For this week’s update, I thought I’d share my aspiration statement. These are my short responses to a series of questions posed by the Peace Corps to better help with site placement once we’re in country.
What are three professional attributes that you plan to use during your Peace Corps Service?
Three professional attributes that I pride myself in having, and constantly striving to further improve, are flexibility, teamwork, and creativity.
How these will help you fulfill your aspirations and commitment to service?
Life is full of unknowns, and being able to metaphorically roll with the punches is where a skill like flexibility comes into play. From the start of service, throughout training and during the duration of our stay in country, unknowns will undoubtedly be in abundance. Living with challenges aplenty will not only require flexibility, but also expanding my capacity to be patient and level-headed. When new problems and unforeseen difficulties make themselves known, flexibility will guarantee the work I do will remain consistent and professional.
Teamwork is essential for the continued survival and development of our species. No matter the sector, no matter the work needing to be done, very little in life can be accomplished alone. By being an enthusiastic and generous team member, to any and all groups I am a part of during my service, I can follow along – and lead where necessary – to see the health outcomes of the organization with whom I partner be realized.
After being in country for some time, I believe I will have amassed enough time, knowledge, and data to contribute to my organization’s work with my personal creativity. Being able to see both in and outside the box, both the small and big pictures of a situation, I can find potentially new and exciting prospects for addressing concerns and cultural needs. Keeping these attributes at the forefront of my work will ensure my service remains of the highest quality.
What are two strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs?
One strategy for working effectively with others, particularly in another country entirely, is actively listening and communication. A seemingly simple strategy, one that might have easily been an answer to the first question, but active listening and communication is much more complex for how I intend to use it. For the duration of my service, I am there to help. I am there to assist with existing Ugandan interventions, developing and implementing new programs, and evaluating others. My hosts and co-workers will be the experts; they will always be the experts. I will constantly be learning from them in order to better work with them. They know their needs, and I am there to help.
A second strategy would be to be both a realist and an optimist. For me, these values go hand in hand with one another. Only together can they build a sustainable, possible, and better future. Hope is useful and necessary, but only to a certain extent. Without evidence, without a grounding in reality, that hope is fleeting and difficult to harness. Balancing both a realistic view of the world and the hopeful optimism that so many prize and practice is a delicate path to take, to say the least. But together, walking that path together, is how we shape those seemingly impossible dreams into truth.
What is your strategy for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background?
As an anthropologist, my strategy for adapting to a new culture is the tried, true, and tested methodology of the social science: participation and observation. As an outsider looking in, as a foreigner living in their space, my neighbors, my co-workers, my eventual friends and confidants are the experts, and I have so very much to learn. I will jump into this new opportunity feet-first, metaphorically speaking. I will take the information provided in training, and live as actively and as appropriately as I can, continuing to learn, participate, and grow within the community I am placed.
List some of the skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training and throughout your service to best serve your future community and project.
Aside from language proficiency, cooking and hygienic strategies, and basic societal navigation, I hope to learn several things to best serve my community and projects. I hope to learn current Ugandan health and wellness strategies and theories, related to recently launched initiatives (One Health Strategy Plan, Strategy for Improving Health Service Delivery 2016-2021, etc.). I also want to become familiar with the current cultural, socio-economic landscape to better become familiar with the resources and information available for use. This will help to build effective, and hopefully sustainable, programs tailored to a community’s needs. Last, but certainly far from least, I would hope to learn theories, practices, and evaluation strategies built specifically by and for the African nations that make up the continent.
How do you think your Peace Corps service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends?
I doubt I could imagine a better location, or opportunity, to develop and expand my professional skillset than working in Uganda. After completing my two Master’s degrees, I had little chance to improve my public health and applied medical anthropological abilities outside of academia. My hope is to take what I learn over the course of my service to continue working and serving upon my return to the United States. If my focus in country is related to preventing communicable diseases, I hope to find work back in America doing the same. The same could be said if my work is with maternal and child health concerns. However my service should transpire, I will seek personal transformations in finding similar and suitable employment afterwards. In many ways, my work in Uganda would be the start of my professional career in the public health and research sectors.
And now, a friendly reminder: Updates will continue every Friday up to Friday May 31st. After that, it will be some time, according to the Peace Corps folks, until the next update. Training apparently begins right after the plan lands in country, and I don’t know when we’ll have free time – with internet availability. Thank you so much for understanding!
Until next Friday! Be well, you wonderful people!
Peace, Love, and Uganda 