Thoughts on PeaceCorps

So I just returned from the Dominican Republic after eight days with Loyola ENT at the ILAC mission outside of Santiago. 485 patient screenings and 119 surgeries later, I am back in the United States and I've got a few things on my mind. At present, I should be reviewing material for the last half of the Step 2 medical licensing examination, but I think time would be better spent musing about a few things.

While in the DR our group needed translator assistance to help out the linguistically challenged medical staff. Towards that end we picked up seven very capable Peace Corps volunteers who took time out of their respective projects to facilitate the daily workings of our clinic. Over the course of the week we got to know the Peace Corps volunteers quite well and heard each's own story of how they came to where they are right now: in a foreign land working with people they arguably don't know on tasks for which many of them had no prior experience let along expertise. My respect for them is genuine and without equivocation.

Indeed I have met quite a few Peace Corps alumnae in my class who are very hard working, globally minded individuals, with solid senses of personal and professional direction. Sure there are a few who suspiciously seem to have learned nothing from there experience, but that could be said about people in any situation, let alone one requiring as much fortitude as Peace Corps.

Peace Corps was a pubic service initiative that was founded by an executive order from the Kennedy Administration to spread aid and foster US-foreign relations in underserved communities. Unlike its uglier domestic step-sisters (eg. Teach for America, or AmeriCorps) the Peace Corps requires a much longer time commitment. This makes it an excellent tool for undertaking long term projects if it takes advantage of developing generative projects that can, in the best case, adopted and run by communities being served or at the least handed off to the next volunteer in the area. Such projects can be as simple as a teaching computer technology skills in developing nations or as complex as managing sustainable crop growing strategies in marginally arable areas. One of the translators, an ex-swimwear model, told me a her project to develop reliable and efficient sanitation to her community. How she had worked with the community leaders to outline a way to protect the drinkable water supply by first creating a way to collect and quarantine waste, how she was furiously writing grants to obtain funding to start working through the phases of her plan, and how she planned to get the project started for the next volunteer to complete. From my own perspective, having as much difficulty actually generating waste as I have, I was just impressed at the mind-boggling layered planning. Many very capable people in the United States cannot put together projects with any foreseeable planning for subsequent phases, even with the vast resources that a well developed western society has to offer. Thus a well described (or at least well intended) plan of action from someone in the field whose prior training in waste disposal included little more than using acetone to strip fingernail polish is absolutely stunning.

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that Peace Corps has an institutionalized handicap built into its framework: no volunteer is allowed to remain in on location for more than five years. The rationale for this rule is to keep the ideas generated and implemented by the sharp end of Peace Corps (the volunteers) fresh and new. After all, one of the missions of Peace Corps is to foster American understanding of cultures abroad so that their influence on the volunteers can be translated back to America upon their return home (though returning home can be particularly difficult for the volunteers). Returning to the longevity of development projects, this renewal of personnel costs projects time and may cause them to stall out entirely if the volunteer is either not suited to the project or if the community does not grow out of the hand holding that Peace Corps is willing to offer. One of the things I respected the most about working with Habitat for Humanity was their presence of mind to be upfront about giving “a hand up” not “a hand-out”. Future owners were expected to be partners in process not just worthy/gracious recipients. This could be enforced by the long term governance of Habitat Boards, but I wonder how this could be handled in the Peace Corps without stirring up the old fires of suspicion that plagued the early volunteering efforts. In the 60s PCVs were criticized for being neo-imperialists inflicting Americanism on the locals like as though they soiled the very ground they touched. Another one of our PCVs told us that the people of her community were afraid she was a CIA spy for the majority of the first year she was in country. “What was I going to spy on,” one of her friends argued on her behalf, “ the bananas?” Regardless, America has had a number of questionable moments in its history, such that even positive programs like the Peace Corps must tread lightly, even if it means sacrificing progress for diplomacy.

Beyond the programs of the American mission abroad, what can be said about the volunteers themselves? At first glance you could make them out to be quite heroic folk: separated from thoroughly American upbringings, often following college ridiculousness, and placed into often poverty stricken areas. They're given a pittance of a salary, a nebulous job, and asked to MacGyver something out of it... if only they had the requisite swiss army knife, rubber band, and chewing gum. But what causes these graduate of higher education to sojourn into the unknown? As so many land-grant college graduates know, liberal arts educations do not gain you jobs. Education in America has turned towards acquiring technical skills to take you into the next salary bracket, which has unfortunately left the educational philosophy of “learning how to learn” to a minority of students. No longer are classical educations taught so that the strengths and weakness of the past can be examined to help shape future decisions, rather we are taught how to tabulate and compound, strategize how to operate within the rule that other men have set up, rather than examining and enhancing those rules. No. Like lemmings marching towards an unknown inevitability we scamper to get out degrees, our jobs, mates, mortgages, and some kids so that we can sit down with a six pack and watch our sitcoms or NASCAR. Is it in this light that some choose to spread their wings and take a chance with the winds of change that Peace Corps may bring? I would guess that it is something slightly less romantic where the volunteer is not sure what he or she wants to do with life yet and does not want to just plop down in the first employment opportunity that winks at them and buys them a drink a the bar. So they take a chance, hoping that biding their time doing something ostensibly positive in the ether of existence may eventually light the spark. Two years of reflection. Two years of the most contemporary liberal education available. Two years to find out how they can make their impact on society, or at the very least constructively contribute to the America that they had the unique experience of seeing from outside in. And now with Bush II, and Obama expanding the number of volunteers in a time of economic floundering there will be more opportunities for our generation to find their way to the benefit of many.

Of course, this may just be a guess and wishful thinking, but I don't know how anyone could come back from that experience and not be changed in such a way that they could be satisfied going back to the states and languish away pushing pencils to keep the American machine humming. However the return home can be equally as big of a leap as leaving the secure confines of your culture. Riding in the state rooms and on the deck of the cruise ship does not let you see all the dents, dings, barnacles and corrosion that is readily apparent from the decks of smaller vessels passing by. Life is simpler when you have less making things like right and wrong much easier to discriminate especially in a wider view like an ethos or core belief. Moving back to the land of plenty with its infinite spectrum of grays between black and white could easily be daunting enough to inspire one to look for a way out back to simpler... which may not be that bad of a thing, at the very least its a plan.

At the end of the day, the Peace Corps is an institution that is hard at work for all Americans, shaping the image of the US abroad while also structuring and strengthening its volunteers to transcend the rote for something greater. I would like to think that, given the option, I would be able to do something like this but I realize that my palsied french abilities, extreme xenophobia, combined with my generally goofy appearance means that I would probably be less than successful. However, this does not exclude me from being a swimwear model.

Thank you again to all who have supported this trip, to the ILAC mission in Santiago, and a special thanks for the tireless efforts of our Peace Corps volunteers. I wish you the best in the future.

Christopher Janowak MSIV

Santiago, Dominican Republic