Peace Corps News

Spotlight on Peace Corps Panama

Panama RPCV Florence Reed's Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) plants their two millionth tree
After graduating from UNH with a B.S. in Environmental Conservation and International Affairs, Reed joined the Peace Corps and lived in Panama from 1991 to 1993, planting trees and working on reforestation projects. "The Peace Corps forces you to figure out what needs to be done," said Reed. She explained that her experiences at UNH and her time in the Peace Corps inspired her to begin her nonprofit organization.

Ten years ago, when she was living in her parent's house, Reed got the idea to create Sustainable Harvest International. However, she had no money and no means to do so. She needed a miracle, and she got it that day. An old friend from Switzerland unexpectedly called from overseas and donated $6,000 for her to work with. "If you have a dream to make a positive change in the world, the universe will conspire to make it happen," said Reed. "Don't feel like you can't do it. Surprising things will happen." Because of her friend's generosity and her parents' donation of the spare bedroom for an office, Reed was able to found SHI in May 1997.

The mission of SHI is to work toward environmental, economic and social sustainability. Trained local staff in Belize, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras work with farmers by teaching them more sustainable methods to use in farming their land. Not only will these methods increase their output, but they will help to grow more varied crops, improving locals' diets. SHI also works with communities by creating loan funds for those who may need to borrow money. Volunteers help in local schools, aiding teachers in the classroom or interacting with students. They have helped families build wood-sustainable stoves that burn longer and create very little smoke, which pollutes homes and causes lung cancer in many people each year. "We have a very charitable mission," said Reed. Read more.

While working in the remote fields of Panama as a Peace Corps volunteer, Zachary McNish listened
While working in the remote fields of Panama as a Peace Corps volunteer, Zachary McNish listened. He listened to the villagers describe how they lived their lives and the many hardships that confronted their community.

During his three years of living with the Wounann people in the Rio Hondo area of Panama, McNish learned, for instance, that the indigenous group faced difficulties irrigating their crops. He also found them resistant at first to new agricultural methods, even though these efforts would likely increase their yield. By listening first, then acting, McNish finally managed to introduce new farming techniques that have helped the Wounann with their crops.

These same qualities served McNish well as a contributing member of Duke Law School community. Shortly before graduating with his law degree this spring, McNish was selected for a prestigious service medal given each year by the university. “Working for the Peace Corps was more of an instinct than a calling,” McNish said. “My desire to help others is specific. … Looking back, I liked being an advocate for people.” Read more.

Panama RPCV Mari Lyn Salvado brings an exhibit on the Kuna to the  Museum of Man in San Diego
Mari Lyn Salvador first saw molas being sewn back in the 1960s, when she arrived in Panama as a Peace Corps worker. The hand-stitched blouses are pieces of art. Their elaborate designs depict items in the day-to-day lives of the Kuna people of Panama's coast. Canoes. Gourds. Fish. Coming-of-age ceremonies. Even political figures and cereal boxes have become subjects. Salvador, an artist and then-budding anthropologist, was fascinated by the tradition. Half of her life's work as a scholar became study of the Kuna.

"I was interested in the geometric patterns and how they came up with them and what the reference is," said Salvador, pointing to a gourd and then to a blouse depicting gourds. Now, as director of the San Diego Museum of Man, Salvador has brought an exhibit on the Kuna to San Diego.

"The Art of Being Kuna" features hundreds of molas and 300 other pieces of Kuna handcraft, including baskets, wooden objects and gold jewelry. Two mola craftswomen from Panama and two Kuna elders will be in San Diego this weekend for the opening of the exhibit to demonstrate and discuss their culture. The focus is "the importance of form and beauty for the Kuna in everyday life," Salvador said. Read more.

Panama RPCV James A. Brunton Jr. is the force behind the 12-year, $1.5 million, "Fitzcarraldo"-like feat of building a 92-foot boat out of rain forest hardwoods with indigenous labor
A rich, sunburned gringo in a straw hat from country-clubby Westport, Conn., was in command when this unusual boating party sailed in Sunday. His presence, and his encouraging the native crew to wear their traditional garb for visitors, raised all sorts of complicated questions. Whose mission was this, really? How to reconcile the capital's fashion habits with the topless women below deck? And was the entire endeavor -- how to put this -- stone loco ?

"We're bringing a piece of the rain forest here," says James A. Brunton Jr., 62, the man in the straw hat, the force behind the 12-year, $1.5 million, "Fitzcarraldo"-like feat of building a 92-foot boat out of rain forest hardwoods with indigenous labor. "That has a powerful impact."

He is a former Peace Corps volunteer (1967-69) in the Darien rain forest (not to be confused with Darien, Conn.) who says he made a lot of money with a Westport-based software company and has used some of the proceeds to create the Pajaro Jai Foundation to help the people he met in his Peace Corps days. The name of the boat is Pajaro Jai, too, a phrase cobbled from Spanish and Embera to mean "Enchanted Bird."

