Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer

Welcome to my first post as an official Peace Corps Volunteer! My cohort swore in as PCVs a few weeks ago. There’s been a huge amount of change in the past several weeks, and while my hands are full with a slew of new challenges and adjustments, I wanted to briefly share with you what the transition of training to volunteering has entailed. 

Finishing training in Agomeda

After a hectic couple of weeks of traveling,  we had our final weeks of training back in our homestay town, Agomeda. We had some more technical training, discussing teaching methods and specific scenarios we might have to deal with, but most of our time was focused on language training. In addition to reviewing previous topics, we expanded to cover some new areas, like describing direction and location and interacting in a market situation.

Then, we began specifically focusing our training on preparing for the Language Proficiency Interview, or LPI. The LPI is the langauge exam that all volunteers need to pass before swearing in and moving to their site to begin service. The exam is essentially a conversation with a certified tester, moving through discussions of specific topics that we’ve been learning in our target languages, including talking about ourselves and discussing daily routines. Volunteers need to test at an Intermediate level to be considered ready to move to their site.

In the days leading up to the exam, we did a lot of one-on-one training to make sure we were prepared to discuss each of the topics we’d be tested on. Each of the language testers even came to our training village a few days early so we’d have time to work with them and adjust to their particular accents and ways of speaking. After all of that preparation, the exam was just about 20 minutes of speaking. I passed, with a score of Intermediate-High.

With that, us 4 trainees were pretty much finished with training and ready to swear in. Already it was time to start packing our things and preparing for the next big transition.

In those final weeks, and especially the final few days, I made sure to cherish the time I had to spend with my host family. Two of the younger cousins from Accra were staying at the house during the school break, so it was a full house, and I did my best to keep all of the kids entertained. We hung around and talked, threw a ball around, did some drawing and other art, watched a couple movies on my computer, and spent plenty of time dancing to both Ghanaian and American music. I was sad to know I’d be leaving my new family soon. They’d taken care of me, especially Dina, my host mother, who prepared three meals a day for me, helped me with chores, and always made sure I was safe and my needs were met. Over the two and a half months of training, my new family had kept me company and guided me as I adjusted to the many changes of living like a local Ghanaian. Although I’m sad to now have left them, it’s a blessing that I was able to grow close to this new family. I was even able to video call some of my family in America, whose support has also been extremely important to me while I’m here, and introduce them all to my new Ghanaian family. It was great to see the two of them interacting, expressing love for each other, with the nexus being me, who was lucky enough to connect these very different people.

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Making kenkey with the family

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I was able to find marshmallows while traveling through the city, and I brought some back to show the family (and various bystanders) the American art of roasting marshmallows!

I still plan on doing a full blog post on my Agomeda family sometime in the future, when I have more time, so I can tell you all about them. Even since I’ve left, my Agomeda family has been keeping in touch with me. Dina has been calling to make sure my travels have completed safely and that I have been alright in the north. The kids have also been borrowing the adults’ phones just to say hi. I’m still connected to my Agomeda family, and hope to go back and visit them.

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Swearing in

On August 15th came the swearing-in ceremony! I got up early to finish getting my bags ready and put on the nice patterned Ghanaian outfit that Dina had tailored for me, complete with traditional Ghanaian bead necklace and bracelet and fancy sandals. Peace Corps drove all of the training staff, us trainees, and a few of each of our family members from Agomeda to the Peace Corps Ghana office in Accra where the ceremony was held. Also attending the ceremony were the other PC staff, some current PCVs, as well as other Americans from the nearby U.S. Embassy and USAID offices, some of whom were previous PCVs themselves!

The ceremony itself wasn’t too long. First a staff member sang the Ghanaian national anthem, and then Evan (another trainee) and I sang the American national anthem. A few speeches were given, including one by a representative of the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana. Each of us trainees went up to say a short phrase in the languages we learned. And then, to become official PCVs and representatives of the U.S. government, we swore the same oath that the President swears when entering office, which I thought was cool. We also recited a Peace Corps-specific oath. And then, after 11 weeks of training, we were volunteers!

What followed was plenty of picture taking, like a wedding or bar mitzvah, where you have to be in a photo with every possible combination of people present. The staff brought in some really nice baked goods from a nearby bakery, which I heartily enjoyed after the months-long absence of sugary confections. There was time for some relaxing, and then sad goodbyes to our families as they headed back to Agomeda. All of the PCVs were staying the night in Accra, which meant we had some time to hang around the city, check out the mall, and get some solid American food. One of the PCVs even found a trivia night at a nearby bar that we went to. All in all, it was a nice night of recharging with some Western culture before the truly intense journey began.

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Starting out as a volunteer

Cut to 17 hours straight on a bus from Accra all the way north to Tamale, a night of rest, and finally being taken the rest of the way to our communities. And here I am now, in the north.

As an education volunteer, I have a specific time when my actual “job” will start. PC Ghana also has health and agriculture volunteers, and they kind of have to initiate the work they’re doing themselves. But as a teacher, I don’t start until school starts back up, on September 10th. Of course, the whole idea of being a Peace Corps Volunteer is that your job is kind of 24/7, integrating into the community and exchanging culture and all that. But school being off means I have all of this time to work on getting set up with my living situation. And I’ve definitely needed it.

