Jumping back to July

Wow, it's been way to long since I managed to update this thing. So time to catch up on some of the things that have happened since June, starting with July.

The beginning of July is when the next group of Peace Corps volunteers arrives for training. Since this is our 45th year of service here in Jamaica, there was a bit of to-do about welcoming the new volunteers. Several PC bigwigs came down for the event, and volunteers who wished to be at the airport to welcome the newbies were asked to wear their 45th anniversary t-shirts. Greeting the new volunteers brought back a lot of memories of my own arrival. In so many ways it is hard to believe I've been here a year (well over a year now). Some days it feels like I just got here and some days it feels like I've been here forever. It was also strange to be the old-timer, the one in the know, who could show the new kids the ropes (I say kids, but the new group, like my own is made up of a wide variety of ages-including those 50 and above).

Arriving in a new country as a volunteer is such an overwhelmingly intense experience. Of course the whole application/interview/acceptance process for the PC can be a strange mix of intensity and boredom (it's a good preparation for service that way). The process is as follows:

You apply online. If they think your application holds promise a recruiter calls to set up an interview. You meet with the recruiter for an interview, much like you would for any job. The recruiter gives you a whole lot of paperwork to fill out (again mostly standard job stuff-resume, references, letters of interest/intent). You also have to send in a copy of your fingerprints so that they can do a thorough background check. Once your done all that, your recruiter will nominate you for a program. Once you have been nominated for a program (my recruiter sent me a list of nominations to choose from; nominations tend to be very general, i.e. AIDS/HIV worker in Sub-Sahara Africa) you then get more paperwork to fill out. This set paperwork is your medical clearance forms. The PC Office of Medical Services provides detailed instructions for getting this paperwork done. The sooner you get it filled out (there is a dental form and a medical form) the sooner they can evaluate the forms. It took me a while to get everything in order because I had to get my teeth fixed before I could pass my dental clearance (my teeth were beyond bad-lots of abscesses, weak enamel and other problems). The easiest and best solution for me was to have them pulled (to fix them would have taken more time and way more money that I had available; truthfully I was tired of being in pain all the time and not being able to eat even soft foods-when it hurts to bite into a bean burrito you know it's time to do something). Getting that done took a while. By the time I got my medical clearance done (and was cleared for a limited number of countries-Jamaica being one of them) I finally got to talk with a placement officer.

The placement officer is the one who actually finds you an assignment. He/She compares the list of countries you are medically cleared to serve in, plus your skills and interests with what those countries need from a volunteer. Once they find a suitable candidate they call you. Of course they don't tell you the country--they tell you what region it is in and discuss the pros and cons of that region with you. For me the region was the Caribbean. Once I said yes, the PC sent me my invitation to serve. I got my invitation to serve in Jamaica in May, a little over a year since I'd started the whole process. I was to leave in July to attend staging, and then continue on to training.

Before you leave the US for your country of service you meet up with all the other new volunteers who will be in your training group for some basic orientation. This is called staging and usually takes a couple of days. For my group, our staging was in Miami. I left the day before staging began since to fly from Spokane to Miami basically takes all day. Left at 5:30 in the morning, full of nervous jitters and excitement, and arrived at 9:30 at night, full of nervous jitters and excitement. Met my roommate, P, once I finally got to the hotel. Good luck would be on my side and Ms. P would be my roommate just about every time we had to get together as a big group (she's really cool and we get along very well). The next day was a blur of meeting 59 new people, having lots of information thrown at you and generally wondering what the h*ll you'd gotten yourself into. It was also fun. We were given a walking around allowance, so we went out to a Cuban restaurant the first night, and saw a movie the second. After two days of intense information overload, we got up way before the crack of dawn to travel to the airport. 60 people and their massive amounts of luggage (I was worried I had over packed, but I apparently packed way lighter than anyone else) waiting to check-in for an international flight is a nightmare. Once we got through that line, we got to go hang out at the gate for a while. We were all so excited and idealistic. We were so shiny and new that I'm sure we squeaked. :)

Then we stepped off the plane into a wall of humid heat. The bright Jamaican summer sun glaring above us. Then we were away to another line, customs. Finally we were able to collect our bags and head out to where a bus awaited us. We were all tired and yet buzzed on the excitement still. There were some of the current volunteers awaiting us outside and they cheered as we came out. After having group photos taken out in front of the airport, we left for the university where our first week of training was to be held.

The whole of training (from the university to our community based training sites) was intense and overwhelming. I know I learned something, but most days I couldn't tell you what it was. My memories of training are mostly just a blur of moments, some standing out more than others. There was the trip my sector (community environmental health, aka wat/san) took out to Belview (a very rural town way up in the mountains) to help paint a school. There was no running water in this town. Most of the townspeople hiked down to a spring for showing, washing clothes, etc. Some of us made the hike (even my out of shape self-I huffed and puffed along, but my friends allowed me to take my time). The water was frigid, but felt great in the hot afternoon sun. Another great moment for me was when we went to see the official opening of another volunteers project. She had helped her community put in a large spring catchment tank and several stand pipes so that they did not have to walk so far to haul water. The group hiked up the mountain to the see the catchment tank, and I wasn't going to go at first because I am absolutely terrified of heights. One of the local Rastafarians finally talked me into going, cut me a walking stick and helped me climb up the mountain (including hiking up a stream at one point). Making it all the way up and back down without having a massive panic attack (or falling) was a huge deal for me. Overall, very cool memory.

Those are some of my memories of training, and it looking back it amazes me how far I've come in the year (plus) that I've been here. How much I've learned, grown and stretched. I have become more realistic in my expectations, and the shiny newness that I saw reflected in this new group has long since worn off. There are still days that I feel like an alien visiting a foreign planet, but for the most part I've managed to carve out a little niche for myself-not quite American, not quite Jamaican, just me.

Next up for posting-August: Well-timed vacations and missed hurricanes.