Jennie served in the capital of the garden belt in Senegal. Her longest and most successful project was working with a local leather worker who made purses and other handicrafts. However, not all her projects worked out. Hear about Jennie’s successes and missteps, while navigating complex community and volunteer relationships.

On this Episode:

* How to win the respect of your community and why you don’t always have to

* Serving as a third-generation Peace Corps Volunteer

* Dealing with inter-volunteer conflict

Photos from Jennie’s Story

Jennie Davis’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

I served in Senegal from 2011 – 2013 as a Community Economic Development volunteer.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

I was in the group SeneGAD and we participated in Girls Camp. What made it fun and challenging was creating activities, the logistics, food menus, and language mistakes on my part.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

When I was sick or when I had a fall out with some volunteers. The illness I could overcome; However, I feel that I could have handled some situations with other volunteers better.

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

The simplicity of life and making my own schedule. Also, having neighbors and someone looking out for you.

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

Always have a backup plan and to come prepared no matter what.

Do you have a favorite quote or local saying?

There are plenty, but there is one. Sometimes children ask me for money (in Wolof) I always say that “I don’t have money, I’m broke”. They always counteract with, “You have a big purse, so you always have money!”

 

 

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Two weeks after finishing her service in Botswana, Janina Yates landed in El Salvador to begin working as a Peace Corps Response Volunteer. We talk about the similarities and differences between Botswana and El Salvador and her two different Peace Corps Volunteer position, in addition to all the amazing stories she collected over three years of service.

On this Episode:

* Why Janina went right into a Peace Corps Response position, as opposed to extending for a third year in Botswana

* Enjoying the simple pleasures in life and remaining present

* How not to hand wash your clothes

Photos from Janina’s Story

Janina Yates’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

I was a Community Capacity Builder in Gobojango, Botswana from 2012-2014 and also served as a Response volunteer, working as a Youth Outreach Specialist from 2014 to 2015 in La Palma, El Salvador.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

I have so many fond memories of my three and a half years in Peace Corps. Many of my most favorite memories remind me of the kindness people have showed me. There was a situation with “mashodwane” (tiny birds), and another when I learned to catch chickens.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

Hand-washing laundry. I would procrastinate for weeks, which only meant that the pile would get larger and larger. There was one day in particular in Botswana where I really felt as if “Africa won again” and I would never resurface from my home.

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

Hands down, I miss the people. The people who took me in, who trusted me and allowed me to trust them. I also miss being in a position to ask difficult questions. If you question the norm here in the U.S., people think you’re crazy…but as a Peace Corps volunteer, people already assume you’re an anomaly so asking difficult questions isn’t as much of a problem.

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

I learned to appreciate the small moments.

Now that I’ve been back for almost 3 years now, my whole time in Peace Corps feels like a very vivid dream. During that time I learned more about myself and the world than I have in my whole 28 years on this earth. I have met people who would offer me their shoes even if they had no clothes on their back, and I have fallen love with the diversity and lessons this life offers if one is willing to open their mind and be patient to learn them. I know there were days where I literally felt so lonesome I wanted nothing more than to be back in the United States, with all of her amenities and privileges…but those days in particular, where I struggled to learn to bake my own bread and roll my own pasta noodles, were what made this journey so unique. So significant.

Do you have a favorite quote or local saying?

In Setswana, there is a phrase: “Ke teng”.

Literally, these two words simply mean “I am here”. When I first arrived to Botswana almost six years ago, this was one of the first things I learned not only because it was relatively easy to remember, but because it was used multiple times throughout the day. If someone asked “how are you?” you could answer “ke teng”. If they asked what you were up to, where you were, etc. the answer was always the same.

Now, seemingly worlds apart and a plethora of experiences later, I have had the opportunity to meditate a bit on this phrase and its actual pertinence to everyday life. I have learned that “I am here” isn’t as much of a physical state of being as it is a mental one. To be present,

Janet served in Burkina Faso, down the road from where I served and 30 years before. It was a pleasure to hear about her service, during two coups d’etats and the beginning of Thomas Sankara’s presidency.

On this Episode:

* Riding her motorcycle down washboard roads

* Serving in Burkina Faso during two coups d’etats

* Returning to Burkina Faso several times after completing her service

Photos from Janet’s Story

Janet Miller’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

I served as a forestry volunteer in Orodara and Dinderesso, Burkina Faso. The nearest other volunteer was in Bobo Dioulasso, 50 miles away by motorcycle over an unpaved washboard road and the Peace Corps office in the capital, Ouagadougou, was a very long days journey so I didn’t have much support. The isolation was difficult for me.

