Nomination information

I contacted someone in the Placement Office yesterday, asking about my nomination. When I got my nomination, it was supposed to tell me three things:

1) The job that I'll be doing there
2) Approximate date of departure (usually a month)
3) Area of service (general geographic area)

But mine only told me the job that I'll be doing -- secondary science education. So when I emailed the guy yesterday, I wanted to know if he knew anything more about my nomination,
specifically about the date of departure. I wanted to know because if the interim between graduation this month and then my departure turns out to be like 5 months, then I would want to know since that means I'd get a temporary job or find some daily volunteer service to get involved with.

Well, he did have the full information about my initial nomination. I was nominated by my recruiter Michelle (Zambia 04-06) to serve in Sub-Saharan Africa from September 2007-November 2009. But as we know this can no longer be a reality because of my condition. It's just nice to know now. I have no idea why they didn't tell me before.

More waiting

I've probably already told everyone that reads this, but I was offered to leave in June 2007 if I wanted to. An email was sent to all nominees who had been 100% cleared (medical, dental, legal) asking if they wanted to take a teaching position that leaves in June. It feels like they were scrambling for PCVs. I guess it's what you can expect when most of your organization is run by previous volunteers. Needless to say, I didn't accept any of that. My earliest departure date is August 1st of this year.

I should also add that I've been checking the PC Yahoo! group regularly for people's "I was invited to Togo!" and "I'm leaving for Moldova in May!" messages, and from what I can tell, people have been receiving their invites ~2 months before departure, meaning I could expect mine sometime in June at the very earliest. But who knows, it could be earlier than that.

Why I wanted to join the Peace Corps, Part I

This post had become really ponderous, so I decided that I would just make it a running series of posts where I tease out the many reasons why I decided to do something like join the Peace Corps.

I first heard of the Peace Corps my freshman year of college when I was at a hunger banquet being put on by H2O. There were some informational brochures and stuff on a table near the exit and Liane and I perused them. Our response to Peace Corps service initially was a resolute hell no. Fast forward to two years later and I am in the process of applying and so is she, along with her fiancé (they have currently dropped out of the application process for their own reasons).

What prompted this decision for me was a number of things. Not the least of these was the question "what am I gonna do after college?"

At the time, I wasn't as interested in linguistics as I am now, so post-graduate studies wasn't an option since I didn't want to go to law school or medical school or anything like that. I honestly didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and to a degree I still don't. What I think sounds good at the moment is grad school for linguistics, but I'll sit on that idea for two years and then see if I still want to do it when I come back.

I reasoned that, if anything, Peace Corps buys you time during the transition from college to "real life". It seemed like a great way to obtain some valuable skills and also, you know, see the world. It didn't seem like a sacrifice to me, but more of a, "You mean the government is going to pay me to live and work overseas? And then pay me more at the end? And everyone who has done this says it was the most life-enriching thing they've ever done?"

These reasons ("Buys time", "Is fulfilling") are close to the front in terms of most important reasons. The obvious one, "Want to help the world", might be first. More on that later, though.

First contact with PC since January 10th

Steven Jacobson from the Placement Office contacted me today:

Dear Elliott,

I hope this email finds you well! I'm writing to you from the Peace Corps Placement Office in Washington, DC. We are busy reviewing and evaluating your Peace Corps application to be sure that everything looks good for you to be approved for service. I reviewed your file this morning and I identified one item that needed follow-up.

Then he went on to say how he needed my transcript once I graduated and that certain things needed to be on it. He also asked if my earliest departure date had changed. I responded that I could leave as early as August 1st, 2007. My plans for this summer are to spend a month (June) with my family and friends in Texas and then one month (July) with Kristofer, and then I'm off.
I'm anticipating not leaving on exactly August 1st, so my stay in San Jose will likely be more than one month.

I'm just very excited that they contacted me. Apparently they don't contact you unless there's something wrong with your file, so I guess it was good that I was incommunicado for so long. I'm just naturally very anxious about getting more and more information.

Mr. Jacobson, as he told me in a reply email, is not my PO, but my real PO (a "she") will contact me in the next few weeks. I don't think this will be an invitation, but probably just a "Hey, I'm your placement officer congratulations on getting into the Peace Corps ... so I see you're from Texas... " and so on.

