zot in Niger bush camels

Sorry its been a few days. Much of transferring appears to involve hanging around in town waiting for things, which doesn’t leave me with a lot of time or motivation to post anything.

Anyway, I have only one major task left, and that is to buy a plane ticket for Ben, who lacks a credit card. He is vacationing in Timbuctu so its just me. Everything else has been taken care of this week. I was offered a post in Niger. I had an interview a couple of days ago and yesterday got my visa application in. Right now it seems likely that I will leave on Monday, but it is not set in stone.

Most people have left now. There are maybe 20 or so of us. The transfer staff that flew in from Washington have returned to the states. All the Guinea Peace Corps staff have left. Those of us who have not left for transfers are just working with Mali Peace Corps staff to make our transfers happen. But by now nearly all of us know where we are going and its just a matter of making it happen.

Sajay left for Zambia last night with Jess. They both have some pretty exciting posts. A contingent including Caitlin who are going to Botswana left this morning for a short trip to see some of Mali before they leave for their country. Transfers to Mali have begun their orientation and training, and so they are still with us, which augments our numbers by maybe seven. So the countries that are left are: Niger (just me going), Burkina Faso (maybe five transfers), Benin (three or so) and Madagascar (one married couple). Everyone else is still around.

Saying goodbye has not been fun of course. It was sad to see Sajay and Ben leave, and the end of our group. But in a nice way the evacuation to Mali brought us closer than we would have been otherwise, so I appreciate that.

So our compound, once filled with the uprooted lives of 90-odd people and the assorted cavorting, has died down to a small number of stragglers who are more or less just waiting to leave.

And seeing the Mali transfers walking around with their shell-shocked stares is a sort of hint of future for me. I think we all arrive in our new countries and wonder why we didn’t just COS and do something else. But I am also at times elated. This is, more or less, exactly what I want to be doing right now. That will calm down when I arrive, but it still feels good.

Yesterday I was so busy I didn’t really get a chance to post. We start each day with a general meeting at 8 am. Then we had our transition meeting with the people who will decide where we go. It was mildly interesting, but full, as always, of questions that are particular to a single person and thus less useful to everyone else. Anyway, after that my group went en ville to get medical done (physical passed, chest x-ray negative). I have submitted all my blood, urine and stool samples. I still have dental to do, but that is it for medical. Mix ups with buses and schedules led to us rushing back in a cab for my one-on-one with my placement person, which was disheartening. I think we all thought that they would be trying very hard to put us exactly where we want, but it seems like more of a shotgun approach. I am going to have to work hard to have the possibility of a post that I’d really like.

Last night we had a little ceremony just saying thanks to different people. Usually those things are kind of cheesy, but we were all on the verge of tears through much of it. It was well done.

Anyway, I hope today will be calmer, and it will be in the sense that I only have one or two meetings this morning and then will be hanging out en ville hopefully getting dental stuff done.

But in another sense today is the make or break day. Tomorrow is the last day for indicating whether or not you want to transfer, and by tonight the list of available sites should be finalized.

There are two sites in particular that I am interested in. One is working on ecotourism with a chimpanzee national park in Kassama Mali. Apparently the site is very remote and hard to get to and located on the top of a mountain. The other site is a municipal development site in Niger, in a smaller town that is located close to a large town (no names yet). In that case I would be working with the local government to teach management, proposal writing, and other organizational skills.

Niger has also been having some political issues of late, and there is a chance that Peace Corps will evacuate Niger as well, but it also has amazing Sahara desert lands and is home to the nomadic Tuereg (sp?) people.

So yeah, today is sort of make or break. I don’t think we will really receive offers till tomorrow or even Saturday, but it is the day that probably determines what those offers will be.

Today was mostly a giant disappointment. I forgot how frustrating the bureaucratic nature of meetings can be. Must we go over each form? But the worst thing was that we did not receive a list of posts, and moreover, it now appears that we won’t have quite as much leeway in chosing sites as we thought. It sounds more like they will place us according to preferences, but also according to where they think we fit best.

So far there are not a lot of SED sites available, and there is a noticable increase in people’s stress levels relative to yesterday. There are some posts in Benin, Senegal, Mali, and possibly Swaziland. Rumors abound about potential sites in Madagascar, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

I also gave blood, got my chest x-ray, and gave two stool samples and a urine sample. I have three or four more required sessions, especially a physical tomorrow, but also meetings with placement people and a counselor.

A lot of this is touch and go. I woke up this morning sick of Africa, and the day spent in sessions and stressed about sites has done little to change how I feel.

Yesterday we were informed that the Peace Corps program in Guinea is officially suspended, but we were asked not to tell anyone until today so they could make an official announcement. So here is the plan:

Yesterday we were given cups and vials to do the necessary stool and urine samples. Today they took blood. Those of us who have not had a positive TB test took another one, those of us with a positive test will have a chest x-ray. Our transfer conference officially starts at 10:30 today, when we will be assigned into seven groups and then cycle through a number of different sessions including medical, what options we have, a counseling session, and some other stuff. We should all receive some kind of information on posts that are available today. The staff seem exremely busy (I have been getting emails at 4 am) and the volunteers are all madly preparing or trying to occupy time until they must begin madly preparing.

Tomorrow we finish whatever sessions we didn’t do today, and that is it for the transfer conference. We have until roughly the weekend to find a new site, with the hope that everyone will be closed out by Monday. The schedule is flexible because some people may not leave for their transfer posts until after that, but that is the target date.

I have already written my description of service (a letter that each volunteer must write that describes what they have done), and my resume and personal statements for law school are basically done. My Peace Corps recommendation for law school is also ready to be mailed. So there isn’t a lot I can do right now. I am sure later today I will be trying to write a bunch of aspiration statements.

We have an official party tonight, and then on Friday a party organized by us. The next several days should be very weird. I am trying to plan a hike to a nearby bluff to watch the sunrise, and find some cigars. We are all trying to ceremonialize the finish of our program in the best way possible.

And as for what I am going to do, it changes almost by the minute. I think it is going to depend a lot on what posts are available. I am not really interested in doing something that will be essentially the same as what I was doing in Guinea, but I am also not ready to go back to the states yet… And wrapped up in all of that is trying to balance conflicting career and life desires.