Ending our service 1/11/84 Whew! I thought I'd never finish. Now, it's November. We're back into it and ready to get out of it. Been busy with lots of odds and ends as we wrap up this two years into nice packages to be sent back home (wherever that is). It's really screwy, I'm feeling resistant to leave this place. Those tenuous weak roots have found soil deep enough to take hold. It's actually going to be difficult to say goodbye to this place. To make me a schizophrenic, I'm anxious to be back in the U.S.A. too, to see family and friends for the holiday season. Beyond that, I'm not so sure I want to go back. Too many ambiguities. Too many hidden traps. Been cranking through the COS process. Medical stuff is completed and just needs to be sent to B-Dos. We have our return itinerary hammered out and only have to weather the uncertainty of being waitlisted out of St Lucia. Oh yes! Our COS conference was scheduled for St Lucia, the last week of November so, instead of flying out of Barbados, we'd spend an extra night in Castries on November 29th and fly down to Vieux Fort on the morning of November 30th at 7:10 a.m. Beats at 6:30 a.m. flight out of St V but I've got my doubts about WINLINK. If they don't show we have only the option of a taxi ride to get us there ($10 van ride, maybe). But after our last encounter I'm a little nervous…. Needless to say, we are busy. Not only with Peace Corps paperwork, winding up our jobs and packing but also with an unexpected bit of social life. Each weekend we have something scheduled (except for our last) and we'll also have the Beinamen’s over for their last night in St Vincent on November 20th. As it turns out, I'll be working right down to the end of the wire but will hopefully complete my work on November 23rd (also my birthday). If all goes well we'll have the house cleaned out, and will be ready to go on November 26th. Until then we're praying for sanity, peace of mind and a lot of patience.  6/11/84 19 days! And things are going smoothly with a couple of surprises. Karl, my replacement has arrived on the island. Young and inexperienced he has a lot of anxiety about being able to do the work. In fact he reminds me of myself as I faced setting up the M.I.U 10 months ago. With him coming in, I realize how flexible I am now. I keep changing as the situation changes. I'm ready to head in any of six different directions as the situation changes and I guess Karl is unnerved and confused by that. I'm in a dilemma between being so directive as to be oppressive or being so non-committal as to appear disinterested. He keeps talking about my credentials, education and experience. Fact is that I'm not credentialed for this kind of work and my success has been through luck and any lack of success due to my ignorance. I remember feeling vague and overwhelmed by the whole thing. and I guess I should expect Karl to feel the same way. Strange how the circle has come around. To complicate matters, most of the U.S.A.I.D project and the government's push for marketing will come to a head in January. There is equipment to procure and staff to allocate. Goals objectives and plans to be made. At this point, frankly, I don't think Karl is in a position to make decisions of that caliber yet. He's competent but it will take him some time to learn the subtleties of this government's operation and grasp the whole picture. Hugh seems to think so too and visibly perked up when I mentioned I'd accept a short-term contract (3 months) to sort things out. So now there is a possibility that I would come back in late January to finish the project. Even if we don't work it out we'll talk to U.S.A.I.D tomorrow. It was a nice to hear that the GSVG would actually pay to keep me here. A nice compliment at the end of a long road. Yes we're reaching the end. Our medical records are on their way to Barbados so we should have medical clearance by next week. Our checks should come the week after. We still have a lot of packing to do and some X-mas gifts to buy. Deb will be finishing up her work soon. The final days are coming.    9/11/84 Or are they… seems like the Peace Corps experience is a magnet for ambiguity and with this thing finally winding up the ambiguities have paradoxically multiplied. Hugh, Mike and I kicked around this idea of a short-term contract and Mike acted very interested in the deal. Except, he was looking at December 1st as a starting date rather than January 1st. That would abort our Christmas plans and I'm not so sure I'd be very keen on that. Scott & Kathy, Ray and Gilda and Grandma all wrote to tell us how anxious and happy they would be to see us. And, to tell you the truth, I'm very anxious and happy to see them. On the other hand (as Tevya says), I'll get paid $100 US a day which ain't exactly chicken feed. The timing is the hang up. I know that the government is going to grind to a halt around December 15th and not resume until at least January 7th. So, we’ll just have to see what will happen. I hope to talk to Mike this AM to sort out details and get some kind of firm offer. Otherwise, I can't really believe that we are leaving in just 2 weeks. I suppose that the pressing business of now is keeping me occupied.    