Life After Butler

Hello friends, colleagues, and professors:

My name is Kelsey Coy, and I am a recent graduate of Butler. I graduated on May 11, 2013, and I moved to Swaziland, Africa on June 26, 2013. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer working in community health in a rural village on the border between Swaziland and Mozambique. If you look at a map, I'm somewhere between Siteki, Swaziland and Maputo, Mozambique.

The Peace Corps has 6 program areas in which Volunteers can serve: education, youth and community development, health, business and information and communications technology, agriculture, and environment. Peace Corps Swaziland currently has volunteers serving in youth development and community health.

When considering service, applicants can discuss which field they are interested in or are qualified for with a recruiter. They will interview with a recruiter about two weeks after submitting the application. Once the recruiter has had some time to consider the applicant, he or she will nominate the applicant to serve in a particular area. The applicant's file then goes from the regional recruiting office to the national headquarters in Washington, DC. After some extensive medical and legal evaluations, the office decides who they would like to invite to serve in which countries. Only 40% of applicants get invited to serve. This whole process takes about a year.

Peace Corps is different in every country all over the world. Peace Corps Swaziland is one of the most challenging assignments, which brings both struggles and triumphs. Swaziland has the lowest life expectancy in the world (48 years), the highest rate of HIV in the world (31%), the highest rate of TB in the world (12%), and the highest rate of comorbid HIV/TB in the world (80% of HIV patients have TB). There is a high death rate, which does take an emotional toll on volunteers. There are advantages to serving here, however. The country is about the size of New Jersey, so getting around to all the other Volunteers is easy. There are 33 that arrived in June 2013, and about 30 that arrived in June 2012.

Community health is very open-ended as a field. For the first three months following training, Volunteers conduct community assessments to determine the needs of each specific community. In my community, winter food security, winter water security, high numbers of child-headed households, high numbers of orphans and vulnerable children, poor hygiene, poor nutrition, and a lack of income-generating activities seem to be the most prevalent challenges at first glance. I have only just arrived, so I still have 3 months of analysis and surveying ahead of me.

The third goal of the Peace Corps is to represent the countries in which we are serving to Americans. I am starting this blog to introduce some of the amazing plant life here in Swaziland. While I was at Butler, I enjoyed plant biology, and the plants here are amazing. If you have any questions about any of the plants I post about weekly, Peace Corps, or anything else, email me at kelseyccoy@gmail.com.

Enjoy!