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