As if getting hit by a car wouldn’t make for an exciting enough month, there has been a lot more going on in the past few weeks. Most notably, as of this week, I am now longer working with WHROMP in Ocho Rios. Tomorrow I will move out to Negril to start a new job with a new agency.
There are a lot of reasons that things didn’t work out with my old agency, but in the end, what it came down to were a series of unspoken expectations, miscommunications and frustrations on both sides. There was a lack of communication, and in the end, it just wasn’t really a good match, so the decision was made to move me to another site. I am upset that things didn’t work out with WHROMP, and that I didn’t get more of a chance to work with them, but this move really is the best for both parties.
On a more positive note, I’m really excited for my new placement. I’ll be working with NEPT – the Negril Environmental Protection Trust. They’re an environmental NGO that work with a lot of different groups – farmers, hotels, schools, etc. They are also in charge of managing the Royal Palm Reserve – a protected area on the outskirts of Negril that is pretty much a 300+ acre forest.
I’m not 100% sure what I’ll be working on yet, but I do have something of an idea, and the work is pretty varied. One of my projects will be to work on their Clean Fields Campaign, which works to promote best practice farming techniques within the Parish. I’ll also be working to promote the Royal Palm Reserve to the local communities as well as tourists in the area. My other major project will be to implement a program through the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE), either with hotels in the area or with schools (the decision about which program we will implement has yet to be made). And I’m sure there will be a lot of other things that pop up for me to work on as well, as there always are in Peace Corps.
Each of those three major projects could all be full time projects, and yes, it is a little overwhelming. But I’ve learned a lot over the past 2 months, and I feel a lot more confident about this placement than my last one. The way my experience at WHROMP played out has taught me a lot about what it takes to be a volunteer. Mainly, it takes the courage to just jump in and work through a project. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever done it before, if you think you are qualified, or if you think you know what you’re doing. The trick is to seek guidance where you can and be willing to go it alone if you don’t get that guidance. Either way, you do the absolute best that you can do with the resources you have at hand and work from there. One of the many reasons that things didn’t work out with WHROMP was that I was too scared to just jump in and get things moving - I was far too afraid of failure. And while that fear does still linger on my shoulder, it’s not something that I will let dictate my actions in this new placement. I’ve been given another chance to prove myself at NEPT, and it’s not something that I intend to waste.
Like I said before, it does upset me that things didn’t work out with WHROMP. I think they are a great organization and they do a lot of much needed work in the area. I spent a few days really analyzing why things went the way they did, and was able to take a lot of good lessons from it. But now I am ready to take those lessons, move on and start work in Negril at NEPT. I think this is a much better placement for me and I now feel a lot more confident that I’ll be able to handle whatever challenges the next 22 months might bring.
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