I want to get my invitation at least by early June, because I want to start planning my going-away party. It's going to be fun, for me at least, because hopefully everyone from my past will show up. FYI, it will be in Austin in the apartment of Andy, Jessica, and Kara/Lauren.

Music

I'll be able to catch up on the dozens of albums I slept on when in the PC, I just realized.

Interview with Michelle

I had my interview with the recruiter on September 11, 2006 at 10:30am. Her name was Michelle Lalonde and we had corresponded briefly by email beforehand. Apparently, the previous PC recruiter for the UT/Austin area had left, and Michelle was just getting settled in. She had only recently returned from Zambia and I was to be her first interviewee.

I got into the room where she was interviewing and she was wearing this heavy-looking shawl. Her explanation for the shawl was that she was used to such high heats in Zambia that being in central Texas' summer felt positively chilly.

She started off the interview with a funny story about how she thought I was another Elliott H, one who had served in Zambia with her. She said that when I first emailed her she thought it was the other Elliott and that he was emailing her to apologize for not showing up to her going away party. Small world huh.

The interview itself was what I expected: around two hours long with lots of personal questions about how I feel about living alone/being far away/being depressed/adapting to various situations. I think I prepared well, since there were good guides online about how the interviews go. I remember I had a problem with questions like, "Tell about a time where you were able to transfer knowledge to someone different from yourself" and "What have you learned about yourself working in an unstructured environment."

Concerning the two essays I wrote, Michelle was concerned that I used the word "hobo" to refer to an indigent person. I didn't give any thought to the fact that they might not want to be called "hobos". Oops. I told her that I didn't really think about it and that there was no malicious intent int he usage. She was worried that, when I returned from my service, I would talk about the HCNs disparagingly.

Oh, and before the whole interview I had a glass of wine so that I would be able to talk without getting the jitters and feel looser. I also wore glasses because I thought that would make me look like I was taking it seriously. Not sure if it worked, but apparently I did something right since I was accepted.

A riposte I hope to use one day

What I tell people about PC is that as long as you're healthy, sane, and have a college degree, you can get accepted. The application process is pretty difficult in terms of amount of time required and number of things you have to do, but it's not like some great task requiring demonstrations of strength and cunning. That said, there are genuinely good reasons for people to be denied: They are clearly intolerant of other cultures, they are running away from the law, they have severe mental issues, they worked for the CIA, and so on. But most applicants who end up not making it to staging drop out of the application process by their own volition, not because they were denied by the recruiter or medical office. People have their own reasons -- you're getting married, you have dependents, you have a great job offer, whatever. Someone even said that they couldn't go because they had an old cat.

I hear from RCPVs that when people find out they were in the Peace Corps, a response they get quite often is "Oh, really! I was going to join the Peace Corps!" or "I wanted to do that!" I've heard that when they get these kinds of responses, how hard it is to resist replying, "But you didn't, did you?"

Waiting for the invitation

I added my timeline over there on the sidebar for reference.

Right now I'm just waiting for the invitation. Headquarters has notified me that I will be serving in a non-malarial country, meaning I will be going to Eastern Europe/Central Asia most likely. I'm also eligible to serve in a handful of Pacific Islands and Morocco as well. This also means that my assignment (Secondary Science Education) might change, since my assignment was made before they knew I was G6PD deficient. If it does change, I won't mind. I wasn't terribly attached to that assignment, and I wanted to do TEFL in the first place, since that could ostensibly help me work toward a degree in applied linguistics, if I end up doing that.

When will my invitation arrive? Well, like everything else with PC, it depends. If you are black, for example, then PC will try to put you in a group where there is another black person, so that you're not the only black guy in Kyrgyzstan. Same thing goes if you're gay, older, serving as a married couple, and so on. That's one thing that can complicate placement. Additionally, if you have a medical condition like I do, then your prospective countries are whittled down even more. Your placement officer has to juggle all these things before sending you away for 27 months.

