By Emily Aniakou
I received a press release in my email Tuesday from the National Peace Corps Association (NPCA), advertising opportunities to interview NPCA president Kevin Quigley about how President Obama is recommending a government increase in Peace Corps funding to eventually double the size of the program.
Two years ago, I quit the Peace Corps halfway through my service in Benin, West Africa. My official reason was a nasty accident in my rural village, where a 12-year-old boy playing with the family’s motorcycle on the main road smashed into me from behind while I was riding my bicycle to the market. My unofficial reason is that it wasn’t a great program and I thought my time and energy could be better spent elsewhere.
I lived abroad in Bangladesh for a year before joining the Peace Corps. It was the most incredible experience of my life. I went alone to the sprawling city of Dhaka and stayed with a non-profit that maintained an orphanage. I was thrown into the culture headfirst and delved right in with zeal.
The Peace Corps tried to prepare everyone for the third world experience, so much so that for me, it ruined it. Involving the government and its policies and procedures in something as organic and unplannable as third world international travel was sadly amusing. For the sake of the volunteers, safety was touted, lectured about and then pounded into our heads. Lecture after lecture on topics like “how to deal with religious differences” and “what it means to be a woman in Africa” went on and on for weeks. Second year volunteers tainted the fresh-off-the-plane newbies with their jaded view of the culture and taught us how to get around the more annoying, unrealistic rules.
The hardest part of the experience for me was seeing the expectations of the locals soar upon our arrival and inevitably fall as soon as they heard us butcher their language. Peace Corps takes pride in their training, and although it is remarkable that I learned semi-fluent West African French in nine weeks, basic language skills does not a local make. The idea that the recent college grads the Peace Corps attracts have the experience, wisdom or street smarts to teach people twice their age with a lifetime of experience much of anything is a long shot.
Most volunteers I knew enjoyed their stay but felt a sense of disappointment at what they really accomplished during their two-plus years in-country.
Peace Corps is sensing this too, I believe, and that’s why I think they’re trying hard to attract older, more experienced retires and professionals. In my group of about 70 who headed to Benin, there was one woman over 50, and she lasted exactly two weeks before calling it quits and heading home. She told me that the program didn’t utilize her professional experience as a nurse and I could sense she didn’t fit in with the 21-year-olds.
In my opinion, Peace Corps is not a service organization, but a travel abroad, good will ambassador program for recent college grads not ready to settle into 9-5 jobs. Send young people abroad, it’s wonderful to see the world and let the world see them. But lets call a spade a spade and drop the pretense that the volunteers are giving up two years to save those sad, impoverished people. More often than not, volunteers will come back saying they were the ones who learned the most.
Question: Do you support the expansion of government programs like the Peace Corps?
Emily outside her house in Bassila, West Africa with some of the neighbor kids.
I think that the Government needs to be cutting back on policies, and spending, as much as possible. Most of these programs do much better when left to the people, and organizations, that know how to get the job done. There are very generous people throughout the world (incl. U.S. Citizens and Companies) that can run these programs more efficiently. Haiti was a good example of this. There has been $2,022,702,837 (yes $2.02 Billion) pledged to help Haiti.
Ref. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/14/haiti-quake-aid-pledges-country-donations#data
I served in Peace Corps in West Africa as well, and though I agree with many of your criticisms of the structure and actualities of Peace Corps, I would caution to go so far as to call it simply a “travel abroad program”. Your statement that, “Most volunteers I knew enjoyed their stay but felt a sense of disappointment at what they really accomplished during their two-plus years in-country,” is sometimes true, but there are several reasons for this.
First, I agree that Peace Corps must do a better job identifying and setting up sites with more meaningful work. There are too many times when volunteers are sent into situations where the groundwork has not been done to see if there are projects to accomplish. Also there is sometimes a lack of support from administration, or the communities used are not ready for volunteers.
Second, we are not there to save the world. I believe your last paragraph misses the point of Peace Corps. It has been built up to this world-saving entity by both Americans and people abroad, when in fact Peace Corps makes it very apparent that it is not. This reality is often disappointing to volunteers who want to get on the ground and start “saving”. But in a way wouldn’t that just be charity? Isn’t being immersed in a culture for a longer time and making inroads into the community and creating sustainable change, even the smallest, better than or equal to showing up, and administering shots or building houses? Both activities are necessary but different. I am glad that your time with an NGO was fulfilling but frankly alot of international development work is difficult, slow, and rewards are not always visible, and Peace Corps is a reality check for those who want to do it as a career.
At the same time the U.S. government has not given the resources and time needed to make Peace Corps into the vision that it should be. If we could compare the budgets of U.S. AID, Peace Corps and similar programs to that of the military we can see why.
I appreciate your candor in this critique but what are suggestions for improvement? I fear that people with other agendas may be trying to use you, the disgrunteled Peace Corps volunteer, as the voicebox for a larger assault on volunteerism and internationalism in general. If that is your purpose then let’s call a spade a spade.