On June 4th, I'll fly out of Detroit for staging in Philadelphia. The following day, June 5th, I will take a bus with my fellow Peace Corps Kenya trainees up to JFK Airport in New York for our flight to Kenya, connecting through Zurich. We will arrive in Nairobi the evening of June 6th, thus beginning the next chapter of my Peace Corps experience.
The prospect of going through the entire Peace Corps process from scratch is a little daunting. Once you arrive in-country, each trainee is required to go through a long series of basic informational sessions covering such enticing subjects ranging from administration, security, and medical. Important stuff, no doubt. But after having received this training before, I was less than enthused to learn that I would be subjected to pre-service training again.
Which is why I was thrilled to receive an email from John, the Director of Programming and Training in Kenya, which set out an alternative timeline for the training of us Mali transfers.
Instead of going through all of the basic introductory Peace Corps training sessions, we will first work with the Water and Sanitation technical trainer on tailoring the skills we had learned in Mali to Kenya, and how to best integrate these skills into pre-service training for the entire group.
We will also immediately be placed into an 'intensified' Swahili language class, with the goal of achieving an 'intermediate low' level of speaking proficiency within 5 weeks. As was the case in Mali, we will be staying with a homestay family throughout training.
Later on in training, Peace Corps Kenya Trainees will be sent out to a current volunteer's site to shadow them and get a feel for their normal routines. We, however, will instead be sent directly to our new sites, allowing us to get an early start in our new villages.
This training schedule is great news for me. It should eliminate much of the repetition in training that I feared, instead allowing me to focus primarily on language learning. And the accelerated timetable will allow me to begin acclimating myself into my new village early. Since I am not scheduled to serve a full two years in Kenya, this could prove useful in helping me become more productive earlier in my service.
In closing, I'll share the end of John's email with you:
"We are looking forward to having you join us here in Kenya. Get ready for some fantastic views of Mount Kilimanjaro since the training center is located just on the northern foothill. Be sure to bring some warm clothing, you will experience nothing like the heat of Mali in many parts of Kenya."
Views and warm clothing... yeah, we're not in Mali anymore!
The prospect of going through the entire Peace Corps process from scratch is a little daunting. Once you arrive in-country, each trainee is required to go through a long series of basic informational sessions covering such enticing subjects ranging from administration, security, and medical. Important stuff, no doubt. But after having received this training before, I was less than enthused to learn that I would be subjected to pre-service training again.
Which is why I was thrilled to receive an email from John, the Director of Programming and Training in Kenya, which set out an alternative timeline for the training of us Mali transfers.
Instead of going through all of the basic introductory Peace Corps training sessions, we will first work with the Water and Sanitation technical trainer on tailoring the skills we had learned in Mali to Kenya, and how to best integrate these skills into pre-service training for the entire group.
We will also immediately be placed into an 'intensified' Swahili language class, with the goal of achieving an 'intermediate low' level of speaking proficiency within 5 weeks. As was the case in Mali, we will be staying with a homestay family throughout training.
Later on in training, Peace Corps Kenya Trainees will be sent out to a current volunteer's site to shadow them and get a feel for their normal routines. We, however, will instead be sent directly to our new sites, allowing us to get an early start in our new villages.
This training schedule is great news for me. It should eliminate much of the repetition in training that I feared, instead allowing me to focus primarily on language learning. And the accelerated timetable will allow me to begin acclimating myself into my new village early. Since I am not scheduled to serve a full two years in Kenya, this could prove useful in helping me become more productive earlier in my service.
In closing, I'll share the end of John's email with you:
"We are looking forward to having you join us here in Kenya. Get ready for some fantastic views of Mount Kilimanjaro since the training center is located just on the northern foothill. Be sure to bring some warm clothing, you will experience nothing like the heat of Mali in many parts of Kenya."
Views and warm clothing... yeah, we're not in Mali anymore!
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