I kind of relate, kind of not. I will say that when I got to staging, I was shocked by many of the people there with me. I was expecting to meet people like myself and many people I met had less experience than me or no experience at all. Many espoused toxic, stereotyping, and xenophobic views on how the U.S. is better than the host country. And I also feel a lot of resentment for the privilege I see in the volunteers around me.

But more-so, I take issue with the organization itself. Peace Corps has ridiculous rules that police volunteers and take away agency we have as human beings. Unfortunately, rather than being interested in trying to reform the rules I feel like most volunteers just skirt them. My country pushes personal growth/coming of age of volunteers as a major component of service, and rewards volunteers for doing show-case-y stuff - like doing projects with the more privileged and educated HCNs while ignoring and not pushing for projects with more underprivileged HCNs. We didn’t talk about criticisms of international development during training or do much to encourage PCVs to think critically about their roles here. I feel like PC advertises itself to the communities it puts volunteers in as giving these communities a trained asset, while encouraging young inexperienced people to join and not really bridging the gap during training.

I didn’t really hit it off with the people in my cohort. I don’t judge them or blame them really, I put that judgement and blame on the organization.