In Service Training.

I have been involved in some conversations, lately, about how Peace Corps volunteers with a lot to lose should act. Minding my P.'s and Q.'s has become sort of an obsession. When I was told to be waiting by the side of the road in Tibar to be picked up by the Peace Corps for my in-service training that is exactly what I did.  I stood at the crossroads and waited.

 The reason that I sit on my porch near the crossroads instead of standing at the side of the road is that I stick out like a sore thumb. A sore, neon, glowing, sweet rave music making 6’3” foot thumb. (mmm-tssss-mmmm-tssss-mmmm-tsss THUMB!)

Vehicles stop when I stand on the side of the road.  Some of them know me, some of them think I might want a ride some of them are just concerned that I may be lost.  In Timor it is normal for drivers, on a whim, to stop and have a conversation. And it is impolite for me not to have a conversation with them. After the first 45 minutes I started to feel like a toll taker. A car would stop and we would talk and then as I turned around another car would stop to find out what was so interesting.  If had known this manner of meeting people when I first got in the Peace Corps it is all I would have done.  I ended up causing the traffic jam that made my ride a hour and half late.

We did eventually make it to the in-service training. We had our training in a little piece of paradise a convent by a beach deep in the welcoming arms of the jungle. The nuns, ishmikes really, served us a quick dinner and we settled in. It was all of us, the 23 remaining members of my group. Since last we talked about this subject we have lost Ron and Kara, Mike and Allie, Kate, Lillias and my good friend Randy. I wonder what we will look like when we have been out in our site a year and not just six months.

This was the first time that my group had gotten together since training. We've all changed, everyone is skinny, everyone is dirty, everyone cannot stop talking. The first thing we did after dinner, and we demolished dinner, is sat down in a room with an ancient TV and were shown every Peace Corps commercial that has ever been made. This was a master stroke of planning.  At first as we watched the early; sometimes offensive, 

commercials that came out when they first started advertising. Including one about a Peace Corps volunteer going into the strip BC.  You remember this is the one with the caveman who rode the wheel a talking clam and the character called the fat broad? Anyway a Peace Corps volunteer is sent to this cartoon land and helps out. As the commercials became more current we became more interested. Some of them were the ones that we had seen as children; that first planted the seed that we might be able to travel and see the world. By the time we got to the most modern Peace Corps commercial we were all spellbound. Black-and-white grainy photographs of impossible beauty and horrible poverty slide across the screen with Matthew McConaghy speaking in the background, "How far will you go?".

This training was so much better put together than the one that we received in Balibar that I was astounded. Instead of forcing us to spend three more hours in classes that night we were unexpectedly released. It was as if the person planning knew that we weren't going to be able to focus until we had time to talk amongst ourselves.

We went to the beach. I pulled in some perks. A case of warm beer was waiting and I had a bottle of duty-free bourbon, my favorite from the states. We decided as one to build the fire and get drunk.

Tibar doesn't have a beach. The coastline is a treacherous mud clogged death trap. There is a type of tree that lives in the shallow water around the coast of Tibar that gets its air, I think, by sending up small roots that barely clear the surface of the water at low tide. These roots are sharp. The mud stinks and is clingy. And I once discovered honest to god quicksand, quick mud?.

This beach was different, it had the crystal-clear sapphire blue water that all of the resorts of the South Pacific promise. White sand, beautiful stars, good friends and conversation.

I wasn't drinking, not in that bigger group. So I went for a swim and found that the secluded beach had one more thing to offer. In the evening there was a life-and-death battle of very small creatures going on around me. One of them glowed. When I moved around in the water there would be glowing streaks of light lights and then something would come and sting me very gently.  Like a shock from a pair of slippers and a carpet.   

Later in the night I decided to show my affection by throwing pebbles at people. This continued until someone who loved me very much hit me in the head with a fist sized rock. We talked, and a couple people cried, and we compared how big our clothes were and we showed off our new scars.

It was a good night.