Nothing Exciting to Say!

Bloop.. just wanted to blog. Realized I can do that from work. Any excuse to kill time.

So, my two friends who are serving in Mali have decided to come home because they were really not meshing well with Mali... they had decided to stick it out and just see how things went but there was a health concern about one of the members in their family and they decided that right now it was more important that they were able to spend time with their family members than try to stick out their service. I'm glad they will be back. I have missed them, but I will miss more that they aren't going to be in the country next door to mine anymore. I was excited about having people to visit in Mali. Their early termination, partially because of the difficulty of their assignment is a bit discouraging, especially since Amanda confided in me that when times were bad in Mali the running joke was, at least we're not in Mauritania!

So boo to that, but I'm still super excited to go and I'm excited to see my friends again!

My friend Jessica is still going to be in Burkina Faso which is just on the other side of Mali so I will have someone to visit over there. Not to mention all of the awesome people who I am going to be serving with who I've managed to connect with over email. I'm excited to meet all of them and as Brian has already discovered we may be brother's seperated at birth, or perhaps cousins becasue we seem to click well.

Jessica is working on her Aspiration Statement that you have to do once you get your invitation to explain to the poeple in your country what you plan on accomplishing and how and why and blah blah blah... I'm supposed to take a look at hers tonight. I saw that Brian had posted his on his blog so I thought I'd post mine as well. Here it be, very unexciting but that's the way it goes:

A: My goals and aspirations at this point are relatively simple and pragmatic. I hope I am able to effectively engage with and instruct my students in the English language. I understand that I will likely be teaching large numbers of young energetic students and that classroom discipline may be a concern. I believe that my experience in working with Korean exchange students helped to prepare me for this role and for the difficulties involved in this goal. My role as an assistant for this program required me to facilitate English exchange and conversation on a daily basis. It was difficult to get the students engaged while remaining a source of authority for students who were the same age or older than myself. It also gave me specific experience in teaching English as a second language to a group of students whose langue I was unfamiliar with.

I also hope to be able to reach out beyond the school and get involved with parents and the community. I had the opportunity to tutor elementary school children in impoverished neighborhoods through program called Kids Reach in Tacoma. While the main responsibility in this volunteer experience was actively tutoring the children to increase their math, reading and writing skills; I also saw the importance and necessity of community involvement and outreach. It wasn’t enough just to provide the students with a few hours a week of tutoring. If a child was able to overcome his difficulty in learning, it required involvement by parents. So after every session we would get in contact with the parents and discuss their child’s progress and what the parents could do to help facilitate their children’s continued success.

Part of community outreach as discussed in my assignment description is encouraging and organizing extracurricular activities. This was another of my primary responsibilities in working with the Korean exchange students. Every week we were responsible for planning and organizing a field trip. Every trip was an exercise in organizational ability as well as the ability to manage and maintain discipline with a large group of rowdy students. One of the field trips involved one other program assistant and myself taking the entire group on a weekend trip to Portland (from our university in Tacoma, WA). At the end of the program, we helped the students to create and produce a play of their own that they performed for a large group of people including all the professors they had worked with and their host families.

Anther role listed in the assignment description is contributing to the advancement of girls’ schooling and education. This is particularly exciting for me and should also serve as the basis of my secondary project. My undergraduate thesis was entitled Empowering Women: A New Approach to Development in Africa, and it addressed how focusing on women’s education, health and institutional participation was not only a necessity for development but also a driving force for achieving development. In my research I found that educating girls and giving them the tools to empower themselves and their communities is one of the most efficient and effective ways to achieve change and sustainable development in Africa. So I’m very excited to have the opportunity to help work with educating girls. I’m very interested in working with the Girl’s Mentoring Centers described in the assignment description. I’m not sure if there will be some kind of cultural weirdness in my being a male working closely with females. There was some hesitation at first in working with the female Korean students, but after a professional relationship was well established it dissuaded any hesitation to interact due to gender.