I was supposed to start a tree nursery in Orodara with money from World Bank, but there were two coups d’etat while I was there, and each time the World Bank suspended the funding. Also, my counterpart was to retire before my stay was up, and although he and his family were very kind and welcoming to me he had no interest in working with a clueless 23-year-old foreign woman!

I spent a lot of time reading, watching birds and socializing with my neighbor women. I was waiting for work to do, and it took me a long time to figure out that I needed to make it happen on my own.

Eventually, I started a project with traditional beekeepers in several small villages, introducing a more productive kind of hive and encouraging them to market beeswax (which had previously been thrown away) to bronze casters and batik artists in Bobo Dioulasso.

My last 6 months I got myself transferred to Dinderesso National Forest and created work for myself that I loved. The forest boundary came right up to the limit of the second largest city in the country (Bobo Dioulasso) and human pressure on forest resources was tremendous. The national forest policy in 1984 was to blade the naturally biodiverse forest and replace it with eucalyptus plantation. Local people living in and around the forest were forbidden from gathering anything although much of their food and household needs came from native plant species growing within the forest boundaries.

I carried out ethno/economic botany research to build a case to the Forest Service for managing the natural forest with cooperation and participation from local people. In my isolation I was unaware at the time that I was part of a global movement to foster biodiversity, but the national forest policy did change eventually to natural forest management.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

Many evenings I walked with my neighbor Mariam and her oldest daughter at dusk when she went to deliver her husband’s dinner to him. He worked as an overnight security guard a little bit out of town, over a small river and through some trees. We would keep him company while he ate, and walk back together in the dark. They were a happy couple and very kind to me. I enjoyed just being with them, and the walk there and back was peaceful and beautiful.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

I went to work a honey harvest at night in a village about 30 minutes away, so I stayed the night in the home of the family of the local man I was doing the project with. In the night he tiptoed into the room where I was sleeping, expecting a place in my bed. I was scared and angry and started yelling at him, waking the household, and he left the room. In the morning in front of his family, he made some really flimsy excuse about how he heard someone trying to steal my motorcycle and came to alert me. He was trying to save face.

I regret that I abandoned the project in that village,

Lisa Curtis was working on a big project with her local women’s group to grow moringa trees for nutritional trainings, but she was evacuated from Peace Corps Niger after a terrorist attack before the project could be completed. Yet, the story doesn’t end there. Lisa went on to found Kuli Kuli, America’s leading moringa superfood brand, as a way to continue the project.

– Enter a giveaway to win a Kuli Kuli sampler pack below – 

On this Episode:

* How Kuli Kuli created a market for moringa

* Building a nationally recognized brand from a business idea everyone laughed at

* Lisa Curtis’s plan to grow Kuli Kuli and develop it into a model for other superfoods

Photos from Lisa’s Story

Lisa Curtis’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger, West Africa I worked in the local health clinic and conducted a three-month needs assessment and identified two challenges: widespread malnutrition and a lack of economic opportunity for women. As a volunteer, I was introduced to moringa—one of the most nutritious plants on the planet—and began working with women in my village to grow more moringa. I had planned a big project with a women’s group in my village to grow moringa trees around the health center, use them for nutritional trainings and then sell some of the powdered leaves into the local city. However, there was a terrorist attack and Peace Corps Niger was evacuated before the project could be completed. I was forced to return to the US and ended up starting Kuli Kuli as a way to continue the project.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

One day after a big rainfall I was walking down the dirt road in my village when my sandals both broke, one right after the other. I stood there looking at the dirty road in dismay, not wanting to walk through the mud and manure barefoot. A man across the street saw what happened and came over to me. He’d never met me before but he offered me the shoes off of his feet so that I could go back to my house and get a new pair while he waited by the side of the road barefoot. Things like that were a common occurrence in Niger — everyone was incredibly generous and friendly.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

It was late in at night and I was drinking tea with friends from my Peace Corps village. A small child approached, stumbling out of the darkness and collapsing at our feet. The boy had left his family to search for food and had not eaten in three days. All of the village women had put out their cooking fires, but I was known for eating packaged foods. That morning, a care package had come from my mother, full of nutritional bars. I grabbed a few, stuffing them into the hands of the child and praying that it was enough. However, I knew that it was not.

We have been stuffing food in the hands of Africans for decades with little improvement for those we are purportedly trying to help. To put a new spin on the classic fisherman adage, “Give a Nigerian woman a sack of American-grown corn, and she will eat for a day. Teach her how to grow nutritious food, and she will feed her entire community.

