How Pre-Service Training is like joining a sorority.
Staging-this is equivalent to that large meeting that all the new members have in a giant hall like Columbia 150 before recruitment starts. Staging for a Peace Corps trainee happens in the US before you leave. I met all of the 35 people I’ll be hanging out with for the next 27 months. At this event, we learned all of the policies of the Peace Corps, similar to how you learn about the policies of recruitment.
Site Selection Day- aka Bid Day. On this day you find out which school you will work at and village you will live in. The level of excitement is similar to Bid Day where you know that in just a few moments you will find out something MAJORILY LIFE CHANGING. I found out last week that I will be working in the Southern Province of Rwanda, in Muhanga District at Kibangu Secondary School. Unlike Sorority Bid Day, you can’t immediately go running to your new “house” well because mine is about a 3 hour bus ride and then a 40 minute ride on the back of a motorcycle. I will be ‘running’ to my new house next week to do a site visit.
Shots shots shots!- Okay well when I joined a sorority I drank lots of shots as a celebration. During Pre-Service Training I have received lots of shots… immunizations that is, not nearly as fun, but definitely much healthier.
‘Hazing’- actually we did not do this in my sorority but if we did the Peace Corps equivalent would be learning how to poop in a pit latrine and washing your clothes by hand. Both of these are at first torturous and need a lot of practice.
Volunteer Assistant Trainers (VATs)- These folks are our new member educators who answer every single question we have about being a volunteer (or initiated member in my analogy). The VATs are incredible people who help calm us and steer us along the path to becoming Volunteers. The new member educator at my sorority helped in the same way.
Swear-In-or in other words Initiation Day. There is no secret ceremony to this but it carries a similar weight in their respective circles. For Sorority women Initiation Day is both an exciting and serious occasion where the circle of sisterhood grows. For Peace Corps trainees the same excitement and seriousness that takes place. We will have our Swear-In on December 5th at the United States Embassy, after having past our language test and other assessments. I look forward to this day as well as feel a bit apprehensive and nervous for it.
Following Swear-in we move to our house and begin teaching in January, the beginning of the new school year. The sorority equivalent to this would be moving into your new sorority house and having to make lots of new friends really fast. I will just be making new friends who speak a different language then me, which will be both exciting and challenging.
The only thing we’re missing our cheers.
P-E-A-C-E C-O-R-P-S Peace Corps!