Peace Corps News

Spotlight on Peace Corps Ecuador

RPCV Angela Fresne writes: My experience in Ecuador taught me not to take basic things for granted
I was "La Gringita" and I was original in my village because I was blue eyed, blonde, English speaking and American. These things gave me rock star status in my village. Children would chase me down the street, yelling my name, holding my hand and chattering away at me in fast Spanish. Generous, inquisitive people invited me to meals and shared fruits and vegetables from their gardens with me. They liked to ask me questions about life in the United States, and they were especially interested in finding out about my parents and my relationship with my family. My day to day life seemed to always circle back to the clever chicken who would manage to get in my kitchen and tear through the trash looking for something edible. This same chicken ate the worms out of my model worm-bed and tore up all my most delicate seedlings in my model-garden. My neighbors found the daily shouting and squawking match between the two of us a constant source of entertainment. I would chase the chicken around and yell I was going to eat it for dinner when I caught it. I never caught the chicken.  Read more.

A Volunteer returns to Ecuador
In 1971 I checked off the Spanish speaking region of South America on my Peace Corps application as my choice of service area, expecting this would give me the best chance of being located close to the Andes Mountains. Living in Southern California (although raised in Iowa), Spanish was my obvious language choice, and my hiking and camping trips in California's mountains attracted me to the Andes. With the luck of draw, I was assigned to Ecuador, a country that I decided, after visiting Columbia, Peru, Bolivia and Chile, has the most scenic and cultural contrasts of any in South America.

Since ending my tour in 1974, the only bars to returning were money, time and resolve; however, after years of mostly talking, my wife Isabel and I finally left on May 19 for a 16 day visit to stay in Quito, the capitol of Ecuador and my Peace Corps site. Our plans were to re-explore some parts of the country, visit some Ecuadorian friends, see just how the country had changed and, hopefully, collect seeds from the little known fruits grown in Ecuador.

Today, my high opinion of the country's attractions remains the same. But, instead of "natural or scenic beauty," the current descriptive term is "biodiversity." I've seen published studies ranking Ecuador as number one in biodiversity density. Two tourists I talked with extensively said they almost passed up Ecuador after reading about its political and economic turmoil online in Quito's main newspaper "El Commercio." This caused them to look further into Ecuador's history where they discovered continuous turmoil was normal, so they made the trip anyway.

Since the 1970's, Quito has grown from what seemed like an easy going town of 600,000 persons to a bustling metropolis of over 2 million. The impression is that the oil revenues, which started upon completion of the first pipeline in 1972, fueled Quito,s development. However, some residents said that the most visible additions of new highways, overpasses and tunnels, the trolley system, and the many high-rise apartment buildings just started within the past five years.

The Peace Corps program appears to be alive and well (fluctuating between 100-200 volunteers) - the same nurse who prescribed our dysentery pills in the early 70's was still on duty. She reported that my program "small business" had come and gone over the years but was being restarted again - the current term is "microbusiness". The headquarters offices in Quite have been pushed about a dozen blocks to the north from their 70's location and now appear to actually have an organizational structure. Behind the main staff offices (a converted house) is a smaller carriage type house converted solely for volunteer use. The second floor has an extensive library, including a librarian, with two computers and e-mail access for volunteers and the ground floor has a lounge, kitchen, shower, storage and rest area for visiting volunteers. After my group went to Ponce, Puerto Rico for training, the entire program was shifted in-country; and, finally after many changes of contractors, the office decided to run their own program on a nearby hacienda. Read more.

Peace Corps Volunteer a hapy cricket writes:  You say it best…*
I finished the book about the PCV in Ecuador from the 60s. In one part that I really was glad to hear, he talked about writing up a letter in Spanish and having a native speaker check it over for him to make sure it was grammatically correct. The reviewer thought he did a good job and commented ‘I didn’t know anyone could say so much in the present tense.’ It is a interesting way to try to communicate, everything must be in the present, or the botched past tense, or the cheater method for the future. The cheater method is easy for me because in Texas we use it all the time; it’s like our “fixin’ to.” I’m fixin’ to eat. That gets you into the future tense. Only in Spanish, it’s “going to….blah blah blah.”

Last night, I had Spanish in my dream. I wouldn’t say I dreamt in Spanish. But I was definitely talking in Spanish in my dream. A fellow volunteer said it best recently when he said, “I dream in Spanish sometimes. I don’t like it though…I don’t understand what’s going on.”