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

My village in Niger was tiny, home to just 2,000 people. Geographically, it should have taken no more than ten minutes to cross it, and yet it always took forty. Every couple of feet, I would stop to speak with a neighbor or friend, asking about their health, family, and farm. I miss the people I met there, and the incredibly close relationships I formed in a short amount of time.

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

In West Africa, 18 million people are malnourished (Save the Children) and 55% of people live on less than $1 per day (World Bank).

Ven and Kelly Anderson served as Education volunteers in a Tanzanian village situated at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. This alone would provide for amazing Peace Corps stories, but their story is made more interesting by the fact that they served as a married couple in their 40’s.

On this Episode:

* Serving in the Peace Corps as a married couple in their 40’s

* Living and working in Tanzania, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro

* First serving in Thailand as a volunteer and then serving again in Tanzania 20 years later

Photos from Ven & Kelly Anderson’s Story

Ven & Kelly Anderson’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

We served our first two years as Education volunteers in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania. Ven taught math and I taught English at Boloti Secondary School which is a private Lutheran boarding school. Ven initiated a Permagarden Club and a number of study tours as well as a student service-learning project. I helped with the study tours, led an English Club, started a library, developed the Boloti Healthcare Club, used a grant to put all 400 boarding students in bed nets, painted three murals along with a couple of enthusiastic artists, and coached the scholarship-winning LEAD Team. Together, we attempted to bring a comprehensive teacher development program to the school.

We extended our service for a third year where we lived in Dar es Salaam and worked from the Peace Corps office as Volunteer Leaders. Ven worked with the training team to bring teaching best practices to the host country national Language and Culture Facilitators (LCFs) in order to improve their teaching skills. The LCFs, in turn, bring those skills back to the secondary schools where they are employed and model the skills that we want our volunteers to use with their communities. I directed previously underutilized social media platforms to highlight all the great work that our 200+ PCTZ Volunteers were doing, furthered my previous role as a warden by assisting the Safety & Security Team, developed an 11-week Resiliency Program to be used with the incoming Trainees during EST, and acted as the Volunteer Leader for the 2017 Education class.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

Kelly: Working with my LEAD Team to bring them to a USAWA sponsored national conference to develop leadership skills.

Ven: Living in a rural, agricultural community and returning to a simpler existence, where I would purchase eggs, milk and vegetables from my neighbors.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

Kelly: The reliance of corporal punishment within the school system. It was incredibly difficult to witness the often brutal and hypocritical beating of children.

Ven: Likewise. What Kelly meant with the hypocritical beating of children is that some teachers thought it acceptable to go teach their class late or to skip their class if they had an acceptable reason. Yet, they punish students when the students don’t do their jobs or had lower scores on their exams. Teachers themselves lack professional training to do their jobs well.

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

Kelly: The people. I really enjoyed working with the staff, especially the HCNs who always have warm, welcoming smiles. Moreover, my students. I am so glad that we live in era of PC where there is a better chance of staying in contact with them. Here’s an example of an email I got last week from Beatrice, a member of the LEAD team: “Hi sir. l hope your fine. lt’s me Beatrice. I miss you a lot now that your in USA. How is my lovely madam Ven doing? Can you please greet her for me. In 2018 January l am going to be in form 4. l am very happy. l am near to graduate. Do you know that l am General Secretary now. Thanks very much to you.

“I was sued for $7 by a drunk ice cream salesman in the village that I worked in.”

On this Episode:

* How Elizabeth met her husband at a bus stop

* The two economies of El Salvador

* Getting sued by a drunk icecream salesman for $7

Elizabeth’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

I served in El Salvador from 2006 to 2008 as a Youth Development volunteer.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

Being an adult playing tag in the park with a bunch of kids of all ages in flip-flops, and laughing.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

Diarrhea…

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

The simplicity of life, getting one thing done a day… and markets.

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

Education can change your life, knowing jokes in another language is a bonus, and connecting people to people or resources is extremely rewarding.

Do you have a favorite quote or local saying?

Puchica- holy crap, it can be vulgar or not depending on the situation.

 

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When Jaclyn Zoccoli reflects back on her Peace Corps service in Liberia 50 years ago, she asks herself, “What were we able to accomplish?” When she posed that same question to her fellow volunteers of Liberia IX, they were quick to respond. Hear their response and more on this episode of the My Peace Corps Story podcast.

On this Episode:

* Nearly being attacked by army ants

* Staying connected with fellow volunteers, more than 50 years after serving in the Peace Corps

* The warmth of the Liberian smile

Jaclyn’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

Peace Corps IX in Liberia. 1966 – 1968. Primary role was teaching, with of course community development, hand holding, and everything else in-between added.

