Now I'm in Mali

The summer flew by, the 6 weeks at the job passed just as quickly and I'm finally in Mali. It's 5:50am (I've been up since before 4:30) and I'm sitting alone in the Refectoire (dining hall) trying to find things to do to occupy my time before breakfast at 7am. I think I went to bed before 8pm last night because the Mefloquine, or the anti-malarial pills I've been prescribed and just started taking yesterday, have made me kind of light-headed.

So, before my battery dies I supposed I'll just briefly recap what has occurred over the last half-week. On Thursday, I finished up at work. My office went to lunch together and then I bid my final good riddance. It was an easy 6-week stint definitely worth the $3,000. I took a red-eye flight from LAX to Philadelphia at 10:10 that same night. Peace Corps had called me several times that week and the week before informing me that red-eyes were against their policy but their travel agency, not mine, had arranged the booking and I kindly informed them that it was too late to call me, after I had made necessary family arrangements, and tell me that I would have to leave on an earlier flight. Their reasoning was that I should be alert and awake for orientation the following morning. Too bad, too sad. In the end, I got my way. The best part about leaving was not having to answer anymore redundant questions about why I want to join the Peace Corps and having to listen to ignorant comments like "It's not safe in Africa". Have you been to America lately? It got so annoying to the point where I stopped telling new people what I was going to soon be doing for the next two years. It also didn't help that my mom and I went to our last Saturday night mass together and the priest, who is Nigerian, was giving a sermon on how he was robbed on his last trip home and his brother, who works for an oil company, has recently been kidnapped and has yet to be returned. That led to a very uncomfortable Q&A session with my mom who had all the Qs and I, in return, had few As. How am I supposed to respond to what happens to me if I get kidnapped?

Anyway, I arrived in Philly around 6am and was picked up at the airport by my college friend who goes to Drexel Med. I stayed at his house until about 1pm and then went to orientation at a hotel which I won't get into the logistics of. As can be expected, it can be summarized as "boring." While most of the rest of my stage (group going to Mali with me) stayed in the city center for the night, I got to spend my last night in America with my sugar plum, Imanyah. The next day, we left Philly on two charter buses and drove 3.5 hours to New York through a pretty cool snow storm. It was the first snow of the season. From New York, we flew to Brussels and from Brussels to Bamako. From Philly to Bamako was something like 30 hours or more total. It's kind of hard to tally when the time differences change every place you stop. My first impressions of Africa were pretty identical to my expectations: hot and barren. Luckily, it was pretty smooth out of the airport as everybody got through customs without a hitch and nobody's bags were lost.

We drove to Toubaniso, the training center gifted to Peace Corps by the Malian government, which is 45 minutes supposedly south of Bamako. This is our third day here and training is starting to get as intense as it was promised. I had my French interview which was awful and an interview with one of my sector directors (I'm in the Health Education sector by the way). I understood all (ok, most) of the questions in French but I haven't practiced French since April so I forgot a lot of the conjugations and the words for certain nouns. I scored a Novice Mid which is only useful to them so that they know not to place me in a village that speaks a minority language. Since a lot of us are going to be learning French and Bambara, the people who already speak French will be learning Bambara and a minority language. I'm glad one of those people will probably not be me. My sector director is a female medical doctor from the Ivory Coast and is nice as can be. I'm really glad to be part of Health Education.

On Friday, I'll relocate from Toubaniso to a homestay family. I'm a little anxious because I only know basic greetings in Bambara and they sure as hell won't know English. I'm hoping there are at least a lot of little kids because they're the most patient and don't mind repeating things multiple times. I'll post more on that at a later date. Toodles.

New Job! [not in Mali yet]

I started my first day of work this past Friday as an assistant in the registration office of a local art college.  Luckily, it's not even a 5-minute drive from my house and I could walk if I wasn't inherently lazy. It's only a 6 week stint as I'm just replacing a lady who is currently on maternity leave. The day the job ends is coincidentally the day I'm supposed to be leaving for Philly to meet my stage. All I've been doing at work the last 3 days is tedious transcript checks because I'm not well-versed enough in the ins and outs of the registration system to be answering phones, which is a shame because the drop period is ending so they've been ringing off the hook and we always seem to  have someone in the office out sick for the day.  So in reality, the office is really down 2 men at the busiest time of the semester. It's not ideal work but 7.5 hours of pay per day will give me some travel money while I'm in Mali.

