Transfer

Transfers were supposed to be a real long shot for the evacuees from Georgia: the way staff pitched them to us was as “stars having to align” and posts being reluctant to take in new volunteers mid-stream. You can imagine our surprise, on our first conference call with Peace Corps Albania’s Country Director and Program Director, the staff was not only willing to take us but was enthusiastic! Hill, the CD (and my hero), told us that; if we were interested, we were in. We were shocked. We showed up at the conference call with 6 interested volunteers, expecting a competitive fight for scarce spots, and Albania asked us if we could get them 12.

We had sworn in as volunteers at this point already so we were, according to Albania staff, entitled to be treated as such. This might have been the most exciting part for us; a couple of other country posts had already agreed to take volunteers but with the caveat that the transferees join the Pre-Service Training (PST) classes about to begin. In the case of Ukraine this was 12 weeks of language and technical training in addition to the 10 week PST we had completed for our Georgia post. Albania wanted us to do a few weeks (it turned out to be 5) of language acquisition so we knew a little Shqip (Albanian) but how much else we wanted to during our abbreviated introduction to Albania was largely up to us. This was the big selling point for me.

There was a caveat to the offer though: they were willing to take a higher maximum of volunteers than any of the other countries but there was a minimum too. To justify the expense of having us moved to the post we needed at least 6 volunteers to sign on. Keep in mind no one had really made up their mind at this point. There were 6 that expressed interest in Albania but the conference call was the initial meeting. The option to go home is always on the table in Peace Corps; we serve at our discretion and can ask for a plane ticket home at any time. After what happened in the month preceding this no one would blame anyone for wanting out. Frankly, after sitting around doing nothing in Armenia for 3 weeks Peace Corps had lost of its “magic” for us too.

The truly interested left the conference room and started spreading the word as soon as the call ended. We probably pitched Albania to all 80 of the volunteers staying with us. We were the victims of bad timing too because, the same night we got a green light from PC:A, logistics starting finally coming through for tickets home. We had been sitting around for 3 weeks with agonizing little information about our fate and, in one night, we were presented with the choice between a new post and a ticket home.

I talked up the country as hard as I’ve pitched anything in my life. One small stroke of luck was that everyone was up late and gathered together to hang out that night. The unfortunate part was that people were up late to celebrate going home in most cases…We lucked out and found some converts by the end of the night. There ended up being 8 of us going but I want to write about one here. Stephanie Yingling is our agro-business expert and she caught my Albanian pitch on the way to confirm her travel plans with the staff. She actually had a ticket home in hand and turned it down to come with us. Hopefully her family in the states, who she had told she was on her way, won’t hold it against me. And, perhaps more importantly, she won’t hate her assignment in 6 months and come strangle me for talking her into this. Pennsylvania’s not that great anyway…right?

We met again with the PC:A staff the next day and presented the second crop of potential transferees. After a few more rounds of questions by our newly interested volunteers (and the confirmation of a few promises I had made to said volunteers, thank god!) it looked like we had our Albania group. We signed up with 3 English teachers, 2 Health volunteers and 3 Community Development consultants. Everyone came away from the talks with staff excited which was a nice change from the catatonic state the boredom in Armenia had left most of us in. Albania’s staff seemed genuinely enthused about taking us in which was what seemed to be what won people over in the end. It’s a nice thing to be wanted.

So, we’ve made it here now and are well into our “bridge to service” as its being called. The country is beautiful and the people are hospitable. The staff has proven to be just as welcoming as they sounded on the phone and we can’t express our appreciation enough for the hard work they’re doing to put us into the mix. They didn’t have any more notice than we did that this was really going to happen so it’s very impressive they were able to arrange teachers, trainings and sites for us in the span of a couple of weeks. They also had the good sense to take us to the beach our second day here which should keep the “converts”, those volunteers we talked into coming, from regretting the decision.

Hopefully, at the least, until I can get out of strangling range. :)