Learning Where I'll Be (and More Learning)

Liora McElvaney
Oct 26, 2024
3 min read

HELLO SITE ANNOUNCEMENT!

A year ago today, October 26th, 2023, I was offered an invitation to serve with the Peace Corps, which I quickly accepted. Today, I am posting this blog to share where I will be for the next two years (literally crazy, I can't believe I'm here sometimes!)

Two days before I was offered my invitation, on the 24th, I interviewed for this position. On October 24th, 2024 I found out where my site would be - okay full circle!!! ... anticipation! Keep reading. It's strange to see who I am now compared to who I was when I applied: I've graduated college, lost a best friend, went through a breakup, and have now moved to Africa!

Since I last posted, I have spent a week in Morogoro, as mentioned, with the Health cohort which gave us a taste of life in a bigger city. We ate an insane amount of Americanized food. I had something called a "broffle"which is a waffle with brownie crumbles on top and a scoop of vanilla and chocolate ice cream - very delicious! Our week was filled with learning about lishe (nutrition) and connecting with mamas in the community by teaching them how to add nutrition to certain meals. We were at a teaching campus all day for a week, so we were starting to go a little crazy and began playing silly games to make time pass and keep us laughing. Our favorite thing to do was play 'What are the Odds?' Which consists of asking a crazy question/dare, choosing a number scale, and counting down from 3. If you say the same number, the dare has to be done. It's hilarious and stupid and perfect.

When we returned to our host families in Korogwe, we were thrust back into learning Swahili and meeting with our counterparts at Zahanatis (clinics). As a health cohort, we also built an awesome hand-washing station for Global Handwashing Day! I even got to use a machete - see pictures below. Peace Corps also hosted a cooking day where volunteers cooked American foods and our Tanzanian coworkers made Tanzanian dishes. We cooked Gigi Hadid's Vodka Pasta with real parmesan cheese and Kerigold butter it was CRAZY! and also all the food had lots of sugar and salt (RIP Fran's stomach!).

This week was more learning and speaking Kiswahili and then finally site announcement! We had an amazing rafiki dinner at my house the night before site announcement and cooked literally every possible food with coconut milk added (a staple in the Tanga region). Lilly, Ben, Katherine, Charlie, and Fran came over - everyone's favorite is the beetroot, passion fruit 'pesheni', and avocado 'parachichi' juice that Dada Vicky, my host sister, makes (it's delicious and perfect). Site announcement day was full of adrenaline but also super exciting at the same time. Our faces were pinned to a map and each person got to go up and take the sheet off of the picture of the next person. Griffin pulled mine and that's when I found out I'll be going to DODOMA! YAY! There are six of us who got placed there (I'm the only girl!) which will add to the five current volunteers in other cohorts that serve there. I'll be in the Lamaiti village of the Bahi district which is about 1-2 hours via bus to Dodoma city.

Now, we are on the way to stay at our sites for a week! We left at 8am on public buses with people from the village that we just met! After this week we will return to Korogwe for the last little bit of training. Then, on November 22nd we'll move there for 24 months. Our villages are small, but we will have the opportunity to go to our "banking town" (Dodoma city) multiple times a month to do things like grocery shop, get work done, and collect/send packages. I'm happy to have friends in my region + in other places so that, once we are allowed, we can travel and visit each other and have amazing reunions. I'm looking forward to this next week because shit is getting REAL! Talk to you all soon :-)