Breaking in the Newbies

The Peace Corps tries to allow Peace Corps trainees ease into living on their own in Gambian society. I think they do a good job of not throwing a trainee directly into their site. I am still going through the training process before I can become a volunteer.

I started in Philly where I met the rest of my group, environmental volunteers, going to The Gambia. This initial training gives us the opportunity to learn about the Peace Corps, the country we are going, and help us prepare mentally. Philly gave us a place to meet other people with whom we will be living for two years in a familiar environment.

Next, we flew to The Gambia, and we are staying in a compound near the capital. Here we have many western comforts like running water, showers, flush toilets, and western style supermarkets. We learn the Gambian culture and way of life which helps us integrate when we reach our village. The Peace Corps stresses intergration into the local community to be successful. This place also gave use the chance to meet current volunteers and talk to them.

After 10 days here, we move to our training villages upcountry. I have not reached this stage, but we leave Friday. My training village will be up river near Kiang National park or forest. In the training village we live in a typical small village where we trade many western comforts for pit latrin, wells, and bucket baths, but we live in the village with other Peace Corps trainees. There will be four other volunteers in my training village. Each of us will live in a separate family. A LCH (Gambian trainer) lives in the village too. Everyday we will have a full day of language and technical classes. We live in these villages for eight weeks. Every couple of weeks, all 24 environment trainees meet to learn experiences from each other and gain more training.

The last week of training we travel back to the capital area, Kombo. We have a final language test and if we achieve the intermediate level, we are sworn in at the US Ambassador's House (I hear it has a great view of the ocean), and become Peace Corps volunteers. We then go to our villages where we live for two years. I like the fact that we go through the training process in steps to help us adapt.