When I was doing research before I came to Panama I was frustrated by the lack of information I found about volunteers' perspectives on training in the blogs I was reading. I now understand that it’s because you’re constantly busy between classes, traveling to training events in other places, and making friends with the other crazy people (read: "trainees" or "new family members") who decided to step into this pressure cooker-wormhole-tornado (and you have very little internet access on top of that).
Honestly, it felt a lot like three months of college freshman orientation, but with more alphabet soup acronyms and Spanglish.
I've decided to attempt to remedy this perceived lack of information with a quick summary of the first ten (really eleven) weeks of my life in Panama.
Here we go:
Week 0
G76 arrived in Panama and stayed in the super swanky dorms (Hot showers, consistent water and electricity, Wifi, and access to a food court where you can buy shwarma for $6) near the Peace Corps office in Ciudad del Saber (CDS). CDS is the former Clayton military base that the US used when they had control over the Panama Canal. It's now the site of many homes, schools, and office buildings. We spend every day in training sessions (like lectures) from 8am-5pm on Peace Corps policies and Panama and Security and Health. We have an oral language placement exam. I stop being able to sleep past 6am, a phenomenon that hasn’t happened since high school. Dinamicas (like ice breaker/energizer games but on steroids) are introduced into our lives and we will never be the same.
Weeks 1-2
The TE (Teaching English) and CEC (Community Environmental Conservation) groups moved to their respective training communities to live with host families for the remainder of our training. Each Aspirante (trainee) lives with a different host family in the small community of Santa Rita. We have Spanish Class for 4 hours in the morning and Tech Class for TE-Specfic things for 4 hours in the afternoon. We spend one day in the Peace Corps office each week with the full group of TE and CEC to do general training, security, and health sessions. During week 2 we were assigned a group mock SECNA presentation. SECNA is the presentation (and paper) that we give to our communities after three months of observations to plan what kinds of initial projects community members are interested in collaborating on. It’s a big project, but if you do it little by little it’s totally manageable (which was the point of the mock SECNA).
Week 3
We each went to visit a current volunteer. I visited Taylor in the province of Herrera and we had a great time. It was really cool to see an example of real volunteer life and work and to feel more grounded in this crazy process (and to not eat any mayonnaise or rice all week). I loved seeing the school where she works and learning about other projects that are available outside of working in schools (organizing seminars, working with the Gender and Development group). We also celebrated my birthday with (a version of) baked ziti, garlic bread, and funfetti cake with chocolate frosting and then we watched a movie from Netflix on her computer. Probably one of the best birthdays ever.
Week 4-5
Back to class in the training community. During Week 4 we took another oral language exam to reassess our levels. I managed to move up two levels (!) and moved into another class. We also had interviews with our APCD for TE (my immediate supervisor) regarding our site placement preferences. He asked us a bunch of questions about what we thought about our volunteer visit and how training is going and our strengths and weaknesses with relation to our technical skills. At the end of the interview he asked for three things that we would look for in our sites (size, number of counterpart teachers, etc.). He humored my list of seven thoughts that I had scribbled down in my journal. Site placement was super nerve wracking because it is really important and you don’t have much (read: any) control over it. I tried not to think about it much because I didn’t want to stress myself out over something that I couldn't control. I wanted to trust in the PC staff to know what was best because I know about a teaspoon’s worth of what Panama is and what the communities are looking for.
We were also assigned a group community project where we were supposed to hold two one-hour community classes for members of the training community based on something that the community expressed interest in learning/doing. My group only managed to do about 20 minutes of one of those hours due to a series of unfortunate events.
There’s a phrase in Peace Corps/Panama (and maybe elsewhere) that people use a lot: “plus/delta”. It’s used for assessment of any given activities—what went well (+), and what could be improved for future implementations (delta). For my group’s community project we didn’t have many +’s, we really only had deltas (though I suppose delicious homemade cookies should always be counted as a +, no matter what else happens). It was a good learning experience on how to organize events better, communicate effectively, and to make sure you’re actually addressing something that the community has interest in learning (English slang didn't sell so well with the kids in the community, even when enticed with cookies).
To Be Continued...
My house in the Training Community
View from a Breakfast Table
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