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Status Update - Interruption of Service for 18s
Entry 84 of 86 | show all | print this entry |
Yesterday morning I woke up at 8am and went to the Navoi Aftovokzal and bargained between a handful of yelling van drivers to get the best price on a 13 seat Ford passenger van from Navoi city to one of the nicest hotels in Uzbekistan (supposedly the one that the Haliburton guys stay in).
"Six-hundred miles, Six people, 15 bags, one Ford Transit van, $60, it's sunny and they are wearing sun glasses... Hit it!"
And who are the heavy packing road warriors? None other than Peace Corps's newest volunteers, the UZ18s. After being at site for less than two months they are leaving Navoi, and then leaving the country of Uzbekistan. The lack of accreditation from the Uzbek government has allegedly prevented even the US Ambassador from convincing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get new visas to keep the volunteers in country whose visas expire on the first of June. Currently all the new volunteers (as well as a few old) are in a conference room at the hotel in Tashkent, trying to decide which country to 'restart' their Peace Corps experience in: Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine, Romania, Azerbaijan, or Macedonia. Some of which have programs that begin in a couple of months. This gives volunteers the opportunity to return to the states for some rest and relaxation before their next assignment.
As for me, my visa expires the 20th of August. Hopefully the two governments work things out among each other so that I receive a new visa and able to complete my service here. It would be a real shame to get so far just to start all over again in a new country. Though I feel like I could get a lot more done being that I would already know the local language (assuming it would be another Soviet bloc country). Meanwhile, a majority of volunteers from my group have visas that are valid till 2008 but questions about the program's future for them linger in the air.
Though they were only here for a short time, it was still upsetting to see trained volunteers ready to help their host country be cast away over some petty bureaucratic-type paper work. It's only the people that suffer from such misfortunes as the Uzbek government tries to distinguish itself form other Soviet countries in yet another way.
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| 84. | Status Update - Interruption of Service for 18s - Navoi, Uzbekistan May 28, 2005 |
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