This is an attempt to explain the concept of extending service after the basic 2 years of Peace Corps. And then I will answer your questions as to What I am now doing?
Extension is an additional one year (13 months including one month of mandatory home leave--like that adjective is needed) of service in Peace Corps. The volunteer needs to apply to the country where he/she is serving and be approved based on track record and country budget.
Once approved, the PCV finds her own job possiblitities: she can extend in her own village or another location in the country. That involves interviewing with the organization. Then Peace Corps sees if they can write an agreement with that org: who pays for what. Generally the org pays for housing and Peace Corps continues to give the monthly stipend, insurance and plane ticket.
In my case, I knew I had an additional year to kill before I qualified for Medicare but I kept my mouth shut until a year into my service. I applied to PC and was accepted with 3 references. I wanted to work in my own field of nutrition rather than general health. It wasn't hard to find something because every organization has a nutrition component and I had done some work for AfriCare and partnered with World Vision, etc. But my Coordinator advised me to go to the National Food and Nutrition Commission. I stopped in the office to make an appointment for an interview, talked with the Deputy and Director and they expressed interest in me from the get-go.
I was very excited because this is an "autonomous" policy-making division of the National Health Department. They work with EVERYBODY in the country--other branches of the government like Agriculture and most Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO). It also was my comfort zone to stay in government.
Here is their website link on the blog if you are interested to see more details. www.nfnc.org.zm
I helped them write my job description since they hadn't had a Peace Corps Volunteer before. That was fun. Anyway, when I showed up, they said they needed me to write the nutrition guidelines for Maternal Nutrition, Child Nutrition, PD Hearth (done!!), HIV positive people, and Micronutrients. Well, after my home leave of 6 weeks and some time off to settle the housing issues, I really only have 9 months of work to accomplish this. The first week on the job I attended two workshops which they were sponsoring--one for the radio communications personnel and the other for the Iodine Deficiency Taskforce strategic plan. After a week of meetings I was ready to get to work so I picked Iodine as my litmus paper. The 8-5 day was hard to get back into. It took two weeks to do the on-line research and historical review of Zambia's salt fortification program. Now I submitted the paper to my two bosses and the point person on the Iodine committee. We'll see how it goes. The internet connection has been the only drawback: it keeps cutting out during search or download or attaching. My co-workers are very welcoming--no surprise there. They are so hard-working. On Monday I found that several had worked all Saturday to finish a report. Meanwhile, we sponsored and open-house for our new apartment. Hopefully I won't be pulled in on the weekends or to go to too many more workshops unless I am presenting (HA!HA!) I don't do windows, either. Hhmm. I sound like a retiree! I am going to shoot for a paper a month and then spend the rest of the time getting feedback and revising.
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