Light at the end of the Tunnel
So the day has finally arrived. I recieved a phone call from the Peace Corps on Wednesday of last week bringing me both good and bad news. In traditionally hollywood fashion I'll start with the bad and end with the good. I'm not going to the Carabiean as I've been anticipating for all these months as my medical screening process was delayed considerably by a surgery I had 7 years ago. Despite the fact that I had no ill effects following my recovery in the months following there was some issue with the diagnosis and so here I am.... still in my appartment when I should be packing for some sunny tropical beaches. C'est la vie.
The good news is that I acutally managed to speak to a real human being in the beaurocracy that is the Peace Corps and I was quickly switched to a new project that is perhaps closer to what I would have liked to have done in the first place. As it turns out I depart for Morocco in early March to work in or around national parks or other sites of Environmental interest doing environmental education, ecotourism, agroforestry and other biologically based projects. Not that I would have found a health realted project boring or that I lacked the skills to feel prepared for it. My many years as an EMT and as a red cross instructor have seen to it that I feel comfortable in most medical situations. However, wilderness and wildlife biology have always been my primary fields of interest.
The new project comes with a new set of challenges of course, as I have come to expect with all my peace corps endevors thus far. I will have to learn Arabic and perhaps the Berber dialect that they speak in the more rugged mountainous regions of Morocco. I already have a shoddy working knowlege of French, though I will work to improve it in the coming weeks so I can converse, if not fluently at least readily in the language of government in a country that still has many holdovers of the European colonial era. Dispite all of this I find that I'm feeling considerably more cooperative with a passport application on my desk and an official invitation and instructions to look upon when I feel my resolve getting shaky.
Now comes the myriad of small details that are the prelude to any 2 year leap into the unknown. In the coming weeks I must rent a P.O. Box as I plan to move out a month early and travel to Israel to see my family and to Arkansas and Florida to see my Grandmothers before coming back to the Pioneer Valley a week prior to departure. I must arange for my final rent payments, pack my belongings, figure out where I'm going to store things, figure out if I'll have power to run my cameras... my computer? I'll be leaving a digital world for who knows what and you know....
I can't wait
The good news is that I acutally managed to speak to a real human being in the beaurocracy that is the Peace Corps and I was quickly switched to a new project that is perhaps closer to what I would have liked to have done in the first place. As it turns out I depart for Morocco in early March to work in or around national parks or other sites of Environmental interest doing environmental education, ecotourism, agroforestry and other biologically based projects. Not that I would have found a health realted project boring or that I lacked the skills to feel prepared for it. My many years as an EMT and as a red cross instructor have seen to it that I feel comfortable in most medical situations. However, wilderness and wildlife biology have always been my primary fields of interest.
The new project comes with a new set of challenges of course, as I have come to expect with all my peace corps endevors thus far. I will have to learn Arabic and perhaps the Berber dialect that they speak in the more rugged mountainous regions of Morocco. I already have a shoddy working knowlege of French, though I will work to improve it in the coming weeks so I can converse, if not fluently at least readily in the language of government in a country that still has many holdovers of the European colonial era. Dispite all of this I find that I'm feeling considerably more cooperative with a passport application on my desk and an official invitation and instructions to look upon when I feel my resolve getting shaky.
Now comes the myriad of small details that are the prelude to any 2 year leap into the unknown. In the coming weeks I must rent a P.O. Box as I plan to move out a month early and travel to Israel to see my family and to Arkansas and Florida to see my Grandmothers before coming back to the Pioneer Valley a week prior to departure. I must arange for my final rent payments, pack my belongings, figure out where I'm going to store things, figure out if I'll have power to run my cameras... my computer? I'll be leaving a digital world for who knows what and you know....
I can't wait
posted by Andy & Erin | 6:21 AM
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