Hello everyone,
Each year on the fourth Thursday of November, Thanksgiving Day
provides people of the United States with a wonderful opportunity to come
together with family members and close friends.
While people move to different parts of the country, the majority of
individuals will travel to their hometowns to enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Whether people are attending schools across
the country or they moved away from their hometowns for personal and/or professional
reasons, people make the effort to return home for this occasion. Consequently, Thanksgiving weekend is one of
the busiest travelling periods of the year.
Anyway, this is the second consecutive year where I, along with several Peace
Corps Volunteers around the world who commenced working as a volunteer around
the same time as I did, have missed out on the traditions and festivities
surrounding Thanksgiving with our family and close friends from home.
I’ve recognized that Peace Corps Volunteers make
realizations about how much we appreciate events, like Thanksgiving, that we
are absent from while we’re in our countries of service. Volunteers speak to each other in length
about our own unique, traditional practices surrounding Thanksgiving and how much
we miss being around our loved ones as they spend the holidays without us.
One interesting aspect about being with the Peace Corps is
the relationships the volunteers develop with one another. Even though the volunteers enter our Peace
Corps journeys as complete strangers, the need for assistance and support while
we encounter similar difficulties and obstacles allows for us to build nourishing
relationships with each other. Volunteers essentially become family with each
other while we are serving together in the same country.
While the volunteers are longing to be near their actual families
for Thanksgiving Day, we decided to choose the next best alternative for our
current circumstances and spend the day with each other. Arianne, a close friend of mine and fellow
volunteer in Dominica, reserved a private dining room in one of the nicest
hotels in Roseau, the capital and main town of Dominica, for the
volunteers to share a Thanksgiving meal with each other. Interestingly, the hotel offered a
traditional Thanksgiving Day meal as many tourists from the United States were
demanding that the hotel offers one while they were visiting Dominica. For the record, the food was absolutely
delectable!
As Arianne organized the event for the Peace Corps
Volunteers, she and a few others came up with an exceptional idea. They extended an invitation to the volunteers
that work in Dominica from the other parts of the world to join the Peace Corps
Volunteers for our Thanksgiving celebration.
Currently, Dominica has volunteer relationships with organizations similar
to the Peace Corps from Australia, Canada, Germany, and Japan. The volunteers from the different countries will
sometimes collaborate on projects but we all rarely get to spend leisure
time together outside of work. Occasionally
some of us will hike the different trails with each other. Anyway, several volunteers from the other countries
ecstatically joined the Peace Corps Volunteers for our US holiday feast. With the Dominican Peace Corps staff members
in attendance, a total of six different countries were represented at our
dinner. The volunteers had great
conversations with each other as we all have the underlying perspective of
wanting to assist Dominicans with the development of their country.
One of the fundamental goals in Peace Corps is to promote a
better understanding of Americans to people from other parts of the world. Well, the cross cultural sharing that was
taking place between the volunteers from the different regions of the world was
a fantastic opportunity for the Peace Corps Volunteers to showcase an aspect of
our American culture. Also, all the volunteers
from different countries had a phenomenal experience getting to know each other
better in a relaxed, social atmosphere.
Even though I was unaccounted for at the Thanksgiving
celebration with my family and friends in Wisconsin, the unique experience
of celebrating Thanksgiving Day with fellow volunteers from around the world is
an occasion that I will always look back on fondly.
Happy holidays,
Joe
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