The Peace Corps Ain’t What you Think

I’m what you would consider a former army brat. My  Airforce Colonel dad made a career in the armed services. I lived in so many different cities and countries I don’t remember all of them, especially the years from 0-5 years old.

After graduating from George Mason University located in Fairfax, Virginia. I was effectively allured into joining the Peace Corps. I truly believed that joining the Peace Corps straight out of college was a great idea. I’d have the unique opportunity to be fully immersed in another culture. Hopefully, I would be placed in a city, town or village where I could be the only foreigner around only to find out that there are many groups of expats. An expatriate is a group of people residing in a country other than their native country. In common usage, the term often refers to professionals, skilled workers, or artists taking positions outside their home country, either independently or sent abroad by their employers, which can be companies, universities, governments, or non-governmental organizations. However, the term “expatriate” is also used for retirees and others who have chosen to live outside their native country. Historically, it has also referred to exiles.

The allure of two years abroad and the chance to integrate into new and exciting cultures has tempted some 200,000 volunteers into a life of service in 139 different countries. Whether it’s a post-college move or a mid-career shift, Peace Corps provides a unique way to experience places in a way no typical trip allows.

Sure, a sense of adventure and a bit of independence are requirements for the job, but that’s where parallels to travel end. Peace Corps isn’t for every globetrotter or international jetsetter. It goes without saying that Peace Corps Volunteers see the world: from the Caribbean Islands to Central America, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, too. Volunteer projects extend to the far reaches of the globe. Yet despite this international presence, the happiest volunteers are typically those most content to stay at home. (Their new home, that is.)

Peace Corps Volunteers are brought in to do a job. Whether it’s to build fisheries in a remote region of Zambia, train teachers in computer skills in Eastern Europe or combat HIV/AIDS in China, Peace Corps work is a full-time J O B.

To be effective, volunteers must integrate into their communities, adapt to new cultures and become familiar with customs and traditions. This means that when the job ends, the hard work of getting to know a place and its people really begins.

Only volunteers who stay on site and dedicate time and effort to cultivating relationships actually succeed.

Peace Corps Volunteers are brought in to do a job. Like most jobs, Peace Corps has vacation and holidays, too. However tight volunteer budgets mean travel is anything but glamorous. Modes of transportation usually include hitchhiking, bike taxis, donkey carts, canoes and banana trucks. And that’s if those options even exist.

For volunteers in the Pacific Islands region that covers more than 300,000 square miles it can take days to get to the nearest major land mass. I should know because I was sent there shortly after my training.

So while it may be tempting to follow in the footsteps of Peace Corps alumni like novelist Paul Theroux or TV journalist Chris Matthews, the best volunteers are those committed to sustainable development, not their career development.

There’s something romantic about spending a year abroad. The excitement of a new culture. The beauty of a language. The potential for foreign love.

While these opportunities exist in a Peace Corps world, the realities of daily life are anything but romantic. There are children living in trees like monkeys, a undomesticated herd of  rabid dogs on morning runs, beyond-basic accommodations and more often than not, no toilets or running water.

The beginning of your training is not a semester like fishing in the Everglades, Bulgaria Europe's third-cheapest tourist city, where you can get by on around $27 a day or a year in Paris. For people looking to revisit those days of binge drinking with coeds, the Peace Corps service will be a serious disappointment.

In a Peace Corps world, the realities of daily life are anything but romantic. Volunteers are sent to developing countries and placed in remote villages and tiny towns. They live just like the locals in terms of both income and housing. From igloos, adobe houses to red clay mud huts, volunteers learn to live without the basic necessities.

Like when I volunteered in Mali, access to fresh foods was extremely limited, which meant meals were often the same morning, noon and night. And, unlike a semester at sea or study abroad, the Peace Corps offers no tour guide or set schedule, which means figuring out the pace of life and a balance with work is left up to the volunteer.

The Peace Corps Volunteers are placed all over the world, but just 24 percent end up in Central and South American countries. Because the demand for Spanish speakers is high and the desire to be placed in those countries is great, the Peace Corps usually sends volunteers who are already fluent in the language. (And yes, there is a test to prove it.) For this reason, taking an immersion class or traveling long-term in a Spanish-speaking country was the right approach for me.

Then there’s the lengthy application process that leaves no room for requests when it comes to country placement.

Potential volunteers can rank regions like Sub-Sahara Africa or Asia in terms of interest, but ultimately the Peace Corps calls the shots when it comes to final placement.

Constantly mentally motivated by thinking about changing the world is a pretty tall order and while most volunteers join the Peace Corps because they want to do good, having such lofty ambitions can be a dangerous thing.

In reality, having an impact takes a lot of time, work and a serious amount of effort. But it is possible just usually on a smaller scale.

Unfortunately, focusing on the macro often results in forgetting about the micro and most of the Peace Corps Volunteer’s biggest contributions happen on a much smaller scale.

Whether it’s teaching one man to fish so that his family and village have enough to eat, helping a women’s collective to set up and run their own small business or improving test scores in a class of third graders, the Peace Corps Volunteers touch the lives of individuals more than they change entire worlds.

Even me, myself and I getting hoodwinked, deluded, fooled, bamboozled or duped into volunteering to join the Peace Corps was an amazing way for me to integrate into a new community, explore a culture and understand a people.

The experience created a familiarity that is nearly impossible to match with more typical travel. While there’s an opportunity to see new countries and explore far away destinations during service (and even after), the biggest challenges and rewards come from the time spent at home, in the village, with members of the community.

It may be impossible to change the world but living in a tiny corner of it is a reminder that it is possible to change individuals, circumstances and ourselves.

That’s when I returned home when I realized I wasn’t changing the world. I returned to Indonesia where I was born.

The one positive thing I took from my Peace Corps experience is that it prepared me to help those where I began life.