5 Days

I have five days left of endless burgers, fries, and refills on my diet coke. On Sunday I'll be leaving for DC, and after a quick run down of all the do's and don'ts I'll swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and board a plane for Tanzania. There I'll serve as a Health Educator from June 2008- August 2010. I'm pretty certain I can make it 27 months without McDonald's, but the thought of no Diet Mountain Dew is a bit overwhelming. I've spent the past week and a half trying to break my habit of 6 cans per day, but with such a strong addiction it's a daily struggle.

I don't know what first attracted me to Peace Corps, but I started looking into the program in high school. In college I studied abroad in Italy for a semester and when I returned to the States I really started researching it. I've been fortunate enough to have done a few mission trips abroad, to Mexico and Germany, and with study abroad I was able to visit several other countries as well. The most surprising things I found while I was abroad were that foreigners seemed to know more about our country than some of our citizens do, and also that in many parts of the world our country is looked at in a negative way... as I'm sure many people could guess. When I looked into Peace Corps their mission statement hit home with with me:

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.
The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals:
1) Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2) Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3) Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

I want to understand other cultures, contribute in any way to fill their needs, and also I want to promote a more positive image of the US.


I knew this is what I had to do, so I applied and requested Sub-Saharan Africa. I couldn't have been happier when I found out I was going to Tanzania, and after looking it up and finding out where in Africa it is I was even more elated!

As a Health Educator I'll be working with local schools and the health center to educate students about basic health issues and AIDS/HIV prevention. I'm calling my program "Wrap It Up with Catherine Duthie"... this title I'll only use with myself of course...and perhaps a few select volunteers.

I'm not really sure what to expect. I'll be living with a host family and training for the first two months. I hear training is intense...language, culture, cooking and basic health/survival classes all day. Oh yeah, I have to learn Swahili. For those who know me language acquisition isn't exactly my strong suit, so this should be good. Don't worry mom, I DO know "Nina sindano yangu"....."I have my own syringe".

I'm going to try to update this as much as possible, as well as send out emails! I look forward to writing about my experiences as The Village Idiot, and I hope you enjoy reading them!