While I wish I could be more specific as to my aspirations for a secondary project, I don’t think it would be wise to have my mind set on any particular program. I think it will be important to assess the needs of the community in which I am placed before I begin to develop projects to address those needs. It’s also very important that I am able to make a sustainable change. Sustainability is a word that gets thrown around a lot today. For me, it means that I want to be able through teaching other educators, working with the community and encouraging students to become involved in their own educations, to help give the community I am placed tools that they can use to further their own goals. I don’t want to simply come in, teach a few kids English and leave. If I am to have a lasting impact then I must help them to organize themselves and meet their own goals so that they can continue to develop after I leave as well.

I’ve become aware through reading other volunteers stories that for secondary projects outside funding may be necessary. While working with the University of Puget Sound’s department of Donations and Charitable Giving my primary responsibility was calling and acquiring donations and funding for university programs. I believe that experience will be useful should I need to obtain outside funding for any secondary projects I might attempt.

While it may be the goal of all Peace Corps volunteers at the time of application to “save the world”, my idealism has been tempered by the realization of my actual assignment. I understand that it is a very difficult assignment and it will be very challenging. While I may not be saving the world, my greatest aspirations for myself in the Peace Corps is to work with my assigned community to help empower them so that they might be better able to achieve the goals they have for themselves.

B: Like I said in section A, I think that it’s important that I am meeting the needs of the community for which I am in and not enter a community with some artificial desires of my own. I think my main strategy will be to listen actively to the concerns and desires expressed by my host country partners. I am there at their invitation, and it’s important that to a certain degree I am helping them accomplish the goals set for me. I will also try to maintain as much contact and communication as possible so that we both might be able to give each other feedback. So, should I need some resource in achieving the set goals or if I am having a problem then I am able to express my concerns as well to the host country partners. While I get the sense that much of my work will be done independently and of my own impetus and motivation, I hope we will be able to work as a team in achieving shared goals as is appropriate.

C: I think my main strategy for adapting to the new culture is to be open-minded. I’m fascinated by other cultures and very interested in trying to acculturate myself to a certain extent to the Mauritanian culture in which I’m going to be placed. I think the obvious first step is gaining a firm grasp on the language as quickly as possible. In my work with the Korean students, they were being immersed in my culture, not I in theirs. But, in order for us to work together it was necessary for me to have an understanding of their culture. Much of the confusion and many of the cultural impasses we came upon were the result of ineffective communication. During our time together I was able to learn to understand and speak a limited amount of Korean and it was clear that every little bit helped us to communicate and understand each other more effectively. The key to our successful interaction was patience. When there is a language barrier, it can intensify confusion caused by cultural differences. So it’s important not to become easily frustrated during frustrating situations. As the language comes along, staying open minded, remaining patient and understanding, finding similarities and respecting differences will help me to adapt to the culture and achieve my goals.

D: I hope that during the pre-service training I will be able to become more comfortable with French and also be able to get a firm grasp on whatever other language I might need to learn. I also hope that I will be able to become comfortable in the new surroundings and culture so that when I make it to my assignment I won’t feel completely alien. I hope to gain a high enough comfort level with the language and culture that I am able to confidently and successfully teach English to my students and create bonds with the community. I hope I am also able to connect with my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and others in the Peace Corps office so that during the difficult times that surely are ahead of me I will have a network of people who understand the difficulties I am going through who might be able to help me remain focused, motivated and optimistic.

E: Right now, my personal and professional plans after the Peace Corps are to attend law school. As far as long term goals beyond starting a family and some kind of career where I am able to help others I’m not sure what my goals are post Peace Corps. I can’t begin to imagine the effects that my service will have on me as far as enforcing my loose plans for life at this point or perhaps even completely changing them. I imagine that I will probably come back and continue with my education still unsure of exactly where I want to go. But whatever I decide I want to do I know that my service will help me to gain skills that are universally applicable. I think it will help me grow and mature as a person so that I might appreciate what I have and what I can do for others. I think it will help to teach me greater patience and courage. I can’t think of any aspect of my personage which won’t be improved by the joys and difficulties which I will experience in the service (unless of course I contract something fun like malaria! That might have some detrimental effects). I think after the Peace Corps, whatever goals I set my mind on I will feel more confident that I am able to achieve it because of the difficulties I will have to overcome.

Yeah, that's it. I think maybe on my next blog I'll write about why I'm 'really' joining the Peace Corps as opposed to my Aspirations...