7/1/2026 (just to mess with you...January 7, 2026) So, it's been an amazing 41 years and two months since our C.O.S. (Close Of Service).  Our last few weeks in St. Vincent are blurry now (thankful I recorded the other events). The journal entries ended abruptly and we exited St. Vincent tearful but hopeful for a return.  The return didn't happen.  We even left some items at the cottage in case we returned. The U.S.A.I.D. contract didn't materialize and there wasn't an extension offered to me to get the M.I.U. (Marketing Intelligence Unit) fully up and running with the new PCV. Life quickly moved on.  We did celebrate a last Thanksgiving at the cottage: Google tells me that Thanksgiving in 1984 was on November 22nd, which meant it was the day before my birthday (a two-fer!) That would have made it just a few days before we C.O.S.'ed.  We were probably VERY busy in that last week.  C.O.S. must have started on November 26th because that is the entry date for St. Lucia on my passport and we left for Miami on December 1st because that is the date on our tickets (yes, I kept them).  Our C.O.S. was unremarkable.  Just a lot of time sharing and saying goodbye while enjoying a few days at a hotel in Castries.  Predictably, WINLINK failed to honor our flight to Vieux Fort, so we took a taxi, BARELY having enough for the trip ($135.00 EC sticks in my head) to catch the flight to Miami. LIAT (Leave Island Any Time) took us to Castries but we took Eastern Airlines (no longer in existence) from Vieux Fort back to the U.S.  The cool thing about Eastern, and probably why they eventually went bankrupt, was that they had a 21-day unlimited flying plan which worked well for us because we planned to visit so many family and friends on our way back to Salt Lake City.  The paper tickets made quite a "book" and you can see the itinerary: Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Norfolk, Atlanta, New York (LGA), Charlotte, Chicago, Atlanta, Denver, Salt Lake City...the more astute of you will also notice the return to St. Lucia on the 17th - didn't happen but the reason was because you had to book the roundtrip to get the special fare.  It was $606 U.S. - about $1900 in today's dollar.  I think the Peace Corp gave us an allowance for our return but I don't recall the amount. That list of cities corresponded to: Seeing Debbie's cousin Greg and wife, seeing our landlady in New York, spending time with family in Chicago, going to see friends Scott and Kathy in Colorado Springs, and then returning home to SLC.  It didn't go quite as we expected.  We were able to check all our luggage through to SLC when we arrived in Miami (try THAT in today's super paranoid air travel industry!) so we were relatively unfettered.  When we got to a very chilly NY, I came down with either a terrible flu or another round of Dengue fever and hardly had time to enjoy the party Mrs. Douyon threw for us.  Deb got sick shortly thereafter while we were in Chicago and we eventually skipped the Denver trip (Sorry, Scott and Kathy!) just so we could be home a couple of days early. After that it's a blur.  Christmas festivities and eventually settling into life as we know it (and have it) today. The strongest takeaway for me, the lasting part of the Peace Corp experience, is the "dealing with ambiguity" part.  We have been in many situations since where we didn't know what we were in for (parenting comes immediately to mind).  Combining that experience with the assurance that God has our backs makes for a joyful, peaceful existence.  It's not all rainbows and glitter, but the Peace Corps trained us to be engaged and flexible, open and non-judgemental until all the dust had settled.  I can think of plenty of phrases that would fit that result in today's vernacular, but I'll stick with "It's the toughest job I ever learned   to love". This was written in the last page of the three-ring binder I used for a journal.  I am pretty sure it was the FIRST entry  :-) BTW...we DID return to St. Vincent, 22 years later in 2006 with our sons, Jonas and Sam.  The cottage had not changed all that much in all those years: But we had changed: