familiarity when I walk in, and I have found myself, to my chagrin, a firmly established semi-regular. I digress). My pastries arrived shortly after ordering and I thought, Great! Now I can start reading in earnest. And I tried. I really did. But at that time I was naïve and uninitiated in the ways of the croissant. As I found out, reading and eating at the same time was perfectly impossible. I was forced to give it up – at least for a few minutes. And so I ingratiatingly submitted myself to the croissant, my two hands occupied, slowly and painstakingly peeling layer after layer of soft pastry away. Brooding. 

You see, reading this book felt important to me – in part because it was quite productive ("The UX Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide," by Leah Buley, the cover read). And so I felt disappointed, and perhaps mildly frustrated, at my failing to read it; because this seemed to me the reason why I was at this café in the first place: to bolster my understanding and exploration of the UX profession in which I have been interested.

Suddenly it occurred to me: I don’t need to do this. I don’t need to be productive. Not right now. Do I? In my mind I was seeking to make the most of this slow morning time. I imagined a wonderful date with my book, blissfully engrossed and simultaneously productive in my studying. But – what if that didn’t happen? In fact, what if I was wholly disengaged and unproductive? What if I not only failed to read a book but simply sat there eating my pastries, sending banal text messages and looking out the window for the duration of my breakfast, thinking about whatever I wanted to think about in all of its potential modicum and unproductivity? What if I did?

I decided that the prospect seemed perfectly alright. So that is what I did.

And what a nice time it was.

 Two friends chatting over a delicious spread of pastries and tea (and Bradley's coffee, but that isn't delicious, is it).

***

In the West we are obsessed with movement, progress, and productivity. We are obsessed with filling our lives; filling our minds; filling space and time; filling our present and futures. We walk, drive and commute with podcasts and audiobooks streaming through our consciousness. We often work, recreate, and fall asleep with screens blaring at us, vying for our attention. “I need to have something on in the background”, a partner used to say as they broadcasted a movie or a YouTube influencer or a video essay on Disneyland theme park rides on one monitor, while playing a video game on another. We are always seeking to “do” things, our dopamine circuits propelling us to look for more and more. Sometimes because we are conditioned to; sometimes because we are driven to; and other times because we have to.

In the East – and elsewhere out of the parasitic reaches of capitalism and industrial living – there is boundless space and time. I call it slow time. This can look like deciding to visit a neighbor without notice to ask a question, staying for three hours, and leaving without the answer to it. It can look like sitting on the stone patio in the sun all afternoon completely listless. It can look like attending a community meeting that you know only needs to last a couple of hours that lasts instead from midday to dusk.

Even as someone who has always appreciated a lot of space and quietude in life, the difference hits me constantly in the Peace Corps. It is both excruciating and vitalizing.

The view from the doorstep of my room in the village.

***

Some days ago I found myself at the same bakery café as before. I, again, wanted a slow breakfast with tea and pastries; and again had brought a book with me (with the intention to read it). I put in my order and settled into a center table from which I could benefit from the warmth of the sun while watching unaware passersby crossing the storefront’s large glass façade.

Once again I failed to read my book. But this time was different – I was less fixated on results. Instead I sat and watched, slowly enjoying my snacks: I watched the sun slowly creep further and further into the café; I watched two commuting motorcyclists stop in for their morning pastry fix; I watched a mixed couple on their walk buy treats for their gamboling children; and I watched the construction workers in their hard hats and reflective gear pace slowly back and forth on the other side of the street.

A group of young friends wandered to the bakery and lingered about. As one of them stood by the cashier's counter a motorcyclist drove by with a delivery. Before either of us recognized what had happened, a newspaper had slid across the floor and hit his sneakers with a flippant ‘sssthwap!’ He turned toward me to pick it up. We made eye contact and I shrugged playfully.

The young Nepali unwrapped the bundle into two stacks and placed them on the round table next to him. I could tell the version he was inspecting was written in Nepali. I pointed to the other pile. “Is that in English?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, handing it to me. He scanned the issue in his hand for a few moments, unusually curt for a Nepali; but, not finding anything worth his attention, returned to his group of friends standing outside. I looked at the bundle of paper he had given me. The Kathmandu Times, it read in bold type.

