It’s 4:16 AM. I was rudely woken up at 1:13 AM by the barking of dogs. I am visiting my permanent site and my new family today. Scary and yet thrilling, since it marks the beginning of our job, what we came here to do: to work with a certain community and leave a positive impact.
In these wee hours of the morning, I have written a list of things to do with my new family, which includes making a community map. I want to take a tour of my village and see what’s available. I want to know where all the dukans (little stores on the side of streets) are, where I could find some seamstresses (I am quite obsessed with the dresses here), what places to go and avoid, who the neighbors are, and essentially learn everything I can to flourish there in 4 weeks. I have also listed some things to be aware of. I have made some mistakes with my first family, and I want to correct them once I get to my permanent site. For one, my current family doesn’t allow me to do any chores, and I want to tell my new family right off the bat that I want to be an equal part of the family. Along the same lines, I want to learn how to heat the water and get the water for showers and how to do basic cooking. In my current family, I still don’t really know how to do these things: I usually hope for heated water in the bathroom and when there isn’t, I just take a pretty cold shower. I am starting to despise this passive approach, although I have managed to heat some water, learning by trial and error.
The minibus will drop me off at the hospital, my workplace. I will hang out with my counterpart and hopefully, she will introduce me to some people and give me a tour. She is a family doctor, and I met her yesterday. She is very personable. I have thought about some questions to ask her, to start assessing what the community needs, in terms of health education. However, veteran volunteers keep telling us to slow down and drink tea with them, and I am fully prepared to do that, but it wouldn’t hurt to start a dialogue today.
So I have to go to the bank today to start an account and also go to the post office to find out the mailing address. I also have to call Peace Corps to let them know that I have arrived safely, although I am pretty close to the PC headquarters. That’s disappointing and also neat. On the one hand, I had wanted to travel and see other parts of the country, since I have trained in this province and especially my training site is twenty minutes from my permanent site. I feel like I would be exposed to the same challenges and atmosphere. My comfort zone. However, I am an hour from the capital of Turkmenistan, and I would get to see volunteers whenever they come to the capital. During my site placement interview, I didn’t say where I wanted to go, although I had secreted coveted a certain province, because coming into Peace Corps, I was ready to be flexible, and I was prepared to go wherever PC needs volunteers.
I am staying for 5 days with my new host family, and I am trying to pack very lightly. I am not that worried about the packing, because I can just come back here to pick up anything that I have forgotten. It’s pretty cool that I don’t have to travel for that long. Other volunteers have 14-24 hour train rides, and since I get motion sickness, I don’t envy them. Ok. I don't have time to finish this post, but I will continue this later. I am leaving now for my new site. Bye! Love, Amy.
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