The End of Pre-Service Training (PST)
- Liv McAuslan
- Jan 10
- 9 min read
We have officially finished Pre-Service Training, our ten weeks of intensive language, technical, safety, and cultural lessons. In a way, it feels like this time has flown by and I am struggling to comprehend how it has already been almost three months in The Gambia. On the other hand, the busy 8am - 6pm, Monday through Saturdays have been a whirlwind. On December 16, the thirty trainees in our cohort swore in as official Peace Corps volunteers at a ceremony in front of U.S. embassy personnel, our training site host families, and Peace Corps country staff. After this graduation, we headed to our respective permanent sites on December 19 and embarked on our individual volunteer journeys (more on this soon). And one year from now, we will have finished service and be back home in the US!
So much has happened in the last two and a half months that I don’t even know where to begin reflecting on our Pre-Service Training (PST). After recovering from the initial culture shock and sense of panic when moving into my training village, I found some rocky footing. Here is my PST summarized in a nut shell.
The Training Village and Host Family
I really came to love my training village and my host family in Kiang, but it was tough love. I was tired and hot and undernourished most of the time. Like my phone in the heat, my personal battery was only ever fully charged to 80 percent. It was hard to come to love a place when I never felt fully comfortable. That being said, there were so many pockets of joy and laughter and beauty.
In my host family, my mother Balang, ~45, and her sister, Ma Siiri, ~50, were the matriarchs of the compound. My host brother Musa, ~28, was technically the head of the household, but Balang called the shots. Saribo, my host sister, ~30, lived in the room next to mine with her daughter Yaya, 3. Oumar, 6, lived with his grandmother, Ma Siiri, and his aunt Fatou, 14 and my namesake. Jalama, 12, was never around. The branches of this family tree were twisted and confusing, but we all lived together in a survivable way.
Oumar and I had a special bond. He would see me from across the compound and make a silly face, and we would hold hands as we walked to the biddick to search for bananas and juice. I felt like I was a safe space for Oumar. He was a happy and goofy kid, but I also would watch him cry after getting yelled at or hit or being cold or hungry. There were a lot of basic needs that weren’t being met, and I saw them plain as day. I know my bond with Oumar grew from a maternal depth in me. I really started to love that kid, and the safety and comfort we built for each other. I cried when I left the training village because how can a six year old properly understand why I came into their life and left so suddenly? I still feel guilty about leaving, but also a strange guilt about being so ready to leave.
The village was exhausting. It’s hard to adequately articulate, but every time I walked anywhere I would be expected to greet every person. I would be peppered with questions in Mandinka: where is your mother, what is her name, where is your father, where are you coming from, where are you going, are you married, where are your children? A five minute walk quickly became a fifteen minute walk. My friends and I would make plans to meet and leave early to allow time for greeting. People would also narrate my every move. As I was walking, they would ask if I was walking. As I was sitting, they would ask if I was sitting. My compound wasn’t even a safe space. Neighbors were constantly in and out, watching me sit, eat, do laundry, read a book, and simply exist. I felt socially claustrophobic.
At the same time, the village was so beautiful. Everywhere in sight there was a baobab tree, sprinkled with fruit like fairy lights. Goats and donkeys milled about, dotting the horizon when the sun set the sky aflame with orange every night. My friends and I would go on a long walk every evening before dark, finding quiet on the red dirt roads. Things were peaceful and simple. I appreciated the village, but in the end I think I outgrew it. It was a training village for a reason.
Food
I knew things were dire when I had a dream only about Whole Foods. Walking up and down the aisles slowly, I carefully chose one single bag of Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cookies. The dream ended before I left the check out line. One week later, I had a dream about finding a store that sold Gotham Greens spinach and had a Sweetgreen in the back. I ran to share the good news with my friend Mikaela before I went straight for the spinach. These two dreams are absurd, but capture my struggle with food.
Don’t get me wrong, food in The Gambia can be very good. I really like domoda, which is a groundnut sauce over rice, and benechin, a sort of fried rice with cassava, onion, and eggplant. However, during PST, us trainees had no autonomy over our food. We could supplement what our host families provided us with bananas and groundnuts, but every day my fate was told by a singular metal bowl. Like clock work, after the afternoon prayer my lunch bowl would appear. Each day, I would receive rice with a different sauce and one bitter tomato. I was lucky if there were less than ten fish bones or another vegetable to accompany the lonely tomato. Dinner would be the same as lunch. I often found myself going to bed with a small, but manageable pang of hunger. I lost weight and felt dizzy if I stood up too fast.
I also watched as my host siblings would have half a baguette and a packet of juice dissolved in water for breakfast. Their lunch was also rice with minimal sauce, and dinner was the same, all in a large family sized bowl. Over ten weeks, I can count on one hand the amount of times I saw chicken in the shared food bowl. If I was hungry, there was no way my growing siblings felt any differently. I tried to do what I could, buying extra bananas and apples and oranges to bring home on the weekends. Oumar liked to walk to school with me if we overlapped in the morning because I’d stop at the biddick and buy him a boiled egg to supplement his bread. There were a few nights where Oumar would cry because he was hungry, and that broke my heart. With our busy training schedules, there was no time besides Sunday where I could go to the store or market in the neighboring town. In my village, the only snacks available were bananas, groundnuts, lollipops, and packaged cookies. I would buy watermelon and extra vegetables for cooking, only to have this food be rationed by my family over the next three days. Watching my little siblings be hungry and not eat well, feeling helpless about it, as well my own undernourishment, were consistently the hardest parts of PST.
