Pre-departure staging
Trip Start
Jun 30, 2008
1
2
17
Trip End
Sep 04, 2010
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania,
United States
Thursday, July 3, 2008
there,
I'm currently writing
this email draft from Philadelphia departure
lounge as 64 PC volunteers have taken over part of the terminal as we wait for
many hours to board our plane for Paris. It seems strange that we literally only spent
less than 3 days together and yet everyone is definately bonding. Although it is a diverse group (but only one
British accent) everyone generally seems to be at the same point in their life,
is excited and nervous to go - all very motivated people who are in the same
position.
Staging took place in the
hotels conference room, with lots of name-game exercises, talks on safety,
coping with unwanted attention, PC policies and what to initially expect. It was not particularly tailored towards
learning a lot about Benin,
but I'm sure that'll all happen when we get there. In the evening there was even more
opportunity to bond as groups went off to dinner, socialising et al. Last night we went off to get classic Philly
cheese steaks, and ate as much classic american food as we could (loaded fries,
buffalo wings, etc). Ended up doing a
bar trivia quiz and doing poorly. It's
hard to mention names at the moment, because there's so many. It is a pretty female heavy group (of the 64
there are 18 males) - most people tend to be in their 20s, with many having
just graduated too. There's one older
lady and a retired married couple (apparently their 22 yr old son was a bit
surprised about their decision to serve).
Everyone seems to be becoming close, and although I've had to explain
the 'US/UK dual citizenship circumstances many times, I feel I've found my
place in the group as being a bit of a
novelty.
At the moment it seems
like I generally packed the correct stuff, I certainly didn't pack the
lightest, but I also wasn't the heaviest either. It seems now that getting to Benin is going to be a bit of a long haul - 4
hours waiting at Philly, the flight to CDG, 5 hours waiting at CDG and then the
6 hour flight to Benin. We had to wake up early for going to the
clinic and getting our Yellow Fever shots and malaria pills (you can't get into
Benin
without Yellow Fever). It's only a
once-a-week malaria pill, which makes things easier. I've been very impressed with how it's being
run so far, it certainly seems like the PC have it figured out.
There's lots to look forward to, for instance for the first time our
training w host families is taking place in Porto Novo, with new host families
who have never had a volunteer before. It's
also the 40th anniversary of Benin
and it seems like our swearing in ceremony is going to be built into the
celebrations,
