Too Many Rookies, Not Enough Pros!

On the one hand, we have 36 trainees about to become full Peace Corps Volunteers, as opposed to about 15 PCVs currently in Madagascar. As I mentioned last week, all of these new PCVs will be awesome. But they are new. They will have a steep learning curve, feelings of loneliness, questions about their job and their role in their community, all in the first few months. They will be the rookies (or Zandry). And there will be a lot of them. Luckily, today we got a few more of the Zoky (elders) back in Madagascar: four Peace Corps Response Volunteers, including the Pargees and Ryan Marsh. The program continues to grow, and although not yet close to its pre-evacuation level of 120 or so, it is still exciting. These Response volunteers will be working directly with NGOs like Catholic Relief Services and Conservation International. It was a nice boost to get to see these old friends (I trained with them back in early 2008) before heading back to site. But now it is back to work, and I will update again in a few weeks... Enga Anie! (Hopefully!)