Since I last posted, lots of things have happened. For starters, I graduated with my MPH in early August and directly after, moved back to Wisconsin. After being home for a couple days, I had the pleasure of spending an amazing week in New York City with Caleb and his family - a fitting bon voyage in the self-proclaimed 'capital of the world' for two Peace Corps volunteers about to depart for Africa! In my last few weeks in Atlanta, and through this past week or so spent with family and friends, my impending departure has somehow gotten more real - "I'll see you later's" (I don't like the finality of the word 'goodbye') have gotten more sweetly poignant, while the thrilling sense of a new adventure is building. I'm also feeling significantly more appreciative and grateful for everyone and everything.
Also, and more relevant to my Peace Corps experience, was a conference call that occurred with my fellow volunteers, country staff, and other Peace Corps staff. In total, it seems as if our group will have roughly 60 volunteers, all from three different sectors: the environment (agroforestry, or agfo for short), community youth and development (a relatively new sector, as this is only the third cohort of volunteers to go to Cameroon), and health. Although I'm not sure about agfo and health, there are 18 community youth and development volunteers (a random fact mentioned on the call). Other nuggets of information included: details on the first couple days; more information on the type of projects that we'll be doing; dress code (NO shorts - shorts cannot be worn to training, in the capital, at one's site, or basically just anywhere, except if one is very clearly exercising); expectations of volunteers, etc.
Here's a breakdown of my upcoming last few days in the US and first days of in-country orientation:
Wednesday, September 11: Fly from Minneapolis to Philadelphia with everything I think I'll need for the next 27 months stowed in two checked bags, and two carry-on bags. Meet at hotel in Philadelphia where we have staging from noon to 7 pm that day.
Thursday and Friday, September 12 and 13th: Take bus to NYC and fly out to Brussels. Have ridiculously long layover in Brussels, but may be able to leave the airport and explore a bit. Take flight from Brussels and arrive later Friday evening at Nsimalen Airport in Yaounde. We'll go through immigration with our government passport and WHO yellow fever cards in hand, then meet some country staff and head to a hotel for dinner and sleep.
Saturday, September 14: Language proficiency tests. Programming interviews. Medical intake interviews.
Sunday, September 15: Personal safety orientation. Dinner at Country Director's residence.
Monday, September 16: Welcome to Pre-service Training (I'll refer to it as PST from here on out). Orientation to food and water safety. Vaccinations/shots. Homestay orientation.
Tuesday, September 17: Processing immigration papers. More vaccinations/shots. Logistics and departure to training site. Move in with homestay families (most likely, our families will not speak any English, yet another facet in this whole experience!)
Wednesday, September 18: We begin PST in earnest, which will be a 9-5, five days a week experience focusing on language, culture, technical, and cross-cultural communication to prepare us for service. PST will last 10 weeks, and if all goes well, we will be sworn is as official Peace Corps volunteers on November 13, 2013 (the start of my two years of service). During this 10-week period, we will find out our site and have an idea of the projects on which we'll work, especially when we each go and stay at our sites for several days. After swearing in, I'll head to my site, which could either be in the Anglophone or Francophone parts of the country - so basically, I could be anywhere.
My training site will be Bokito, but the other agfo and youth development volunteers will train in a different place, called Bafia. Bokito is 22 kilometers west of Bafia (which itself is an hour and a half drive north of Yaounde). Bafia is a mid-sized town near a large river called the Sananga. The area is a mix of forest, savannah, and farmland. The climate is warm and humid. Although most of the inhabitants will be French speakers, many will speak local tribal languages. Our host families will be locals. Not much is mentioned about Bokito itself, except that it has "almost the same landscape." We'll be arriving in the rainy season, so the climate will be warm during the day and cooler at night, with "amazing cloudbursts every other day or so" according to our welcome book.
They also mentioned on the call that the majority of the health projects in the country focus on maternal and child health, and related HIV/AIDS and nutrition. With this in mind, they also said that there were some assignments/sites that involved working in a more hospital/clinic setting. Needless to say, this information was helpful, but didn't tell me any more about what I might actually be doing. Ah, well, c'est le vie! Additionally, although we as foreigners will operate slightly outside of the expected Cameroonian cultural norms, there will still be expectations of us; we will be considered professionals with valid opinions at our sites, and as such (and as Americans), will be expected to hold ourselves to different standards and realize that we will constantly be 'on' - 24/7 representations of our culture/background.
Hope this wasn't information overload, but wanted to make a totally foreign process a little more familiar for everyone reading. Au revoir for now, Valerie