In a gentle breeze spiked with Old Bay seasoning from the Maine Avenue SW fish wharf, the Pajaro Jai bobs at anchor at the Capital Yacht Club. With its two tall masts and three sails, it is all varnished butterscotch luxury, quite a contrast against the white fiberglass of neighboring craft, with names like Story Maker II, Prospero and Brigadoon.

There are seven Embera aboard, plus nine others, including sailors who give the Indians crew lessons. But just what is the deal with the loincloths, jungle paint, dancing and breasts, anyway? Is there anything that so recalls the bad old days of medicine show exploitation, tourist trinket colonialism, insulting old dioramas at the Smithsonian, cliches of National Geographic titillation? Brunton has a ready answer: "This isn't dress-up for charade; this is real," he says. "We don't want to represent them as Latinos, because they're not Latinos. They are the original people of the rain forest. . . . It's who they are. However you interpret it, tough luck." Read more.

Read more about Peace Corps Panama.

Forestry and the Peace Corps

Nepal RPCV Joe Krueger has been to Liberia four times in the past two years as part of a program that is drawing on skills from the U.S. Forest Service to restore Liberia's timber industry
The Liberian Forestry Initiative came about as a means of re-establishing a viable and responsible industry, as the country operated under a shaky interim government. While the initiative is driven by a U.S. Forest Service team, it is funded by the State Department with the cooperation of the United Nations. The program is aimed at establishing laws and regulations and a general framework for managing Liberia's forests. Krueger said he was tapped for the program because he had worked on a community forestry project in Senegal in 2004, and had served in the Peace Corps in Nepal in the early 1990s. He first went to Liberia in April 2005 and has been back three times since, most recently in December. Krueger said there has been progress in rebuilding the country's timber industry, and a big part of it is due to the relative stability that's developed since last year, when a competent, Harvard-educated president was elected, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

"Right now, the industry is completely unregulated," he said. But many of the pieces are falling in place for an organized, regulated timber industry to start up soon. And there is pressure for Krueger and his fellow advisers to make it happen. "There is a lot of pressure on the Forest Service to get this sector back up and running," Krueger said. "People want to know, where are the logs, where is the revenue?" The old contracts have all been nullified and new ones will be issued under a system that will more closely monitor the movement of products. A "chain of custody" system is being developed to track logs from the stump all the way to their export destination. Read more.

Niger RPCV Clark Fleege helps rebuild Afghanistan's forests
Fleege, who directs the Lucky Peak Nursery for the Boise National Forest, will make his second trip to Afghanistan to continue working on a United States Department of Agriculture project to plant native tree species for reforestation, soil improvement and beautification. The country has lost a lot of its forests to a drought that has plagued the area for the past several years.

"By us going in there and helping improve their natural resources, we can help these people improve their lives and have a more stable country," Fleege said. The U.S. compound where Fleege will stay includes dorm-style housing in metal shipping crates. He will be confined to working in and around Kabul because of safety concerns, and will need an armed escort everywhere he goes. "What we do is management of natural resources, and sound natural resource management is just fundamental for anything, for life: having good water, good soil, clean air," he said.  Read more.

Ed " Redwood" Ring writes: The best thing that ever happened to me was going to Central America to help treeplanters. I was fortunate to have a first-hand look at some of their finest work, when I went there with Stuart Conway, an EcoWorld Hero and co-founder of the reforesting group, Trees Water and People.

Stuart Conway has been living half in the U.S., half in Central America for about 25 years now. He and his wife Jennie Bramhall joined the Peace Corps, went to Guatemala for their honeymoon, and didn't come home for three years. They lived and worked in a small town just south of the beautiful highland colonial city of Antigua. Since then, they return to Central America several times a year, specializing in helping small communities grow trees and protect their watersheds.

Stuart co-founded Trees Water and People (the name grows on you) in 1998 with Richard Fox, a veteran forest arborist, who specializes in North American forest preservation and watershed protection. Both of them moved with their families to Ft. Collins, Colorado, rolled up their sleeves and got their organization up and running. They work along with a small staff in a lofty 2nd floor suite in an old brick and timber building on College Avenue between downtown and the University. Towering Plains Cottonwoods hang huge limbs overhead (Cottonwoods decorate the whole city, and why they aren't planting new ones is beyond me), and just one block north the main train line intersects the street. If you call them and hear a roar in the background, it's just a freight train about two hours on the tracks from Denver.

When the folks at Trees Water and People aren't providing funds and expert assistance growing trees and protecting watersheds in Central America, they are working closer to home, protecting watersheds in the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. This is Richard Fox's area, and he brings to his work a lifetime of experience in forests throughout America, but mostly in the Rockies. In his time, Richard has had crews of planters where, using a special planting tool, each person could plant up to 1,000 trees per day. I didn't believe him, but we timed the motions, and I did the math. I guess it's true. We could have fun with this! One thousand people could plant a million trees a day. A billion trees in less than three years!

Planting trees is only part of the solution, though, and managing a forest and a watershed is complex work that is never done. Richard's trees and watershed protection has so far enlisted the support of communities throughout Colorado and Wyoming, mostly along the "Front Range," the eastern slopes of the Rockies.  Read more.

Read more about the Peace Corps and forestry.