Week 76: Isolation, Diversity, and Acting Class

Peace Corps is a two-year commitment with 2-3 additional months of training before one’s service officially begins. I arrived in August 2013 had pre-service training until October. For the next three months I was not allowed to leave the village which would be my home for the next two years, this period is called community integration or lovingly referred to by PCVs as “lockdown.” Lockdown ends with a two-week training called In-Service Training (IST). This week I facilitated a session at the IST for the PCV group who came a year after me. The session I was co-facilitating was on diversity and led to some quality conversations amongst the training group on their respective identities. Many PCVs feel a common bond with each other that may not have been present had we met stateside due to the nature of our shared experiences. However, unfortunately American prejudices and narrow mindedness also travel with individuals no matter what continent they are on and consequently some people may feel isolated in their newfound communities whether they are amongst host country nationals or fellow Americans.

In the library the standard six and seven classes are reading Finding Nemo. I thought the story was on par with the classes’ English level and would make for a good time in class. However one of the classes this week was trying to act “too cool for school” and thus I turned the lesson into an acting class and instead of simply looking up the challenging words (ie accused) in a dictionary. I had the students practice accusing each other. Other fun words included gasped and exclaimed. By the end of the lesson my irritation and the student’s attitudes had all melted into laughter.