I guess I can write a little bit more about my job because I find some of it interesting and it kind of takes me back to the end of high school. The interesting part is that now I find myself on the other end of the spectrum (the person reading the application) and I realize the same things I laugh at when I read these kids' applications are the same stupid things I said not so long ago. Really all I'm supposed to be doing is verifying that all enrollees have sent in their final high school transcripts with their second semester grades and date of graduation so we can confirm that they've actually finished high school after their acceptance, and if they're transfer students, they also need their additional up-to-date transcripts from their previous school(s). It's as boring as it sounds so I find ways to entertain myself. If they're incoming freshmen, they have SAT or ACT score reports in their files so I compare those results with their transcripts for kicks. I find that this art school, like I suppose any state school would, accepts a wide variety of students. Some kids have almost straight As and some have so many Ds and Fs, I not only wonder how they got in to college but how their school districts let them graduate with those marks. One girl had a load of Cs on her transcript but scored above a 2000 on her SAT. How do you get a 700 on the Math section and a C in Algebra II both semesters? Another girl went to an LA public high school and had a cumulative 3.95 GPA but when I looked at her test scores, she scored a 980 (out of 2400) on her SAT and an 11 (out of 36) on her ACT. The same chick who ranked 5/588 in her class scored in the 6th percentile for the national average on the SAT. It doesn't matter how bad of a test-taker you are, you can't be THAT bad. California, like most states, has a state exit exam where you have to pass the test and your required classes before you're allowed to graduate but the standard is so low, it should be the elementary school exit exam rather than high school. On the flip side, if they raised the standard and made the exam harder, as it should be, that puts the state in limbo because then the schools become overcrowded and even more financially burdened. So California is graduating kids who can't can't give you the definition of the word "synonym," can't read past the fifth grade level, and can't convert a basic fraction into a decimal. Nobody wins.

Another thing I do for entertainment when my eyes are bugging and my headache is starting to develop is read their essays. In general, art students aren't the most captivating writers. I admit I normally read the essays of international students because they're the most chuckle worthy. So you score a 65 (out of 120) on your TOEFL (English proficiency exam) and you're coming up with sentences like "His usage of the rich array of color warms the palate and invigorates the senses"? LOL. Right.

Another common trend I find funny is a majority of the Asian students write about how they have "typical" Asian parents who had wanted their kids to take up the violin and academics but someone/something inspired them to pursue their "true passion" even if that meant disappointing their parents, who will only be pleased if they become "a doctor, lawyer, or nurse." Which is funny because I really don't know many Asian lawyers of nurses. A lot of kids write about one of their parents becoming ill or dying and ALL the grad students write about how they just never really found satisfaction in their undergraduate pursuits and now is the time to go after what makes them happy, blah blah blah. What I was getting at earlier when I implied that I would probably shake my head at my own application essays if I read them today, from the perspective of an administrator, is how we think we're making an impression by over-emphasizing details (for example, adding strong adjectives) or dramatizing ordinary events when in reality, we're just blending in with the crowd and adding ourselves to the "too ordinary" pile, which is some cases becomes the "DENIED" pile. If you say that you had nothing better to do one day than go parade through an art gallery and one work of art struck you so vividly that you instantly knew from that moment you wanted to be an artist, you don't sound very believable because we all know that things don't really happen that drastically. I still remember one of the questions on my Duke application simply asked why I was interested in Duke. I spent several sentences trying to flatter them, talking about how "prestigious" of a university they were and how I would be "honored" to be a Blue Devil and yada yada, when I should have just been honest and said that their brochure that came to my house junior year as part of the daily "college mail" pile really caught my eye, I was interested in learning more information about all the clubs, programs and student groups they listed as offering, I did further research on their website, talked to a few current students and alumni, and Duke was a place I could have pictured myself attending for all the above reasons. Not saying it would have affected my outcome, but at least I wouldn't be sitting here today, as a college grad, and cringing at the essays I wrote as a newly minted high school senior. Oh well.  Hindsight is 20/20.

Enough about my job for now. I'm about 6 weeks away from Mali and I'm feeling pretty neutral about it. One of my best friends, who now lives in New York, was home for 10 days and she was asking me if I'm excited about leaving next month because I've been talking about the Peace Corps since high school. I told her I'm excited but not bursting at the seams just because I'm skeptically anticipating what's to come. On the one hand, I'm really excited to meet my fellow stagers and the Mali volunteers already in country but who's excited about no running water, electricity, or wireless internet!?! She told me that she's always thought I've had good foresight and if the Peace Corps was designed for anyone, then it was designed for people like me. That was a nice pick-me-up but I'm going to remain as reserved as possible, which we both agreed was my natural mechanism for preventing disappointment. I'm really kind of concerned about some of the folks in my stage who just seem a little TOO excited. What happens when the excitement of being a newcomer to the Peace Corps and a resident of Africa wears off and the harsh realities of living in the African bush rush in? The last thing I want to do is ET because I'm "not liking it," it's "not what I expected," or it's "not what I signed up for." So I keep my emotions guarded, my anticipation low, and my expectations at close to 0. Definitely excited for Philadelphia though and meeting all those wonderful people. Just about 5.5 more weeks of the good life.

