Coup Runnings

Hi Friends!

We were evacuated from Mali on Sunday after a lot of time consolidated at our regional capital, Sikasso, and at Tso, our training center. In both instances, it was mostly hanging out and holding our breaths to get details on WTF was going on. Basically a lot of this:

Over the last week (since Sunday) we have been at our evacuation "transition" conference at a very nice hotel (below). First, let me tell you that they have taken care of us in every way imaginable. 

Evacuation was really emotional and stressful, and a team from Washington came with additional medical staff, counselors, transition help, a placement officer, a career counselor, etc. They have done an amazing job of taking care of us, and we have also had conference calls/sessions with the head of Master's International and the head of Peace Corps Response at HQ in DC. Everyone has been so helpful and willing to help us get to the next steps and put our lives back together, we just wanted to give them a shout out and thank them for all of their help! We also appreciate our PC Mali staff (below) coming along with us. (Mike, our Country Director, is second from left.)

So here is what has happened over the last week. We have been staying at a lovely hotel by the beach, and spending a lot of time thinking and trying to plan. Here is how lovely it is:

There were basically 4 things to do with us as evacuees: 

• "COS," or simply close out our PC Mali service and go home to work, do PC Fellows, or apply to Peace Corps Response;
• Direct transfer, or go directly to another country and program in the traditional PC sense of 2 years of service as a PCV;
• Direct-delayed transfer, or go to your "home of record" and wait for the training class to begin in your transfer country (basically for like 1 month or so, so you're not stuck in Ghana), and also serve for 2 years as a PCV; and
• Re-enrollment, or COS PC Mali service here, go home, and basically re-apply (except a much shorter process) to be in a new training class, do pre-service training, etc.

So we thought, obviously we want to do a direct transfer. It would be the fastest and surest way to complete our PC experience and still get to live in a community, serve for 2 years, and do what we wanted to do, just in a different setting. Cool, right? Well, there were only a few countries with this option open who wanted to host PC Mali evacuees (refugees!). They would only transfer you in this way if you found a position with your same job title, so you would stay in the same job. The only country we both qualified for was Burkina Faso (below).

This part was really hard for us. Burkina is awesome, as Jon and Becca have told me lots of times. We wanted to visit Burkina, and serving there would be like Mali all over again. It even looks like Mali. That was the problem for us--seeing as how it's just next door to the Sikasso region where our "real" home is, we thought it would be awfully hard to commit to these new people and not want to go home, constantly compare our new service to Mali, etc. We also did not want to take a spot from someone else who would be super excited about Burkina, since there were only so many spots open. So we declined.

We started looking at Peace Corps Response. It's basically a program for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) to continue to serve, but in a more technical capacity, and it's more for people with a lot of experience. We thought it would be a great option if we could find two positions, in the same country, that we both qualified for and wanted. A tall order to say the least. Then we found Guyana...

Guyana is a tiny South American country between Venezuela and Suriname. It speaks English, but has been colonized by just about everybody, and Venezuela and Suriname both still claim some of its Amazonian land as their own. Basically it's a country as confused and mixed up as we are, so it already seems perfect. 

I found a position as an HIV/AIDS technical support specialist. I would be working with the Ministry of Health and helping them improve their capacity for prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), monitoring and evaluation, health education and communication, patient care, quality assurance, etc. They wanted an MPH with 2 years of HIV/AIDS experience, some health communication work/coursework, and some other stuff that looked like it came right off my resume. It would also include site visits in rural areas!

Cass found a position with an NGO that does radio shows for "educational entertainment," presumably on HIV and other diseases with a high burden in Guyana. They need help with website development, social media, archiving their radio shows on their website, and training their staff on how to do all of these things, so basically teaching them web design. Cass was pretty much the exactly right person for this since he's taught so much math and done so much awesome work with MailChimp. 

Things were looking great. Then we Googled pictures of Guyana.

Pardon my French, but holy shit. 

Have you ever seen the movie "Up," the Pixar film? Paradise Falls was based on Mount Roraima, above. It's at the corner where Brazil, Guyana, and Venezuela meet. So at this point we were thinking, wow, okay, we could deal with this.

Waterfalls. Dude. Looks like Costa Rica. This could be cool, right? This is the largest, highest waterfall by volume in the world. Amazing.

Here is the capital, Georgetown. This is most likely where we would be living, though nothing is set in stone. Even if we do live here, I would be going out to rural sites where HIV prevention activities are going on. My job description said that I would have to be transported by "speedboat" to get to some sites...and that life vests are standard issue to PCVs in Guyana. Hell yes!

We love boating. We love colorful parrots, water, trees. Beach and mountains. Things you miss when you live in Mali.

There are jaguars, otters, parrots, and an insane amount of biodiversity.

Welcome to our new home: we are going to Guyana.