Site Presentation: Feeling Loved

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Jett

At the end of May my boss came to my site to officially present me to my community at an event called my “site presentation.” The idea of the site presentation is that you organize a community meeting so that Peace Corps can explain why you are here. My presentation went way better than I could have imagined.

The director of the school where I will work organized the presentation and I made cake and invited my host family and the team at the community clinic where I work. I wasn’t sure what to expect.

It was beautiful! When I got to the school the professors and director were running around getting everything ready. I went into the office to help the director with my name and when I came out again the school patio was filled with chairs and the entire school, plus several parents, and the clinic staff were waiting.

They put on music and had a microphone. The program unfolded like a real community event would. One of the professors introduced each part of the agenda. We started with the anthem of Paraguay. Next, the director talked about how I’m here to teach about health including self-esteem and starting a school garden.

What made the presentation special was that the students performed music and dance. First, one student played the guitar and sang a song about welcoming foreigners as friends, then several students performed a traditional Paraguayan dance. Next, the students performed a modern dance –which was surprising, amazing, and almost brought me to tears. They danced to a song about New York City.

The director of the health clinic shared some words and so did my boss. Then it was my turn. I wrote out my speech—I hated that I had to read it, but I figured being understood but reading was better than being confusing and not reading. I spoke in a mix of Guarani and Spanish.

The event was exhilarating and, for the first time since getting to my site, my doubts melted away…I can do this crazy thing call Peace Corps service.

Taking the Oath

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Jett

Ten weeks and a billion new emotions later, I’m officially a sworn-in Peace Corps volunteer. Time flies when you are having fun, or maybe it’s when you are working hard.

The swear-in ceremony was simple and sweet. Peace Corps staff offered advice; representatives from my group gave pump-up speeches with inside jokes; our host government shared some touching words; and the US ambassador, well, had good things to say but his Spanish wasn’t very good.

We took a lot of pictures. It was overwhelming. As exciting as the oath was, many goodbyes and new things lurked and would inevitably follow. Peace Corps has changed my understanding of excitement. In the Peace Corps excitement and being petrified are inseparable. The two emotions together are a concise summary of my first months in Paraguay.

The oath is as follows:

“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The Great Reveal: My Site

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Jett

Welcome from my site host family!

Holy cow! I know where I’m going to live and work the next 2 years…in Paraguay.

One of my pig neighbors.

Milking time.

I spent the last 5 days visiting my future site. I move there to start my work as a sworn-in Peace Corps volunteer on April 11.

View from the ruta.

School where I will work.

My site is beautiful, the people are welcoming and guapo, I’m close to Asunción and a huge supermarket, and it looks like I will have a lot of work to do (if I play my cards right and have a little luck). My host family is large and friendly. I have a room with a lock. I feel spoiled.

Health post where I will work.

Views from around town.

I was nervous to visit my site for the first time. What if my host family didn’t like me? What if I didn’t like them? What if the people in my site didn’t want me there? What if…? Waiting to get my Peace Corps site was an introduction to a level of nervous-excitement I didn’t know existed.

Views from around town.

Let me explain. Living with a host family is hard. Moving to a new community where people don’t speak your first language is hard. For those of you who haven’t studied abroad or lived with a host family (and a host community), it feels a lot like meeting, for the first time, the family of the significant other you hope to marry.

You want to make a good impression while still being honest about yourself. You want them to like you and you hope that you like them. You want everything to go smoothly and you want them to want to get to know you better.

My site visit went well. I chatted, drank terere, walked around, went running, attended a soccer game…I visited the high school and health post where I am going to work. I felt safe there. I even think that, with time, my site will feel like home.

My site reminds me of Vermont. It’s green—it’s full of rocks and trees and has cows that wander across the road.

A 10-Point Bucket List: Countdown

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Jett

I have 1.5 weeks until I learn were my site is going to be. Here’s my oh-gosh-training-is-almost-over bucket list.

Polish my “elevator pitch” for the following questions…because people are liable to ask them shortly after or when I meet them.
1. Are you married? Do you have a boyfriend?
2. Why are you in Paraguay?
3. What is the Peace Corps?
4. Why are you doing the Peace Corps?
5. Are you Catholic?
Identify what makes a place feel like home and think about how I might apply that to my future site. Sometime ago, I realized that I’m only as happy as I am with my home. It may seem like a minor thing for some people, but for me things tumbledown if I don’t set up a good camp.
Be ready for the little things so they don’t get to me. If my site visits taught me one thing, it’s that my service is going to be filled with countless, endless, little annoyances. These will range from the same dang polka blasting from my neighbor’s house just as the roosters stop crowing to families dumping kids on me for baby sitting.
Make some personal ground rules and boundaries. What kinds of things am I willing to tolerate and what kinds of things am I not willing to tolerate?
Develop some strategies for child and classroom management. Children are everywhere and they are a huge part of many volunteers’ lives. I need to prepare for them to be a large part of my experience as well.
Dig in my heels and do the legwork. So much depends on good, trusting relationships. Take the time to make them. In the words of my father, “Measure twice, cut once.”
Dedicate myself to learning language. Do what it takes to learn how to communicate about the daily basics—Guarani or Spanish.
Look beyond the bounds of my community to round out my workload, if needed. Peace Corps runs camps, committees, and other programs to achieve the Peace Corps goals. Get involved.
Take it a day at a time but don’t forget the big picture. Pieces make up the whole, but if I can’t see the whole the pieces have no meaning.
Think positive thoughts. I can do this.

