Peace Corps Boot Camp

            Peace Corps has its own method to train volunteers.  In fact, we are not called volunteers until after we finish nine weeks of pre-service training and get sworn in.  That is when our two years of service begins.  After leaving Manchester the morning of September 11^th, we arrived in Philadelphia where we joined the other 33 invitees to begin service in Botswana.  We are called “Bots 13”, since we are the thirteenth group to serve since Peace Corps returned to Botswana in 2003. 

            At Philadelphia, we completed paperwork and participated in about five hours of seminars and meetings.  It was an attempt to make sure everyone understood what they were getting in to.  Then we were off to bed for about five hours of sleep.  We rose at 2:30 AM to catch a 3 AM charter bus to JFK airport in New York.  Everyone was groggy, but few people could sleep.  At JFK, we waited awhile and then checked into a non-stop flight to Johannesburg, South Africa.  Once on board, we endured a very long (15 hour} flight heading mainly south.  We changed in Johannesburg onto a short flight to Gabarone, Botswana’s capital, arriving in early afternoon.  The whole ordeal lasted more than 24 hours, something we never want to repeat.

            We were picked up at the airport on a charter bus and taken to The Big Five Lodge in Gaborone, a modest hotel and conference center.  We thought that we would be allowed to go right to sleep, but no such luck.  We attended several orientation sessions, played a team-building game, ate dinner as a group, then it was time for bed.  The next morning we attended more meetings, had lunch, then climbed aboard a charter bus for Kanye, an oversized village of 50,000 about 50 miles west of Gabarone. 

            While there were bureaucratic reasons for our treatment up until then, Kanye would be the place where Peace Corps’ training model would truly come to life.  We attended a ceremony at a very modern continuing education center on the outskirts of town.  There, we were matched with our host families, the households where each of us would live for the next nine weeks.  Peace Corps believes that all volunteers should spend time residing with a typical family and thus getting to know how Batswana (the people of Botswana) really live.  We were taken in vans (called combis) to our homes where we expected to spend time with our family over the weekend.

            The cultural immersion really began when we moved into our host family home.  We will discuss more about that later.  Our host mother (a widow) has been very good to us. We couldn't ask for anyone better.  We share the home with her youngest two sons (19 and 20 something) and her daughter (20 something) and the daughter’s own 6 year old girl.  We have our own simple bedroom with bed and dressers.  We have electricity, water service, bathroom and television.  We heat water on the gas stove for cooking and filling buckets for  bathing.  There is a rooster in the yard (who likes to crow throughout the night) with several hens and many chicks.  There is a guard dog and her puppy outdoors and an indoor/outdoor cat.

            Trainees are expected to eat meals with the host family and to help with household chores.  The Peace Corps pays these families by supplying them with extra food (more than enough for a trainee), propane gas canisters and credits for electric bills.  The host family is supposed to involve the trainee in family activities, including meal preparation and attendance at church, weddings, funerals and cultural events.  The host family also is supposed to help with our Setswana instruction.  The younger members of the family speak reasonable English, but our host mother does not.  Yet she is our main outlet for Setswana practice.

            The rest of the Peace Corps training model is displayed in its pre-service training curriculum, which is made up of classes and field trips six days a week.  We are based at the Kanye education center.  The training includes instruction in the Peace Corps model of development, safety, health, cultural awareness and, most importantly, language instruction. 

For Setswana classes, we are broken up into small clusters, arranged by the neighborhoods in which volunteers live.  There are only three in our cluster (one person has dropped out for family reasons).  It is hard to learn a new language, particularly a non-European language, as one gets older.  But it clearly is important, since most everyone in Kanye, and perhaps in most other places in Botswana, speak Setswana on the street, even if the younger ones have learned English in school.  We are expected to be reasonably fluent, since as volunteers we are supposed to work directly with Batswana and to understand its people and culture.

Late every afternoon we return to our home stay, tired from the day’s work.  I try to go for a walk (running would make me stand out too much at this point).  We do our homework and then relax by watching Botswana television with our family.  We have a busy schedule coupled with the task of blending in with our host family in cramped quarters.  We’ve now completed the second week, and have the beginnings of adjusting to the new pattern of our lives.  It is tough, but we are very much engaged with the training and remain positive.