The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 he tiny Daewoo microbus into which I had crammed myself, along with the driver and several old women, rolled along out across the flat and dusty countryside as we passed the endless cotton fields. We were outside Gulistan, Uzbekistan — in other words, the middle of nowhere — and I was not quite sure where we were going. I had shown up at the bazaar with only the name of a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer and her town, and was hoping that some taxi driver would have an idea of where to take me (and that my poor Russian would hold F O C U S O N T H E P E A C E C O R P S T HE S ILK R OAD TO W ASHINGTON O NE FSO DESCRIBES HIS TRANSITION FROM THE P EACE C ORPS TO THE F OREIGN S ERVICE . B Y J AMES W ATERMAN T Philippe Béha