I’m 27, have a degree in anthropology, I work in Marketing, I speak a little Russian and a little French, I have traveled internationally to 10 or so countries. I’d like to go to the Ukraine or Bulgaria. (I assume that a woman of child-bearing age wouldn’t be sent to Belarus? I hear foodstuffs are still quite radioactive). I think I want to shake my life up a bit, do some good in this shitty world, maybe tune up my Russian skills.
I haven’t applied yet… just sent away for the info packet.
The one thing is, I don’t have a ton of volunteer activities going on – I have a 40+ hour job plus a hobby – one that has been my lifelong dream to pursue – that I am very dedicated to right now. I have never been a huge volunteer-er – unless you count giving my life to the theater in college.
A friend of mine left for her 27 months in Turkmenistan last September. She was in a similar situation to yours, except that she spoke quite fluent Russian and some Moldovan/Romanian, having spent a semester in Moldova on a high school exchange. She had worked for several years before joining up, so she was about your age. She didn’t have a ton of volunteer experience, but had worked for a nonprofit, so maybe that helped. Maybe you could tutor ESL in the meantime or something to beef up your resume? ESL and NGO/small business development are the big Peace Corps missions in the FSU, as far as I know.
I also don’t know how much choice you get in where they send you. She had hoped for Moldova, but they sent her to Turkmenistan, which is, ummm, a rather different social environment for an extremely extroverted, flirtatious, blonde, salsa-dancing feminist. Turkmen women, especially in villages, still wear long skirts and long sleeves, and non-related men and women are segregated from each other in social situations. As my friend is single, she complained that she was seated at the table with the 12-year-old girls rather than married women her own age. Just one example.
I got a couple of lengthy update e-mails from her last fall with stories of people she’d met and how she’d been adjusting, but she sounded extremely busy (no surprise), and I haven’t heard from her since. I hope she’s OK, and was thinking about calling her to make sure…
I really doubt, though, that they’d refrain from sending women of childbearing age to Belarus. You could always ask if you were concerned, I suppose.
I was in the Peace Corps in Micronesia for two years and then in Nepal for one. And I can honestly say they were both fantastic experiences.
It was also the hardest three years of my life. You will get incredibly sick, frustrated, put upon. You will, for at least six months, stand out in front of your hut, house or whatever, look to the heavens and ask, "What am I doing here?
You will eat foods you think are unedible, you will be called upon to accomplish things that are alternately childish, impossible, bullshit and had to be done four years ago.
You will come up with hundreds of reasons not to continue with your assignment and maybe one or two reasons to stay (if you are lucky). But if you do stay, you will feel more fulfilled when you leave than you ever have before or ever will again.
As for where they will send you…all bets are off. You are dealing with at least three different bureaucracies - ours, theres, and the local one. Don’t expect any of them to be even mildly competent. Trust me. They are not. I grew up in the high country of Colorado (practically grew up on skis) spoke workable Spanish so, of course, I was sent to an island in the Western Pacific a mile long by 70 yards wide where the highest point on the island was about three feet above sea level (during typhoons it was a little below sea level). By the way no one on the island had ever heard of Spanish, much less, heard Spanish.
Should you join? If you think you can make it, sure. But don’t ever expect to be the same person again. You won’t be.
I agree with TV. You’ll never be the same. Your views of the world, politics, race, cultures (yours and others’), poverty, wealth, consumerism, your values about what is important… all of those things change. Not everyone who comes out of the Peace Corps has changed in the same ways, of course. You can probably expect to do a lot more work on yourself than on anyone else, and to learn far more than you teach. If you do end up working on a project that is taken over by locals and continues after you are gone and improves the lives of the people in that place - count yourself (and them) very lucky!
My husband and I was in the Peace Corps in Jamaica about 12 years ago. We adoped our son as a new born baby there - he turns 13 this month. We’re back living in the Caribbean now, some distance from Jamaica, but we keep in touch with several of the people we knew in our village there.
Good luck and drop me an email if you want to know more.
Jill
Thanks for the comments, guys. Jillgat I’ll probably be emailing you sometime this week… I tried emailing the Chicago PC office with a question, and they sent back a form letter which did not answer it. Ah, bureacracy.
Umm… my brother? He’s always asking me to pack them up in a box and mail them to Berkeley. The application process takes about 9 months so I have a while to figure out the details. “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it” is my motto.
Just think of that as preinduction training. For three months after I got to my assigned location, Peace Corps was sending my mail to the wrong island.
I sent a link to this thread to my friend who just got back from the peace corps about a year ago. She was in the Phillipines. I hope she’ll come and tell you what she thought.
-Lil
I emailed the Chicago Peace Corps office and got a prompt real reply!
I too am thinking of joining up. I actually applied a couple years ago, was accepted, and was all set to go teach English in sub-Saharan Africa (I never got my country assignment). Then September 11 happened, and my parents were so miserably upset at the thought of me going that I decided not to go. Now I rather regret that…especially because now I’ll have to reapply from the very beginning! The only thing more fun that lots of lots and lots of paperwork is…doing lots and lots of paperwork for a second time.
