“It is easy to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends.”

-- Joan Didion


As of Friday I am no longer a journalist with 20 years of experience under my belt. A month from now I will be a novice Peace Corps Trainee. Working in environmental education, I'll be known as a "mental." Insert joke here.

Excerpts from my assignment booklet:

Country: Tanzania
Program: Environmental Education and Sustainable Agriculture in Rural Communities (EESARC)
Job Title: Village-Based Extension Educator
Dates of Service: August 24, 2008-August 27-2010

Your Primary Duties:

This project places a strong emphasis on community-focused activities. At the village level, the role of the Peace Corps Volunteer is a facilitator and to act as a catalyst to enable village communities to help themselves and to better understand the situations around them as well as some of the possible solutions. The relationships you develop, and the growth in your counterparts' and village members' skills as a result of those relationships, will be as important as the number of vegetable gardens you facilitate to establish or the environmental education campaigns you facilitate. ...

To a large extend you will also be working with a local primary school on various environmental education activities. ... Many of our current Volunteers work at this level on environmental education and/or HIV/AIDS prevention and care activities. ...

Project Purpose: Members of Tanzania's agricultural and agro-pastoral communities will raise their standard of living by strengthening local knowledge of and capacity to implement successful sustainable agricultural practices, including those activities that also help mitigate the impact of HIV/AIDS. ...

Your daily duties might consist of:

- Facilitating the development/promotion in school and/or out of school on environmental education activities including youth (e.g. demo plots or tree nurseries on school grounds).

- Promoting and supporting efforts to adopt appropriate technologies that preserve the environment, plant trees, and engage in sustainable agricultural practices such as water conservation, water storage, water harvesting in the arid lands.

- Facilitating training events and cross-farmer visits to promote sustainable techniques for soil conservation/rehabilitation and other ecologically sound agricultural practices and appropriate technologies (e.g. use of green manure, zero grazing, tree nurseries, fuel-efficient stoves, documentation and utilization of indigenous knowledge).

- Facilitating and encouraging farmers, men and women, on environmentally friendly, small-scale income-generating projects (e.g. beekeeping, rabbit raising, vegetable farming, etc.)

- Promoting the spirit of utilizing available resources in the village or district, such as water conservation in arid areas.

- Promoting formal and informal environmental education/conservation activities with youth and adults.

- Encouraging and supporting community leaders and teachers to take an active position on environmental issues.

- Conducting farm and homestay visits to facilitate appropriate methodologies and approaches in your area of expertise.

All Environment Volunteers work on HIV/AIDS prevention and care activities, as no gains in the environment area will be sustainable if HIV/AIDS goes unchecked. In the area of care, PC/T will train Environment Volunteers on how permaculture and gardening can be used as a means to boost immune systems of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, helping them to live longer and more productive lives. Many Volunteers also work to improve health in the villages through activities such as promoting safe water systems and conducting health education events for both children and adults.

Opportunities for Secondary Projects

Peace Corps Volunteers often develop secondary projects. Although some projects involve outside funding, many do not. Volunteers get involved in many different types of secondary projects with their communities.

Another area of special focus for Peace Corps Tanania is girls' empowerment. Volunteers work to promote girls' empowerment through activities, such as promoting peer education and organizing conferences. Examples of other secondary projects include teaching English language, promoting sports for boys and girls, improving school facilities by painting murals, constructing latrines or setting up libraries and working with local NGOs for capacity-building projects. Projects are selected bsed on the community's needs, available resources, continued sustainability, and the volunteer's interests and skills. Secondary projects provide an excellent opportunity to become an integral part of the community. ...

Living Conditions

You will be provided a village house as a contribution of the village government. The houses vary from a mud-walled house with a corrugated iron roof, to a concrete house with glass windows, not your typical mud hut! Your house may not have any furnishings or may have minimal furnishings -- a couple of chairs, a table and a bed. You will have a pit larine and outdoor bath facilities, and you will fetch your water from a village water source. Rain harvesting and treatment of water for drinking will likely be a daily activity. There will be no electricity in your village/house. Kerosene lamps will be the ain source of lighting and charcoal stoves, firewood or kerosene stoves will be used for cooking and heating during cold spells. Peace Corps provides a settling-in allowance that can be used to purchase those furnishings necessary to make your house comfortable on a modest scale. Volunteers are also provided mountain bikes to assist in their work activities and to make transportation in and around their sites easier.

Currently reading:

Building Soils for Better Crops (second edition), Fred Magdoff and Harold Van Es