Cannon

Of course, my internet went out the day following my previous post, dashing my hopes of charming the masses with a few bloggy tales before leaving Chongqing for a month. And by “the masses” I mean the kindhearted three who still take the time to stop by here no matter how bad I get at updating. Thanks for sticking around. And my internet is still out, but I won’t let that hold me back. I can do this old school style in Word and then upload whenever I’m reconnected.
Too much has happened over the past 30 days. It’ll be impossible to package it up into a tidy little post, so I’ll just ramble a bit. First off, I attended a ten-day language training at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, the city where our pre-service training was held. Those ten days were long and tiring, but totally worth it. Unlike Romanian, there are plenty of materials, resources and classes available to help foreigners learn Chinese. And Peace Corps even reimburses a decent chunk of the bill. I’m just barely beginning to feel like I might be able to semi-learn this language, tones and all, which is a nice feeling. The characters still terrify me, though, but I’m hoping to start cracking that code this semester.
After the ten-day training, I dove straight into our ten-day PC in-service training, which now feels like a blur. It was great to see everyone, but we were so busy and preoccupied and tired the whole time that it was hard to really enjoy each other’s company. I’m planning to travel more this semester, so hopefully I’ll get to see my closest friends again soon, but it’s too bad they’re the ones placed the farthest away. After staying with a friend for a couple of days in Chongqing following IST, I am finally back home and, needless to say, still exhausted. I can’t count the hours of sleep I missed out on, but luckily I have this week to regroup and rest and get ready for classes to start on the 28th. I’ll be teaching the same students, but it’ll be American Culture instead of Oral English, so it’ll be nice to have a new topic and some content to work with.

And I’m typing this feeling like I’m avoiding what needs to be typed about and feeling too falsely cheery…typing is how I deal with things, so deal with things I shall. On the first day of IST, February 8th, a little before 11am, our country director took the microphone to make an announcement. Her expression paralyzed the audience. She told us that the body of a US citizen had been found in a hotel in Thailand. She said that the body had been confirmed as a volunteer, as one of our own. She said that it was Cannon. There were no signs of violence and it appeared that his heart had stopped beating, she told us. The heart of a 6 foot 5, fit, 26 year old man had simply stopped beating.
Cannon had been at my training site, Chengdu University, and his host family lived not too far from mine, so we often ended up in the same group of 5 or 6 people who walked to class together. In all honesty, he intimidated me at first. He was tall, sported a multitude of tattoos, smoked tirelessly, spoke with a Bronx accent and wore less than appealing sweat-soaked white t-shirts and basketball shorts. But there was something in his demeanor that sparked intrigue. It only took five minutes of talking to him for the intimidation to melt away and a deluge of questions, curiosity and respect to take its place. I always liked Cannon’s presence and always wanted to talk to him more, but didn’t want to annoy him or appear to be too curious about his life.
He was the kind of person who spoke like he had failed English 101, yet had graduated summa cum laude from Boston University with a dual degree in finance and international management, something that even his closest friends here didn’t know about until reading it in his obituary. He was the kind of person who may or may not have been in a gang in his younger years, yet knew everything about Improv Everywhere and may or may not have participated on a few occasions. Although his tattoos peeped out from under his sleeves, he was an excellent teacher dedicated to and beloved by his students. He was the kind of person who appeared bored and uninterested, yet laughed at the cheesiest of jokes, even some of my own, to my surprise.
He broke down so many of the stereotypes people often have, yet he was completely oblivious to the good he was doing. Some people are capable of changing the way others view the world just be being themselves and to me, Cannon was one of those people. One of the diamonds in the rough, full of surprises. I thought so all along, just never felt the need nor had the courage to tell him. And it would have been a pretty weird thing to say to somebody I really didn’t know all that well.
Although Cannon and I, along with 15 or so other volunteers, were placed in the same city (Chongqing), I didn’t see much of him after pre-service training. He tended to avoid big groups and parties, for which I can’t blame him. I think the last time I saw him was just before Halloween. A group had gotten together for dinner and I remember chatting with him about classes and about how spicy the food was. We shared a moment over our mutual love of cauliflower. He laughed and smiled and I remember wishing I could think of more things to talk to him about that weren’t so lame.
Last Thursday evening, around 5:30pm, we held a candle lighting memorial for Cannon. The country director, his program manager, and three of his closest friends told a few stories about him, interspersed with tears and laughs, but of course mostly tears. We all shared a moment of candlelit silence to think of his family, reflect on the time we had with him, and focus on the little welt of loss stirring in all of our chests. Afterwards, a pretty little notebook was passed around for everyone to write their memories of Cannon in to send back to his family. His closest friends later added a few pictures and their own stories. His family, whoever they are, must be in an agony that I can’t even begin to imagine.
We all still have so many questions - how did it happen, why was he there, who was he with, was he happy, on and on – questions that will most likely never be answered, but all you can do is hope that he’s happy, drifting on a bright patch of cloud somewhere out there, keeping a caring eye out for all of us.

I feel like I should add, for anyone with a friend or family member in or considering the Peace Corps, the death of a volunteer is very rare and obviously devastating for the program and the volunteers and staff members who knew that person. For the three years I have been in the PC, eight out of approximately 7,500 current volunteers have lost their lives while serving. Peace Corps does all that it can, through safety training, medical care and volunteer support, to prevent harm to its volunteers, but it can’t eliminate all risk from service.