1000 words and not a single picture

I know, I know! It's not because I haven't taken any but even when we have internet there's usually not a lot of bandwith so text makes it up but pictures do not. I'm working on it, I promise.

Cluster F’ed

Pre-Service Training (PST) is organized into 4 or 5 person groups called clusters that are assigned to a village and hold language training together. I’ve have 3 close cluster mates from the first days of orientation and we’ve been through an awful lot together. Lauren (lawyer from South Carolina), Casey (financial expert from New Jersey) and Chris (banker from New York) have been my family for the last 4 weeks and today we heard we’re being split up. Understandably, we’re furious.

Peace Corps is shuffling the clusters in an attempt to group trainees according to skill level in language acquisition. While I’m sure this makes sense in some ill-conceived, bureaucratic thought process, it’s outrageous to us. We’ve spent the last month building group cohesion and bonding with our cluster mates and now we’re being torn apart because of some arbitrary assessments.

It’s a ridiculous system: there’s no comparing our skill levels. We all have our good days and bad, our good subjects and bad subjects. Lauren has the best pronunciation of the group, Chris is the best at social vocabulary and Casey knows virtually every vocabulary for foods and drinks in Georgian. (I don’t have a specialty per se; I get by on my looks and charm.) Difficult and stressful as language acquisition has been I feel its been the support and friendship of my cluster mates that has pulled me through so far. Whatever the minute benefits of working with people slightly closer to your level and skill set is certainly offset by the upset of cleaving off my family members from my life.

We go through an awful lot here and I’d like to think we’ve been pretty good sports so far. I’ll spare the blog from the gory details but the trainees have to go through some pretty extraordinary circumstances in-country. In my first post, back in Philadelphia, I wrote that I though the best asset we were going to have in Peace Corps is the energy that each volunteer brings and that that was what was going to sustain us. It’s been true so far and this Friday that support system is about to be crippled.

I’m going to miss my friends.

Back to work

We’ve just finished our first project in our technical (social entrepreneurship) training. Each group had to construct a business plan for a potential Georgian business and I think we rocked it. We were given an outline of an idea for a juice company in Shida Kartli region and told to flesh it out with marketing, organization structure, SWOT analysis of competitors, etc. We worked for about a week on our presentation and put together financial documents, process maps, organization charts, and marketing and distribution strategies. Luckily I’m blessed with some very talented people in my group and we put together a detailed, well thought-through and sharp looking presentation and were able to put enough energy behind it to successfully sell our ideas. A quick note to my friends at The Alford Group: we had the slickest PowerPoint in the room thanks to the time I spent at the firm. (Extra special thanks to my man Tim)

It felt good to be working on a project again. We’ve been killing ourselves for the last month acquiring the language and it was almost cleansing to get back to something that uses our strengths. I got to work out the organizational structure, distribution strategy and do a SWOT analysis among other things. Those that have worked with me know that I have something of a fetish for procedure and, after struggling day after day to pick up a foreign in a place far from home; it was something close to heaven to do what I do best. I worked on the flow charts until about midnight last night and I couldn’t have been happier.

Gori

CULTURE TRIP!!!! Peace Corps gave out the first round of culture trip allowances this weekend and I left my little village to join another trainee in Gori, one of Georgia’s larger cities and Stalin’s hometown. We spent Saturday and Sunday exploring the city and enjoying our first block of truly free time in a month. We were cut loose to wander on our own, at our own pace without schedule or supervision and loved every minute of it. If it sounds weird that 20-something’s should have supervision at any time (especially at a volunteer job) remember that we’re now working in the most complicated bureaucracy on the planet (our beloved government) and there’s nothing bureaucracy loves more than even greater bureaucracy. We were pretty happy to get out on our own for a while.

While in Gori we got put up at the Hotel Victoria which was especially welcome because it had more than a few amenities not found in the rural villages we live in. Use your imagination.

We did a number of cultural activities while in Gori (Gori fortress, Stalin Museum, the bazaar) but the shining moment of the trip was undoubtedly Populi. It’s not a monastery or statue or ancient battlefield, it’s a small grocery store on the edge of town about the size of your standard CVS. If you’ve never lived in a developing country you may not get the appeal but I’ll try to explain. I think the main selling point is this: occasionally you want to eat something that wasn’t less than 12 hours ago was inside or a part of an animal, something that’s undergone some processing. “Organic” has lost something of its novelty and appeal for me.