The past few weeks have been pretty difficult. Maybe some of the most difficult since coming to Ghana. Like I said in my last post, my community, and Northern Ghanaian communities in general, tend to be more off-the-grid, with less resources. My community is really just a very large cluster of household compounds at some point along one of the main roads stemming from Tamale. There’s a primary school/JHS building at the edge of town, where I’ll be teaching. There are a few tiny provision stores selling pure water and other packaged goods. Several mosques, for the many daily Muslim prayers. And that’s pretty much it. Most of the men are farmers, and most days they go to work on their farms, tending to many different kinds of crops. Some of the women also farm, and some stay home processing different crops, as well as cooking. Life is relatively simple.

Some of the farmland out beyond the community

And while the villagers, of course, have their daily routines figured out, I, moving into a new space at the edge of the community, have a lot to figure out. I’m working on buying all of my kitchen and bathroom supplies, which is turning out to be a lot. Buying these supplies requires trips to larger towns. I’m also still working on unpacking and organizing my things. It’s difficult, because compared to all of the stuff I brought from America and all of my supplies, I have very little space. I’ve been working on setting up my living area to make it as comfortable as possible. For many things I’ve needed help from the local carpenter and mason, like fixing my doors so they’re in working manner. Through it all the village’s assemblyman has been pretty helpful, doing his best to attend to my needs amid his other responsibilities.

View looking towards the village from the teacher's compound where I live

It’s a difficult situation, because as much as I’m trying to adjust mentally to dealing with these different living conditions, my expectation of comfort is just at a very different level than the locals, as is my capacity for dealing with the rawness of nature, which everyone is just much more exposed to here. One issue that got particularly bad was a huge amount of bugs coming into my space every night, mostly tiny beetles but occasionally crickets or cockroaches. Fortunately, the mason was able to come and seal off some of the cracks in the ceiling, which has helped a lot. At the same time, of course the bugs were all coming at night because they were attracted to the light in my room, so I’m working to adjust my sleeping schedule to be more aligned with the sun and minimize the hours spent awake after dark.

At the same time as I'm slowly getting my living space set up, I’m basically having to relearn how to do all household chores. I was very much not a fan of chores to begin with, and everything is just much more difficult here. I’ve begun cooking a bit–Peace Corps set me up with a gas stove that I need to use a match to light, and I also bought a rice cooker which I’ve started experimenting with. But with very limited ingredients and really not much cooking space, everything is more frustrating. And afterwards, cleaning dirty plates and pans without a sink is all the more uncomfortable. Of course there’s still hand washing my clothes and keeping my space clean from the interminable dust and dirt invading from the outside–chores like these I got experience with in Agomeda, but now without Dina to help me they’re that much more difficult and time-consuming.

Meanwhile, I’m doing my best to engage with the community. All of the teachers are away with their families for vacation, so it’s just me and the villagers. I try to walk around almost every day and greet people, so we can start getting to know each other. It’s difficult, because there are hardly any English speakers. I may have passed a Dagbani language exam, but it’s a far cry from having day-to-day conversations, in accents that are harder to understand, typically straying from the limited vocabulary we covered. For the Dagbani speakers I’m able to give the standard extended greetings, which are a few sentences back and forth, and then they inevitably follow up with a sentence that I can’t understand, which just makes things a bit awkward. But I have started to make a few acquaintances. Over the few weeks I’ve begun to encounter a few locals who are able to speak English relatively well, and we’re able to have some deeper conversations. Even with the non-English speakers, I’ve begun to develop some acquaintanceships. My closer neighbors, who I naturally see more often when I leave my living space, have even helped me out a couple times, showing me how to cook a basic meal and lending me a bicycle to go to the nearby market.

It’s pretty much up to me to engage with the villagers to learn about them, both because they don’t really know me yet, and, I think, because everything they’re doing is already just completely normal to them, so they wouldn’t realize I’d find it interesting. But I’m slowly learning a bit more about life here in my village. I see the women at various types of work throughout the village, and the men preparing to go to farm. I met the carpenter, who is a boy younger than me who makes tables and stools. I met the veterinarian, who has been very nice and has come to speak with me a few times since. One day I passed a woman working on a sort of loom, weaving together colorful threads to make strips of fabric that will one day become the nice smocks that the men wear. I’ve gone back to watch a few times since and have even gotten to sit at the loom myself and help weave. 

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The fabric being woven will one day be part of a smock like the one I’m wearing here

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the past few weeks here at my site. No real schedule, just waking up every day and chipping away at the list of tasks. At times I’ve been pretty mentally overwhelmed, but overall I’m managing. There’s certainly a lot to adjust to, and I’m doing my best. I know that I’m just at the beginning of my journey of integrating into this community, learning about the people here, and connecting with them. I’m looking forward to a time in the future where I’m fully settled with a consistent routine and I’m able to focus all of my energy on teaching and engaging with the community. Until then, I’ll keep at work.

And I’ll do my best to share more with you about what I’m up to. Pretty much every aspect of my life these days is different than anything I’ve known before, and I’m just trying to select the most relevant details to share with you without these posts getting too long. But I’m not sure what you all are curious to hear about, so please, leave any questions you have in the comments of this blog, big or small! Otherwise, until next time.