The Tire Swing
Ah, the infamous tire swing: my best and worst idea. As a thank you to our village for welcoming us so generously, my friends and I wanted to hang a tire swing for the kids to play on. We acquired a tire and rope, selecting a central and sturdy tree to hang the swing. Within three minutes, a crowd of about twenty children gathered, craning to see our scheme. When we unveiled the final product, it was like dropping a piece of bread into a koi fish pond. Our “three to the swing or else it will break” meant absolutely nothing. A wave of energized, yet terrorizing fury ensued. The little kids didn’t stand a chance, pushed out of the way by eleven year old boys eager to climb high and surpass their friends. There was so much energy, excitement, shouting, and some crying that I stood back, ready to throw the towel in. Liv, you should’ve known better! One tire swing for fifty kids at a time is a recipe for disaster.
Later that night, I brought Oumar and Yaya to the swing with my older host sister Fatou. Before the swing came into sight, we could hear the clamor from afar. As I rounded the corner, I saw not one, not two, but NINE boys on the tire swing. It was utter chaos. The peaceful, sweet swing I had imagined for the kids was a beast in disguise. I hedged the swing would last for one more day.
The tire swing ultimately exceeded its anticipated lifespan, lasting three days before it disappeared into the night. Our amateur sleuthing led to the reason. Someone cut the tire swing down because the kids were playing hooky from school to play on it. I cried.
There were a few lessons learned. First, Peace Corps volunteers can engineer a damn good tire swing. The swing should have fallen the first time six boys clambered onto it. We had actually done too good of a job. A++. Secondly, if you want kids to go to school, hang a tire swing there. Case closed.
The Chocolate Bar
This memory still makes me giggle. The first time a group of us escaped the training village and independently traveled to Soma, the larger market town near us, we felt an exhilarating rush of freedom. Like teenagers with a driver’s license, we could now catch a gele-gele (pictured below) and take to the streets. In Soma, one particular store we called “the toubab shop” became a common weekend destination during training. Somewhat like your neighborhood 7/11, the toubab shop was the closest thing we had to a grocery store for these ten weeks.
One day, Erin and I found a refrigerated chocolate bar with puffed quinoa and almond slices. I don’t think words can capture our excitement, so I’m not even going to try. We split the cost of the bar (less than 75 cents) and gleefully rushed outside to find the perfect spot to share our first bite of chocolate in weeks. Erin and I took nibbles of the bar, eyes wide with satisfaction and determination to savor the moment like Charlie Bucket with his Wonka Bar.
Within minutes under the West African sun, the chocolate started to melt and Erin and I started shrieking. “Eat it! Eat it!” We began shoveling the chocolate into our mouths, laughing hysterically at our demise. With a mouth full of chocolate, Erin cried out that we were going to get sick and I could only cry-laugh in agreement, my mouth also covered in chocolate like a two year old at birthday party.
We ate the entire chocolate bar in a race against time. The entire moment felt like satire, ending in both belly aches and belly laughs. I guess this is why we can’t have nice things.
Health and Language Training
Our busy days consisted of technical health trainings, administrative, medical, and security lectures, as well as language and culture lessons. Because this Peace Corps program is a condensed 15-month pilot, our training included material that would normally be taught during a mid-service training for the usual 27-month program. This meant that our days were extra busy and our cohort was expected to reach an Intermediate Mid language level in ten weeks rather than six months. I scored as Intermediate High in Mandinka, which is slightly surprising given the amount of times I would accidentally say something in Spanish.
As someone who studied International Politics and Law, I loved the technical health trainings. It was so fun to learn something new and feel out of my element, but I know my strengths and it only became a matter of figuring out how to apply them to this new sector. Our health program goals in The Gambia are to end preventable maternal and neonatal deaths, and support youth to transition to healthy adults. These are broad objectives, but our goals fit under the umbrella of the Gambian Health Ministry’s national objectives. In my role, I will be working alongside the Community Health Nurse and Village Health Worker in my new village. Together, we host Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) clinics, work on different national campaigns (vaccination and malaria), conduct home visits, promote healthy behavior change, and increase education related to nutrition, malaria, safe deliveries, healthy newborns, breastfeeding, etc. I’m so excited to get to work in my new village!
Swearing In
PST culminated in an official swearing-in ceremony on December 16, in front of our host families, Peace Corps staff, and US Embassy personnel. The live stream to the US cut out within five minutes, but somehow the event was broadcasted on Gambian national television as my new host family would tell me later that week. This was basically our graduation, where we reflected on how far we've come and where we are going. The US Charge d'Affairs spoke, as well as some of us volunteers in the four languages we've learned: Mandinka, Pulaar, Sarahule, and Wolof. I delivered part of the speech in Mandinka, something I had not imagined on my 2025 bucket list.
And just like that, we swore an oath and became official Peace Corps Volunteers in The Gambia! Less than twelve months to go!
P.S. Please forgive me for the hideous fabric in the pictures below. I promise I had no say in the matter.
Your wonderful article about your PST in Gambia was illuminating and delightful. Sharing your insights and experiences is so helpful in understanding another culture. I look forward to reading more about your journey with successes or challenges in this upcoming year. I appreciate your willingness to work for The Peace Corps, especially since my cousin and family served in Pakistan. Wishing you all the best!
Diane Georghiou
Beautiful. For as much as we talk, I knew some, but really not all of this. Loved learning more!! And the additional photos. So proud of you!! 😘