The monochrome print crinkled delicately, unfolding in my grasp like a pair of whispering butterfly wings. I scanned the articles slowly and started to read. (Trump’s implications on the imminent TikTok ban in the United States; the state of illegal mining in South Africa; and the potential of Nepal’s hydropower in fueling the tech industry). It was riveting and (dare I say?) fun.

Once I exhausted the articles that interested me, I noted the sudoku puzzle at the back of the issue. I still had my book with me. But I felt like giving it a try anyway. This isn’t my newspaper, my anxiety alarm-bells rang. Whose is it then? What if it belongs to the manager and they do this sudoku puzzle every day? What if I'm about to ruin it for them?

It took me a moment to realize how ridiculous that sounded. That it was likely no one cared, and that, even if someone did care, it was a reasonable thing for any patron of an establishment such as this to do.

So I sat in the window and systematically worked through the rows and columns of numbers, logicking my convictions onto paper one after the other. I felt myself melting into flow – that is, until I realized with dismay that I had made a fatal error. The 4 I had confidently written down had a duplicate in the same row. This would take some investment to correct.

I looked at my phone for the first time in a while. I don’t have time to fix this, I thought. Nor the patience. In fact I had an appointment to prepare for. So I put the paper down, gathered my things, paid, and bid goodbye to the friendly cashier to whom I am now acquainted, feeling light and utterly relaxed.

What exactly propelled me to read a newspaper? I have not read a newspaper in years and years. And I had brought my book to read after all. I am a naturally curious person, so that might have been it. Perhaps some delight in entertaining the ‘newspaper-reading in a café’ paradigm (which surely one day will cease to be a paradigm) played a role. I am also sure, however, that the morning and all of its parts – the interaction with the young friend, the newspaper reading, the sudoku-filling, and even the conversation I had afterward with a stranger as I was returning (“You were visiting Seattle?! I’m from Seattle!”) would not have happened if I had driven deep into my book as I had wanted. Yet with the perception and allowance of unfettered time and affordance, they did.

***

Not by chance the second book I brought to read to the cafe was “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention” by Johann Hari. My personal lack of attention has been causing me some low-grade strife (and is why I bought the book). You would think, as I did, that living in rural Nepal, surrounded by beautiful hills, heartwarming community, a lifetime experience, and nothing but time would be supremely motivating. That it would allow someone to work on themselves in healthy ways, being inextricably grounded in nature and simple humanity and connection. Right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, despite this reality I feel frustratingly attached to my phone and computer living in my rural village. Instead of stretching in the mornings, spending quality time with my community members, reading books, or being creative, I fall back into the familiar feedback loops of scrolling through my WhatsApp messages, email, Reddit, and Instagram. This is what I wanted to get away from in the States only to be placed at one of the most electricity- and internet-stable villages of my cohort. The irony has not been lost on me, and the perpetuation of these bad habits turned me to Hari’s work.

The book of the hour with all its modern and digital condemnation

Hari argues many factors for the apparent decrease in our inherent ability to pay attention as members of a modern, technologically literate, and collective society. Among these factors lie the increase of “multitasking”**, “the crippling of our flow states”***, stress, social media and its predatory grips, and decreases in mind-wandering. Many of these factors strongly resonate with me, but the art of mind-wandering seems especially relevant in the cross-cultural lens of the Peace Corps.

Backed by the literature of accredited scientists, Hari states that mind-wandering is “essential for things to make sense,” allowing our brains to connect sometimes seemingly disparate concepts, inspiring creativity and insight. “‘If we’re just frantically running around focusing on the external world exclusively,’ states one of his interviewees, ‘we miss the opportunity to let the brain digest what’s been going on.’”

Similarly, Hari muses: “I thought back over all the scientific studies I had read about how we spend our time rapidly switching between tasks, and I realized that in our current culture, most of the time we’re not focusing, but we’re not mind-wandering either. We’re constantly skimming, in an unsatisfying whirr.” Reading this, I felt validated.

