Adoption (almost)

For the past three and a half weeks, and soon for another three and a half weeks, I have been living with a Surinamese family in a town of about two hundred people, called Marshall Kreek. Humphrey and Rita have been the best of adoptive parents, giving me plenty of good food, helping me practice the Aucan language, and making sure that I bathe with a full bucket of water three times a day. They have four children, but still have enough space for me to have my own ten by twenty foot house, which is very nice. They also have a couple of green parrots that do not talk much but have excellent personalities nonetheless.

During this stage of training, I have language classes in the mornings with the two other volunteers in my homestay village, and I have technical training two afternoons a week. On Fridays, all of the volunteers meet in a central village for guest speakers and additional technical training. I also have a community-building assignment for which I teach English to about 25 kids in the village on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. In my free time I spend time with my host family and learn practical things like shaving cassava, planting vegetable gardens, and clipping the wings of parrots so they can walk around outside their cages.

It is not difficult for me to adapt to a new set of living routines, but at first, with my limited Aucan, it was quite a challenge to learn what those routines are. Since language was an issue for the first couple of weeks I had to observe and try to communicate in other ways. For instance, it took me a week to learn that I should use a full bucket of water when bathing, even though I washed three times a day.

In terms of adventure, I sleep in a hammock, and I have a collection of unwelcome visitors in my house such as cockroaches, bats, and a band of giant spiders larger than my fist. These have led to some exciting, and often very funny late night hunts and punitive expeditions within my house. After all this is South America.

A Government A.R.E. (Acronym Rich Environment)

You know you work for the government when you catch yourself using at least two acronyms in one sentence. All these acronyms naturally aid us in streamlining and simplifying government work for the greatest efficiency possible. The practice of using these abbreviated forms started out gradually at Staging in Miami, affectionately termed PDT (Pre-Departure Training). Once we arrived in-country, however, we would be PCT’s (Peace Corps Trainees) of the class SUR 14 (the fourteenth team to Suriname), engaging in PST (Pre-Service Training), and we would be expected to use as many acronyms as we could contrive. We even had to know acronyms in other languages. Our initial training facility was called NAKS (roughly “After Work Comes Sports” in Dutch).

At NAKS we met Ann, our CD (Country Director), Marlon, our SSC (Safety and Security Counselor), and “Doc,” our PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer), as well as many first or second-year PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteers). PST is divided into several segments including a week-long orientation, TOT (Training Of Trainers), CBT (Community Based Training), CPC’s (Counterpart Conferences), and future site visits. I have no clue why we do not have an acronym for future site visits, but I’m thinking of suggesting FSV’s). During CBT, we have HS (Homestay), when we stay with a HCN (Host-County National) family, have language classes with an LCF (I do not really know what this stands for, but it means language-teacher), and formulate a CDA (Community Development Activity) based on our conception of CED (Community Economic Development) in our respective HS sites. For our CDA we use PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) tools such as FREEHOP and SWOT to assess what we should do before we do it.

During PC service, we have an EAP (Emergency Action Plan) in case anything goes wrong, but during training we have a PST EAP (Pre-Service Training Emergency Action Plan) specific to our locations. After we are sworn in, we have access to ICE (Information Collection and Exchange) resources, the IRC (In-country Resource Center), as well as IST (In-Service Training) to help us with ideas. IST is, in-turn, divided into EST, MST, and LST (Early-Service Training, Mid-Service Training, and Lat-Service Training). If we decide not to ET (Early Termination of Service) before our COS (Close Of Service) comes around, we have to submit a DOS (Description Of Service) or a DOW (Description Of Work), but I’m not sure what the difference is yet. There is still so much more to learn.