Pre-departure October 2010

Struggling with how to start this blog... going to start with the basics of where I'm at in life and some general Peace Corps information.

Things are a bit all over the place currently but here it goes. I've been living between my parent's house in Northville and my sister and brother-in-law's apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Every week I pack up a bag with the different clothes, books, and whatever else I might need for the week because I don't know yet which residence I'll be staying at each night because substitute teaching is quite variable and most of the time the way the system works you find out where you're teaching anywhere from a couple days beforehand to a couple hours before showing up for a day of work. I've been substitute teaching in several districts, visiting different districts, schools, and classrooms everyday. This can get a little trying over time because you never have enough time with the kids; one of the reasons I prefer elementary school because at least then you're with them all day long.

So I'm taking a bit of a break down in Austin, Texas right now. The plan originally formulated before I had heard from Peace Corps. The idea was I'd help my friend move down here and then stay for an unknown duration of time substitute teaching while I waited to hear the final word from Peace Corps and/or develop an alternative approach to teaching overseas. Substitute teaching doesn't work out because I'm only down here for a month; I was invited into the system but by the time I took their orientation class I'd be leaving in less than 10 days. Not worth getting a Texas drivers license or paying to be fingerprinted in the Texas system.

On October 4th I received my Peace Corps packet!!! Or I should say it arrived at my home in Northville where my Dad promptly called me, opened the package (felt like it took FOREVER but there was a lot of packaging to get through in his defense). Then he read that I was invited to serve with the Peace Corps in Zambia as a Community Educator working with the Rural Education Development (RED) project. I depart January 31st for pre-staging; I'll spend two days stateside getting paperwork and final medical reviews taken care of and then fly to Zambia!!!

I received my Peace Corps packet and the next day accepted. I didn't quite know what to make of my decision. The friends that I know that have done/are doing Peace Corps all seemed to need to take a couple of days to process the invitation and decide if this is what they wanted to devote the next 27 months of lives to the Peace Corps. I didn't want to take this commitment lightly but realized that I wasn't making a rash decision I'd been waiting 13 months for this packet to arrive in the mail. I was planning to teach overseas anyways if Peace Corps didn't work out. With Peace Corps I'm able to go to Africa, teach in an underdeveloped area, and I'll be living in a rural village; there couldn't be a more perfect situation if I'd picked it myself!

I applied to Peace Corps because I want to have an overseas experience, to experience a culture completely different from my own, and to feel completely out of my element (pretty sure I won't be loving it at the time). The most important thing to me is to gain a better understanding of all types of people. I hope to make a difference in the lives of the people I meet from my village, the teachers or children that I work with in the schools, whomever really. I don't know yet how this will take form; I think it's better to be open-minded and approach every experience as a potential learning moment.

I don't know what I'll end up doing in my life (hopefully it'll include teaching elementary school) but regardless I think it'll involve education, formal and informal. The experiences I have in the Peace Corps will allow me to better understand the students in my classroom, not just the ones from similar backgrounds of my own, but the ones that are struggling in their new environment, the English as a Second Language students, the ones that the educational system really needs to work on reaching. 

So I accepted my Peace Corps invitation. In the thick Peace Corps envelope they sent me I found my exact job description and a bit of what the day to day should actually look like. Here's a brief little overview.

January 31st:

Pre-staging, located in the United States somewhere for two days. This is where we'll get any necessary vaccines including: rabies, hepatitis A and B, meningococcal meningitis, and typhoid. I'll also start taking Malaria medication which I'll be on the entire time I'm over there. Peace Corps starts all volunteers on Mefloquine which you take weekly; however, it has the great side effect of often making people get sick so if your stomach can't handle/hold down the Mefloquine then they switch you over to Doxycycline.

February 3rd:

Fly to Zambia to begin Staging (training for the next 11 weeks). We'll be training at the Peace Corps building located in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I stay with a host family within commuting distance to the training center. During training I'll find out what region of Zambia I'm being sent to so I can start learning the local language. Peace Corps also provides training for your specific job, community educator in my case.

April 2011- April 2013:

Live in a mud hut in a village somewhere in Zambia without electricity or running water; cook over hot coals, use an outhouse, shower from a bucket, truly embrace life.

What will I be doing as a Community Educator working with the Rural Education Development (RED) Project? 

Great question - I wondered the same things myself. This is what I've put together from the information/sources that I have. I will work with 5-8 different schools in the area; it's common to have to bike up to 40 km, sometimes more, to the schools you work with. I'm not sure if this is one way or roundtrip? Regardless I need to get into WAY better shape to be able to handle 40 km on a mountain bike on rural dirt roads. The common situation is you're the only volunteer in your village, the nearest PC volunteer is likely a 40 km bike ride away. I'm also about 40 km from the nearest town. Peace Corps seems to love the distance of 40 km and I am about to become quite familiar with it and can foresee a love/hate relationship developing with it.  I'll be teaching HIV/AIDS, food security, and life skills to the community. I also have the opportunity to start side projects anywhere from bee keeping, community gardening, and after school programing; I'll have to wait until I learn from the community what skills/projects they're interested in.

Hopefully you have a better idea of what I'm doing for the next bit of my life and why/how I've come to this decision! I'll be continuing to post updates on Zambia as I research things while I'm down here in Austin - so check back every once in a while!

Zambian hippo. Heather, my sister, found the picture when she was first researching Zambia; it's now my computer background and figured I'd include a taste of Zambian wildlife. Zambia also has also giraffes, lions, alligators, and cheetahs to name a few!