Officially a Volunteer!
Hey all!
I apologize for the tardiness for those who have been wondering what I’ve been up to, but finally now that I have officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Benin volunteer, I have some time to sit down and write a little update.
The first three months of service in the Peace Corps is called Pre-Service Training (PST). My PST took place in a larger town in the South of Benin called Lokossa. During those three months I lived with an amazing, generous, unbelievably hilarious host family which I described in my last post. We had training everyday in Lokossa, save for a two week site visit where we got to go live with another host family in our real sites all over the country. The last four weeks of PST were all technical training. Since I am a rural community health volunteer, I learned about specific health practices promoted by the Minister of Health of Benin which I will pass on to my community throughout my two years of service here. I won’t go into detail about everything we learned because it was extensive, but the general topics were maternal health, good breast feeding practices, nutrition, danger signs during pregnancy, family planning/birth control, and hygiene.
On September 5th, 2019, my cohort of 67 rural community health (RCH), sustainable agricultural systems (SAS), and teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) trainers officially swore in as Peace Corps Benin volunteers. The oath we took was really inspiring and I think is worth sharing:
“I, Rita Dexter, promise to service alongside the people of Benin. I promise to share my culture with an open heart and an open mind. I promise to foster an understanding of the people of Benin with creativity, cultural sensitivity, and respect. I will face challenges of service with patience, humility, and determination. I will embrace the mission of world peace and friendship for as long as I serve and beyond. In the proud tradition of Peace Corps’ legacy and in the spirit of the Peace Corps family — I am a Peace Corps volunteer.”
That night we had a wild swearing-in party which I helped plan, and two days later we packed up all of our stuff into bush taxis and headed to our sites. My site is about a 10 hour drive from Lokossa in the Department of Donga. Unfortunately our bush taxi ran into some issues along the way so it took us about 13 hours to actually get here, but we made it! And now my site mate, Laura, and I are here in the Donga trying to visualize what our next two years will look like. Right now, I am typing up this blog post while five Beninese men are putting up a tissue ceiling in my house, preparing to paint the dark, sad cement walls which make up the concrete box I moved into three days ago. Laura and I feel so welcomed into our community, and we can’t wait to start our work here.
I’ll try to post once a month from here on out, thanks for reading :)
I apologize for the tardiness for those who have been wondering what I’ve been up to, but finally now that I have officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Benin volunteer, I have some time to sit down and write a little update.
The first three months of service in the Peace Corps is called Pre-Service Training (PST). My PST took place in a larger town in the South of Benin called Lokossa. During those three months I lived with an amazing, generous, unbelievably hilarious host family which I described in my last post. We had training everyday in Lokossa, save for a two week site visit where we got to go live with another host family in our real sites all over the country. The last four weeks of PST were all technical training. Since I am a rural community health volunteer, I learned about specific health practices promoted by the Minister of Health of Benin which I will pass on to my community throughout my two years of service here. I won’t go into detail about everything we learned because it was extensive, but the general topics were maternal health, good breast feeding practices, nutrition, danger signs during pregnancy, family planning/birth control, and hygiene.
On September 5th, 2019, my cohort of 67 rural community health (RCH), sustainable agricultural systems (SAS), and teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) trainers officially swore in as Peace Corps Benin volunteers. The oath we took was really inspiring and I think is worth sharing:
“I, Rita Dexter, promise to service alongside the people of Benin. I promise to share my culture with an open heart and an open mind. I promise to foster an understanding of the people of Benin with creativity, cultural sensitivity, and respect. I will face challenges of service with patience, humility, and determination. I will embrace the mission of world peace and friendship for as long as I serve and beyond. In the proud tradition of Peace Corps’ legacy and in the spirit of the Peace Corps family — I am a Peace Corps volunteer.”
That night we had a wild swearing-in party which I helped plan, and two days later we packed up all of our stuff into bush taxis and headed to our sites. My site is about a 10 hour drive from Lokossa in the Department of Donga. Unfortunately our bush taxi ran into some issues along the way so it took us about 13 hours to actually get here, but we made it! And now my site mate, Laura, and I are here in the Donga trying to visualize what our next two years will look like. Right now, I am typing up this blog post while five Beninese men are putting up a tissue ceiling in my house, preparing to paint the dark, sad cement walls which make up the concrete box I moved into three days ago. Laura and I feel so welcomed into our community, and we can’t wait to start our work here.
I’ll try to post once a month from here on out, thanks for reading :)
 |
| Swear-In Day ft. SAS in green, RCH in red, and TEFL in yellow (together we make the Beninese flag) |
Comments
Post a Comment