Long-Field Visit

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Jett

This past week I went on a second site visit. This time I traveled with 4 other trainees and 1 language teacher. We spent 3 nights in the community of a current volunteer. We had language classes at the volunteer’s house and helped the volunteer with projects like giving health presentations and making dish soap.

I stayed with a host family on a humble farm with a wonderful view. The fields lightly peppered with trees, tall golden-white grass, and cows reminded me of my childhood—rural Vermont. The corrugated-ruffed space that served as a dirt-floored dining room/living room looked just right with its hanging baskets of plants, rough-wooden chairs, and flower-patterned clothed table. Somehow the attentive audience of cats and dogs who sang songs around my feet while I ate was charming. I found myself amused and pleased by the pigs that wondered in-and-out of the living space, grunting and squeaking as they waddled. The pigs were funniest when the mother of the family locked them in a shed just next to the dining table so they wouldn’t bother her while she cooked. The pigs pushed their snouts out of a hole in the bottom of the door and gave a squealing protest.

I started my days early with a sunrise run with my host volunteer. Nothing quite lifts my spirits like a good morning run,. Next came my shower and coffee breakfast. I’m not usually a coffee drinker, so even the mostly milk brew was quite a kick-starter.

Running water in Paraguay—showers, sinks, and toilets—are different than in the US. The simplest of shower spaces has a concrete floor with a drain with nothing separating the shower space from the toilet space. The walls of the bathroom are made of mud bricks and put together with a clay-cement-dirt mix. The showerhead is plastic and round, maybe 8 inches in diameter. There is a switch along the edge of the showerhead were you can select cold or warm water. The toilet has a string to flush it that is attached to a tank mounted on the wall about 5 feet above the floor. The sink faucets in the bathroom (and kitchen) are frequently plastic.

In the morning, at the volunteer’s home, I had Guarani class. The afternoon was filled with laugher, health presentations in the 30-student community school, and chatting in a mix of English, Spanish, and Guarani: They say that volunteers leave Paraguay speaking 3 languages poorly. My group gave a dental hygiene presentation to community parents a day early because plans changed at the last minute and we redesigned our recycling presentation for kids halfway through because the activity we planned wasn’t working for the students. We made bubblegum colored dish soap and tried double digging the volunteer’s garden. I say “try” because the site I visited hasn’t seen rain for about 3 months and the soil was like a firmly packed, dirt road on a crisp Vermont-autumn day—pretty dang hard.

I have almost 2 weeks before I learn where my site will be. Nothing has helped me feel as ready as the volunteer site visits. I’ve gotten to practice my language skills with community members and to see what life, as a volunteer, is really like. I spent my first site visit learning what it means to be a volunteer and confirming that the Peace Corps is right for me. This second visit, to a different site, I spent learning how I can be a volunteer once I get to my site. It’s hard to explain how helpful it’s been to have my host volunteers answer the waterfall of questions I’ve had, share their stories and insights, and show me that being a volunteer is real, not just an amazing dream.

First Site Visit

Posted on February 23, 2014 by Jett

Last week, I went on my first site visit. In pairs we (the trainees) traveled to a current volunteer’s site to learn about volunteer life. I was ecstatic to finally see a site after spending weeks discussing sites theoretically—it sunk in that in only a little over a month I too will live in a site of my very own.

Sleeping in, taking siesta, selecting my own food… my wonderful host spoiled me.

The visit shed light on the Paraguay beyond my training community. The department that I visited, Paraguarí, is green and tranquil. During the visit we hiked along a stream with little waterfalls, viewed the plains from a hilltop garnished with palms, and enjoyed the vibrant sugarcane fields.

Through the course of the visit two contradicting feelings bubbled through me: excitement and dread.

Daydreaming about what my house would look like was the root of my excitement. Seeing how my host had decorated her mud and brick house walls, stocked her kitchen with all kinds of goodies, and shared her space with an energetic cat I’m itching to get started with my own homestead in Paraguay.

Dread came from an entirely different place: reality. Despite my host’s positivity there are slow times (no tangible work) and hard times (rumors, gossip, etc.) between the rewarding times (little victories). The visit showed that we volunteers are not in control of our work. As a volunteer we have a responsibility to put ourselves out there, build relationships, offer our ideas, lend a hand, but in the end all projects, work, and relationships come back to the Paraguayans of our community. What I mean to say is that pure desire to work hard doesn’t guarantee that you will accomplish any project that you can report on—a project that has numerical results (i.e. things produced). Being a volunteer is the epitome of teamwork, you have to trust and work with others of a culture you are still learning to navigate.

I returned from the site visit with the vision that I’d be trapped in a rainbow for the next two years—caught in the rain and the sun at the same time.

Connecting the Dots

Tag Archives: Volunteering