Populi is a beautiful, luminescent, heavenly western-style grocery store that (almost) could have been plucked out of any American suburb. April and I went and bought fried chicken, Ruffles, Nestle chocolate, Pepsi, orange juice and most anything else that looked appealing, was heavily processed and tasted like home. We eat well here in Georgia; most of us will count ourselves lucky to still fit into our pants at the end of training. This weekend though we got a little bit of America with our meals and that’s hard to come by here.

April and I both left feeling recharged and better about the future. We’ve got Peace Corps staff, our host country counterparts and our host families to help us through our time here but I’m betting Populi is going to be the most important partner to surviving service.

I got a call from Katie!!!!!!!!!

Whoohoo! Katie called me today and we talked for about 20 fabulous minutes! (Hopefully she’ll still think it was worth it when she gets her phone bill, sorry sweetie.) We caught up on what both of us are up to, talked a bit about things we did together and I got some news about her family, friends and America in general.

She’s doing fabulous as ever of course. A rock star at work as always, I’m going to be very disappointed in Katie if she’s not CEO by the time I get back. I got some updates on our friends in D.C. and some other tidbits about what she was doing for the holiday weekend, what her brothers are up to…the subjects we talked about weren’t important: I was thrilled to hear her voice. We chatted a bit and laughed and it’s the best I’ve felt in a long time.

Lots of love, butterfly.

July 4, 2008: Independence Day

Today is our Independence day, a holiday for every American except Peace Corps volunteers. We went to work today while the rest of the U.S. is getting drunk, barbequing and stockpiling explosives (lucky, lucky bastards). There is something satisfying though in representing the country on its birthday. I wonder if that’s why we had the formal celebration yesterday?

Probably not, I’m still betting on poor logistics instead. Either way we’re still all feeling pretty American and liking it.

I’m thinking today about my contribution to the U.S. I don’t know how many are considering their worth to their country over the holiday but I’ve actually worked out the numbers on mine: it’s about $43,000. That’s the cost of keeping 1 volunteer overseas for a year; logistic, staff support, medical supplies, language training, etc. It’s a surprising number. If you saw how we lived you’d be pretty shocked too that it costs 43k.

I discussed the cost of the program with some of my fellow volunteers yesterday; jury is still out on whether we’re worth it.

The 4^th in Georgia is, at the same time, surreal and mundane. We go about our business, class and seminars, and eat the same food we always do, just trying to make it through our training. It’s odd though because we know what’s going on in the U.S. right now and, even if we really wanted to, we probably couldn’t have put together a decent celebration of our own. Sigh. Right now Rogers Park is preparing to blow a hole in Loyola beach the size of a Buick and I’m missing it this year. Of course, this is also Taste of Chicago week and this is the first in six years I’ll be missing it. Those of you who know me know how I feel about the event, I don’t think I need to explain to any of you what it means to not go.

Damn, I would kill for a buffalo wing.

All in all, I’m happy that I get to celebrate the 4^th in the Peace Corps though. Being an American means something extra dear to you when you’re far from home and surrounded by nothing familiar. Peace Corps training has been a pretty trying time for me so far, there’s definitely more good days than bad but there’s been some rough spots. We all feel pretty good today though and I’m learning to appreciate small victories over here.

Happy Independence Day everyone, God bless America.

July 3, 2008: Almost a Holiday

Today we celebrated our independence day in Josef Stalin’s hometown and the irony was most definitely not lost on us. The staff organized an event in the honor of the 4^th that could only happen in the Peace Corps. Aside from the location the astute reader will notice that we’re a day early. Don’t ask my why this is, the fact that we can’t get the answer leads me to believe in either poor logistics or the staff has tomorrow off.

The food was good and definitely well intentioned but lacking a certain authenticity. Whatever we ate resembled burgers and hot dogs although I’m not sure any of us forgot for the day we were in Georgia. The cake was good.

Naturally, no Peace Corps event would be complete without a bit of paperwork and even our Independence day is no exception. Mary, if you’re reading this, I think we’re ready for a break from the ice breaker activities.

After our picnic some of us decided to take advantage of the day by heading to the Stalin museum in the center of town. If you haven’t been, it’s an experience. It takes about 30 minutes for the tour and, while they do seem to leave out some rather critical bits, we learned a lot. Did you know Stalin wrote 18 books? Me neither. We saw some of his belongings including his private train car (I have a picture of me laying on Stalin’s bed!) and a casting that was done of his face after he died. This was probably the most fun I’ve had in Georgia so far and a hell of a way to celebrate Independence Day. Best 10 lari I ever spent.

Back to work tomorrow, hope everyone in the U.S. is enjoying the day off but we’ve got to keep at it. Have fun.