Rita’s PeaceCorps Stories

Bonjour tout le monde! We left off with our arrival in the Lokossa Training Center Wednesday June 12, 2019. All three sectors, TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language), SAS (sustainable agricultural systems), and RCH (rural community health) stayed in the Training Center for the next three nights. On Saturday, June 15, 2019, we were separated into language classes within our respective sectors based on our French level coming into the program. SAS and RCH were then assigned host families (famille d’accueil) in villages outside of Lokossa and TEFL was assigned host families in Lokossa. I was put in a language class with five other women in RCH and we were all assigned host families in a village called Koudo, about 20 minutes away from the training center. We were also assigned a Language and Cultural Facilitator (LCF) named Raymond who lives (for the time being) in Koudo with us and teaches our language classes. My host family has never had a volunteer before, which is fairly u...

Hello everyone, Bear with me, I’ve never been much of a public speaker in person and I doubt that will change with a screen in front of me. Also, I managed to get access to WiFi on my phone but it doesn’t seem to work on my laptop, so I will be text typing these blog posts for the time being. Alors soyez gentils s’il vous plaît. I flew from Anchorage, AK to Washington DC on Sunday night, June 9th 2019. I flew from Anchorage to Chicago (6h) then Chicago to DC (2h) and arrived at 10:30 am on June 10th. From there I took a Lyft to the 4H Convention Center for registration and orientation. I found that carrying my backpacking backpack (42 lbs) on my back, my carry on backpack (~25 lbs) on my front, my duffle (50.2 lbs) in one hand, and my “personal item” (~5 lbs) in the other hand was extremely heavy and I couldn’t walk more than 20 feet without becoming winded. And honestly I don’t feel like I overpacked but we’ll see how I feel in a year or so. Anyways, we had meetings all day Monday...