I check the Yahoo! PC group, and people post their own timelines there. From what I gather, people get their invites roughly 3-6 months before departure date, which for me is around Sept./Aug. 2007. So, with any luck, I will be hearing from them as soon as March.

G6PD deficiency

The medical screening process is the one where most applicants have problems. On the various PC online communities, without a doubt the #1 type of question from applicants is medical in nature.

"Do they have tampons in Bolivia?"
"What if I was clinically depressed for three years?"
"Will the PC office care if I am fairly obese?"
"I got asthma."

I didn't think I would have a single problem with medical screening. I am a fit young man, with no history of mental problems nor any medications I have to take regularly. So it was a surprise when lab reports came back saying that I was deficient in G6PD. It might've been a lab mistake, I thought, because sometimes the blood is sensitive to being left out past a few days and not being tested. So I got retested and that confirmed that there was no mistake.

G6PD is glucose-6-phosphate-dehydrogenase, which is an enzyme. It converts glucose-6-phosphate into 6-phosphoglucono-δ-lactone and is the rate-limiting enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway. I had to learn about this shit in microbiology and I hated it.

Basically, if you are deficient in G6PD, then you can't eat fava beans (which is why it is known as favism) and can't take the antimalarial primaquine. If you do [eat fava beans or take primaquine], you can go into hemolytic shock and maybe die. It is said to be the most common and thus most studied enzyme deficiency in the world, and it confers some type of resistance to malaria. More info here if you care.

This condition disqualified me from serving in any malarial countries. No Latin or Central America, no Southeastern Asia, and definitely no Africa.

PC terms

There is a lot of jargon used when talking about the Peace Corps. Here is a fairly comprehensive list explaining them. A link is placed in the sidebar for future use.

• APCD: Associate Peace Corps Director; a host-country national in charge of that region's program
  
• CD: Country Director; the one in charge of the volunteers in that country
  
• COS: Close of Service; the end of a volunteer's service
  
• Country Desk: the department representing regional countries, at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington D.C.
  
• ET: Early Termination; leaving, for whatever reason, before close of service
  
• Homestay: part of training where the volunteer lives with a member of the community (the owners of the house are often referred to in kinship terms)
  
• HCN: Host Country National; person from the host country (it's slightly disparaging to call them "natives")
  
• Host Country: the country where the volunteer is serving
  
• Invitation: a formal summons to serve in a specific job/country after receiving medical/legal clearance, which marks the beginning of one's official Trainee status
  
• IOS: Interruption of Service; when local political or environmental conditions require the entire program to be pulled from an area
  
• IST: In-Service Training; a secondary training event that happens mid-service
  
• LCF: Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator; trainers responsible for language and culture sections during pre-service training
  
• Medevac: Medically Evacuate; to return a volunteer to the United States for medical treatment, usually because they have an injury/illness that is untreatable in-country
  
• Medical Separation: when a volunteer cannot complete service due to a medical problem
  
• Nomination: a proposed invite to a very general region and job area made during the early application process, pending medical/legal clearance -- highly subject to change
  
• OMS: Office of Medical Services
  
• PC: Peace Corps
  
• PCMO: Peace Corps Medical Officer; the nurse or doctor in charge of all that country's volunteers
  
• PCT: Peace Corps Trainee; volunteer's title during training and before becoming an official volunteer
  
• PCV: Peace Corps Volunteer
  
• PO: Placement Officer; person in charge of officially placing each volunteer in an assignment worldwide; based in headquarters in D.C.
  
• PST: Pre-Service Training; the training program, usually 3 months long, that teaches volunteers language, cross-cultural sensitivity, and job skills before they begin their official service
  
• Recruiter: locally-based representative in charge of providing information on Peace Corps to potential applicants and screening applicants during the initial stages -- the "voice" of the PC
  
• RPCV: Returned Peace Corps Volunteer
  
• Site: the location where the volunteer lives and works for 2 years
  
• Staging: the first day of training, held in the U.S., before flying out to the host country
  
• Swearing-In: the ceremony that accompanies transition from Peace Corps Trainee to Peace Corps Volunteer
  
• VAD: Volunteer Assignment Description; the lengthy document given to applicants describing an assignment in detail, part of the official invitation