Peace Corps Invitation

Let's hope by the time I start the Peace Corps, I'll update this blog more regularly. Now that my 9-month application process is over, I'm sure I'll have more to write about. Not that I haven't had anything exciting to write about lately, as I've been in Europe backpacking for the last 9.5 weeks and haven't blogged once about it, but people change their ways sometimes, right? Anyway, the exciting news commences...

In mid-June, I received my invitation to serve. In Mali! A few weeks into my trip, I received an email from my Placement Officer requesting a phone interview so we set up a time for me to call him since I can't receive calls while I'm abroad. I thought he was just going to ask me more tedious questions about where I stood in my decision to continue with the application process since we had previously had a phone conversation about a month prior where he was informing me of Peace Corps's changing financial situation and how that might affect my nomination. It was also the point I told him that my September nomination probably wasn't going to be feasible anyway (see below post) and that I would be out of the country for the next 3 months. I was in Salzburg, Austria at the time and I called him via Skype using my hostel's WIFI. The connection wasn't strong enough because the call dropped twice so I ran around the corner to the nearest internet cafe and called him from there. Little did I know he was offering me a position in the Mali program at the end of October. I'm not a squealish, overly-excited person by nature (plus I was in the middle of this cafe and the only person on Skype); he totally caught me by surprise with the offer (after the normal Q&A) so all I could say was, "Wow. That's great." Most PC Invitees have to wait a week or so to find out where they're going (or so I'm told), as the normal invitation comes by snail mail, but being in Europe for 12 weeks made my situation unique, so he sent me the official inviation letter by email along with sending the normal package to my house. I found out later that night, from the email, that I would be going to Mali if I accepted that invitation. I knew right away that I would be accepting because it's a French-speaking country (the Peace Corps required me to take French for my original nomination that didn't happen so might as well put the courses to use) and it's in Africa, where I've wanted to go all along.

Now I've officially accepted and will be departing for staging at the end of October. I'm kind of lagging on my pre-service duties, however. When I got notice that PC received my acceptance, they said in the email that I have 10 days to submit an aspiration statement and something else to the country desk. That was about 50 days ago and still no submission. I'm a bit pre-occupied Europe-ing and being lazy. I will do it first thing when I get back though. I have about 11 or so days to apply for the special passport from the time I get back home so I'll have a busy few days.

I also got an email a few days ago saying a Facebook group had been made for my program so I joined the group and find some of the postings amusing. Some people are already PACKING!!! And we don't leave for staging for another 10 weeks or something. My fellow invitees are also discussing amongst each other what they've been buying and what they'll be bringing with them, and should they buy or bring this, etc. In other words, they're VERY excited and I haven't even really let it sink in yet. I guess when I'm back stateside I'll have more time to think about it. I'm for sure not bring tents and handlamps and sleeping pads with me though. I probably won't buy much of anything and instead have those sent to me once I get there if I deem them necessary. Plus you never know what you can find cheaper in Mali or get for free from current volunteers. Better not to have to schlep what you don't need.

I think that's it for me for now. I'm getting the stink eye from people waiting to use the computers. But I promise more updates! Oh, and Croatia is fantastic!!! Cheers.

Happy New Year

I know it's April, but it's been 6 months since I last posted an entry so happy new year it is. I'm graduating next month which is the good news. Bad news is I have a month to finish this thesis. I haven't really touched it in the last few weeks so things can get interesting.

Peace Corps- Ok, so the last blog I think I wrote was a few days after my interview and nomination. I guess a lot has happened since then, but the steps have been so spread out, it doesn't really feel like it. I received some medical forms in an official package, I want to say less than a week after my interview. It took me a few days to figure out where I was going to get my dental and medical evaluations done, seeing as how I have no dentist or doctor in Baltimore. Luckily, though, there is a dentist office in my apartment building. So I called to see if they were taking new patients. They were. Score. Made an appointment for a week or two later and I told the receptionist what exactly I needed done and why; X-rays and dental chart fill-out based on the dentist's assessment of my teeth. Please... This must have been some time in mid-November. I actually ended up seeing this dentist twice because the first time around, he remarked that he didn't know how extensive this evaluation was and he had another appointment so I could only get the x-rays done that day. I hate when they do that. Good thing I didn't actually have to take anything more than an elevator and a few steps to get there because I would have been less than happy. I went back for the assessment and teeth cleaning. Submitted the paperwork and got dentally cleared really quickly.

