Mr. President?

Today I was fortunate enough to meet Aaron Williams, the newly appointed Peace Corps Director. Since he didn't have a lot of time on his visit, two other volunteers working in nearby villages and I went to another volunteer's site for the meeting.

It was convenient for me for two reasons: 1) My site wasn't well prepared to accommodate the visit and 2) I got to see what Haley, the hosting volunteer, had been up to since she has been here.

As can be seen in the post about my school, it is in poor condition and we would have to move learners out of a classroom in order to hold a meeting; this would be not only unfair to the learners but in poor taste as representatives of the U.S. My room is also a disaster since I had a late night visitor that was on top of my wardrobe. I jumped up on my bed and with a broom proceeded to knock everything off the wardrobe using a broom handle and dump the contents of all the bags all over the floor. Also I have many great projects planned but that's it, there is nothing to show for it.

The meeting was instead at Haley's primary school where she teaches reading to special needs children. I was astounded to see the classroom she had set up; partly because there are no additional classrooms at my school but mostly because of how good of a job she did in setting up her classrooms. There were tons of books neatly stacked on recently built bookshelves, teaching aids all over the wall, and it just felt like a place where children would learn; she deserved that opportunity.

Mr. Williams is tall, slender, light skinned, African American man. When he entered one of the classrooms, the learners started going wild and were enthusiastically asking "Aungu Obama naa?". Given the fact that he's tall, slender, light-brown skinned, and from the U.S. government, it's no surprise that they wanted too know, "Is that Obama?". Mr. Williams said he gets that a lot from the children when visiting foreign countries.

He resembled Obama not only physically but also in the respect that he commanded. A former Nicaraguan Peace Corps volunteer himself, he was a very approachable, kind, and progressive leader; which made him a good choice to be appointed as Director of the Peace Corps.

For such a high-profile diplomat he traveled surprisingly light. He didn't have any security officers, only 3 women and 1 man, all of average build and in their mid-twenties; not a very imposing bunch. He rode in the Peace Corps Land Rover with everyone else including some of my fellow South African Peace Corps volunteers. He was also accompanied by my APCD (Associate Peace Corps Country Director) in charge of the education project, and the PTO (Peace Corps Training Officer) for South Africa.

We sat in Haley's classroom in a circle of learners' chairs with all of the tables pushed to one side. Created a less formal and more comfortable environment to hold the meeting. The first part of the meeting was Haley talking about her site and all of the great things that she is doing there. Then, as that discussion was waning, another volunteer, Steve, suggested that the other volunteers talk a little about what they were doing.

It was interesting for me to discover that we all cover very different parts of development and how much work we were all doing together. Haley is a special needs teacher by training, Steve works with ICT, Joanna (the other volunteer) works with HIV/AIDS education and activities, and I focus primarily on infrastructure.
Haley is teaching at both her and Steve's schools; Steve has helped set up computer labs at both Joanna's and Haley's schools (and mine in the near future); Haley and Joanna are going to do an HIV/AIDS workshop at both my and Steve's schools; I'm helping Steve with a bookshelf project; and everyone is learning from my successive failures.

He said "that is music to my ears" when Steve mentioned that from a volunteer's perspective, ICT is severely lacking. There are many discussions going on now about how to better improve the Peace Corps in respect to ICT. One of the biggest and in my opinion most important one is to increase the sharing of information amongst volunteers both within each country and worldwide; all too often volunteers are re-inventing the wheel causing a lot of wasted effort and resources. That is a problem that

I suggested that they add updating the Peace Corps website to the ICT list of things to do. Since the communications director is new and was not responsible for any part of the creation or operation of the existing website she said I could say whatever I wanted about it without fear of reprisal.

Amongst other things, I said that there is very vague and general information for incoming volunteers that doesn't do a good job of describing what Peace Corps actually is. Sometimes prospective volunteers know of someone or knows someone who knows someone who was/is a Peace Corps volunteer and they may send a few e-mails back and forth but that's usually the extent of that relationship. Each post should have their own website with more up-to-date and detailed information about their projects and the post's project goals. Just like universities and colleges there should be not only an incoming/prospective volunteers website but also a current volunteers section.

Other major concerns included an increase in the readjustment allowance-payment accrued to be paid at the completion of service to help us reenter "normal" life-whose rate hasn't changed since 1999, and difficulty in locating money for our projects.

It was a very beneficial meeting-the APCD said "it went swimmingly"-for both Peace Corps Washington and Peace Corps South Africa. I feel very confident that with Mr. Williams in charge, the Peace Corps has a bright future.