I’ve found internet that’s easier to access, so hopefully I
can post more often. At least for the
duration of training. I realize that I
should probably back up a bit and explain a little bit of how Peace Corps
works, since I know most people aren’t familiar with the process.
When you apply to Peace Corps, you tell them all of your
skills and background and they roughly try to place you somewhere where you can
use those skills and experience (very roughly.
More on that in another post).
The application process is a completely separate beast that I’m not
going to go into here :P Once they tell
you where you are going, you have the opportunity to accept your invitation or
decide not to go. I got my invite in May
after I graduated. Then there’s a whole
bunch more paperwork that goes back and forth between you and PC, until the day
arrives that you leave.
When you leave home you go to some city in the US for
staging, to meet the rest of the people going to your country at the same
time. A lot of people might not know
this, but PC sends people to countries in batches. So my staging was in Philadelphia with 34
other people going to Botswana to be Life Skills volunteers (more on the life
skills stuff later). We meet each other
and more paperwork ensues. After getting
talked at a bunch we basically didn’t sleep and began the process of getting
here, via a bus to New York, flying to South Africa, then Gaborone
(affectionately known as Gabs for short), then taking a bus to Kanye.
Kanye is our training site.
Each of the 34 of us (one person has gone home already) live with a host
family to learn Setswana and local culture and customs (unless you are married
then you are placed together). M-F and
some parts of Saturday, the 34 of us have training at a local education
center. This is what I mentioned last
time, where we get sessions on health, safety, language, local culture,
HIV/AIDS, and eventually what we are doing in schools. At this point, we are actually not Peace
Corps volunteers yet. We are Peace Corps
trainees, in the Bots13 class (you’ll hear me mention that a LOT). Once we finish training we swear in as Peace
Corps Volunteers (PCVs) on November 15th, at which point we then go
to our sites.
So I’m currently a Bots13 PC trainee in the middle of pre-service
training (PST). Have you picked up that
PC really likes acronyms? J There are currently 3 other bots groups here
as current volunteers. Bots 12 came in
April, Bots 11 came a year ago in September, and Bots 10 came April 2011, so
they only have about 6 months left. Bots
9 left this past June. Keep in mind that
people think of Peace Corps as a 2 year commitment, but it’s actually 26-27
months, because your training (that I’m currently in) doesn’t count towards
your 2 years of service. I’m sure I’ll
go into lots of other PC stuff in future posts.
Next week we have a break from M-F training and we get to
shadow current volunteers for a few days.
I leave at 4:30am for Ghanzi (pronounced hanzi, most Gs are silent in
Setswana) for 4 days, and I’m super excited.
I’m excited to actually be with a volunteer, and to see more of the
country; Ghanzi is pretty far west- look near the Namibia border if you are
trying to find it on a map. I also know
that our training class Bots13 will have sites within several hours of Gabs and
not be as far as where I’m going next week, so yay for getting to go farther
for a few days! The 8-hour bus ride is
not on my list of favorite things, but at least its just one bus I think. I’ll give a full report in a week or 2.
Once again, leave a comment if you have questions!
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