Entering the home stretch…

A sunset from my house in Fagalii-uta.

That's 'my' dog, Charlie. This is her first bath, and she was surprisingly patient with it. She meets me at the bus every day after work, and follows me every time I leave the house. Anyone loooking to adopt a dog? I'll bring her home with me for any good home that's offered?!

I’ve got about 5 months left, and am busier than ever at work. It still amazes me how far I’ve come… the first 6 months after swearing-in I had to work hard to occupy my time, and became involved in a random assortment of secondary projects. Now, I am juggling all sorts of major projects and just hoping I’ll complete everything I can before I go.

Me and my co-worker, Keli. We're hard at work.

At METI, I’m finishing (hopefully) the Ecoliteracy curriculum. This has been challenging for me, partly because I’m rather disenchanted with the school system and feel like this part of my work is something of an unnecessary band-aid, but it’s given me curriculum-writing experience (and quite easily shown me how little interest I have in doing that for a career), and it’s been a learning experience.

The work I most enjoy, though, is the project management side of our rehabilitation projects. I’ve described METI’s work before, so I won’t repeat myself. We’ve started monitoring our coral gardening projects more closely after we’ve completed the initial work, and I enjoyed working with my (always awesome) counterpart, Tavita, to find the most logical, efficient and useful methods. We finally decided to ‘randomly’ tag 4 of the coral-covered fish houses that we’ve created with the villages at each site, so the last two weeks we traveled around Upolu Island armed with a digital camera, plastic tags, and snorkel and mask. We tagged each selected house with a different color plastic tag, then took pictures of all the coral growing on it, drew a rough map of where the house is at in relation to the shoreline, and now will be able to track the growth of the coral over the next years.

A view from the ferry on the way back from a site in Savai'i. The island in the distance is Apolima-tai, where there's a small village of about 90 people.

One particular village, Matautu-tai, is doing really well with the project. We only completed the work in December, but you can easily see the huge changes in coral growth, and there are already much larger and more plentiful fish within the Marine Protected Area (MPA). It’s heartening to see that a project you’ve worked hard on is already producing positive changes. In theory, those fish will grow bigger and more numerous, and eventually swim their way out of the MPA, where they’ll be caught and sold, or eaten, by the village, thus increasing livelihoods/food security.

Keli and Tavita, hard at work also.

I am also proud as a new mama because one of my favorite villages, Falease’ela-tai, got approved for a grant that I initiated and co-wrote. By the time I leave, we should have completed a large scale marsh rehabilitation project with the village. I love this village because they have a great track record of completing well-thought-out conservation projects, and very little history of misuse of funds. It’s beautiful- surrounded by dramatic cliffs, with a huge lagoon, a large river with a waterfall, and friendlier-than-average villagers. I’m glad they will be one of my last major projects, and thrilled that I’ll be able to see the project through from pre-conception to finish.

The last main project I’m working on is planning an Ecotourism Conference for PCVs and their counterparts. I think one of the major needs of Samoa is a way for families and villages to support themselves financially, rather than relying on cash from overseas relatives. There are very few small businesses, and there’s a definite need for more small-scale tourism activities. I’m working on designing/organizing the conference, and am gaining great experience, and enjoying it, so far. It’s great to be in the driver’s seat and leading the project.

Without getting my mom’s hopes up too high… it looks like I’ll be heading home in late July or early August sometime. I have to leave the country (visa expires) by August 24th.

I’ve gotten many emails recently from family and friends talking about their friends who are thinking about/filling out the application for/interviewing for the Peace Corps, and asking if they can forward my email to them… so here’s a general, blanket permission for anyone to email me if they are considering Peace Corps. I am more than happy to answer questions, and would give positive, though honest answers. I wouldn’t recommend the Peace Corps to everyone, but have been so, so happy with my experience, despite- or maybe because of- the challenges I’ve encountered. My email is jejobe@gmail.com.

I hear from almost everyone that I talk to how they ‘thought about’ or ‘almost joined’ or ‘always wanted to do’ the Peace Corps. All I can say is… do it. Or don’t, but don’t sit around and over think it. Fill out the (long) application, go to the interview, see how it goes. You’ve got nothing to lose in interviewing and seeing what sorts of opportunities you could have. You could be in an entirely different country doing something flabbergastingly, perplexingly amazing in a year. Or you could still be sitting around, doing the same old job. I’m glad that I won’t regret not doing it. (I don’t think that made sense grammatically, but that’s another drawback to PC- you forget how to write proper English!)

Despite the bureaucracy, Peace Corps has been undoubtedly a great experience, for me (I can’t speak for everyone here…). As my service is drawing to a close I feel more and more strongly about the benefits of Peace Corps. World-wide, or country-wide change will never happen because of Peace Corps Volunteers, but you do get to be a part of some really neat projects, and meet some amazing people, and do interesting work, just because you’re a PCV. You get thrown in some pretty incredible situations, and there are definite advantages to being part of this organization. Ok, I’m done with that spontaneous recruitment message! Enjoy the pictures!