I got my assignment today. I will be in the Tetovo region of the country.
My work will be divided between two places, which isn’t unusual for community development folks in the Peace Corps. One will be the Language Center at South East European University; the other will be at the Center for Equal Opportunities “Ladybug.” At Ladybug, I’ll be working with a journalist who has participated in an exchange program abroad. I’m told they were beyond excited when they learned this cohort had a volunteer with a journalism background.
The university has worked with the Peace Corps before. Their application says, “Our previous experiences show very fruitful cooperation with the Peace Corps volunteers. The cooperation was very active in the area of materials development in the context of teaching languages. In addition, the volunteers helped the Language Center with organization of language activities and speaking activities with students, as well as extracurricular activities including debate clubs.”
This will be Ladybug’s first time working with the Peace Corps. Ladybug’s mission appears to involve a lot of work fighting sex discrimination. The application says, “Having met the past Peace Corps Volunteers who have stayed in our country has made us realize how much they can impact an organization for good and impact their community. Bringing new experiences from countries that have already dealt with the same issues as us can help find creative solutions and new approaches. We have already worked indirectly with some Peace Corps Volunteers a couple of years ago. We have seen that not only their contribution is meaningful to us but including them in our community is a beneficiary for all of us.”
I will be one of three Peace Corps folks in the Tetovo region. There is one other community development person working at a different university and one English teacher.
The region is part of the Albanian-speaking part of the country. For the time being, I will concentrate on learning Macedonian, but I will study Albanian after that. I’m told Albanian is a much harder language to learn.
I’ll be staying upstairs from my resource family, which consists of a man in his mid-40s and his three sons in their 20s. They live near the university and they’ve hosted one Peace Corps volunteer in the past. The father is a self-employed furniture maker.
(“Resource family” is what has replaced “host family” in COVID-19 times. We don’t share living quarters with a resource family, but they live nearby, although not always in the same building like in my case. )
Thankfully, the people I’ll be working with and my resource family are fluent in English, which will be a big help for someone who has just started learning Macedonian and hasn’t even begun learning Albanian.
Tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 7), we check out of the hotel, meet our resource families and our counterparts, and go to our communities of service.