We're going where?

About 5 weeks ago, the Peace Corps Fiji staff announced where each individual or couple would be headed for their 2-year assignment. This is the culmination of all the work and effort that trainees and staff have put in to identify what sites would best meet the needs of the local people as well as the needs of the volunteers. Keep in mind that the trainees/volunteers, once they’ve reached this point, have already been heavily vetted, so Peace Corps generally has a pretty good idea of where most people will fit.

The Peace Corps application process is no small task. Michelle and I began our application 18 months prior to our selection for Fiji, which was just 6 weeks before we stepped on a plane to the South Pacific. The time in between was filled with multiple interviews, a psychological profile, medical/dental exams and immunizations, essays upon essays, questionnaires, recommendation letters, and a “wish list” of where we’d like to go. Just making it through the application process is a testament to the determination and dedication of the applicant. If you can at least manage to make it through all that bureaucracy, you’ve shown that you have the patience and resilience to be a good Peace Corps volunteer. Imagine a track and field event involving endurance running and randomly placed hurdles where a line judge decides to arbitrarily stop the race for individuals where they see fit and you have an idea of the Peace Corps application process.

Given our passion about the oceans (not to mention my interest in – not addiction to – fishing), Michelle and I selected three regions on our wish list including: (1) the South Pacific; (2) Southeast Asia; and (3) the Caribbean. Bear in mind that those of us in Fiji are a percent of a percent of a percent of all applicants to the Peace Corps. Last year, about 16,000 people applied to the Peace Corps for only 8,000 available positions. Of that 8,000, most volunteers end up in Africa or Latin America. Only 5 percent of all Peace Corps applicants go to the South Pacific and only a percentage of that end up in Fiji. Currently, there are about 30-35 trainees who are annually selected for Fiji, making the overall percentage of Peace Corps volunteers who apply for service and end up in Fiji about 0.45 percent of all Peace Corps applicants per year. Nonetheless, placement is at the pleasure of the Peace Corps and we could have just as easily ended up in a landlocked African nation like Niger (for those of you confused by a recent Vice Presidential candidate, Africa is a continent, not a country). Thus, we feel very fortunate that we were selected for not just the South Pacific, but for Fiji specifically.

So for site announcements, the Peace Corps Fiji Training Director, Rose Armour, held a dinner at her home in Suva to announce our site placements. Prior to the dinner, two large maps of the north and south islands, Vanua Levu and Viti Levu respectively, and a smaller one of the Yasawa Islands, were placed on a large plywood platform covering what would be a swimming pool. Anticipation was allowed to build as trainees browsed around what would be their prospective sites on the map while other staff and current volunteers arrived. Next, large envelopes where handed out to all the trainees, who were instructed to await an announcement for everyone to open their envelopes simultaneously. Shortly after, the announcement was made to open our envelopes and, like 6 year olds on Christmas morning, the trainees all tore into their envelopes to varying degrees of surprise, confusion, satisfaction, or disappointment. Everyone dreams of that idyllic thatched hut on a beach surrounded by palm trees and crystal blue waters for their site placement. However, the reality is that Fiji is a developing nation and its needs vary just like any other developing nation. This includes needs in urban and rural as well as interior and coastal areas. While most trainees seemed satisfied with their placements, there were a few who expressed outward disappointment with their placement. In previous years, some trainees have apparently cried they were so disappointed. I can understand mild disappointment with a placement, we all yearn for that tropical paradise, but I do think perspective is in order.

Nowhere in Fiji are you more than 2 hours from the beach. Furthermore, the tropical jungles and mountains are amazing in and of themselves. Taking this into account, and considering my description of the total percentage of volunteers in Fiji, it makes it hard to understand how anyone could really be disappointed, but it apparently happens. I guess you can’t please everyone all the time and some folks can find the dark cloud in every silver lining, but I can’t help but suggest to those folks that they could’ve been in Kazakhstan living in a concrete Khrushchev surrounded by snow or in Niger living in a mud hut surrounded by scorching sand. That said (and not to be smug) Michelle and I were incredibly fortunate because not only did we get the Idyllic beachside villa, but our house is about 1000 square feet, made of wood (much of it mahogany no less), powered by hydroelectric (thank you China for your attempt to buy U.N. votes), and has reliable running water. So we really don’t have anything to complain about.

Our site assignment package described a site on Vanua Levu in a village called Wailevu, about an hour bus ride from the main southern city on the island, Savusavu. Savusavu is a town of about 5,000 people including surrounding communities, hardly making it an “urban center” by U.S. standards, but it is as urban as it gets next to Labasa on the north end of Vanua Levu at 24,000. Wailevu is comprised of the village proper and several small settlements outside village boundaries amounting to about 300 people. The village is on a small river delta sandwiched between a coral coast and beautiful rocky peaks over 1000 feet and blanketed in lush, green jungle. Michelle was assigned to address public health and education needs while I was assigned to address environmental needs in the village. We probably couldn’t have asked for more…this is as close to paradise as it gets in terms of our assignment. So later that night after an amazing Mexican dinner (you have no idea how hard this is to come by in Fiji), many of the trainees went out either to celebrate or drown their sorrows and we, very content with our assignment, went back to the hotel where we were staying to enjoy another precious night of air conditioning, hot showers, and the Discovery Channel before returning to our host village and buckling down for the last two weeks of training. In any event, the last big step before swearing in as Peace Corps volunteers was complete and we were all able to rest easier with at least a little more certainty of what we were getting into.