To celebrate the Peace Corps' 50th birthday we saw a film at the Earth House, a collective housed in a church building across the street from us. Its website reminded me of communes and collectives of the '60, but it is in a nicer and cleaner building. Now that we know our away around we plan to visit the Earth House cafe.
The film was Niger'66: A Peace Corps Diary - another reminder of the '60s. Five RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) who went to Niger in 1966 traveled back in 2008. They took along a cinematographer and two cameras. The film was mirror of our lives. The thoughts and experiences of the RPCV were familiar - they are our age. Their reasons for joining and their expectations have a generational ring. Their reflections on the experience had a more universal ring - similar to the reflections of others who have lived and worked abroad (outside an expat community)>
The audience largely consisted of relatively recent (within the past 10 years) returnees from African countries. A scattering of the RPCV had volunteered in regions. Pictured below are returnees from Ukraine (bottom, left), Uganda (bottom right), Niger (top, left) and Panama (top, right).
My interest in the long-term impact of the Peace Corps was stimulated by a December article in the The New Yorker, which featured a returnee and his successful waterpump project in Nepali village. The Niger film credited the Peace Corp installing wells and establishing well baby clinics. Both were evident in their 2008 visit.
I recalled that RPCV whom I have met claimed that they gained far more than they gave. The impact goes beyond the individual. I sent an e-mail to Charlene, a NCSU Ph.D. and a returned volunteer from the Slovak Republic. (She introduced me to the concept of self-empowerment and the right of people with mental illness to have a voice in decisions that effect them.) Her reply is worth repeating, "While I think my "technical assistance" -- in budgeting, strategic planning, grant writing, personnel policy creation, and basic filing -- was very useful to the organizations I worked with, I may have had more lasting impact on individuals who interacted with me everyday. Just the idea of giving my life over to volunteering for two years, especially when I left a well-paying job and comfortable life for it, was a very foreign concept for a lot of people. I also brought optimism and a willingness to take risks that was very hard to find in the post-communist world. Peace Corps' biggest impact is in the relationships it builds -- among Volunteers and their hosts and among volunteers themselves -- and the bigger world view that Volunteers return to America with. The technical assistance is just gravy."
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