In the PC office in Quito this past week, I demonstrated my Spanish prowess to my fellow volunteers by trying to get some people up and moving to go eat lunch. I was attempting to say something along the lines of “I was born ready,” which is a bit of a stretch for me to even attempt. But in this case, I used the verb “nadar” which means swim rather than the verb for born which is “nacer.” Everyone erupted in laughter. Oh well, I like to be funny. I just wish I was more in on the jokes these days. Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Ecuador.

Peace Corps Hippies

Poland RPCV Troy Headrick writes: Peace Corps Volunteers have historically been viewed as eccentrics or idealistic, hippie types who were out to save the world
I call myself a freak because that's what I am. According to Dictionary.com, a "freak" is "a person or animal on exhibition as an example of a strange deviation from nature." Lots of people who know me and are familiar with my way of living would argue that my lifestyle is certainly unnatural (to say the very least).

Here's the deal: Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV) have historically been viewed as eccentrics or worse by far too many Americans. This is perhaps due to the fact that the organization, early on, was made up of idealistic, hippie types who were out to save the world, and thus they were seen to epitomize the sort of bleeding heart liberals that your average Joe and Jane American Citizen, with their tendency to be fairly conservative and isolationist, find so repulsive.

This general attitude about Peace Corps Volunteers still exists and has been made clear to me on any number of occasions, but never so blatantly as the time Mike Wilson's parents came to visit him in Poland. Mike was my closest PCV buddy during those two glorious years of service. He was stationed in a town not too far away from Tarnów, the city where I was living. During our second summer as volunteers, his parents flew over from Kansas to visit him and have a look at his adopted home. As might be expected, my best friend was keen for me to meet his folks; thus, on a warm afternoon in August, I hopped on a train and traveled to Krakow where the three of them were sightseeing. After disembarking, I met Mike and his parents in the main market square in the city center and then we all went out for dinner.

Suddenly, in the middle of a wonderful meal of traditional Polish food, Mike's mother, a nice woman in every respect, turned to me and said, "You Peace Corps people are just a little different, aren't you? I mean, it takes a very unusual kind of person to live like this, all the way over here, in these conditions. Let's be honest, it's just not as modern here as it is back home. I mean, there are easier and more lucrative things you could be doing in America. Know what I mean?"

I certainly did understand what she was saying. There was nothing ambiguous about her message. And she was right. There were other easier and more lucrative things that Mike and I could have been doing, but neither one of us wanted easier and lucrative.

What we wanted, on the other hand, was the struggle, the sense of mission, the feeling of being personally and professionally fulfilled, and the authenticity of the experience of building bridges across national and cultural divides. And, on top of all that, we felt wonderfully purified by our simple (i.e., materially poor) lifestyles. Mike's parents -- though I have to give them credit for honestly listening to me that evening -- just found it impossible to get their minds fully around all that I was saying.

It was partly because while I was speaking they were thinking that you can't put self-fulfillment in the bank and partly because the vast majority of mainstream, middle-class Americans believe in something called "the American Dream," which teaches all good boys and girls that they should clamor after all the things that Mike and I seemed to have rejected, thus making us first-class weirdoes.  Read more.

Judy Henry moved from New York City to Rowe, New Mexico in 1970 to become a hippie on the advice of her friend, Helen Thompson, with whom she had been in the Peace Corps in Ecuador
Caption: Judy Henry sings with friends Kate Moses, right, of Santa Fe, and Bee Zollo, left, of Eldorado at a hippie reunion at Henry’s home in Rowe. The event marked the 34th anniversary of the arrival of hippies in the community southeast of Santa Fe.

Judy Henry moved from New York City to Rowe, New Mexico in 1970 on the advice of her friend, Helen Thompson, with whom she had been in the Peace Corps. “She said, ‘Come to Rowe. It’s just like Ecuador but there is running water in the house,’ ” Henry remembered. So she came, driving a mail truck across the country with her then husband, getting hassled by the cops in every state along the way. She was 25 years old. “They called us hippies, but I never called myself a hippie,” Henry said. “We were just trying to get away from a crazy world. I was sick of what was going on. Like I am now, but I’m older now.”

She’s since learned to embrace the term. Saturday — on her 60th birthday — she threw a party. The flier said: “celebrating 34 years of hippies in Rowe.” It had all the markings of a hippie celebration. Bumpy dirt road to funky adobe house? Check. Potluck spread? Check. Peace, love and hot tubbing with your friends? Check. Many of the women wore their “hippie costumes:” denim cutoffs, braids, flowers in their hair. “I saved this dress from 1976,” one said. “I saved this body since 1976 and I’m still wearing it,” joked another. “My breasts too, nothing added, nothing taken away.”

