Alphabet Soup

As Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) we are forced to learn a slew of acronyms that make conversations sound like we’re speaking in some sort of secret code. A PCV is a Peace Corps Volunteer and a RPCV is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. The dysphemism for not finishing your service is ET, Early Termination, which always reminds of that scene in the 1976 sci-fi flick “Logan’s Run” where they all float up into the giant fly trap looking thing to kill themselves when they turn 30 because the world is overpopulated. (If anyone gets that reference I’d be shocked.) ET can also be used as a verb i.e. “We knew Jared was ETing when he lost it in Nicaragua” as can COS which stands for Close of Service but holds an important distinction from ET. I know exactly what an APCD and a PTO are (or rather, who they are) but I have no idea what they stand for. If I get sick I have to call the PCMO and if I get robbed I have to call the SSC. Already I have been through PST, IST, PDM, MSC, and one AVC. I had to turn on some MGMT just to write this.

Despite all of these, in the world of the Peace Corps alphabet soup three letters stand out as the most dreaded of all: VRF. I’m pretty sure that stands for Volunteer Reporting File (or something like that) but it really doesn’t matter. It is, as far as I can tell, the root of all evil in the world. The VRF is a tool Peace Corps uses worldwide for getting volunteers to electronically report what they have been doing every six months. If you couldn’t guess, mine is due this Thursday and if you couldn’t guess, it hasn’t been going so smoothly. I didn’t have to go to a community today so I’ve been working on it intermediately between rewatching episodes of the first season of “The Wire” and getting up to wander around to stare at the wall or do anything more interesting than my VRF.

If I sound bitter you have to understand that technology and I have never really gotten along. There is this stereotype that every male in my age range knows everything there is to know about computers and electronics and all that crap. Not true; I know nothing about them. My iPod is really the only electronic device that I've ever fully mastered and the only one I’ve ever had a real propensity towards but mostly just because it allows me drown out horrible chicken bus music for long bus rides.

So it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that it took me about a week to actually get the file to open on my computer. And it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that I when I went back to finish up the last 5% of my VRF a couple minutes ago to find that it hadn’t saved even though I obsessively saved it after everything I entered and it even told me every time, “Changes Successfully Saved to E:\\ 1_2011¬_StephenOliver (1).vrf.” Like I said, the root of all evil in the world.

So now here I sit with a much needed cup of “Mellow Moments Herbal Tea” thinking about calling my APCD to tell him that not only will I ET if he or the CD and PTO don’t call DC about the VRF but that before I COS and am a RPCV I’m going to talk to VAC about bringing it up at the next AVC as long as I don’t get FOC and have to see the PCMO.