New posts

Yesterday we received our new posts, and today we met our counterparts.
Counterparts are local Cameroonians, for us in most cases farmers, who live or work in our villages and will be partnering with us in our work. It was certainly an exciting time for all the stageaires, to find out where we will be living for the next two years of our lives! My village is called Mafa-Kilda and is right on the main road between Garoua and Ngoundere, but only 30 km from Garoua. This is so close to Nassarao, where we have been training, which I am happy about, because I look forward to visiting my homestay family, and now will have real means to do so as I wont be far at all. Over half of our group will be posted in the Extreme North, some very close to the border with Nigeria, in the mountains, some near Waza National Park, which should be cool to visit!
I will be opening a post, which means that I will be the first Peace Corps volunteer the community has had and in fact I believe there are six or seven of us opening posts. Peace Corps agroforestry system is set up somewhat to go in an eight year rotation (if needed). A volunteer opens in a communty, and if things go well and the communty wants to continue the work, that volunteer will be replaced after two years. This can continue up to eight years, when, ideally the work is done. Because of course the goal is to work ourselves out of a job. That is to say that the purpose is not to always have volunteers in a community, but to train community members to do the work, to become leaders so the community has no need for volunteers. There are also posts who convert from agroforestry to health, or vice versa, so we have some trainees who will be the first agroforestry volunteer in the community, but not hte first Peace Corps volunteer.
We will be visiting our posts Sunday for the week, to see our houses, meet people and see the communty, set up post office boxes and bank accounts, etc. (While I will get a new mailing address, I can keep the old, and Ill see which one tends to get mail quicker-but dont worry about if you send something to the old one--it will get to me)