Jason Pearce

Today I received a fun letter in the mail from my Aunt Sarah (my dad’s sister). Enclosed she sent me two photographs of family members holding up signs wishing me well.

The first read “Got Milk?” and pictured Aunt Susie & Tommy, Cousin Deavon, and Nana (my dad’s mom).

The second sign read “Hi Jason, We miss you” and pictured Aunt Sarah & Coker, Cousin Patrick & Nicole, and Cousin Alex (who has just started driver’s ed).

Thanks Sarah and everyone for putting this all together. Your warm greetings were well received. Have fun on the coast of North Carolina this week. Wish I could be there.

This week I moved back to Station Street in the Kitty area of Georgetown. Since we are conducting our site visits right now, I thought it would easier for me to avoid the one-hour commute via mini-busses from Grove and set up temporary housing back in the city.

I would have moved back in with my previous host family of Gale, Anthony, and Zowie, but they are currently housing another volunteer — Gina — who is also stationed in Georgetown. Instead, I moved in with Norma and Henry, who have served as host parents for Patrick and Anna Joyce — making them my third host family. Patrick and Anna are assigned to New Amsterdam, so they are not in town this weekend, leaving their room available for me.

Best of all, Norma and Henry have a desktop computer with Internet access. And since my WWF counterpart has been in conferences all week, I’ve had the chance to stay at home to get some much needed surfing done. I really needed my online fix. But I sure do miss my high-speed cable modem. 56k dial-up is painful!

Today I added a commenting system to the Monologue section of my website. At the bottom of each posting, you’ll find a link that looks like this “Comment?“. While I’m still in the testing phase, I hope that this new feature will give you the ability to comment on some of my posting for me and others to enjoy. Let me know what you think by trying it out now.

Last night I managed to sync my Palm Pilot to a host family’s computer and was able to upload about 200 black and white photos that I have taken during my first eight weeks of training. They are all rather small and were taken with a low resolution, but at least they give you an idea of what I have been experiencing.

Click here to see my photos.

The first dozen photos or so are of us all in training. The next dozen features shots of my first host family’s home, as well as their 90-pound four-year-old Zowie. You’ll then find more photos of us in training, with some focus on Information Technology. After that, you’ll find several photos of our group going to Baracara Resort. That was a fun trip. You’ll then see photos of me and Tim’s visit to Dean’s home on the Essiquibo coast. Next comes some nasty photos of the loss of my toe nail, and eventually the loss of that toe nail.

I hope you enjoy them. I’ll continue to shoot low resolution b&w photos during training. But once I settle in to my job and have access to a regular computer, I’ll switch to a higher resolution and color format.

Here is an interesting article about Peace Corps safety. It was published by Peace Corps Online, which is distributed monthly via email.

The GAO issued its long awaited report on Peace Corps Safety and Security on July 25. The report said that assaults against Peace Corps volunteers around the world have doubled in the past decade and that Peace Corps’ efforts to safeguard volunteers are not consistent. The report offered a number of recommendations to the Peace Corps to improve security. Director Vasquez with his background in law enforcement seems the ideal man to implement these changes and when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations committee last year during his confirmation hearings he said that he would make safety and security of volunteers one of his top priorities. Read the complete GAO report and Director Vasquez’s response on what he will do to improve volunteer security.

Today I met my counterpart at the World Wildlife Fund, Dr. Patrick Williams. Patrick is the Program Officer for the Guyana branch and is one of two employees, the other being his assistant.

It wasn’t until about 11:30 today that Patrick was able to find the time to meet with me. He came by the Peace Corps office, where I was waiting in the volunteer lounge. We then got in his car and drove about two miles south for a tour of his office. Located in the Bel Air Park area of Georgetown, I found the office to be quite comfortable. I hope to post photos sometime in the next month or so. In the meantime, here is the contact information:

WWF Guianas
Lot 87A, Ituni Street & Issano Place
Bel Air Park
Georgetown, Guyana
592-223-7802 tel
592-223-7801 fax
wwf@networksgy.com
http://www.wwfguianas.org/

Due to Patrick attending a conference this week, we were really only able to visit for about 15 minutes. So I still do not know an awful lot about what will be expected of me, but here are some basics.

The WWF Guianas website was developed by a Peace Corps volunteer located in Suriname. She will be leaving soon, so I’ll likely take over that project — which is just what I was looking for. I’ll also be developing a Knowledge Center that will enable the Guiana offices to share information with each other over a private intranet.

Part of my duties will also include conducting research on topics that interest the WWF. I’ll likely be attending various conferences and workshops, as well as making trips into the field. These travel opportunities, in addition to their IT needs, are what interest me the most.

So all in all, our brief meeting today was very inspiring and offers me a lot of hope for an exciting and fruitful two years. While I would love to spend more time this week learning more about my duties, I’ll just have to learn to be patient and to wait for training to end.