The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

up in this area where most people preferred their native Uzbek). Three days earlier, on the night of Sept. 11, 2001 (for those of us in Uzbekistan, the attacks will always be remembered as happening in the evening), we had been ordered to “stand fast” at our respective sites. But it was difficult to reach people like Stephanie, who were assigned to villages where phones were still something of a luxury. The Peace Corps office in Tashkent had tried to send her a telegram, but because they had the incor- rect address on file, it fell to me as the site warden to track her down. So that’s why I was thigh to thigh with the Uzbek grannies in the back of the microbus. When I arrived in Gulistan, I was immediately sur- rounded by Uzbeks, most of them very sympathetic, just as I’d come to expect over the last couple of days. I was again touched by how many people asked about my fam- ily. I no longer took the time to explain how far Wisconsin was from Washington and New York; I just said everybody was fine, “Slava Bogu” (Thank God). The ride to Stephanie’s town took an hour, which is a long time to think about things once you’ve already used up all your Uzbek by saying “Good morning” to your fel- low passengers. I hadn’t yet seen any footage of the attacks, but what I’d heard didn’t sound good, and rumors were flying among the volunteers. We heard that the State Department building had been bombed, that Muslim gangs were rising up against Westerners in Uzbekistan and that we were going to be evacuated to Russia. I could only imagine what our colleagues in remote villages were thinking. As it happens, Stephanie hadn’t been thinking much about it at all, because news had barely made it out to her. She’d heard about some explosions in New York, but that was about it. I filled her in as best as I could, and we agreed on a schedule for her to get over to the next town to use a phone and check in with me every couple of days. As a crisis response, it was a bit of a nonevent — she had not been expecting me, wasn’t expecting any information, and I didn’t have much to give her anyway. A Moment of Clarity Until that point, however, I had thought of things dif- ferently. On the ride out, I played back in my mind the calls from my parents on Sept. 11 and the days afterward. I remembered the quaver in my mother’s voice as we’d spoken, and I couldn’t get out of my mind what Stephanie’s mother must have been going through, knowing that there was no way she could just pick up a phone and call her daughter. I’d already had a lot of jobs at that point in my life — bartender, teacher, hardware store clerk — but my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer was the first time I felt I was doing something genuinely important. That was an unex- pected bonus, because I’d joined the Peace Corps not so much out of altruistic motives, but because it seemed like an interesting way to better my chances of making it into the Foreign Service. I was fully aware that Returned Peace Corps Volunteers make up a sizable portion of the U.S. diplo- matic corps (though I do not have any statistics on just how many). And yes, I admit that during my oral exam, I leaned on that crutch at every opportunity and halfway expected my examiners to say, “Okay, enough about that already!” Yet as I rode out to Stephanie’s village, I was not thinking: “Wow, this will look great on my Statement of Interest!” I was only concerned about getting to the per- son I thought needed help, in spite of the fact that there wasn’t much to do upon arrival. Of course, there was much more to my Peace Corps service than that one ride. And there were certainly plen- ty of times over the next several years when I wondered whether and how it was really going to be useful. But the experience of assisting a fellow American who might be in trouble was a clarifying moment for me that solidified my desire to become an FSO and help others. And in the end, I think that the Peace Corps was an ideal way to pre- pare for my career as a Foreign Service officer. A Wide-Ranging Education Upon my arrival in Uzbekistan as a Peace Corps Volunteer in August 2000, I was given language instruc- tion, cross-cultural exercises, personal security training and much more. All of that preparation would eventual- ly help me adjust to the Foreign Service, as did total immersion in a world of acronyms and specialized jargon. So while I currently pepper my conversations and writ- ing with terms like PDAS, 214(b) and ConGen, I come F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 James Waterman entered the Foreign Service in 2006. He recently completed his first tour in Hermosillo and is now in Almaty. Prior to entering the Service, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan from August 2000 until September 2001, when he was evacuated following the 9/11 attacks.