Most people aren’t really aware of where Liberia is. It’s on the western coast of Africa, right by Nigeria and Ghana. It’s about the size of Missouri. It’s a very small country and it was founded by American slaves, so many of the things that they do are Americanized. Their money system is in dollars and cents and their political system, in theory, is the same as ours, though they’ve had their struggles and you’ve heard about them more recently with the Ebola problem that was pretty much centered in Liberia.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

Our parade as we were about to leave – my children of my school holding the banner of celebration for me. . . they, of course, were in the parade with “soldiers” carrying wooden guns. I reflect on their innocence in 1968, and how they loved me.

What do you miss about the Peace Corps?

I think I miss the people the most, in spite of the fact I don’t communicate with any of my students. Thier simple beautiful smile and their warm-hearted nature always make you feel comfortable. I felt comfortable there, often more there than I do in my own country.

You can walk down the street anywhere and wouldn’t be hurt, so it’s the smile it’s the warmness.

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

When you bond with volunteers with a common passion and give unconditional love, nothing compares to the abundance that is shared.

Do you have a favorite quote or local saying?

“No Mya” or never mind, they loved to shrug things off.

More about Jaclyn Zoccoli:

* http://ProsperityandPeace.org

* http://LifeStoryLibrary.org

* http://NetworkBuildersArizona.com

* http://Refer.com/jaclynzoccoli19

 

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Greg Emerson began his Peace Corps journey in Morocco but was evacuated from the country before swearing in, when the US invaded Iraq. Months later, he flew to Peru, where he would spend two years working high in the Andes mountains.

On this Episode:

* Taking on a new name in a new country

* Trying to be the same as the locals, and learning that it would never be possible

* How a foreign Peace Corps volunteer could bring people working in the same community together

Photos from Greg’s Story

Greg’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

My Peace Corps service began in Morocco in 2003, where I was sent as an environment volunteer. I was assigned a site on a gazelle reserve near Safi but never got to serve there because the program was suspended when the Iraq war began.

I was reassigned to Peru and served two years as a community health volunteer in the high Andes, living in a Quechua village and spending most of my time on nutrition and general hygiene projects.

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

I had many positive moments in my Peace Corps service, both in Morocco and Peru, related to the work and to my life outside of development work, but one moment that stands out to me comes from the end of my service in Peru, and the goodbye party that we had when I left.

It wasn’t just a good party – it was a tangible example of how my presence there, I think, bridged some gaps among the locals themselves that otherwise would not have happened.

As the lone foreigner in this mountain valley, everyone was curious about me for different reasons. For the group of mothers in my Quechua villages, I was not quite a child, not quite a partner, not quite an authority figure, but rather a little bit of all of them. For the teachers who came from the nearby city to our school, I was a peer, a fellow outsider. For the health post workers, also from outside of the village, I was a coworker and assistant. For the men and leaders of the village, I was, like them, a trusted and respected elder.

My “despedida” from Collon brought all of these groups together around the same table.

The conversation quickly turned into a discussion of my staying in Collon, taking a local girl as my wife and living out my days in the mountains. When I respectfully declined, it was suggested I marry the nurse from the health post, and once again live out my days in the high Andes. As we ate and drank more, inhibitions dripped away until we were engaged in a frank and hilarious discussion of sex in the village, sex in the city, masturbation and everything in between. These were subjects that rarely came up in plenty of other drunken conversations I had had (certainly not that graphic), and certainly never with such a mixed group as this.

I remember sitting at one end of the table and watching them talk with each other about all these things, laughing in part because of the taboo, but also learning about each other and about how differently they all experienced lust and intimacy. The villagers learned that city people take off all of their clothes to have sex (!), the city folks learned that a knobby potato could double as a sex toy, and they all came away from it with a much more nuanced view of how the other side lives despite the desires they all share.

I am quite sure that that conversation wouldn’t have happened without my presence, and it was humbling to see how, without my actively doing anything, I could facilitate Peruvians of different backgrounds understanding each other more than they had before I arrived.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

Most of the negative experiences I had in Peru have to do with money, and there was one incident about halfway through my service that reminded me that to some people, no matter how much the town accepted me as one of their ...

Happy Holidays!

I’m excited to share with you the first thematic My Peace Corps Story episode where I talk with four Peace Corps volunteers who served across the globe during different decades. They share their holiday Peace Corps stories and reflect on their time abroad.

