Woman Ambae:
A Tale of Peace Corps in the South Pacific

This was cutting it uncomfortably close... but all's well that ends well, I suppose.

I want to take a moment to describe the circumstances that lead up to my medical clearance because I think other applicants may find it helpful. Again, my application procress was a bit out of the ordinary (please see first blog entry for details) and I'm not sure how the medical evaluation process works otherwise. I had my application expedited because I was unexpectedly offered an assignment right at the six week cut off. At that time the Office of Medical Services had not even began reviewing my file. In the short, very intense 24 hour evaluation period I was told I needed some additional paperwork for something that I assumed was not an issue as they told me they would medically clear me once they received that paperwork. Unfortunately that assignment fell through for other reasons, and my medical files were put on hold. After I was offered the most recent assignment to Vanuatu a few weeks later I promptly submitted the additional paperwork.

I waited the 48 hours requested by the PC before contacting them for receipt of information. I called my screening nurse and left her a message first. Another two days after that (four business days after faxing the information) I contacted the medical assistant I had been in communication with since I first received my medical packet. This process went on for about two weeks, rotating between calling both of them every few days and leaving message trying to confirm that someone had received my information and that I had done everything correctly on my end. Three weeks passed, countless messages left, no responses. At this point my departure date was a month away, and I was getting pretty panicky. I called several other numbers at the OMS and left many more messages explaining what was going on and asking someone to please call me back and let me know if they had received my fax or not.

After almost a month of this I finally contacted the person in charge of managing the Pacific Islands assignments, who was listed on some of the paperwork I had received in my welcome packet. I explained my situation to her, and although she could not say much regarding anything medical due to confidentiality reasons she finally got me some answers. In order to do so, she physically walked down to the office of my screening nurse, gave her my name and my number and told her she needed to get in contact with me immediately. She then called me and informed me my screening nurse was in her office at that time and had said she would take my call. I called right away and she did not answer. She did however call me back the next day, and had in fact received all of my messages, but had NOT received my paperwork. I have several documents confirming I did send the fax, and it did indeed go through. Essentially my paperwork was lost in the mix. My screening nurse lacked any compassion or sympathy for my situation. Frusterated and upset with discovering that not only was my $30.00 fax misplaced by someone else's error and that I had to pay out of my own pocket to resend it and that the OMS couldn't even spare me five minutes to return my countless calls and let me know they had no such fax, I asked my screening nurse how this could happen. Her response lacked any kind of emotion other than annoyance, "we have a lot of applicants."

I refaxed the paperwork the next day as well as sent a hard copy via snail mail. My screening nurse called me to tell me that they had received it and called me again to let me know when it was being reviewed. I was cleared roughly two weeks later.

What I hope other applicants can gain from this is the understanding that you have to be persistant (even if you're treated like a nuissance) and you have to be very on top of things, the Peace Corps won't do it for you. If I wouldn't have gone about this in the roundabout way I did by contacting someone completely unafilliated with OMS I don't know that I would have been medically cleared in time to leave for my assignment. There's a good possibility I would have fallen through the cracks, and I don't want that to happen to anyone else.

That being said, I leave in 18 days! I've just barely began packing and shopping for supplies. Which brings me to my next point, I'm not sure if any other PCV's even read this, but if you do, recommendations on what to pack would be greatly appreciated! I'm really struggling trying to compile some sort of wardrobe that's appropriate for the modest culture and tropical weather. Any others packing for Vanuatu experiencing this?