Village Update (written Nov 17)

Our sincere apologies for the long silence - we haven't had internet access for more than a few minutes since my last real posting. We have confirmed with current volunteers that we never should have to go that long again without intenet. Whew! Luckily for all of you, I have been writing blog entries in my notebook, so I'm going to type them all up over the next few days and post them, along with complementary pictures. The first entry is a long one...

Arrival in Training Village
Arriving in the village Friday we got a very early start and spent the morning working out logistics and loading up trucks and vans with all our stuff. On our way out to the villages we stopped at a market to pick up a bunch of kola nuts. Kola nuts are large, bitter, earthy nuts that are very important for any and all special occasions and ceremonies here. Interestingly, they are not grown in the Gambia, so they have to be imported from other West African countries, making them quite expensive (by Gambian standards). Upon our arrival in our village, we presented the cola nuts to our host mother (our host father was not there) and the head of the village (the alkalo).


Group picture before going off to training villages


Last glimpse of our bags being trucked off to our training villages


Kids going crazy when we dropped off the first trainees in their training villages

Our Host Family
Gambian villages are made up of many family compounds, which generally include a man, his wife or wives (polygamy is alive and well here), his sons and sometimes their families if they have them, his unmarried daughters, and his parents if they are alive. Our compound consists of our host father (who is a school headmaster a few kilometers away in Soma and lives there during the week), his mother, his two wives, his youngest son, his five youngest daughters (his second wife is mother to four of the five), and the daughter of one of his older daughters who he adopted (we aren't quite clear on why yet). Our host father speaks good English, as does his youngest son, which is hugely helpful for our language learning. In addition to intense language and culture lessons, over the past few days we have spent time getting to know our host family and adjusting to village life.


Our compound - our house is on the far left just outside the picture frame. Every night we ate dinner and hung out on mats on the platform in the middle of the compound.

Village Life
There is no electricity in our village and we have to pump all our water from a well and carry it back home in buckets. Really makes you aware of your water usage! Today I carried a bucket on my head for the first time (using my hands to hold it in place of course - I didn't spill a drop! Little victories :-) Since there is no plumbing in the village, we take bucket baths and do our laundry by hand and dry it in the sun. We filter our drinking water with Peace Corps-provided filters and bleach it as well. We use a pit latrine. We sleep under a mosquito net every night to keep out mosquitos, flies, earwigs, lizards, mice, and whatever else might try to crawl into bed with us when we're sleeping. Needless to say, the net is crucial for a good night's sleep! We sweep sand, dust, bugs, etc out of our house with a hand broom at least once a day. It is impossible to sleep past 6:30am because of very noisy roosters, donkeys, chickens, other birds, goats, women pounding rice and groundnuts (peanuts), and coos (millet), the incessant bike horn of the man selling fish off the back of his bike, call to prayer from the mosque, etc etc.

NOTE - After writing this entry, I found an uncannily similar but more poetic description of all this ruckus in Mark Hudson's book, Our Grandmother's Drums, written two decades ago: "Before dawn, the first cock would crow, immediately followed by the massive hooting and howling and honking of the other animals, and above it all, the braying of a donkey, like the grinding of a rusty iron door. Finally, beneath this barrage of noises...the voice of the muezzin, calling the faithful to prayer."

Picture of me carrying a bucket of water on my head, per my mother's request

Naming Ceremony
Yesterday morning, our village had a naming ceremony for the four of us in our training village. Normally this ceremony would be for a baby (similar to a baptism or a bris), but it is a long tradition for Peace Corps trainees to take local names in this way to promote acceptance into their new culture/community. The ceremony itself was quite short and involved a symbolic shaving of our heads and the announcement of our Gambian names. Jacob's Gambian name is Lamin and mine is Fatoumata. We later found out that Lamin and Fatoumata traditional Mandinka names for the first son and daughter. So now, when the little kids yell "toubob" (white person) at us, we can tell them that are names are Lamin/Fatoumata and NOT "toubob." Quite nice.