“It was hard when I moved to Boston. There was a whole hippie fad and it was all based on what you where wearing,” she said. “I used to get really aggravated because I knew being a hippie was about living on the land and living simply, not jumping out of your Range Rover with your handmade clothes and your patchouli.” Henry is a Hospice nurse. She lives part time in Santa Fe, but still cooks on her wood stove when in Rowe. She doesn’t have any regrets about being a New Mexico hippie. Like many of the people at the party, Henry sees parallels between the political climate of the late 1960s and the political climate now. “If I was the same age now as I was then, I would do the same thing,” she said. “ I would drop out. Take myself away from the mainstream. I don’t like it. I don’t approve of it. I don’t want to be part of a war machine.” Read more.

Help! Our son wants to join the Peace Corps! As we recall from the 1960s, that's mostly a bunch of hippies or druggies wasting time instead of working.
Wow, it sounds as though your son was born about 30 years too late, for when the Peace Corps was first on the scene, it was thought of as a terribly important and generous way to help less fortunate people while at the same time seeing the world -- or at least an unfamiliar and interesting community. Now, in the face of a greedier time, we are expected to gravitate toward the higher-paying, prestige-loaded job at the expense of doing good.

I think it would be very big of you to support your son's decision. Remember, the Peace Corps is a limited assignment, and it might help him clarify his life's path, as there are valuable lessons to be learned in this type of foreign affair. After his service is done, there is plenty of time for him to go the corporate route, if that is the right one for him. I think you should be proud of your son for his independent thinking and altruistic spirit. Regardless of what first job he chooses, it will be a time of learning and self-discovery, as well as a period of forming values. He obviously doesn't care much for yours. And perhaps you should take a look at why not.  Read more.

Recent RPCV Obituaries

Obituary for Liberia RPCV D. Michael Van De Veer
On December 19, 2006, shortly after returning to Hawaii from Nepal where he was working as an independent journalist, D. Michael Van De Veer died from an infection from which he could not recover.  An active member of SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association), Van De Veer was a long time social activist around the world and best known as the colorful and compassionate voice of Kauai Community Radio KKCR’s weekly “Out of the Box” call in talk show.  But as large as his presence in radio was, Michael was also very active as a journalist, writing and reporting for Pacifica’s Free Speech Radio News, UnitedWeBlog, Voice of Democratic Nepal and other independent news outlets.  An active member of SAJA (South Asian Journalists Association), Michael frequently traveled to and wrote about, social and political affairs in Nepal.  A KKCR website biography notes that Michael was a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia and the former Planning Director of Santa Cruz County, CA.  Michael served on KKCR’s Board of Directors and was active in supporting charitable causes in Nepal. 

Obituary for India RPCV Ken Miller
There was another side of Ken Miller known best to his neighbors in Morgan County. He was a farmer and a dedicated citizen. His sense of service had been honed in India as a member of the Peace Corps for two years. He was on the board of the Morgan County Hospital and a member of the Mooresville Nature Club.

Obituary for Ecuador RPCV Jack Thornborrow
Thornborrow's life of service may have begun after college when he volunteered in agriculture for the Peace Corps in Ecuador. He met his wife, Darcy, in London, and they traveled to Afghanistan, where they taught English. They married in the Katmandu Valley in Nepal before returning to the United States and moving with his family to Buhl in 1974. In the early 1990s, Thornborrow bridged his agricultural background with local politics and took a seat on the Planning and Zoning Commission. "I think my dad was one of the most fair people you would ever meet," Jenah said. "He would make decisions to his detriment if he knew they were right. In the farm, he made those decisions as well as in the bigger community."

Obituary for Costa Rica RPCV Langdon Barone
After graduating from West Virginia University, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica. From 1985 to 1998, he worked overseas with the Department of State. In 1998, he was sworn in as a Foreign Service Officer and had postings in Dakar, Senegal and Washington, D.C., where he was serving at the time of his death.

