Site Preferences…

Created on 8/30/2014

Before I begin to tell about my language assignment, host family, and my site location; I must give some context to what goes on in the Peace Corps process.  I have a few stories that I hope to post in the coming weeks but I need to share some background information with you before these stories can be fully understood.  This post in meant to set the tone for future posts rather than to entertain you but hopefully I can achieve both.  

After arriving in Okahandja for training, Namibia Group 40 spent the first few nights at the Kurkuri center.  In total we spent 6 nights together before we moved in with our host families for the remainder of our 9 weeks of training.  During the initial days of training we were given details about our possible site placements.  For education volunteers, the site details included the subject and grades we would teach; the number of teachers and learners at the school; the distance from a major shopping town and other volunteers; and the style of housing we would live in.  The only known information that we weren’t given was the location of the site.  If you care to learn about the geography and diversity of Namibia, you will find that there are many different cultures and environments within the country.  Think of it as if you were applying to a job in the States and had all of the job details in front of you except for the location.  On top of that, whatever job you were given you had to take!  

Somewhat stressful but we were all required to take this information and develop our preferences for what type of volunteer experience we would be interested in.  This was an extremely difficult task for us, at the time, as we had very little knowledge about the country and the education system.  Our site preferences would be a key factor for the staff when determining where to place us and what host family in Okahandja we would stay with during PST.  Our site placement would determine what language we would learn during Pre Service Training (PST) and therefore affect if we stayed with a host family that speaks the same language.  We all interviewed with education program coordinators to express our preferences and voice any concerns we had about our site placements.  This all took place during our first week in country and would have a large impact on the next two years of our lives…

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