Women cooking pankatos (similar to doughnuts) for our naming ceremony


Finished product - delicious!


Symbolic hair shaving


Again


Village elders praying for us


Group picture after the ceremony


Goodies distributed after the ceremony - kola nuts, pankatos, and bags of juice (made from powdered drink mix)

Tailor
At the market in Banjul last week we bought fabric for curtains and some clothes. Yesterday we went to the village tailor and requested a door curtain, a window curtain, a shirt for Jacob, and a completo (wrap skirt, shirt, head wrap) for me. We ended up paying the tailor 80 delasis for all of it...around $3. The fabric cost us 265 delasis...around $11. We are very excited to pick up our new things this afternoon.

Other Assorted Items
1) Our host family has been hosting Peace Corps trainees for over a decade, so they are relatively familiar with Americans, which is really nice. For example, none of our host siblings have ever "toubobed" us, which almost all the other kids in the village love to do. One particularly cool experience was asking our host brother if he remembered the past volunteers. I didn't expect him to remember all of them since he was quite young when his family started hosting trainees, but he was able to list them ALL by their Gambian names!

2) In a period of 10-15 minutes yesterday, I had chickens attack me, a spider catipult out of a tree at me, and a lizard fall on my head!

3) We were warned before we came that the locals might compare me and Jacob but we hadn't experienced it until last night when our host mother made a comment about Jacob's brain being better than mine because he is having a slightly easier time with Mandinka than I am. I don't think she meant for our host brother to translate the comment into English and even if she did, I don't think she meant it in a mean way, but it still was a bit of a blow to my confidence. Just a reminder to keep thickening up my skin I guess...

I hate to end on a negative note, but I need to eat dinner and then join the New Year's festivities with my other trainees (almost official volunteers!), so you all will have to wait for tomorrow for more. Happy New Year!!!

Yes we are still here...

Just a quick update to let everyone know we are doing fine. We will be in our training village for another week and a half and then we will head back to Kombo for the remaining of our training. We will have much more to say then when we have more time on the internet but for nowI hope all is well for everyone and we will write more soon.

A few more pictures

We're heading off to our training village tomorrow! We probably won't have internet for at least a few weeks and possibly as long as a couple months, so this will be our last post for a while. We'll leave you with a few pictures from pre-service training...

Market in Banjul (where we got some awesome fabric to have made into traditional clothes)














Mosquito net demo














Bucket bath demo


















Pit latrine lesson, complete with graphic drawings. Didn't get a picture of the (clothed) real life demo unfortunately.

Language assignments and cell phone numbers

We finally received our language assignments today and we will be learning Mandinka. There are more Mandinka training villages than any other language, so the Mandinka language group is the largest of the three training groups. All the couples are in our group. The language is spoken throughout the country, so it really doesn't tell us anything about our future site unfortunately. Each trainee is matched up with a Gambian Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF) and no trainer has more than three trainees. Jacob and I were lucky enough to be a group of two, so we will be getting private tutoring! There will be two other trainees (taught by a different trainer) in our training village as well, which is nice. Neither of us had a strong preference among the languages, so we are perfectly happy with Mandinka.

We were hoping to be able to talk computer-to-computer via skype, but the internet in the house we are staying in cuts in and out every few minutes, so that is not a good option. Additionally, we will be leaving for our training village Friday morning, where we will no longer have internet. However, Peace Corps issued both of us cell phones, so we are now reachable on them. It is free for us to receive calls, but the caller will be charged. Each phone company (and plan) will charge different rates, so you'll definitely want to do your research. Additionally, I heard that it is possible to call cell phones using skype for a flat monthly rates, so that might be worth looking into as well. Our cell phone numbers are 011 220 734 03 09 (Jacob) and 011 220 734 0308 (Sarah). That includes country codes, so those numbers are exactly what you will need to dial. The best time to call us is between 6pm and 10pm here (1pm and 5pm EST).

Pictures!

As promised, here are a few pictures I took yesterday:

Our room at the transit house (sleeps eight and has both a fan and AC!)














