The End of an Era

I saw a joke once (probably on “How A PCV Puts it Gently”) that had a picture of people jumping all over the place getting excited and above it was the line “How I felt when I got my Peace Corps invitation”, right below it was the same picture again, but this time the line was “How I feel now that I am getting emails about COS.” It’s funny because it is SO true.

At some point in your Peace Corps service you start looking at your time and counting the days until you get home. It took some people in my group (myself included) almost two years to get into Peace Corps, and yet a lot of Volunteers still find that they end up doing this. Until about the four month mark, that is when you start freaking out about going home (you can check out “When Home Became Scary” if you want to hear more about that.) You freak out because you have adjusted to this, and it has become comfortable, and now home isn’t where the comfort is.

I went to my COS conference a week ago. The first time I was cognizant of COS was when they handed me this nicely laminated card that had all of our big meeting dates on it. PST (Pre Service Training), IST (Inner Service Training), MST (Mid Service Training) and COS (Close of Service); it was this neat little card with no warning of the emotions that would be connected to any of these gatherings. COS was far away, it was about as solid an idea as what job I was going to have when I get home. At some point COS became the goal line, the mythical gate that outgoing Volunteers had to pass through to get to the Promised Land (Microsoft is telling me to capitalize this so I’m going with it.) I think it started being this when I saw my Bots 11 friends going to theirs.

And then it was my turn, and I showed up to the nice hotel and had to deal with who I am going to be in a few months, and saying goodbye to the only group of people in this world that really understand what this has been, and think about something other than Botswana for a hot second. It was hard, we were finally be given permission to think about home and encouraged to plan for it, and yet that meant we had to think about all the other things, like leaving, and not having this life style any more, and saying goodbye.

I lucked out, I had a training group that managed to be pretty close. Even those Volunteers in Bots 12 that I didn’t spend a ton of time with, I still felt like they would have my back in a scrap. The group of people that encompass Bots 12 are some of the hardest working, caring, and determined individuals I have ever met and that is saying something since I have met a lot of wonderful people in my life. There were reusable pads, soccer tournaments, special Olympics, GLOW camps, condom distribution in taxis, M&E workshops, systems analysis and overhauls, reading rooms constructed, gardening projects, farmers markets organized, gender empowerment, LGBT support groups, computer training, English, math, and science classes taught, art competitions, pen pal programs, health and nutrition talks, small business development, a bajillion condom demonstrations and a million other projects that were accomplished by this group. Our diversity of projects is only mirrored in the diversity we have as a cohort.

We came with the want to change our communities for the better, and we managed to do that, in our own little corners, in our own little ways. We may, or may not, have moved mountains, but we took axes to the cliff face all the same. We lived for two years in a foreign land, and pushed ourselves to physical and emotional limits we had never thought to see. All the while we sang songs, and called each other, and crashed at each others pads, and shared our care packages, and at the end of the day we came to COS, knowing that for some of us it would be the last time we would see each other “on this side.” I wasn’t prepared, I didn’t realize how attached to this rollercoaster of an existence I had become. I thought I was ready for it to be over, and I still think I am in some part of myself, but there is a lot I am afraid to lose.

All of you will always have a place in my apartment/ house/ cardboard box/ van down by the river whenever you need it. No questions asked, for as long as you need.

Three days after COS wrapped up, in the middle of a PSDN meeting, I received an email from the One Acre Foundation congratulating me on getting the tree nursery fully funded by their organization. I turned the grant in, in December and hadn’t received any sort of confirmation of receipt so had assumed I had been taken out of the running. It would be a crazy task to set myself to try and get everything done before my June 10^th date, which is why I will be extending for another month before coming home.

I don’t know if I hoped to somehow convey the mixed emotions at this decision by prefacing it with my tale from COS. I’m excited to end my service with such an amazing opportunity, but moving a date that has been in my head from when I first received that little orange card, felt like standing on the edge of a cliff and being told to jump. Ultimately I know this is the right decision for myself and my community, and after sitting with it for a day, I'm not quite as hyped up as I was before (you know...yesterday.) This puts a bit of a wrench in my plans to travel around Southeast Asia for a month, but things happen. Claire makes plans and God laughs. :)

Promise to post more soon, and to those that are just now getting their invitations to serve in Bots 15 and may have stumbled onto this blog, CONGRATULATIONS! Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have, and I promise to get back to you ASAP. (Check out: Comments, Questions, and Answers for more info on how to contact me.)

Hugs and smooches from my side of the world to yours, 

Claire