Supernatural Dreams

This post is adapted from the briefer explanation I gave about my dream in the update email to friends and family, posted above.

Assigning sites to volunteers is an interesting process. To provide a little background on the site assignment process, volunteers don’t actually choose which town they want to live in for two years in Peru. We have to be flexible to be placed in any town in Peru, be it small or large, rural or urban, Spanish-speaking or Quechua-speaking, coast or mountains. For nearly two and a half months during training, we have no idea where we will be placed for permanent site assignments. We may express our preferences or needs in certain regards, but there are no guarantees. We are pretty much in the dark until the last 2 weeks of training, at which point all assignments are finally decided and we are told our sites. The day of site assignments is very exciting as tension builds up over the previous weeks. There is an elaborate ceremony led by our bosses to reveal each site assignment to every volunteer. As site assignments are read on that day, the news is met with loud cheers and applause from all the volunteers and staff of PC Peru. Soon after assignments, each volunteer packs up for a week and visits his or her site to get a taste of what their life will be like for the next two years.

Now, I’m not too sure about my opinion on destiny, but both Milene and I feel that somehow our site assignment was meant to be. The night before our sight assignments were given to us by Peace Corps administration, I had a bizarrely accurate dream of my future site. It is safe to say that this was the craziest form of premonition I have ever experienced. Tension had been building up for weeks before site assignments as volunteers discussed with ever growing anxiety their thoughts and ‘what-ifs’concerning their future sites. I myself was really hoping for some place in the mountains but suspected that somehow I might be placed on the coast. Milene and I discussed with evermore frequency our ideas on where we might end up. Finally the day had come to find out where we would be placed, where we would spend the next two years of our lives.

That night before, I dreamed about our future site. I woke up that morning and explained my entire night’s dream to Milene. In the dream, there was a small town built on top of a lake and supported by giant concrete pillars rising out of the water. The lake and town were surrounded by mountains. Although the town was constructed on pillars above the lake, our house was on the shore of the lake, according to my dream. We were on a porch as water lapped up to within feet of us. Everything was beautiful about the site. The only downside in the dream was that the lake was actually quite dirty. When I explained all this to Milene, she chuckled and said, “Yeah that would be nice, but I don’t think we should get our hopes up.” After all, we both knew that sites with lakes and mountains were nearly unheard of and we had been given the impression by our bosses that we would actually be going to a coastal town.

Later that morning at the Training Center, the volunteers split in to groups to meet with Peace Corps staff and discuss their anxieties/questions concerning the upcoming site assignments to take place later that day. Towards the end of our meeting, I raised my hand and as a half-joke asked the staffer if it was at all possible that I could get placed in a beautiful town near a lake and surrounded by mountains. I explained my dream to her and the entire group. My friends’ reactions were similar to Milene’s: they smiled and gently laughed, thinking “yeah right.” They all knew what I knew, which was that our bosses had a coastal site in mind for Milene and I. The options for married couples were very few, and the other married couple had been told that they were going to a mountain site, leaving the other couple site, a costal site, to us. But the mood quickly changed when we all realized that our staffer wasn’t of the same opinion as everyone else; on the contrary, she was bright red with shock, and her facial expression exlaimed, “How did you know that?!” Extremely intrigued, we all probed her and asked her if what I had said was actually true about my site. She laughed in disbelief but wouldn’t say anything, keeping us all guessing. My friends said to me, “When you find out your site today, I want to know if any of that dream is actually true. It would be so weird if it was. I mean, a lake? Come on.”

A few hours later, it was time to get our site assignments. One by one, names were read off and correlating sites were pronounced. As each person was eliminated along with their site, the remaining volunteers quickly recalculated their chances of ending up in a certain province or a certain climate zone. For us, every time a coastal site came up, we were sure our name was going to be read.

A site name was read, the department was Cajamarca. Milene and I barely paid attention because we knew Cajamarca was a mountain department, not a coastal department. Suddenly, our name was read and we jumped to our feet in elation. We were getting a mountain site after all! But the biggest surprise came when we were handed a folder with all the information and pictures of our town. I opened the folder, pulled out the photos and saw our town—on the edge of a lake and surrounded by mountains.

Sure enough, when we arrived at site for site visit, our town sat exactly on the edge of an enormous lake, surrounded by Nevada-like mountains. Our house was one of two homes in the town that was located directly on the lake shore, just as in the dream. During the rainy season, water comes up to the walls of our home, and although we don’t have a porch, we do have a balcony. Oddly enough, as I had dreamed that the town was actually built on the lake, I later found out that the town had previously been located where the lake currently is. The town was only recently relocated further up the mountain when the government installed a hydro-electric dam and flooded the entire valley, giving rise to a new lake exactly where the town used to be. As for the lake which I dreamed was dirty, it was the only part of the dream that seemed flat wrong. The lake was blue and people told me that swimming and water sports were not uncommon there. In any case, I was happy to be wrong about that point and happy that the lake looked so beautiful. It took about a month of being in site until I finally learned that the lake has a problem: all of the town’s sewage is drained directly into it. Now, the lake is miles and miles long, so for now there’s enough water volume for this not to be a serious problem, but it will become serious in the future and this at least explains why I dreamt of a dirty lake.

Upon returning from site visit, no one could believe the photos I showed them—exactly what I had predicted it would be like according to my dream. I still cannot believe the uncanny accuracy of that dream, nor can Milene for that matter. In fact, many of you are probably thinking that I am somehow exaggerating this post to make a better story, but I have about 20 real-live witnesses who will tell you that they heard me explain this exact dream to them hours before I ever found out my site. Whatever the explanation for that dream, I’m just happy that we ended up here, in a place that feels meant to be, a place that feels like home.