The rest of these are from the reptile farm:

Me with a ball python


















Pythons curl into tight balls when they get scared














The owner of the reptile farm (which is really a catch-and-release educational center). He's British and married a Gambian woman. He gave us his email address and said we could send him pictures of any critters we run across and he would tell us what they are.


















Cross between a scorpion and a spider. Yikes!














HUGE centipede. Repulsive.














Bad picture of a chameleon.














Our group at the reptile farm.














Monitor lizard (sp?)














Crocodile.














Hibiscus.















Jacob's parents asked us to talk about the other people in our group. There are 35 of us (the largest group ever for The Gambia I believe), plus one girl who transferred here from Guinea and is doing an abbreviated pre-service training. I said before that we are split about 50/50 Health and Environment, but it's actually more like 2/3 Environment, 1/3 Health. It's a very diverse group, but so far we are all getting along amazingly well. There are two other married couples. We range in age from people right out of college to a retired nutritionist. We have people from all over the country as well. We haven't done a count yet, but I would guess at least 20 states are represented.

We had interviews today to help Peace Corps narrow down our site options enough to assign us to a language group. They won't assign specific sites for quite a while yet, but it will be huge to know which language we will be learning for the remainder of training, so we are all really looking forward to the announcements (either tonight or tomorrow morning).

A little background on languages here. The Gambia is rather unique in that there have been 3-5 major ethnic groups living together here (mostly peacefully) for a very long time, and often in the same villages. One of the reasons this works is the various ethnic groups have distinct roles in a community, all of which are important, allowing them to co-exist peacefully. Apparently it is quite normal for different compounds within a village to speak different languages. While this seems like it would be incredibly confusing, every Gambian speaks at least two languages, and many speak as many as four or five, so apparently there are enough willing translators on hand that it isn't really a problem.

Peace Corps focuses on the three most common languages and only expects us to become functional in one (although some volunteers do end up learning others), but this context explains why it's important to at least know the basics of the other languages.

More to come tomorrow, with news on our language assignment!

Field Trip!

There are pictures, but they are on the camera and I don't know where it is so...pictures to be added...

Today was effectively a rest day. No official wake up time, breakfast was left out late, and the Peace Corps trainers planned two "field trips for us." Having not been on a field trip in a while this was a pretty exciting experience.

This morning we went a short walk to the beach. I am definitely not a beach person, but it was a beautiful beach! Warm water, hammocks, pavilions, and some beautiful cliffs. Played some frisbee and swam in the water - good times had by all.

There was one aspect to the beach that we were all expecting, thanks to a skit the night before by our trainers, but did not encounter. No one had a close encounter with a "bumster."

So... let me elaborate, by way of quoting another blog, on what a “bumster” is for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of a personal encounter.

In the face of widespread tourism from the West, particularly as a result of the high amount of exploitative sex tourism perpetrated by Westerners in the country, young men from across the country flock to the beaches to appeal to the tourists. They loiter on the beaches with Rastafarian hair and mesh tank tops, doing push-ups and touting such lovely phrases as “it’s nice to be nice.” Yes, this is a stereotype, but it gives you an idea of what they look like. Many of them come to the coast to be a bumster because of the lack of opportunities in their own villages or elsewhere in the country. They see it is an opportunity to get support, maybe even to get out of Africa.

So they jog back and forth on the beaches, essentially fishing for a woman that will support them. Sometimes it involves sex, sometimes it just is walking around with them through town and showing them around. You’ll often see these young men with older white men, too, just escorting them around town as a local with local knowledge.

No one had that experience today, but I am glad I know a bit more about it.

This afternoon we went to a reptile farm and got a brief tour by a very knowledgeable young Gambian. He talked about many snakes, some geckos, and crocodiles.

Things to note:

• There are many snakes in Africa.
• Some of them are poisonous
• Thankfully snakes are scared of people
• Thus if we don't bother them, they won't bother us
• Apparently, crocodiles in West Africa are very different than crocodiles in East Africa (this is a recent discovery) and West African crocodiles are much more docile and don't really bother people.
  
