A Second Chance?: December 20

We got to the PC office early in order to type up our newly formed behavior contracts, outlining our consequences. Our behavior contracts consisted of: house arrest for six months (forfeiting any travel outside of our village), a weekly activity log signed by a supervisor in our village, inability to serve on a PC committee for one year and time spent helping the administration address the problems of unauthorized leave. We sent our drafts to the country director asking for her feedback, informing her that we were willing to make any necessary changes in order to stay in country. We lunched on smoothies and muffins at a nearby mall and tried not to drive each other crazy waiting for a response from the country director.

After a day full of anxiety, the country director finally met us in the computer lab around 5 pm. She regretfully informed us that our consequences weren’t much different than ones she had rejected from PC staff members who had offered contracts as an alternative during their staff meeting a few days ago. We understood her explanation that she didn’t want to put extra work on others for our mistakes, but were shocked when she informed us that she couldn’t trust anyone in our village not to lie for us about our whereabouts. We continued offering suggestions, all of which were denied for one reason or another. Although she liked any ideas that involved making our supervisor work harder (she revealed that she thought he was incompetent and was actively helping him look for a new job), she claimed that she couldn’t trust us or our supervisor. Kelli joked about ankle bracelets and she actually responded, “I wish I could get them for all of the volunteers.” Frustrated, one of our friends offered to name her first born child after the country director, to which she replied, “I already have enough kids named after me.” Angry, dejected and depressed, we were too tired to eat and settled into another sleepless night.