Staging

Tuesday, 5 June 2018

As I begin this post I’m sitting in the Washington Dulles terminal, waiting for boarding to begin on a direct flight to Accra. I, like the 33 other Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) in black airport chairs around me, am alternating between thumbing on my phone and glancing out the window at the imposing letters of “SOUTH AFRI” on the part of the plane I can see. The smell of fast food fills the air as a few of us shovel fries and burgers into our mouths.

I arrived in D.C. two nights ago on an afternoon flight. As well as I could with two large suitcases and a backpack, I hustled through the dreary drizzle from the Uber car up the front steps of the National 4-H Convention Center. The guy behind the desk was very kind, first asking me if I was in the Peace Corps (French terms are weird), and then handing me my room key. But I only dropped off my bags and headed back out, because I was on a mission for passport photos (one of the things I forgot on my don’t-forget-these-things list).

En route to CVS, I worried about how woefully I’d misjudged how much luggage I should have brought. See, in the few minutes I spent in the room, I had time to glance at the things of my roommate who had come and gone, and he’d only brought a large duffel and a backpack. Surely he was a true hardcore adventurer like all of the other PCTs, while I had practically brought an entire moving van. Is everyone besides me going to have mountain backpacking experience, and perfect abilities in four languages, and 100 days on an isolated fishing boat in Alaska? Probably.

As it turns out, my roommate Ben did have that last thing and also the face of Tom Cruise (I swear he does). But besides that he’s pretty much a normal dude, thank goodness, as I found out when I returned and we chatted for a while. Oh, and almost everyone else brought as much luggage as I did. Stay close, Ben Cruise, I have extra Clif bars!

I called Colleen (she’s my girlfriend for those who don’t know her, and she’s absolutely wonderful and I love her, and I recommend everyone should have someone like her in their life) to give her a synopsis of my day. Then I settled in for a night on the bottom bunk (I got my own bunk all to myself, WHOOP!) in the quiet convention center dorm rooms. Except for the few of us flying in from far away, most of the Peace Corps folks would be arriving the next morning, so you could say the excitement was almost in the air.

Oh dear, I just realized how many details I’m writing. Sorry, I’ll pick up the pace!

Registration opened at noon and closed at 14:00 (please accommodate my 24-hour format, it’s just easier), which kicked off Staging, our first official PC training sesh! And it wasn’t just a bunch of paperwork like I’d thought it would be – we actually did some fun icebreakers and had a few really good discussions and scenarios about PC policies and practices. I came out of the five or six hour stretch in that conference room feeling much more confident, and more importantly, already well connected with my fellow PCTs.

We had the evening to ourselves, and while I think most of us headed to a nearby sports bar to watch a hockey game or something (I’ve never been called “sporty”, let’s just leave it there), I and a few others hung around at the convention center and ordered pizzas. Then I stayed up late talking with my parents and with Colleen some more, Texas and D.C. preparing for my imminent home-leaving.

Since starting this post, I’ve gotten on the plane with all my fellow PCTs, and we with a whole bunch of folks I don’t know are streaming east across the Atlantic for Accra. Having left a bit before sunset, we’ll be landing ten hours later in the early light of an African sunrise. It’s a good group we’re bringing to Ghana – the mixture of enthusiasm, determination, and sheer variety of shades of American makes me feel like we’re on as good an initial footing as we could be. I feel that we’re primed to do some awesome work in the next two years and to share the bits of home we brought with us while we’re at it.

But I already miss my good ol’ Red, White, and Blue, so keep it safe while we’re gone, y’all!

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Just real quick, I want to say that I’ve been thinking about how I want to do this blog. You see, I really like to try to dive deep into specific experiences to try to make you feel like you’re right there too. But that doesn’t work when I feel like I need to summarize every event too. So while I might offer short summaries and background info, I think I want to focus closer on scattered pieces of my experience. Hope that’s cool. Let me know though!