• There is an insect that is sort of a cross between a scorpion and a spider - weird!!!

Beyond that, we went for our first run since we landed with a current volunteer....ouch...that is all...

Anyways, that's all for now so I hope everyone is enjoying reading our updates and I hope that all is well at home.

Pre-Service Training

Salaam alaikum! We have started our introduction to language training yesterday and that is the first phrase we learned - it is an Arabic greeting meaning "peace be with you." Unlike all the other greetings, it can be used with anyone at any time of the day and used throughout The Gambia. The appropriate response is "malaikum salaam," which means "peace be with you too." Each of the three main languages spoken here (Mandinka, Wolof, and Pulaar) have their own individual set of greetings that we are expected to know, so we started with them right away. Even though we're only learning greetings, it's pretty challenging to keep the three languages straight, but we're working on it. Early next week we will find out which of the three languages is spoken in our site, and we will be focusing on only that language for the rest of training. We are definitely looking forward to that!

In addition to starting language training, over the past two days we met with our Assistant Peace Corps Country Director, had personal health interviews, got the first of a series of rabies shots, had a training sessions on safety and security, had a training session of basic bike maintenance (unnecessary for us, but helpful for many people...and yes, we will be getting bikes!), got an overview of the technical training we will be receiving, met all the Peace Corps staff, and got a tour of the Peace Corps office. Our class is made up about 50/50 of two types of volunteers: (1) Health and Community Development and (2) Environment and Natural Resource Management. We found out that Peace Corps - The Gambia is launching a five year cross-sectoral food security program with our class. Food security is an area of interest for both of us, so we look forward to hearing more about that later. One thing we do know is that as our first "trainee directed activity," everyone in both groups will be planting a home garden in their training village, which will be handed off to community members once we go out to our sites. Should be both educational and fun!

Miscellaneous other stuff about experience thus far: It was very hot and humid yesterday, but today was quite a bit more pleasant. The current volunteers tell us that we can expect this sort of weather for the next several months. Peace Corps has been giving us a mix of American and Gambian food, being careful to make sure we are eating a balanced diet (as well as offering vegetarian options). The Gambian dishes we have had are basically what we expected: rice with peanut sauce and meat. The meat is tougher here than at home, but not too bad. Peace Corps is clearly easing us into the food both in terms of our palates and our health, as no one has gotten sick yet. We expect this will change once we go out to our training villages late next week, which is when things will start getting real :-)

Goodbye for now,
Sarah

P.S. We have wireless internet in the "transit house" where we are currently staying (also known as "the stodge" for unknown reasons) so I'm taking advantage of it while we can. No promises once we go out to our training village. If you have any questions you're curious about, post them in the comments and we will try to answer them in our next post.

We made it!

I don't have the time right now to write up something lengthy but I wanted to let everyone know that we made it here safe and sound. It took us almost 29 hours from when we left the hotel in Philadelphia until we made it to the Peace Corps house where we will be staying for the next week. All is well, we made it, and we are busy so its all good....

Staging

Greetings from Philly! I only have a few minutes on the computer at the hotel, but I just wanted to write a quick post to let everyone know that we are safely in Philly and staging went well today (basically just a lot of paperwork and an introduction to Peace Corps). There are 35 people in our group and everyone is quite outgoing and friendly. There are several people who were originally in our Mauritania group. Talk about coming full circle!

Tomorrow we have to be up bright and early to get our Yellow Fever shots, then we will be off to the airport. Our flight takes off at 6:35pm and we have a couple hour layover in Brussels. From Brussels, we will be flying through Dakar then on to Banjul (but not deplaning in Dakar as we previously thought). We should be arriving in Banjul around 6:30pm on Thursday. So assuming all goes as planned, our next post will be from The Gambia! I will leave you with a few pictures from our departure...

