Next in line...

Now that the health class three months ahead of me has gone through the COS process and made their way out of the country, it’s starting to hit me that I’m next in line and I could even classify my departure as soon. Meanwhile, there are daily reminders that I’m still in Tanzania. For example, the last three days I’ve been mostly in my bed or the bathroom due to a digestive issue with my stomach making sounds I didn’t know it could. Regardless, preparing for the end is kind of a rushed process for our class, not by choice but by necessity. As I think I’ve said before, the powers of PC TZ have been searching to shift the program for a while but it was apparently granted just recently. This means the new education volunteers will swear in in about 17 days and if we wanted our sites replaced we had a two month minimum overlap with our replacements.

We can debate the merits and faults of this plan on from both the sides on this and believe me as volunteers we have…too many times! Basically it boils down to do you want someone to help you find your way in a new village or discover it for yourself and do you want someone around while you’re packing up to leave? In the end, it’s irrelevant because the whole duration of Peace Corps they have pounded into you the need to be flexible. From the start, you can’t even choose your country of service and if I got one choice in my entire service I’m pretty sure that would be the one I’d want. The funny thing is I wouldn’t be here and I would have made a mistake with that one choice. The beautiful thing about this process is that when control is taken from you you’re left with making the best of what you have. Well, what I have is magnificent and I couldn’t imagine myself elsewhere. Why do most people love their hometowns? Because they had to live with them for 5, 10, 20 years before they could go anywhere else. Anyway, to bring me back to the point, the overlap is what it is and you’ll see the positives and not realize the negatives are things you could have been without.

However, what it does do to my immediate future is severely limit the time I have left to do things. I will be traveling to COS conference next week and will miss a significant chunk of those days. It wouldn’t be as much of an issue except that I have a female replacement. This means, per PC policy, that I need alternative housing and since I want my replacement to actually stay for her two years, I think it’s best I’m the one living in said housing. It’s not all bad. This gives me an extra filter in which I get to cut stuff out of the trip home. I can be silly with my sentimentality and packing two months early is a good way to cut that out.

Otherwise, it seems my final two months will be devoted to arguably my biggest project of service. The health weekends, which we’ve raised an astonishing amount for (Thank You!), will happen in September and October. With the money raised, we can fund three full weekends, each impacting 500-700 students! As we currently have them planned, they are 3-day events covering a broad range of topics including nutrition and well-being, diabetes, mental health, and sexual health, including HIV and AIDS. I should qualify that and say that I’m certainly not taking point on this project but I hope to make a significant contribution beyond collection of the funds. My Kiswahili is not good enough to run the sessions but I’m going to make every effort to facilitate them as best I can. Documentation to come!

Alas, staring down the tunnel it has gone from just light to a definite world on the other side but I still have a ways to go. Hopefully there are fewer weekends like this one left in my future and I can enjoy the days to come. I’m going to do my best to document the weeks ahead as it should be a volatile time with constantly changing plans. The outline is exciting but we’ll see what happens!