Beyond the Peace Corps and Through the Looking Glass: 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps

I serve on the National Peace Corps Association's Volunteer Advisory Council (known as the VAC of the NPCA - love those acronyms!) The head of publicity revived a Top 10 list started by RPCVs from Colorado and asked us to submit our own Top 10.  Thought it would be bit hard for me since I've only been in country 6 months - but, as I wrote, I found there are TONS of things that will always stay with me - the good, the bad and the ugly!

In any case - here's what I wrote:

Debra Pritchard
Country: Palawan, the Philippines
Years: 2010-2012
Assignment: Children, Youth and Family

1. Realizing, after the second hour of trekking through the rainforest outside of Olongapo, toward a beautiful waterfall, that I couldn’t keep up with the 24 year old PCVs….and worrying that maybe I’d waited a little too long to fulfill my lifelong dream of serving in the Peace Corps!

2. Arriving to my host family in Olongapo and having the same birthday, favorite color and blood type as my host “mother”!
3. Going to bed my first night on Palawan – to the amazing cacophony of trumpeting frogs – hundreds of them – so loud that I couldn’t sleep!

4. The incredible beauty of the ocean – snorkeling on Snake Island with sea kraits, schools of Moorish Idols and iridescent blue giant clams.   Indescribable.

5. Carrying with me at all times: my umbrella, insect repellent, bottled water, hand disinfectant and a facecloth (used either to cover your mouth to block pollution or to absorb sweat from the heat and humidity).

6. New sounds – symphonic frogs, lizards that talk with their tails and tuko geckos that first chortle and then bark amazing vocalizations…oh, and of pigs slowly slaughtered – like shredding sheet metal.

7. The most amazing, torrential rains ever seen – and the shortest “dry” season (summer) imaginable – 2 months! And then the rainy season starts for 10 months, but it’s 80F year round.

8. On a sunny day, feeling the air in your hair as you fly down the hills on your new bike! (And, because the roads are unpaved and full of rocks – getting up the next day with a very sore tail bone!)

9. Being divorced in one of two nations in the world where divorce is illegal – and where the Peace Corps Tagalog dictionary’s sample sentence is, “Divorce is forbidden by Jesus Christ.”

10. Night visits from centipedes, 8” spiders, 5 types of frogs and moths with a 10” wingspan..and sightings of enormous fruit bats gliding 100 feet high above at dusk.