Before starting to pack (~10pm last night)

Casualties of the last cut to get down to 80 lbs apiece (~2am this morning)

All packed up

Loaded up outside the Cohns' house

I will post our final packing list later on when I get the chance. Tomorrow will be an extremely long day, so I'm off to bed...goodbye for now!

~Sarah

After two delays, one cancellation, and two years, the Peace Corps gods finally heard our pleas...

Given the extraordinary long and painful nature of our placement to-date, last week Peace Corps decided to make an exception to their generally rigid rules and offer us a new placement instead of making us wait another 4+ months for the delayed Guinea program. Our new invitation is for The Gambia and we will be reporting for "staging" (two-day US orientation) in Philadelphia on November 3. Jacob will be in the community development program and I will be in the health extension program.

First off, I want to put out there that I feel rather uncomfortable about the fact that, to the best of our knowledge, we are the only ones from our Guinea group that got this special treatment. From what we have heard, Peace Corps is telling everyone else that they just have to wait it out because they only reassign people when their programs are canceled, and at this point, Guinea is only delayed. Our understanding is that Peace Corps is only bending the rules for us because we have been waiting SO long, which makes sense, but I still hugely empathize with the others who weren't as "lucky." (I know some of you will read this...you are completely justified in your frustration and indignation, but instead of being bitter, please try to use our experience to give you hope that some justice does exist if you stick it out long enough.)

That being said, we are absolutely thrilled that things are finally working out for us, with what looks to be a great placement! If all goes as planned (knock wood), the day we report for staging will be almost exactly two years to the day after we first submitted our application for Peace Corps. We honestly haven't had much time to research The Gambia, and we certainly will not have a free second between now and November 3 to do so, but we do know that it is more politically stable than Mauritania or Guinea, the climate is similar to Guinea (tropical), and we have only heard good things about it. In fact, it is nicknamed "the smiling coast!" While there is some French spoken, it was a British colony, so technically English is the official language. We don't expect to get to use our French much unless we're traveling, but only time will tell. I posted some other basic facts about the country in the sidebar to the right.

We are incredibly grateful that we have been able to spend a lot of time with family and friends over the past few months, because, given the very short notice, we will not have time for another round of formal goodbyes. Logistically, the next eight days are going to be incredibly challenging for both of us. We both will be working through Friday this week since we have various projects we need to wrap up at work, Jacob is urgently trying to finish revisions on his thesis so he can resubmit it for publication before we leave, and we have an impossibly long list of Peace Corps-related things we need to get done as well. Somehow it will all work out though. I expect our next post will be from Philadelphia...

Much love to all and thanks as always for all your support,
Sarah

New Blog Address and Update

Hi everyone,

So sorry for the long silence - things have been a bit crazy for the past couple months. As you can see, we now have a new blog address (with no mention of a specific country name). I posted a message at our old address directing people here.

For those of you who haven't already heard, we have been reassigned to Guinea, another Francophone country in West Africa, with an early December departure. See the column to the right for some basic information on Guinea. Our program assignments are almost identical to Mauritania - Small Enterprise Development for Jacob and Public Health for me.

We are happy that our new assignment is still in Francophone Africa, happy we got essentially the same programs, and very frustrated that, assuming we leave on time, we will be the last ex-Mauritania people to leave the US by almost a month (including another couple). In case you're curious, yes, we tried VERY hard to leave sooner, but Peace Corps claims they did a worldwide search and this was the absolute earliest placement that was a match for our skill sets. We are also frustrated that not only do we have to wait so long, but we were assigned to another country that had a coup within the past year and has elections coming up - read: decent chance of being delayed/canceled again (more on that in a minute).

As I mentioned before, we are incredibly grateful that we were able to get our old jobs back for the summer/early fall and that we were able to stay with Jacob's parents until we got our feet back on the ground. We were thankfully able to find a somewhat affordable short-term lease on a studio in Capitol Hill and we have been living there since the beginning of August. We will be staying in DC for another two months (when we're not scoping out graduate programs for post-Peace Corps), then we will be leaving for France, where we will stay/work on an organic farm and practice on our French for a few weeks. Assuming our Peace Corps departure is not delayed/canceled, we will be flying back to the US for Thanksgiving and reporting for "staging" (Peace Corps orientation) a few days later. If we find out we will not be leaving for Guinea on time before we leave France, we will simply extend our stay there. Or that's the theory at least.

