Assistant Peace Corps Director Visit: December 5

After canceling his appointment for the previous day, we were a little weary as to whether or not our PC advisor was going to show up for our site visit. Our PC advisors are required to do two site visits for each of their volunteers over their two years of service. The site visits are a chance for the PC advisors to touch base with the volunteers and their school counterparts in order to make sure that things are running smoothly on both ends. Since our advisor decided to schedule his visit on the last day of school for the teachers, he was not able to talk with any of our counterparts about our progress as they had all left by the time he showed up. Furthermore, instead of asking us about our experience and integration into the community, our advisor spent our whole visit telling us stories about other PC volunteers. We were not terribly disappointed since our expectations for any help or guidance from our PC office had steadily been declining over the past three months due to the office failing to respond to our numerous messages and questions.

Deciding to make the most out of the situation, we asked our advisor if he could drive us to the nearby Cash Build so that we could pick up some more paint to finish off the house. We needed a ride because although Joe is strong, there was no way that he could carry 20 liters of paint the three miles back to our house and we had unsuccessfully been asking around the village for a ride for the past month. Picking up the last few supplies we needed for the house, we also imposed on our advisor to help us find a washboard so that we wouldn’t have to borrow Ma’s every week. We had previously tried to explain our need to the employees of Cash Build, but they either didn’t understand our English or did not carry washboards, even though everyone assured us that Cash Build was the place to get one. After speaking to a few of the employees in a number of different languages, our advisor was stunned to learn that not only did Cash Build not sell washboards, but that they didn’t have any ideas on where to purchase one. How can this be? Everyone in our village has a washboard except for us, and we had spent the last three months searching every store we could find for one. However, once we began asking people where they got their washboards it became clear that these necessities are passed down in the family and are handmade from scrap boards found around the village. Guess we have another project on our hands!