Another month has flown by! It feels like I have already
experienced an entire lifetime. I can’t imagine how I will feel one year from
now. It seems to me like time moves much slower whenever I leave the US—but
much faster at the same time. My three months in Rwanda felt more like a year
abroad. I once heard someone in our group say that in PC Colombia “the days are
long and the weeks are short” (or something to that affect). Sometimes I feel
as if the days here will never end! Waking up at 5:00am everyday (and mind you
I am NOT a morning person), spending my 8am-5pm in training, returning home by
6pm, and passing out at 9pm, can be quite lengthy and exhausting. But somehow
it seems that I wake up on Monday morning, then all of a sudden it’s Saturday
night. If Peace Corps years are anything like college years, my time will be up
before I know it. I still don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
Site Placement
Part of my commitment to the Peace Corps requires me to live
and work in a community (either in/around Barranquilla, Cartagena, or Santa
Marta) for two years. After two months of having this very important day
looming over us, site placement day finally came! Understandably, everyone was
pretty stressed out when it was time to find out our fates. While we all
pledged to be “flexible” with our placement, I’m sure that deep down everyone
had one or two reasons why they preferred one site over another. From before I
even landed in Colombia I knew that I wanted to be placed in
Cartagena—primarily because I wanted to work within an Afro-Colombian community.
Through my extensive (and at times obsessive) pre-departure research I found
out that Cartagena was home the largest Afro-Colombian community on the coast.
It seemed natural for me to work with this community. I saw it as a way to
further my education and experience within the African Diaspora. I live in the
States, I’m West Indian-American, and have already been to Africa. It was time
for me to acquaint myself with Afro-Latino culture. In addition, I wasn’t too
keen on staying in the constant hustle and bustle of Barranquilla.
Some people were secretive about their preferred placements.
Others insisted that they would be fine with wherever they were placed. I told
everyone from day one what my intentions were. So by site placement time,
everyone knew exactly where I wanted to go and why. I also got the feeling that
they were all silently rooting for me to get exactly what I wanted (like I was
doing for them). The actual site placement “ceremony” was stressful. It began
with one of the PC staff reading a name from a folder and revealing their
placement. Then that person would pick another folder, read the name, the
person would get up, and the staff would reveal their placement. I knew that
there were around 19 Barranquilla sites (including small pueblos in the
Atlantico region), 5 or 6 in Santa Marta, and 5 in Cartagena—it felt like the
odds were not in my favor. My some stroke of bad luck I was one of the last
names to be read off. My heart thudded in my chest with each reveal. I relaxed
a little bit as more and more people got Barranquilla placements—it meant that
I was less likely to end up there. But then there was only one more Cartagena
site left, my site! One of my friends was snapping reaction photos of everyone
after they got the news. I look more relieved than anything, the stress was
real!
Site Visits
For two years I will be living and working in a smallish
community outside of Cartagena city. After meeting our counterparts (the
English educators that we will be working with throughout our service) the
following Tuesday we all headed out to our respective sites for a three day
visit. My site looks very different from any part of Barranquilla I have ever
been in. Its more in line with the image that I (and I’m sure many others) had
of what “real” Peace Corps looks like. As one of the few urban placements, PC
Colombia is not the typical “secluded village in the middle of the bush”. In
Barranquilla all of us have running water, electricity, and most of us have
washing machines and wifi (which is definitely a luxury here). My site
placement is much less developed and has a clearly visible income disparity to
the Old City in Cartagena. However this did not make the community any less
appealing. I got to visit the school on Wednesday to meet the students and some
of the teachers. Everyone was very welcoming and made me feel right at home. I
was also surprised and relieved to find out that there were two other
volunteers from the US working in my school. So in addition to me, there are
two World Teach Volunteers, and an Austrian foundation in the barrio. One of
the only downsides is the heat. It’s even hotter than Barranquilla and my
barrio is supposedly even hotter than Cartagena city. I’m going to be drinking
a ton of water!
In less than a month I’ll be moving in and starting a new
chapter in my life. I can’t wait!
