“The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty YES to your adventure.”

I just got off the phone with my recruiter and there may be a change in my nomination.

When I first applied I mentioned that I have worked in my family’s vegetable garden throughout my life. I also have participated in taking care of farm animals (i.e. my horse) and worked in an agricultural chicken house.

So today Emily (my recruiter) called me and said they want to nominate me to work in Agriculture. At first I balked, because I’ve really gotten myself excited about teaching English and I felt like my experience was sort of in passing. I mean, I’m an English major with some o-chem experience. But she explained that a lot of the work is teaching people how to more efficiently use their resources, to do their farming in a more environmentally friendly way. There are not many people who are qualified for this position, and I’m one of the few.

After really considering it, I think I could get excited about this. No, it’s not exactly what I want to be doing, but in some ways, helping people to have a more efficient business plan, increase their quality of life and be more environmentally friendly could be more rewarding and more impactful.

Basically the world has a need of my skills, both in agriculture and in my experience organizing and leading people. Few people have these two together and they need me.

The last shocker was that it is may be in French speaking Africa, which normally has a four semester French requirement. I don’t know French. At all. However I have a talent for languages, and they are talking about giving me an exception as long as I learn French independently (Rosetta Stone!) before I go. I love the challenge of being asked to learn a new language so quickly, and then immediately learn the local language when I get there. I may very well come back trilingual.

So it’s all been a shock, but I’m just going to go with the flow, and assume that at the end of the day I’ll end up doing what I’m supposed to do, even if it’s not what I think I should be doing.

On the other hand, I will be able to implement my own set of projects that can be completely unrelated to agriculture. (I am thinking about starting a creative writing class for students or perhaps a library.)

So I’m going to go with it. I’ve asked Emily to let me know how likely it is, since the couple months between nomination and invitation could be very important for me to learn French, and I will keep you guys up to date.

Also, I may be able to buy a horse…

Here are the countries that speak French in Africa. Keep in mind that I am only going a Sub-Saharan African country. Also, many of these are unstable and the Peace Corps does not go to all the highlighted coutnries here.