One of my good friends is a Peace Corps placement person. I can’t think of his official title. Several of my other friends have had stints or are soon going on stints with the Peace Corps thanks in part to him or other people. Generally, you don’t get much say in where you are going. If you are willing to go anywhere you have the best bets at getting placed.
The work is hard. One friend is an HIV counselor in Guyana. He was an HIV counselor in New Hampshire before and had to tell maybe 5 people total in the few years he worked their that they were positive. In Guyana he has to tell 5 people a day (or something like that).
Most of the Peace Corps folk I know did their stints in Africa. Wherever you go, you will live like a native. The above person had a fairly nice one bedroom place with electricity and air conditioning. His experience seems to be much different than the typical volunteer.
The original friend lived in a Mauritania (sp?) and shared his sleeping quarters with 4 or 5 other people and basically lived like a native there. It is great hearing him talk about it. The people there speak french and always called him Garcon-fille because he is particularly nellie, but ironically they thought he was sleeping with all of the girls around town.
If your email works, and the original friend and you agree to it, I can hook you up with him via email.
I just wanted to say that I don’t really say things like “My husband and I was in the Peace Corps…” as I did in a previous post. I think I must have started to say just “I” and then added the husband part. I ain’t ignrunt, dammit!
Dorkus, if you email me your friend’s name and contact info in Guyana, I’ll check on him and bring him some paperback books next time I’m there (those were like gold when I was in the Peace Corps!). I do HIV/AIDS work in the Caribbean and go to Guyana fairly regularly. It’s a mindblowing country – rainforest as far as the eye can see as you fly in, with massive wild rivers. Unfortunately the crime in Georgetown is mindblowing, too. Fascinating place, though. An American woman who was in Guyana with Peace Corps stayed on and worked in some other capacity and now works with CDC in Trinidad. Her boyfriend is Guyanese and they go back all the time. Is your friend in the city or in the woods?
if you’re going to seriously do it, there are many volunteer programs out there. look into your options. i have not done peace corps or anything like that because im too young, but im planning to do something of the like after college. i had a teacher in high school who spent two years in belize with the jesuit volunteer corps, and he brought a group of us down there about two weeks ago to do volunteer work. we saw where he lived and where he worked and everything…he was explaining to me the differences between different volunteer organizations:
with habitat for humanity you build houses, and you build houses, and you build houses. you meet the people but you generally dont live as one of them, which i have experienced myself.
the peace corps is world-renowned and will be good for getting a job when you return, since everyone’s heard of the peace corps. if religion is a big part of your life, the peace corps can be limiting, since it is non-religious and many of the religious people i know feel that service is key to religion and vice versa…but the more you put in, the more you’ll get out.
americorps is newish and i dont know much about it
if you’re catholic, the jesuit volunteer corps is extremely intense and you will live in poverty, as the people you are helping will be. their motto is that you will be ‘ruined for life’
if you’re another religion, most have their service organizations as far as i’ve heard, but im afraid as i went to catholic school, i dont really know that much about them, because i havent heard much about them.
all in all, whatever you do, if you want a rewarding experience, and you are willing to work for it, it will change you. good luck!
Hey, maybe y’all can shed light on this situation for me:
When I was studying here in the Czech Republic back in 1994 I met two people who were thinking of joining the Peace Corps. They were calling around trying to get information and were getting the run-around as they were telling people “I graduate from college in 6 months, could I get some information…” It wasn’t until they mentioned what their degree was in that they got some serious attention: Accounting.
They were under the impression that the Peace Corps get thousands of English Lit., Drama, etc. majors every year, but they rarely get people with “useful” degrees. Is this true? Is there preference or choice or benefits for people with more “useful” backgrounds like accounting, programming, medicine, etc?
Pretty valid impression. Just like in the “real” world. If you have marketable skills, people want you. The less marketable the skills, the less in demand you are.
That being said, however, some skills one may have that might not be in demand in the U.S. are seriously sought by the Peace Corps. People with farming backgrounds or farming related fields (unintended pun) are super in demand. Mechanics, people with experience in small engine repair, experienced businessmen, welders, people knowledgeable in construction - all these are in demand.
But yes, philosophy, fine arts and poli. sci. majors fresh out of college sometimes are a bit harder to place. Still, many of us who loved it so much were indeed “blessed” with those sorts of backgrounds and we got in and maybe did some good.
TV
(by the way, I also saw my usage error in my first post in this thread, and since JillGat came clean about hers, I do in fact know the difference between “there” and “their”.)
FTR, I was accepted and placed in the Peace Corps with my fabulously useful degree in Anthropology (same degree as Hello Again, although she studied archaeology and I studied cultural anth), at the ripe old age of 22. So it’s not like you have to have specialized knowledge.
The application process takes about 9 months so I have a while to figure out the details. “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it” is my motto.