The Final Week - Welcome to my blog

The time has finally come for me to start my blog. A week from this moment I’ll be in DC wading through last minute paperwork, immunizations, expectations, and meeting a slew of prospective volunteers I’ll be sharing this experience with.  My last footing stateside will be Tuesday Feb. 28^th at 5:40pm, when I’ll commence the journey that will take me from DC to Dakar, Dakar to Johannesburg, and from Johannesburg finally, after nearly 24 hours of travel, to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. 

For the most part I’ve been telling everyone that I am a Peace Corps Volunteer working within the Small Enterprise Development profile, meaning I will be working with small businesses and NGO’s (non-governmental organizations).  Which is partly true.  But to be entirely honest I still hold the status of ‘peace corps trainee’ and am about to embark on an intensive on the job interview/training beginning March 1^st and culminating May 4^th.  At which point I’ll be speaking Malagasy with intermediate-high proficiency as defined by the Peace Corps and be comparatively well-equipped with the technical skills and cultural awareness to hack it as a full-fledged volunteer for the following two years.  I’m expected to hit those marks before being sworn in or else, as I understand it, Peace Corps will be generous enough to pay for my plane ticket home.  Slightly daunting yes, but I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t looking for a challenge.  To be frank, I’m proud that Peace Corps holds volunteers to a rigorous language standard and emphasizes cultural immersion to the extent that they do.  No doubt it will be strenuous at times but infinitely rewarding if I want to be an effective volunteer. 

Here’s a brief overview of my daily schedule for Pre-Service Training, to give some idea of what it will look like:

Sample Daily Schedule

Weeks 1-4:  Community Based Training with Home stay (Mantasoa Village)

8:00 - 12:00     Class (Malagasy language, technical sessions)

12:00 - 2:00     Lunch Break

2:00 - 5:00       Class (language, technical sessions)

5:00                 Return to Home Stay/Individual study

Weeks 5-9:  Center-Based Training (at our PC Training Center in Mantasoa)

07h00-07h45   Breakfast

8:00 - 12:00     Class (Malagasy language, technical sessions)

12:30 - 2:00     Lunch Break

2:00 – 5:00      Class (language, technical sessions)

18h00-18h45   Dinner at PC Training Center

19h00-19h45: Occasional evening sessions (Technical, X-Cultural, Medical, and Safety)

I could go on ad nauseam spelling out all the idiosyncrasies the I’ve been told in umpteen Peace Corps Staging emails will encompass the life of a soon-to-be SED volunteer during pre-service training but rather, I’ll remain brief and provide updates on life as I live it.

One last note: 

I spent some time this afternoon ruminating on a blog title.  A much more painstaking process than I expected as I wanted something that would truly capture how I felt going into this experience, what I expected to put in, and what I hoped to take away.  After some very helpful suggestions on Facebook, highlights of which included, ‘Havin’ a Blastar in Madagascar,’ and a link to the Gilligan’s Island theme, I finally settled on what’s listed above.  It’s fairly simple, nothing too clever or poetic but I felt it spoke to what I’m aiming for.  Crossroads refers to the old Robert Johnson tune by that name, and though the meaning of the song is slightly obscured, blues legend suggests that the crossroads of U.S. Routes 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, Mississippi served as the hallowed ground where Robert Johnson made a Faustian bargain with the devil in exchange for his blues prowess.  So here’s the tie in:  For me, Peace Corps has always appeared as a critical juncture.  A necessarily transformative moment in my life.  Those familiar with my career aspirations are aware of my fixation with international affairs and diplomacy, but also my desire to give back and lift up those less fortunate than myself.  So I enter into this particular intersection in my life unencumbered and with the hope of developing insight, codifying my skills, and trying my best to better the station in life of the Malagasy people I’ll be working with.  After spending some time with it, I realized that I’d always viewed Peace Corps, especially in light of my life’s goals, through a lens that suggested the moment as a crossroads.  So with that I’ll conclude.  Next time entry will be from beautiful Madagascar, thank you to everyone for following along.