I understand the elemental privilege of my circumstance. Living here in Nepal with my basic needs taken care of: shelter, food, and healthcare, and a bit extra to cover an occasional excursion to the city – something out of reach for many of my villagers. That being said, something they have naturally ingrained that we do not is their state of relative ease. Of mind-wandering; of just being. Of taking things as they come, asking for a newspaper from a stranger and reading it, of marinating in the moment and the mundanity. Not that this is always beneficial, either. As I said, it can be frustrating... but there is an argument for the benefits that come with a slower and mind-wandering propensity. And therefore an argument for cultivating more of one in our lives. Certainly, in mine.

Cousin-aunt-in-law Bishnu didi sitting on a straw mat at the edge of our patio.

A friendly kitten enjoys her company.

I feel like I talk a lot about slow time, and I also feel like it is something that volunteers can struggle with, coming from a society that experiences constant movement and stimulation. If you don’t move quickly you get left behind! It seems to shout. You won’t reach your goals!  You’re not enough if you are not in a state of production! Your worth is the quantity of your activity and effort!

But are you?

And is it?

I think about a commuter in a typical American city walking quickly to work, a coffee in hand, avoiding eye contact, earbuds feeding them the newest episode of their favorite podcast. Then I think about my host mother on our mud-caulked patio, sitting on a straw mat, warming her legs in the sun and engaging any of the many faces that have the habit of wandering past our house, neither party having any particular necessity or purpose.

In the example I have illuminated here I struggled to find production in a single morning. But periods of low activity are quite common during Peace Corps service and can last a very long time. Volunteers find themselves in trenches of inactivity which can leave them feeling aimless and deeply uncomfortable. These marathons can last days… weeks… and months when there is simply not much to do; not much that can be done despite their highest desires and best efforts. Village life is like that. And so is the Peace Corps.

Of course it is important to have some sort of drive and ambition in order to accomplish beyond the bare minimum, in order to achieve success. But it’s also okay to be unproductive sometimes. To exist for no reason. To exist in slow time. It’s okay to not be constantly driving yourself toward being harder, better, faster, stronger ... or even simply, less bored. It’s maybe even good. Hari and his cavalry of scientists say it’s definitely good.****

For me sitting in that café, deep in croissant time, watching the slow goings of the morning with a mind relaxed and wandering-prone without any expectations… it felt pretty great. There were (and still are), of course, personal problems to worry about… work activities to plan… the rest of the day, and the day after, and the day after that, and the weeks and months after that, to think about… and the list goes on (Oh – trust me, it goes on).

But the bouts of unproductivity have also opened me to a state of engagement and possibility that I would have otherwise shut down. And in some ways my still café moments led me to be more productive and fulfilled than I would have been normally. Perhaps we would feel similarly if we were to replicate this in other facets of our lives as well.

And that, I think, is worth a lot.

 

A wary cat perches on the step of the bakery cafe.

**The title of this chapter is “The Increase in Speed, Switching and Filtering”. It's an impactful chapter but less topical to the moral of this blog piece, so I neglected to speak about it here.

***”The Crippling of Our Flow States” is another pregnant chapter of the book that I gleaned a lot of insight from. After reading this chapter I realized that when I was first at the bakery with my Kindle what I was desperately seeking was pleasure derived from the flow state of reading. But it wasn’t attainable in that moment. So what ended up happening was that, being unable to achieve flow (a healing activity that builds up attention and happiness, argues Hari), I replaced it with another attention-healing activity – mind-wandering – which was likewise pleasurable. This made so much sense to me.

****in moderation. Note that too much of anything can be bad. I found this passage from the book poignant: ”Given that mind-wandering has been shown to have so many positive effects, why does it so often make us feel bad? There is a reason for this. Mind-wandering can easily descend into rumination. … In situations of low stress and safety, mind-wandering will be a gift, a pleasure, a creative force. In situations of high stress or danger, mind-wandering will be a torment.”