the peace corps thing

I figured this is not a bad way to keep a record of my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Antigua. I've already been here for almost 9 months, but I guess is never too late to start...

The idea of joining the Peace Corps came from an impulsive decision (as most of my decisions are) almost 3 years ago while I was an exchange student in Sweden. We were up late talking and drinking with my friend Louise - the nicest, funniest French-Canadian I've ever met - about the war in Iraq and other issues of the time, just sitting there drunk and lazy about how things should be and how other people are not doing there job as they supposed to - which of course seems easier to criticize when you are not doing much. She had been a volunteer with a Canadian organization in the Dominican Republic and I had been thinking about what I wanted to do after I finished my major in International Relations, which I didn't think very highly about at that time. That night after she left I went to the computer and without any research, thinking through or sobering up I decided to begin filling out the application form on-line. Of course it sounds easy, but you would have to go through it to know how long it takes to do anything in Peace Corps, beginning with the application form. It took me a few days to get it done but I had seen nothing yet. The whole process took close to 22 months. During that time I must've changed my mind at least a thousand times, driving my closest friends crazy with the Peace Corps thing.

It took so long that I already had a really nice job in Mexico City by the time I got my assignment date. Since I was leaving from Mexico I couldn't send my passport to Peace Corps as they instructed me, so I was kind of hoping that that would be a good excuse for them NOT to accept me. See, as much as I wanted to go I was really scared about actually leaving, specially when I finally had a nice little income of my own and was planning my first earned vacation. So I was still waiting for their approval on the passport when my boss, Rafa, asked me to tell him if I was leaving for the Peace Corps or not, he wanted to send me on a trip to Michigan for a training. I wanted to go on that exciting bussiness trip so I called the recruiter in DC that same afternoon to ask what was going on. I had been repeating that passport story to myself for so long that I actually believed that the Peace Corps had said something about it, to my surprise they hadn't and the woman was very upset by the third time I asked her to repeat the news: YES, I was already accepted, and NO there was no problem with my passport and YES quit your job soon and start packing up. I was leaving in a month!

I almost backed up at the last minute. I had everything going on for me and I was mad that the assignment hadn't come before, I was worried about who I was going to leave my job to and how I was going to do it in such a short time, I was excited of the possibility of having a real life adventure, but most importantly I had never been more scared in my life. This was it! What I had been waiting for, an actual job in my field, an international relation in itself! And of course I didn't know what to do, I asked all my friends, my parents, my sister, my brother, my boss, everyone had an opinion and I wanted to hear it. It was my first life changing decision, up until that point I had always known what to do, because it was a natural thing to do. You go to school from age 5 to age 18, no decisions there, then you go to college, not too difficult decision -what to study, very difficult decision but not the point- then get a job, which wasn't much of a decision for me, but then there comes this Peace Corps thing. I had to actually choose a between Peace Corps and a nice, safe job in a pretty office, close to my family and friends, with lots of friendly people that I had already become close to, business trips, fancy clothes and comfortable life. The best advice I got from all my research was from Rafa, he said, "No one know what's better for you than yourself". So the next thing I knew I was having a lunch and dinner marathon with everyone I knew to say good-byes and see you soons. Decisions are a very loose concept for me, I much rather negotiate and land on a shade of gray, so I decided not to give up anything. I was of course going to leave, BUT I wasn't ready to give up everything for something unknown. So I told my boss, my friends and my family that I was going to give it a try and if I didn't like it I would be back in a few months. I couldn't help smiling since I woke up that morning to leave to the airport, I wanted people to ask me where I was going, I wanted to say, "I'm off to the Peace Corps".

