I've been bad about updating this blog, and now all of this seems like afterthought, but I thought it would be good to share.
The first week of January was a haul. For one, the vacation was over. I had a great Christmas this year, and not only because I spent it in Vegas :) I got to see old friends, catch up with family, and eat a lot. Who could ask for more? Of course, the whole time, the uncertainty of my situation was always in the back of my head. Ringing in the New Year was exciting and nerve-wracking! I was very anxious to hear back from the Peace Corps, but given my past experiences dealing with the bureaucracy, I was expecting to hear back, oh I don't know, mid JULY! So, I was shocked to receive a phone call the Wednesday after New Years. Of course, I had just eaten the nasty salisbury steak at work and was battling a bout of indigestion, but tried to maintain composure on the phone. Furthermore, the anxiety, stress, excitement, nerves all seemed to be attacking me at once. I was shaking so much I could barely write down what the placement officer was telling me.
I think it boiled down to this:
'Oh hey Ian. So, sorry about Honduras. I wanted to talk with you about some of the various option we have going forward. I have three assignments leaving around April-May, all three in Africa. The countries are Uganda, Rwanda, and Mozambique. All of them are community health positions. Also, there is a program leaving around the same time for a Latin American country. I'm not going to tell you which one because they would make too much sense. Instead I'm going to warn you how difficult it will be to get because you will be competing against the 100 other people who were dis-invited to Central America. So. I need an answer soon.'Well, its not word for word, but pretty close. I swear these Peace Corps officers must write out full monologues before calling people. Of course, I had no idea what to do. I was really hoping on a position in Latin America given my Spanish studies. BUT, I had resigned myself to the fact that it probably wasn't going to happen, and the more I looked at going to Africa, the more it appealed to me. Of course I'm young and naïve, right? I took a half day from work and went home to google where exactly Mozambique is. (I know, it's embarrassing, but really...who knows that off the bat?!) The more I looked at these three countries, I kept coming back to Rwanda. I don't know why. I may never know why. But something about it just seemed to call out to me.
A few days ago I sent in my acceptance email and made it official. On May 7th I leave for Rwanda for 27 months! The past few weeks have been a learning process, I've probably read the Wikipedia article on Rwanda a million times. I'm excited to start this new chapter in my life and to learn a new culture. Of course, this position is slightly more daunting than my previous. For starters, I've never been to the region, so there's not the comfort of having visited before. Also, it is really really really far away. And not in the same time zone. And tickets there cost a billion dollars. It will be a challenge.
Of course, the biggest challenge will be learning the national language, Kinyarwanda (which isn't even recognized by my spell check!) O mein gott. One things for sure, I'm going to have some good stories for my blog.
