Integration

The first three months in our community is called the integration phase.  We are meant to go around our community introducing ourselves, asking questions, and figuring out what the challenges our community faces.  We are tasked to compile a report on our findings which will help us and use as a reference throughout the rest of our service.  We are only allowed one night a month to stay away from site which kind of feels like house arrest.  My counterpart has been really good at setting up meetings for me to meet with all of the groups throughout my Chiefdom.  I have met with 5 Neighborhood Care Points (the community kitchens that feed orphans/vulnerable children), 3 HIV support groups, a handicraft group, sewing group, adult literacy program, the clinic, the primary school, and development committee.  I have met the Chief, attended a couple Umphakatsi meetings (community meetings with Inner Council to the Chief), I was there for the election 25 new community police, and I go to church on a fairly regular basis.  I am supposed to go homestead to homestead with a survey, but that really hasn’t happened.  I have slacked a bit on that end, but I hope all of my other meetings will compensate.

Thankfully, house arrest, I mean integration is almost over.  It ends with an In-Service Training that will help us in the programming aspect of our service.  I am really looking forward to IST because at this point, I have identified ton of groups I could help, but I am not an ideas person as far as programming goes.  I have never been the initiator of a project and being the leader is intimidating to me.

I could sit in my room and do nothing for these two years and come back to America with a couple pictures and a few stories and everyone would be so proud of me because simply I was a Peace Corps Volunteer.  But I don’t want to leave here having done nothing.  I want at the end of these two years to have actually made a noted positive impact on my community.  I feel this huge weight on my shoulders, but it’s a weight of my own making.  I have higher expectations for myself than anyone else. 

It makes it easier when I get to talk to my fellow Volunteers and share our successes and setbacks, but this hasn’t been so easy (house arrest).  So I am really looking forward to IST to help organize my ideas, brainstorm solutions, and give me the confidence to be a catalyst for development in my community.