Exploding Expectations (Site Announcement and Visit)

7/12/12 

When a person enters the Peace Corps, there is very little that she actually knows. As a result, the training program sometimes feels like a series of veils are being lifted, one by one, from the view of the big picture. Two Saturdays ago, June 30, was one of those days: Site Announcement Day - the day that each of us 70 trainees found out which town would be our permanent site for the next two years.

The Peace Corps did a great job of making the day seem as important as it was. First, they gave us a 2 hour lecture on safety and security that no one wanted to hear at that particular time, which served perfectly in building up our impatience. Then we had a ½ hour coffee break, during which we were all able to talk about our impatience (very constructive conversation, as you can imagine). Finally, they began to announce our site placements…one by one by one. It was agonizing! They would call out the name of a town, show you where it was on the map, and then announce who would be sent there. I was about the 50^th out of 70 to be announced, so by the time they got to me, my stomach was in knots and I could barely sit still in my chair. Oh, the anticipation!

The result: my site is a town called Fincha (or Fincha’a), and it is in the region of Oromia, where Afan Oromo/Oromiffa is the regional language.

With my announcement, I was given an envelope with some basic information about Fincha. For instance, it is 1,200 meters above sea level, it was created after the construction of a hydroelectric dam on Lake Fincha in the 70s, and I will be paired with Fincha Primary School, which has about 1,600 students. The packet also said that the population of the town was 45,000 people as of 2005. Based on that information, I began to form certain expectations of my future life. I assumed that with that many people, I would have a hard time integrating and have to deal with more verbal harassment than I would in a small town. I also figured that meant certain helpful commodities would be available to me, such as fruit, good juice, and other food stuffs.

Well, this past Saturday, July 7, I traveled to FIncha for my official Site Visit, which is another of those landmark veil-liftings. The site visit is a 5 day trip to our future towns, so that we can meet important people and get a feel for what life will be like there. To get to Fincha from Addis, I took one large bus directly there, and I was accompanied by my counterpart and another trainee and his counterpart, who will be living just 50 kilometers away in Shambu.

(In the Peace Corps across the globe, a counterpart is a host country national who agrees to be paired with the Volunteer. The counterpart initially helps with introducing the Volunteer to key people in the town and helping him or her get around town, and later is a partner with the Volunteer’s projects.)

The trip took 8 hours, and when I arrived, I was surprised to see a town that sent out a vibe of calm and welcome. I asked, and was told that the town has a population of less than 10,000 people.

Less than 10,000 people. Thus, we arrive at the meaning behind the title of this entry. They say that one of the key characteristics of a successful volunteer is flexibility, and this was my first big dose of why that’s important. Essentially, the opposite of my first expectations are now my current expectations, after being in Fincha for 4 days: that it will be easier to integrate into and feel at home in this town, that the level of verbal (or otherwise) harassment I will have to handle will be low in comparison to what other volunteers deal with, and that certain food items and other commodities will not be readily available.

Guess what, though? I will happily take that trade-off! Living without a good fruit variety and without juice bets can be easily done, especially with the help of certain loving people who may or may not be sending me packages. Living in a small community where everyone knows me will come with its challenges, I’m sure, but it’s what I first envisioned when I joined Peace Corps. Already I feel welcomed and safe, and it’s only been four days! So, the lesson learned is to never to get too attached to my expectations, and to let them shift as needed.

As a conclusion to this entry, it turns out that some pretty delicious food can in fact be put together here in Fincha. One of the greatest upsides to this story is that I will have a site mate here in Fincha – she’s a health PCV, and she’s been an incredible help to me already. Last night for dinner she cooked a cabbage stir fry, flavored with onions, garlic, soy sauce, and peanut butter, and we ate it over rice. Everything in that dish, except the soy sauce, which was purchased in Addis, is available here in Fincha. It sounds terribly weird, I know, but it was scrumptious!

The upcoming month will consist of the remainder of my pre-service training, including Afan Oromo language training, teaching practicum, and more technical training. Bring it on, Peace Corps, I’m ready to go back to FIncha!