Prism Online

HARD

CORPS

written by Toresa Galiardi photo by Ron Lewis

Thirteen months into her two-year term, Erin Kelly pulls up stakes in Fiji and heads back to the United States. She leaves behind what she calls appalling conditions, despite living in a luxurious three-room home in a wealthy community .

Chaya Rivka Mayerson completes her term in Nairobi, Kenya, despite poor living conditions, racism, and threats of violence. Although she describes her experience as "lonely, difficult, dusty and hard," the hardest part is yet to come.

Kelly and Mayerson don’t know each other, but they are connected by a common thread: besides being among the Peace Corps’ alumni of more than 165,000 volunteers, each feels disappointment with the experience. "Part of the premise of going into the Peace Corps is being stuck in these remote places," Mayerson says. "I didn’t know how lonely it could be." Established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the Peace Corps today boasts approximately 6,500 volunteers serving in more than 90 countries across the globe.

According to Peace Corps National Director Mark Garan, 94 percent of former Peace Corps volunteers surveyed would do it all again. What often isn’t acknowledged, however, is that 15 to 20 percent of new volunteers drop out before their two years are complete. "The first few months [abroad] is difficult," says John Slattery, information specialist at San Francisco’s Peace Corps office. "A lot of people have someone special back home, and when you aren’t confident yet, you want to return to that person."

But Kelly doesn’t return home because she misses someone special. She blames mismanagement and lack of training for her early departure in November 1996. Having graduated in Women’s Studies and Program Coordination Policy Making at Western Washington University, Kelly chooses to follow the health field in the Peace Corps. It takes 15 months of training from the time she graduates to her arrival in Fiji, but she nonetheless finds herself unprepared for Fijian customs -- ones which directly contradict her feminist beliefs.

"Even looking in the eyes of Fijian men was disrespectful," Kelly remembers. "Women are the last people that women are concerned with. First the husband, then the children, then themselves," she explains. Boredom prevailed at her job, and she sat at a desk in a health clinic afraid to offend anyone by talking to them. "We’re guests, we don’t want to come in and be these smart Americans," she says.

Kelly ultimately becomes fed up after a particular incident in her neighborhood occurs. A traditional arranged marriage is made between a neighbor’s 21-year-old Indian daughter and a Fijian-born Indian living in Canada. The family orchestrated this marriage so that they could eventually move from Fiji with help from their future son-in-law. Meanwhile, the daughter continues her affair with an American teacher. When the two are discovered, the teacher is fired and the daughter is confined to her home, forced to do extra work. "There were tears everywhere," Kelly says. "You read in the local newspapers about Indian women killing themselves and setting themselves on fire for situations like this." Kelly is proud she hacked it out for 13 months. "But it is more for the retired person who has the experience. We think we’re doing good," she says, but adds, "This grass roots stuff is not what developing countries want. They want technology."

Mayerson arrives to Kenya in 1988 as a Peace Corps city planner. Living in Nakuru two hours north of Nairobi she lives in poverty by U.S. standards and low income by Kenyan standards. Her job is to help newly settled nomadic tribes design their towns. She works with the town council and surveyors to design the placement of the main town, like positioning the market so everyone can get there easily. "I was really just an advisor," Mayerson says. "I would run plans back from these non-existent villages to the city." Learning to speak Swahili when she got there, Mayerson is able to talk to the townspeople, but after a month she begins to go stir-crazy. She travels to Nairobi and tries to find acquaintances. Often she travels to obscure villages to meet other volunteers. With no boss, her schedule is flexible, and trips like these are no problem.

When in Nakuru, Mayerson experiences racism and gets pelted with pebbles from the locals. "I was a white, so people assumed I was British or South African, which is the worst thing you could be. When they found I was American, it was good, because they liked Kennedy." Nonetheless, her life is threatened. Her neighbors come to her work and warn that a man with a machete is in her house. Mayerson hires a guard and collects her valuables from her house later. "The first night back I slept with the lights on, an iron pipe in my hand, and a knife under the bed," she says, laughing. "My friends convinced me I could be shot down over Washington D.C. just as easily as I could be knocked off in Kenya. The logic actually made sense to me."

Having experienced a new culture, as well as a different way of living, Mayerson feels fortunate but would not volunteer again for the Peace Corps. One of the worst parts of the whole experience, she says, was returning to the U.S. Already used to a slower pace, Mayerson remembers having a hard time keeping up. "It took me a while to undo a lot of the shock of coming back. I was mildly depressed for a year." This is not unusual. John Slattery of the San Francisco Peace Corps office says there is a mild depression period, which often lasts two to six months. He says the Peace Corps offers readjustment programs such as the Returned Peace Corps Center and other counseling programs. There is also a support network of returned volunteers to help. "They kind of go after you, they say that they are here for you," Slattery says.

But even a support network doesn’t always make the experience better. "We weren’t told. That was the hard part. We weren’t told we would go for two years and then crash," says Mayerson. "If you had told me that, I wouldn’t have gone, because who would want to do that?"