Peace Corps - On Sunday Morning

Generic PC Summary

In the fall of 2016, I applied to the Peace Corps for the first time. I would say it was on a whim, but I first heard of the Peace Corps sometime around middle school. The idea to join it was a gnawing thought in the back of my mind from somewhere around age 12. So while to some, it seemed like a spur of the moment thing, rest assured the seed was planted some 20 years prior.

Peace Corps service is broken up into several parts. There is the pre pre-service. This part involves the application, interview (if you are lucky enough to get one), and all the tasks assigned from PC Medical and Legal. It’s called the Invited to Serve part of the application and can take as few as 3 months but more likely around 6 months.

The there is the actual Pre-Service training or PST. This part takes place in the actual country of service and is roughly 10 weeks long. It involves language learning, cultural assimilation, and learning how to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. Assuming one successfully completes this stage, one finally becomes a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I survived the PST portion of service and became an actual PCV.

Being an ‘actual’ PCV

The first three months are similar to the first 90 days on a new job. We’re meeting people from the community, improving language skills, making contacts, basically living life in the community the Peace Corps puts us in. We aren’t allowed to travel or overnight anywhere else.

After 90 days, we have a conference and are basically let off restriction. Another conference follows at the 1 year mark and the last approximately 3-4 months prior to end of service. Depending on the sector of service, a typical day will have more or less structure with education following a school type schedule and the other sectors having a bit more uh–Unscheduled time,

To measure progress, PCVs submit reports to PC country HQ. What happens to these reports is anyone’s guess. Each country runs its PC programs slightly differently.. Some ore more lenient while some are quite strict. It really depends on the Country Director–which by the way changes every 5 years. So it’s quite possible that not only could your bib boss change at some point during service, but also the rules could change–drastically–as well.

But somewhere around 24-26 months of service, we find out our **COS [close of service] date. It depends on several factors including how much vacation time one takes during service, what holidays are occurring, and how many people there are to COS. We can swear in as a big group, but only leave in small groups of around 5 or so.

**March 2020 put a big kink in PC’s global operations as nearly 7500 PCVs globally were evacuated from >100 countries in a one week period. Impressive, even for the US Government**

Specific PC summary

While I did keep as blog-like summary of my PC experiences in real time, it was heavily edited for political correctness. Actual blogs had to be submitted to the PC Country Director so they could viewed at any given time. And we weren’t allow to write anything that would put PC or the host country in a bad light. Basically, we could say ‘all’s well’ and ‘look at these pretty pictures’. Our CD changed right before our arrival so while we had no other experience, the 4 cohorts already in country had lots to say when we would meet up. Which the CD tried to keep from happening. But much like my public blog and my private journal, the truth (and people’s opinions) always find away out. The following post are a summary of my PC experience. They come from my own recollections, personal correspondences, journal entires, and public posts.

My first PC application was a bust

Invited to serve

Application, timeline, and clearances

Every single thing I packed for Madagascar

Shit hole countries? Where is that exactly?

Answers to the most frequently asked questions

Thoughts before I go

Wait–what happened?

11 weeks to go