For those of you that are wondering about the political situation in Guinea, here is a brief summary:

Last December, Guinea's president died and a group of military officers immediately seized power (bloodlessly) within hours and suspended the constitution. The junta promised to hold a presidential election by the end of this year and said that no members of the junta would stand in it. The UN, the European Union, the African Union, etc were all very supportive of this. However, in the past few weeks, first the elections were pushed off to early 2010, and then it became clear that the junta chief, Moussa Dadis Camara, fully intends to stand in the election. Not surprisingly, this triggered a variety of protests/riots/demonstrations. The junta has responded by cutting off text message service to the entire country and banning "politics from all types of interactive broadcasts in any language."

Here is a discouraging excerpt from the blog of a current Guinea volunteer:

"Also, because of protests in Conakry, I have decided to apply to law school this fall. It is unlikely that we will be evacuated, but given the elections in January and the possibility that they will not happen, I wouldn’t be surprised. This way if we do get evacuated I will be able to go to law school in the fall, and if not I can request to defer until my service is finished (assuming I am accepted)."

That being said, we are trying our best to stay positive and roll with the punches. We will try to be better about posting updates as our scheduled departure approaches. Thanks as always for all your love and support...

Cancelled

First, the facts:

Yesterday we got yet another call from Peace Corps, during which we were informed that not only will we not leaving for Mauritania on time, we will not be leaving for Mauritania at all: our staging group has been cancelled. Peace Corps' official explanation is they have not been able to make any headway on the visa situation. They are not pulling out the current volunteers and assured us that our cancellation has nothing to do with the incident in the capital on Tuesday (http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55M5DS20090623).

We spoke with our Placement Officer last night to determine our next steps. She is working on finding a new assignment for us, which could be anywhere in the world (not just French-speaking Africa). She will be looking at August-October departures, which supposedly is the earliest we can hope for. The good news is she said she should have a new assignment for us next week.

Now, some stream-of-consciousness reactions to the news, in no particular order:

We're frustrated, of course, but we're also a bit relieved. If this is the direction things are going in Mauritania, then we really may have dodged a bullet here. We are confident that we will have a great experience no matter where we end up going. However, going back to not knowing where we're going or when we're leaving is NOT fun. We feel incredibly fortunate that we were able to get our jobs back for the summer and we can live with Jacob's parents. We're bummed that we will most likely not be serving with many of the very cool invitees we have gotten to know (electronically of course) over the past couple of months. There is a decent chance that some of us will be reassigned to the same countries though, so we're keeping our fingers crossed on that. We will have more time to see friends and family while we're waiting, which is nice. We know that placing couples is significantly more difficult than placing individuals, so we REALLY hope that we don't end up delayed past the fall because of that. If we end up going somewhere non-tropical, we will have to rethink some of the clothes we intended to bring. We need to rename our blog, which is frustrating. We learned our lesson here...the new name will NOT have a country name in it. Stay posted for that.

~Sarah

A Slight Delay

We just got the ever dreaded phone call and found out that we will not be leaving for Mauritania on time. Apparently, visas are necessary if you want to go live in a country for the next two years. The Mauritanian government has not yet issued visas to any of the upcoming class of Peace Corps volunteers so there are 58 other volunteers that are just as unlucky as we are. Hopefully after the July elections everything will clear up and Mauritania will start issuing visas again and we will still be able to go. Who knows....

Bottom line - this is totally out of our hands so I am going to do my best not to lose any sleep over it. Hello more time in DC!

