Site Announcements, Swearing In, and Settling In

Part of Group 92 in traditional wear at Swearing In! 

Hello everyone! Sorry about the long wait between posts; I have been very busy with moving to site!

Last time that I updated, I was in training in Dravuni Village on the east side of Fiji. During training you learn the language for 2-3 hours and then have technical training the rest of the day. Technical training may be a traditional cooking lesson, government department, non-profit organization, current volunteers presenting on related topics, Fiji youth presenting, core Peace Corps training sessions  and much more! You know all the training you have for a new job? Imagine that for 8 weeks...Pre-service training was some of the best and worst times of my life. The best part is that you are still surrounded by other Americans and can be yourself; you have this protective bubble. The worst part is that by week 5 you are so finished and want to move on. Spending 8 weeks with these people that have the same goals as you seems amazing in the beginning, and then like normal people, you begin to get on each other's nerves. The end of training concludes with site announcements, language proficiency exams, technical exams, medical exams and safety exams. I passed all my exams with flying colors and scored in the top 5 for language; I scored "advanced mid" in the Fijian language. We did not test over, or have many language sessions on, Fijian Hindi because most of us will not use it that much at site.

The staff at Peace Corps make site announcement day super exciting, but as I understand, this is actually very different depending on the year and your country! Some countries go in knowing their site placements. The group before us, didn't find out until the day or so before they swore in! Crazy!

We went to a resort on a Friday and then quickly got to work. They put everyones picture on a photo of Fiji, and then an arrow would slide over to your placement on the next slide. I was placed in Navola Village and assisting at Nasikawa Vision College along the beautiful coral coast. I'm about 45 minutes southeast of Sigatoka and 1.5 hours west of the capital of Suva. My village has about 150 people and is unique because most of the women work at the nearby resorts. I will be working with the youth in the village and in the school. I'm not technically a teacher, but a more of a capacity builder.

   

The screenshot from site announcements!

At a basic level, that means I will be teaching the Family Life Education classes, which is basically youth wellness and includes physical, emotional, spiritual, reproductive and social health. How we teach the classes is up to us; which means I will be using music therapeutically (can't practice in country, it's against Peace Corps rules). My principle is absolutely amazing and totally gets the idea of using music or creative arts to re-engage students in the core courses, as well. I've also been asked to assist with the PEMAC (physical education, music, and arts/crafts) classes. These courses are typically taught by one teacher and the students in Fiji, rarely, seem to see actual sheet music. The PEMAC teacher is delighted to have assistance and is eager to transition to sheet music. I recently learned there are some hymnals with the actual sheet music instead of just solfedge notations and couldn't be more excited! The schools in Fiji are very religious, which means I will be incorporating that where it is appropriate.

On November 4, 2015, I was sworn into the Peace Corps service, made an oath, and transitioned to being a Peace Corps Volunteer instead of Peace Corps Trainees. We had a few people who were evacuated because of the Ebola crisis last year right before they swore in and were given a special mention during the service, which they definitely deserved. We had a RPCV and foreign service officer give our speech and our oath. The girls and guys both performed a traditional make, or dance. I'm sure there is footage somewhere; I'll find it and out a YouTube link up at some point this year...on Fiji time, of course. I couldn't stop coughing in the middle of the ceremony, which is probably good because I would have been emotional otherwise; turns out I was allergic to the flower necklace my host family gave us.  It's amazing the connections you can make with people in 8 weeks. The rest of the week was spent packing and then we were off to our villages; boy, I was nervous!

My village is wonderful and pretty soon, I will upload the maps that the community members will draw as part of their assessments. Speaking of assessments! For the villages served by the Peace Corps, volunteers complete what's called PACA, or Participatory Analysis for Community Action, which is a community wide assessment on location, needs, and assets of the community; this is what I will be doing for the first 3 months at site. Currently, I'm still trying to learn the village life, names, who works where, and who lives where. Everyone knows me (only American girl in the village), but there are about 150 members plus the school.

School here is ending because it's almost summer...Remember that I'm down here in the Southern Hemisphere? However, I've met all my fellow teachers and have been helping renovate the library. It's amazing the things we are so blessed with that we never knew. I'm not an expert in libraries, but I have experienced the ones with systems that work and can relay the information that I know. I found an English church, which has been wonderful. I met some of the missionaries that run the religion aspect of the school, they are from Korea, and are some of my new friends. The resort within walking distance has an Australian owner and there is another Australian, retired in the next village over.

While I'm here in Fiji, I'm part of the Community Youth Empowerment Project where we work on goals such as wellness, mental health, suicide prevention, pregnancy prevention, STI/HIV prevention, physical health, nutritional health and developing capacity for both parents and teachers.

I realize that this is a very long post and will talk about the CYEP project goals and objectives another time! I'll even go into our assessments for my MT friends out there. I will also touch on my interventions used during both my youth camp presentation on reproductive health, consent, and prevention and my school presentation on stress management during PST, because it's slightly different working not in a clinical setting while still incorporating music therapeutically.  Until next time, moce mada!