I left my home, my job, my family and my friends in Mexico City in July 2005. After a brief training in Miami - in which we were pampered beyond belief - we were off to our "site". Our first stop was St. Lucia, a beautiful island in the Eastern Caribbean, where we were to stay for a couple of weeks for another training. The Peace Corps has been in St. Lucia for over forty years and the training for the new volunteers was done regularly in Babonneau, so almost everyone I met knew what the Peace Corps was and could name a few of the volunteers they had met. People in St. Lucia are extremely friendly, they hug a million times a day, call out your name as you are passing by and feed you all day if you let them. I lived with a wonderful family in a small village thirty minutes from the capital city of Castries called Babonneau. Most of my day was spent in training but the rest of it was split between eating and Genevieve. I spent hours playing dominoes and teaching her Spanish, she was five years old and had just traveled to New York with her aunt, Nila, to visit another aunt that lives there and had started asking for her "momma" since the first day they were there. Her "momma" is actually her grandma, Lucille, who doesn't like to travel and prefers to stay home when possible. Lucille was in charge of feeding me and introducing me to Caribbean life and I can say that she did a great job, even with all the walking -I walked forty minutes to and forty minutes back everyday to a primary school that was functioning as our training facility in Babonneau- I managed to gain quite a lot of weight by the time I left. Nila and I became good friends, we talked every night when she came back from work and went together to a couple of parties, by far the best one was in Gross Islet -which is basically a closed street by the beach, with food stands, a few bars and restaurants, a platform for dancing and huge speakers on a stage. Nila took care of the housework and of Genevieve. The two brothers, Eli and Jeanyve, were in charge of the bills for the household and Nila took care of Genevieve's expenses. I tried to help cleaning when I first got there, but I was always told to sit down and enjoy myself. I did manage to make guacamole for them one day, with this HUGE avocados right from the tree outside the house. It was only for a few weeks that I stayed with them, but leaving them was extremely emotional and it really felt like a big part of my Peace Corps experience.

The permanent placement was announced a week before leaving St. Lucia. I really didn't mind where they sent me, I was just ready to go! I was assigned to the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. The first eight weeks I lived with a nurse Roberts in the community of Swetes right in the middle of the island of Antigua. After eight weeks we got to move to our own place, I can't tell you the joy to have a little independence after following a thousand little rules for almost 11 weeks. My apartment is attached to the Spencer's family house and has a beautiful view of the mountains, although it is pretty small, it has everything I need and it's easy to clean. The Spencers are a very organized and hard-working family, I hardly see them on the weekdays, but on the weekends they stay at home and Onyka -one of two of the Spencer children- who just turned three last December, comes up on the weekends to color and always asks to listen to Calypso, her favorite kind of music.

My first assigment was with the Ministry of Youth and Sports, I worked there for six months basically helping with office worked when needed and trying to find projects to start. After a few months I was already involved in an afterschool program, teaching Spanish to the teachers in a school in town -as Antiguans call the capital city of St. John's- and computer classes to fifth and sixth graders at the same school. In December, everything kind of stopped for the Christmas vacation and so we had an improvised Christmas program at the Church of the Nazarene in my community. It was a lot of fun, we started by coloring some Christmas cards and our final project was a snowman piñata, each of the kids made their own but didn't want to break it, so I made one to fill up with sweeties and took it to the big Christmas party in town. All of the Churches of the Nazarene got together and had children from all over the island bused to the venue. Every community had to have an activity for all the children, so ours was Spanish songs and piñatas. The Spanish singing was OK, but the piñatas where a success! We got them all lined up and got a stick, they each got three tries and finally one kid broke it and as wrapped candy fell a stampede of kids came from all directions and pushed me to the floor. After the candy from the piñata was gone I found a bag with the rest of the candy and started throwing it at them, I can't say that it was a good idea. Kids started running after me, even when I told them that I had no more candy, it must have been fun to watch!

After all the celebrations were done, I started working with the Bolans Primary School teaching Spanish to children from preschool to grade 5. This has been very challenging, as much as I hate it sometimes, it has been the most rewarding job I've ever had. Even if it doesn't seem like Spanish is going to take them anywhere, is a great way of getting to know the culture and the people in the purest form. Sometimes, at the end of the day I swear that I'm not going back, but as the next day comes I forget how frustrating it is and start all over again. My reward is hearing children yell "buenos días" at me as I ride by in the bus or walk through the village.

The Ministry didn't work out for me in the long run so I talked to them and to the APCD, my boss, and she moved me to a new organization called National Parenting Resource Centre (NPRC), there I work with Ms. Joseph, Ms. Christopher and Mrs. Moe, three very dedicated woman that deal with children and their parents through counseling, providing basic resources and as links to other services and organizations. My work there is basically help with Parenting workshops and try to get the services to the Spanish-speaking community.

So after 9 months I'm pretty sure I'll serve for the full 27 months, the unknown is my home now. Being a volunteer is not an easy job, but the hard part is rarely the work. My experience can be summarized as "loving it while convincing myself to love it", the most important thing for being a successful volunteer is to keep motivated and not let go when it gets hard, if you do you'll never know what was going to come next and after a bad experience it was surely a good one coming.