Tonight I dream of Uruk-hai

One would think this band of Peace Corps misfits would be overwhelmingly wanna-be hippies who grew up with the Doors and parents whose stories recall the flower child movement.

I came here one of those people. But, I’ve found the people with whom I’ve surrounded myself, the Americans with who I am closest, have brought out my nerdy side. A side that I have suppressed since my prepubescent years of pining for Middle Earth, a place that I’d never visited and doesn’t exist.

We write and trade crossword puzzles. We have arguments about Franzen and Foster Wallace. We can easily play ten rounds of Boggle and spend hours waiting for NPR podcasts to download.

And today, I completed a lifetime goal: watching all three extended editions of the Lord of the Rings in rapid succession. I took breaks to teach, to sleep, to run and to shower, so it wasn’t entirely a 15-hour binge. But when I woke up on the second day, I contemplated skipping my classes so I could finish the two and a half hours of the Return of the King I had left. I cut my two-hour naptime into 20 minutes in order to maximize my viewing time in between meetings. Last night, I dreamed I was riding a horse with Legolas and Aragorn.

Less than an hour after I finished, I was talking to my friend who was just in Ghana. She was telling me how the Hobbit is basically our lives as volunteers.

These are the type of people who have been entrusted to develop a nation.