VAC and the Welcoming Committee

I have been given the immense honor, my friends, to be the Assabe Regional Coordinator for 2007-2008. Apparently, my good nature and impressive work ethic has made such an impression on other volunteers that, in a surprising act of democracy, I was voted to be the next coordinator…Oh! The power that I now wield: great forces will bow down at my RC mercy; no army will be strong enough to withstand my brute RC strength; and no damsel will be able to resist my infallible RC charms. Oh! The power!

Actually, no one else wanted the position, and I showed the slightest enough interest to be nominated and voted upon. The job is nothing glamorous. It entails being a “conduit”, as the Peace Corps terms it, between my fellow regional volunteers and the Peace Corps headquarters in Nouakchott. I also have to manage the regional Peace Corps bureau, i.e. pay bills and so forth. It sounds easy, but thus far in my first week on the job, I have managed to bankrupt the regional bank account and lose the regional bureau through unresolved rent negotiations {the owner wants to raise the rent and I refuse to let her do so!}. So, on the bright side, there might not be any need for my job relatively soon.

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Each quarter, the regional coordinators gather together to form a Volunteer Action Committee (VAC), the purpose of which is to communicate volunteer concerns and issues to the country Peace Corps staff. The first meeting was held at the end of June, a week before the arrival of the new Mauritanian Peace Corps trainees. The meeting went smoothly: the staff readily agreed to most of the improvements suggested by the VAC.

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Following the meeting, the VAC was given the task of the Welcoming Committee. The regional coordinators worked long and hard arranging the logistics for the arrival of the new class of trainees. Worry not, for we partied hard also. We didn’t want any repeats of The Shining (“All work and no play…”), especially with new blood on the way.

The trainees arrived into Dakar, Senegal on Wednesday morning. A group of us, me included, flew down from Nouakchott in a rented jet plane, all bleary-eyed at three in the morning, gathered the trainees and flew back to Mauritania. The following day and a half consisted of herding the new ones from their respective hotels to the Nouakchott bureau for official paperwork, medical exams, cultural presentations and so forth. I am relieved to report that no one died before they all headed down to Kaédi for the beginning of Stage 2007.

While the trainees were generally in good form, some appeared weaker than others. I have found, however, that outer weakness often hides inner strength. Everyone seemed to be in a cheery mood and glad, strangely, to be in Mauritania. I feel that most don’t know yet what they are getting themselves into. It will be interesting to see how many of the 72 survive this summer and become official volunteers. I hope that they all do, but I know that some people will terminate their services before then. It’s just how it goes.

Up next time: “One year done! What comes next?”