The holidays can be difficult for Peace Corps Volunteers. At a time when much of the celebration is centered around friends and family, many volunteers find themselves thousands of miles away from their loved ones. The traditions they grew up on are nearly impossible replicate in a new foreign land, and, for many, dreaming of a white Christmas is impracticable, to say the least.

Yet, the volunteers I talked to reflected fondly on their Peace Corps holiday memories. They reveled in the simplicity of the celebrations they had, which were stripped down from the commercial hype and pretense that tends to come with celebrating the holidays in the US.

They tell stories of celebrating with newly found family and friends in their community, sharing large meals with fellow volunteers, and crafting makeshift Christmas trees from Styrofoam packing material.

I only spent one Christmas in Burkina Faso when I served as a volunteer, but it was an unforgettable celebration filled with food, song, and dance. There were no gifts, but I could have cared less. My community of Muslims and Christians came together to celebrate with one another.

The second Christmas during my service, I was fortunate enough to travel back home. That Christmas will likely be one of my favorite Christmas’s with my family, given how much I enjoyed being with my family. I brought back simple souvenirs as gifts, which were all I could afford. Yet, my friends and family loved them. Four years later, those gifts are still proudly displayed, unlike all the other countless knickknacks I’ve given over the years.

This year, I’m going to make an effort to slow down and enjoy my time with my family. Take the few days I have with them and cherish the fact that we’re healthy and together.

I wish you the very best this holiday season and hope you take time to enjoy the many gifts of the season.

-Tyler

 

“I came home from Spain to a frozen house in mid-January after Macedonia had been bombarded with copious amounts of snow… My toilet wouldn’t flush, the water didn’t run, all the pipes were frozen, and the windows were icy. It was like my entire bungalow mutated into an igloo of sorts while Macedonia was starting to resemble the likes of Siberian Russia.”

On this Episode:

* Serving as a person of color in the Peace Corps

* How Charles connected with his students as a TEFL volunteer

* Growing to appreciate nature more in Macedonia

Photos from Charles’s Story

Charles’s Peace Corps Story

Where and when did you serve? What did you do?

I served as a TEFL volunteer in rural Macedonia from 2015-17. My primary assignment was co-teaching English classes with my Macedonian counterpart by emphasizing the conversational and cultural aspect of American English to students. Many extracurricular activities kept me busy when I wasn’t co-teaching. For example, coordinating the Macedonia English Essay Challenge, preparing my strongest students for the annual spelling bee competition, implementing the world map project at my school, hosting a summer traveling camp in my village, and participating in a Peace Corps-approved volunteer of color video project, to name a few. Learning the language and integrating into my community I believe were the greatest aspects of the “job description.”

What is one of your favorite Peace Corps memories?

An impromptu dinner date with two of my dearest students on what happened to be my first birthday in Macedonia stands out as a favorite memory. They knocked on my door that day wanting to play badminton across the street on the town hall lawn where we usually played. Then they asked me to dinner, I accepted, and we enjoyed a nice meal together, just the three of us, with a sweet selfie taken to commemorate the special, spontaneous occasion. They had no idea it was my birthday until after the fact, but I knew that was God smiling on me through these precious youngsters. It was a birthday to remember.

What is one of your least favorite Peace Corps memories?

One of my least favorite memories is when I came home from Spain to a frozen house in mid-January after Macedonia had been bombarded with copious amounts of snow during my winter vacation in beautiful Barcelona. It was dreadful. My toilet wouldn’t flush, the water didn’t run, all the pipes were frozen, and the windows were icy. It was like my entire bungalow mutated into an igloo of sorts while Macedonia was starting to resemble the likes of Siberian Russia.

What will you miss about the Peace Corps?

I will miss my frabjous students who have made this experience so rewarding for me by far. Their surprise visits to my home, our nature walks, candid talks, badminton and basketball play, YouTube video ideation and sometimes creation, peanut butter and jelly sandwich demonstration, Friday movie matinees after school and so much more. Although I only had her for three months, I miss and will continue to miss my first-ever adopted pet Matilda, a cute and homeless hybrid puppy I found at my school one day, convinced by the children to adopt her as my own. Some of them helped me to care for her whenever they visited my house. Then suddenly one day I found her missing, a whodunit petnapping mystery. Perfect scenario for a flash fiction story penned by yours truly!

What is something you learned in the Peace Corps?

Something that I learned early on in my service that still resonates with me is the fact that I cannot/could not change the culture. My country director made this clear during PST, and it constantly rang true in my worldview. While there were behavioral norms and practices that inevitably vexed me about the country and culture, I was not there to try and radically alter the ...