In mid April, an email landed in my inbox telling me that my Uganda cohort would have our first on-boarding meeting via Zoom the following Friday. Wow! Another step and feeling more real!

During the meeting, our Country Desk Officer mostly went over administrative info. We’d have more tasks coming via “Learning Space” and we should make sure we get those completed, as our departure depends on having them done. She also explained that the last item that will determine our departure date is logistics around travel COVID testing requirements. Once that is sorted out, we’ll have a departure date; we should know by mid-May.

On the call, I also learned that we will have 45 people in our cohort, evenly divided between Agribusiness, Education, and Health. We were on Zoom for the call, but everyone kept cameras off – that is standard practice for Peace Corps to help with bandwidth issues, especially when calls include attendees “in country.” Nonetheless, we were able to ask questions via chat. I asked if there was some way we could connect with our fellow volunteers ahead of time and ended up volunteering to set up a Facebook group.

More tasks

A few days after the meeting, our country desk officer sent out the email with links and this began another round of tasks… at least they aren’t about getting clearance – these tasks assume we are going! So, I’m working on updating my resume and aspiration statement according to their format and questions. This information will help country staff get to know us better before we arrive. Then there are videos to watch and lessons to work through around core expectations, security procedures, and even a set to learn how to use Learning Space. I’m beginning to feel like I’m headed off to college…

Photo

Today’s photo is of two sea stars on the WA Coast, taken in 2018. At that time there were not very many, so seeing two together was heartening; much of the population had been wiped out by “sea star wasting syndrome.” I’m happy to report that last summer (2021) we saw even more.