Rinse Cycle

So I knew it would be hard to explain my two years of Peace Corps service to people that have never experienced it.  What I wasn’t prepared for was how draining pre-service training would be, and how it’s really hard to explain the insanity factor to people who haven’t experienced it.

I feel like I’m in a washing machine.  Everyone tells you it’s a good thing, you are going to get clean and ready to be used.  Woo!  Except you don’t realize how long the wash cycle takes.  It’s a lot of fun in the beginning when you are tossed in with all of these other people along for the ride, and you don’t think much about the water filling up until you are spinning around.  And even that is fun in the beginning, until you begin to get a little seasick from the spinning and the close quarters and the constant reminders that you aren’t clean yet but you will be if you hang in there.

And sometimes the spin cycle pauses and you are thankful for the lull, and then you begin to go stir crazy from the lack of movement.  And then you start spinning again and think, thank God, something is happening!  Except then it won’t stop and it’s so repetitive. Spin, pause.  Spin, pause.  And throughout the whole process you are aware that it will end soon, but not soon enough, but when it does you’ll miss being close to everyone, even if your introverted tendencies are not happy about being submerged for this long, thank you very much.

Also you begin to wonder if the whole process is actually worth anything, because you are pretty sure they forgot to add soap, so you’ll have to clean yourself when you get to site anyway.  Currently you are just soggy and slightly seasick.

Then you realize they did put in something like soap, but it’s not actually soap- so it won’t get you as clean as you want and need to be, and you’ll probably have to scrub it off at site later.  It also burns your eyes at inopportune moments.  Those frustrations on top on of the spinning and closeness makes you want to jump out of the washer not infrequently.

At this point, we are counting the days until we are done soaking and spinning and are clean enough to swear in as Peace Corps volunteers.  At which point we’ll go to our sites and find all the stuff that pre-service training didn't wash out or prepare us for and be frustrated all over again.  But we’ll be free of the washer for a while at least.

I don’t know if this made sense at all.  Sometimes I feel like I really am going crazy.  If I ever see another flipchart again, I might do something drastic.  Then again, I helped come up with a rap yesterday about taking malaria prophylaxis, so the drastic might already be happening :P