thoughts on the Corps Experience

Below is from an article written by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer named Rude that I can't publish in it's entirety, because I would probably get in trouble. But these two paragraphs I thought were pretty intense.



"We made a difference!"

No single Peace Corps experience can be generalized to all volunteers, countries or eras touched by the Peace Corps. Nevertheless, there are common themes that have made the Peace Corps a unique and enduring organization. One theme borne out by historical experience is that the problems addressed by volunteer efforts have been immense – in fact, far beyond their capacity to solve, in nearly every case. This discovery alone has been worth the venture.

The facile, oft-used phrase, “We made a difference!” is a frank admission that making a dent was all that volunteers had a right to expect. Hunger, poverty and disease have grown immeasurably worse over the past 40 years. Peace Corps volunteers have witnessed these tragedies, but for all their passionate caring, they have done little to avert them. Because they were sent as emissaries from the world’s wealthiest nation, a nation perceived as having the capacity (but not the will) to alleviate global suffering, Peace Corps volunteers were viewed as complicit in the very problems they tried to solve.

Volunteers found themselves in circumstances similar to the “innocent” German citizens of Dachau. At the end of the Second World War, as the people of Dachau were required to visit the death camp on the edge of town, they could no longer cry innocence to God or their neighbors. Figuratively, Peace Corps volunteers have also smelled the stench from the ovens. Figuratively, the ashes of AIDS, ignorance, oppression and starvation have been scattered all over their immaculate clothing after they returned from overseas.


Rian----> When I was applying for Peace Corps, I was asked if there was anywhere I wouldn't want to go, and I said that I couldn't go to Africa. I couldn't go because I was afraid that such an experience was something I couldn't come back from - that I would never be able to live with the guilt if I happened to see things that were too vivid.

The rate for suicide for photojournalists who cover Africa is astronomical. I think it's easy to imagine why - having to see tragedy and chaos and be powerless to do anything about it could easily lead to despair. I wonder if there is a comparable statistic with returning Peace Corps volunteers from Africa. Somehow, I don't think I'll be able to get my hands on such statistic.

Mai departe.


The Common Humanity that volunteers discovered

A second, even more powerful discovery of Peace Corps volunteers has been the surging river of common humanity that volunteers, as Americans, could scarcely be aware existed, until they were immersed in it. American popular culture has tried to tap and exploit this yearning, but those who have lived in the so-called developing world know that Hollywood and the media are missing the story of global suffering—as well as global resilience.

What Peace Corps volunteers understand – because they have lived in the places where one third of humanity tries to survive on $2-a-day or $1-a-day – is that laughter, late-night conversations in dimly-lit courtyards, wailing chants at weddings and funerals, and tears of loss, shared with friends who happen to be from different cultures – these humble experiences define humanity for all of us. (emphasis added) This has been a life lesson granted to few Americans, seldom even to the best-educated Americans: that what binds people together as human beings is far more important than what tears them apart. Most volunteers, even those who revert to the middle-class attractions of consumerism, understand that ultimately these attractions are illusory. Love, suffering and courage are not exclusive traits of any society or culture -- they transcend our material world, and bind together the lives of rich and poor alike.

These discoveries–that they were witnesses, more than saviors, and that they shared their humanity with their hosts–is what gave legitimacy to the word “Peace” in the title of the Peace Corps. Who can deny that the agonies of Israel and Palestine, or of India and Pakistan, are based on arbitrary and artificial enmities? Over and over, Americans (watching on TV) hear the pleas of ordinary people whose societies are shattered by war and terrorism. “We just want to live in peace!” they say. And how, exactly, is peace to be defined? As Peace Corps volunteers have lived it, in their daily struggles among people who, with all their differences, are amazingly like themselves.


Rian ----> These are not shocking new principles to me, nor did it take me becoming a Peace Corps member to discover them, nor do I think they're unusual ideas for many people reading this. But I have smart friends. And I think maybe I had a head start thinking about these things anyway.

These are principles that should be, I don't know, common, understood. And I don't think that for many people they are. Not in America, not in Moldova, not anywhere.

There's a word that this article never uses, and it's emphathy. I think that PC does teach people to be very empathetic. And that can never be a bad thing.