Medical was not so fun. The good thing was I found out there are actual physicians that work in our campus' Student Health and Wellness office so at least it was convenient. For the medical evaluation, it was mostly just annoying paperwork and medical history documents but I also had to have a regular check-up, a blood test, a urinalysis and all women are required to get pap smears. First one. Ouch. A few weeks later, everything came back normal and I submitted the results along with the dental evaluation. Peace Corps sent me a letter in the mail some time during Xmas break saying a few things on my medical chart were missing but they were things that I either a) stupidly forgot to put a check mark next to... or b) filled out but forgot to fax, or they got lost on PC's behalf. One document that was missing required the doctor's signature so I had to wait until the health office re-opened at the beginning of January to go back and get the signature. I re-faxed everything... or so I thought... and waited. I never received any kind of confirmation that my documents were received but I figured that my file was just being put on the backburner because my nomination date still wasn't for another 8 months. Meanwhile, I started an intensive 3-week French course that compressed a whole semester of beginner French into 30 hours of class time and probably 120 hours of homework. It was necessary to keep up my end of the bargain with Peace Corps that I would learn some French if I wanted to take part in my nominated program.

Finally in March, I emailed someone in the Medical Office HQ and asked if the needed something else from me because I hadn't heard from them in 2.5 months. Turns out they never received my fax of updated medical documents. HA! I later realized it was because I never included a "9" before the fax number, which is necessary when sending faxes long distances. I re-re-faxed and about a week later, I was medically cleared. One giant leap for mankind.

Which brings me to today. My online Toolkit, which is basically Peace Corps' system of letting its applicants know where in the process they are and what is need from them next, is a little ambiguous. Here is what it says: "Your file is currently under consideration. Please review the information on this page to determine whether Peace Corps is awaiting any information from you." Well the information on the page doesn't actually tell me anything other than what is already complete so I called the Placement Office for my nomination field to get more answers. The Placement Officer who answered my call told me he would review my file and get right back to me. A few hours later, he responded by email:

"Our database shows that you have been nominated to a Community/Youth Development program that is estimated to depart sometime in mid to late September. The review of your file here in the Placement Office will begin within 6-8 weeks of when you become medically qualified."

It's now almost mid-April and I'm realizing that my September nomination program is not looking so likely afterall. It sounds like they're going to start reviewing my file some time around my graduation. This can be a problem. I'll say why in a second. Here's more...

"Then, your Placement Specialist will perform a final evaluation of your technical skills and suitability for service. Upon completion of this assessment, your Placement Specialist may contact you with some follow-up questions regarding the information in your application."

Yeah. Contacting me after graduation might be a little difficult. And the kicker...

"Given this, please keep in mind that an invitation is never guaranteed. Applicants should make no plans to go overseas until an invitation has been issued and an email has been sent to the headquarters staff to accept the invitation."

Well. That's just too damn bad because I'm backpacking Europe for 3 months this summer and I won't be back stateside until August 25. That might make getting a visa and other documents in order for a 2 year trip that leaves a in a few week, a little difficult. This doesn't really bother me that much though. It's funny to read some other applicants' blogs on Peace Corps Journals and see how stressed out they are about the application process. Maybe I don't care so much because I'm too busy with school/excited about my Eurotrip to worry about placement right now. I've also been thinking a lot lately about the possibility of not being able to participate in my September nomination program and there are only 2 things that suck about it. 1) I haven't really imagined myself anywhere other than French West Africa. But I can quickly get over that. And 2) I specifically started learning French and taking French classes at school as part of my agreement with Peace Corps that my nomination was contingent upon gaining at least a year of French. Oh well to that too. A little French never hurt anybody. And it's a super easy A. So, basically I have zero problem with asking for a new assignment if I am actually invited to my nominated program. It will also give me more time to be in LA for a little while and volunteer somewhere locally as a way to make my candidacy for a new program stronger. I also just miss LA.

So that's my 6-month Peace Corps application status wrap-up in a nutshell. Stay tuned for more updates.