Obituary for Venezuela RPCV Debbie Jirak
After graduating from Temple University with a degree in Spanish, Mrs. Jirak became one of America's first Peace Corps volunteers, working in a village in the Andes in Venezuela for two years. Returning to the United States, she earned her master's degree at Duquesne University and taught Spanish in a number of Pittsburgh Public Schools. That's where she met her husband, likewise a teacher and eventually a vice principal. The couple helped finance their 1981 honeymoon in the Galapagos Islands by arranging a tour group of 34 friends. That led them to start their own travel company. In a 1995 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on the agency, Mrs. Jirak said, "Adventure should not be reserved for the advantaged, nor should world travel be exclusively for the wealthy." Mrs. Jirak and her husband were sensitive to the various cultures they visited with their tours, holding several orientation sessions before trips to familiarize travelers with their destinations. "We find that people appreciate a trip more when they know what to expect and they become sensitive to the particular culture being visited," Mrs. Jirak said in the article. The couple visited the Galapagos numerous times and also traveled to China, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Germany and the Arctic, among other locations. Mrs. Jirak would document their trips through photographs and writings. The Jiraks also hosted Mexican, Japanese and Inuit exchange students.

Spotlight on Peace Corps Writers

Ecuador RPCV John Brandi is the author of more than three dozen poetry collections
When John Brandi moved to New Mexico in 1971, he designed and built a small cottage near Guadalupita, north of Mora. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he had served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador and begun publishing poetry as part of what he calls South America's "mimeo revolution." Using a Rotary Neostyle hand-operated mimeograph machine, he founded Tooth of Time Press in his cabin and thus brought the revolution north. Brandi published the work of other writers in addition to his own, and his press became known for attractive books of poetry. From the beginning, he combined writing poetry with making art. Currently a resident of Rio Arriba County, Brandi is the author of more than three dozen poetry collections. He has also created many works in a format called broadside -- poems printed with artwork on large sheets of paper and designed for display. Born in California, Brandi began his creative endeavors early. "My parents encouraged me to draw and to write at a young age," he said. "My dad was an accountant for a newspaper in Los Angeles. At the end of the month, he would ask the pressmen to cut end rolls into 8-by-10 sheets for me. He gave me a coffee table to work on and said, 'Draw the places you've gone with your mother and me.' My mother would always add something like, 'Write about how you felt when you were standing on those rocks with all those waves crashing around you.'"   Read more about John Brandi.

Robert Davidson wrote short stories to pass the time while in the Peace Corps in Grenada, little knowing that would be the start of a new career
Robert Davidson got his doctorate in American Literature in 2002 from Purdue University. Before that, he and his wife were in the Peace Corps, from 1990 to 1992. He joined because of Linda, who had more of an idealistic "do-good-in-the-world" mind-set. "I wanted to travel," he said. "My intentions weren't as noble." The couple spent two years in Grenada, a Caribbean island. While there, he taught students about reading and writing, but found there wasn't much to do in his spare time except read and write. He hadn't always wanted to be a writer--"It whetted my appetite, I guess." There, Davidson learned discipline. He would wake up at 5 a.m. and write for two or three hours almost every day before work. "At first, that sucked," he said, the experience still fresh in his mind 16 years later. "Then I realized I had to do it. I liked doing this every day." Davidson's Peace Corps experience changed how he wrote about people. He said he learned to "see with a new set of eyes." Having to live in the 13-square-mile country for two years made him adapt to their way of life, instead of them adapting to his. "I recognized I had biases, preconceptions I didn't know I had," he said. "It was really hard to let go of that." Read more about John Davidson.

Deborah Gardner's murder is impetus for Tonga RPCV Jan Worth's first novel and second marriage
For years, the grisly murder of a female Peace Corps volunteer in 1976 haunted Jan Worth of Flint, who served with the organization in Tonga in the South Pacific archipelago at the time. Worth came to grips with the tragedy by writing a novel loosely based on the real-life events. The task took more than a decade. Though she made up the characters in the novel, the main events are true, said Worth, who was 26 at the time of the murder. "I never wanted to tell a factual story. I wanted to be able to embroider it."  Peace Corps volunteer Dennis Priven confessed to the murder and was found not guilty by reason of insanity. He returned to America a free man, where he worked in a government job for years. Another outcome from the experience occurred when she married Ted Nelson, a man she'd known in Tonga, in July 2005. (She'd been divorced after 15 years of marriage.) Worth and Nelson reconnected through Philip Weiss, who had interviewed both of them for his book, "American Taboo." They e-mailed for months, spoke on the phone and eventually met in Flint. He lives part time in San Pedro, Calif., where he runs a trophy business. "Twenty-five years later, we got together," she said. "It clicked. That'll be the second novel."   Read more about Jan Worth.