Goodbyes

I've never been particularly good at goodbyes, partially because I'm generally not very emotional. It's not that I'm not an emotional person or that I don't miss my friends and family when I'm not with them...it's just that I don't tend to get emotional at that actual moment of exchanging "goodbyes." That is why I was taken completely off guard by how difficult it was to leave CARE. In an attempt to make some sort of sense of the situation, I did what I usually do, which was make a list. Here are some reasons why I think it was so difficult:

-CARE is truly an amazing organization that I've become more attached to than I realized.
-I feel incredibly fortunate that my first non-internship job out of college was such a great fit for me (and is a career path I want to pursue). I know many many people who weren't so lucky.
-I spent 8+ hours a day with the same small highly collaborative team (with only a few staffing changes) for the past 2 1/2 years.
-Our team worked extremely well together, and actually liked each other!
-My supervisor was a hugely supportive mentor that helped me grow by leaps and bounds while working for her team.

Sarah

Me too Me too!

So a couple weeks ago when Sarah first posted she laid down the law...we have to alternate posts so I can't take credit for all the quality blogging that she is waiting to unleash on the world and my family and friends will not be wondering what happened to me and why they never see me write on our blog. This is unfortunate for me cause well it means I have to actually contribute something useful and double unfortunate for you cause it will probably result in less frequent updates. If you are missing your fix from us - blame me.

So go me here is my first post...now Sarah can post again!

More importantly, a lot has changed in the past week. I left my job at CARE, which has been an absolutely amazing experience and I really can't think of somethign else I would rather have been doing the past year. Also, five years after I first moved down to Atlanta, I left. I definitely will not miss the heat and humidity of Atlanta or the pollen, but I will 100% miss all our friends - so to everyone in Atlanta - don't be a stranger! Finally, going on two years after I first started working on my thesis - I think we are about ready to submit it for a second time. If you ever wanted to know more about the relationship between juvenile crime and the laws transferring juveniles to the adult criminal system - I am your man.

Anyways, now I am in Milwaukee for the midwestern good bye tour - wedding this weekend in Madison and then friends in Chicago and friends and family in Milwaukee and then back to DC for the last few days before we make our way to Africa.

The Countdown

Now that this blog has been in existence for over a month now, I figured it was high time I wrote a real post. I apologize in advance for any blogging faux pas I may make - I'm very new to this. So here goes...

As most of you know, Jacob and I started the Peace Corps application process a year and a half ago, so I guess the countdown really started then in a way. But it was only in the last couple months that it became real, and only in the last couple weeks that it actually sunk in that we are going to move to the Sahara for 2 years. We both occasionally have twinges of nervousness (I think that's more me than Jacob), but most of the time we are just really excited to start this new chapter in our lives and cannot wait for June 16th.

Our last few weeks in the US are looking to be action-packed as we race to complete our daunting lists (yes plural) of things we need to take care of before we leave. The Cliff notes of our schedule for the next few weeks look something like this:

May 11-21 - Sarah and Jacob both in Atlanta, wrapping things up at work, going to last minute doctor's appointments, attending a first aid class, stocking up on cheap spices at the farmer's market, selling/giving away half our belongings, packing up what's left, loading up the car and moving "cube", etc, etc. Jacob's last day of work is the 21st.
May 22 - Sarah and Jacob drive the car up to DC
May 23-25 - Sarah and Jacob in DC
May 25 - Sarah flies back to Atlanta, Jacob stays in DC
May 26-29 - Sarah works one more week in Atlanta (last day the 29th), Jacob in DC seeing friends/family and acquiring Target's entire supply of sunscreen and insect repellent (and maybe a few other things)
May 29 - Jacob and Sarah both fly to WI
May 30-June 8 - Sarah and Jacob in WI attending a wedding, seeing friends/family, spending a day and a half in Chicago (June 1-2), Jacob retakes LSAT (on the 8th)
June 9 - Jacob and Sarah fly back to DC, where they hang out and pack/unpack/repack their bags until it's time to report "staging" (2-day orientation in Philly before flying to Africa) on June 15.

We will be trying hard to say our goodbyes in person to as many family members and friends as possible, so please get in touch if you haven't already!

Sarah