Tell me about the Peace Corps

In My Humble Opinion
1

No, I’m not pulling a “should I join” or “talk me out of it” thing. I really think I want to go, but I’ll have to finish my application later this summer. I went to talk to my campus recruiter and he came off as a bit brusque. I found out the second time I went to see him that he’s leaving this week and there will be a new recruiter in the fall. I guess as long as he wasn’t going to really be my recruiter he really didn’t want to get involved with me.

All I want is to hear about other people’s experiences. I know a few Dopers are volunteering now and I’m sure others have in the past. I realize that likely nothing I hear will apply to my situation, but I still feel like I’m jumping into something I know almost nothing about. Its scary!!

If anyone is interested, I’m a senior sociology major and I’d like to volunteer for the agriculture program. I was an animal science major for two years, did FFA in high school, raised animals, etc so I could be qualified for it.

2

I’m going to finish my application for it. I know Kyla is in Bulgaria (or somewhere in the area) right now for the Peace Corps and she has a “Ask the…” thread dedicated to it as well. You may wanna throw in a search.

3

Dang it!

4

If I remember right, even sven either is or was in Cameroon as a Peace Corps volunteer. She’s started threads about her experiences.

I’ve never been in the Peace Corps, but I’ve known plenty of people who have through the Dept. of Anthropology at my university. Many of them had lousy experiences, which is why they dropped out of the PC after 3 to 6 months and became grad students instead.

IIRC (and I could be wrong about this), the PC doesn’t consider people who dropped out and came back to the US as “returned volunteers.” Therefore, most of the stories you hear about the experiences of returned volunteers are neutral to positive. The people who had a very bad time don’t have their experiences reported as frequently, or to as wide an audience, as those volunteers whose experiences were at least OK.

It might make sense to try Googling for stories from people who decided not to stay in the PC after having been selected and placed in the country they were supposed to work in.

I’m not trying to discourage you from doing this. I’ve met several people who loved their time in the PC and say it was one of the best decisions they ever made in their lives. But, since joining the PC comes with some pretty hefty financial sacrifice and a 2-year commitment, it might be a good idea to find out a bit about why some people decided to bail out.

5

Yeah, that was kind of what I was hoping for here. I can find tons of positive stories, but I wanted to hear what it was like when it sucked.

6

Here are a few takes on the Peace Corps that might help you consider whether or not the organization is for you. The thread includes book recommendations that might be useful to you, too.

7

My wife did three years in the PC. She maintains that the recruiting process is intentionally a total PITA to weed people out. Be sure to make copies of any documents you send them because they will lose them and ask for them again.

8

What are some alternatives to the Peace Corps? I’m interested as well.

9

Heh. If you want to find out what it is like when it REALLY sucks, check out my brother’s blog: http://ericinafrica.blogspot.com/
Start with the August 2005 archives.

10

Depends on what you want out of the Peace Corp experience, I would guess. If you’re interested in helping out within the borders of the United States, check out an AmeriCorps program in your region. I recently completed a second term with Public Allies, which receives funding from AmeriCorps to apprentice young adults in non-profits around their chapter’s local community for ten months.

Working directly for AmeriCorps you can join VISTA, which is often a much more Peace Corps experience of living in centralized residences provided for you during your stay. The pay is next to nothing, but room and board are covered. I have nothing bad to say about my experience at Public Allies, but I’ve heard… mixed reviews of VISTA.

Just a thought.

11

My daughter is in the process of applying – she finally handed in the medical paperwork and hopes to hear from them by the end of the summer.

We were at a Returned Peace Corps Volunteers picnic last weekend, and it was a great way of meeting people who returned (you might look for one in your area at this site. They gave some great stories about their times abroad, and everyone there seemed to think it was one of the greatest things they ever did.

12

Damn!! That was less “I couldn’t stand my situation” and more “I got hit with a dump truck”, but still! Talk about dangers you never think about. :eek:

13

Yup. But, through it all, I don’t believe he regrets his decision to go into the PC, so that’s probably a vote in favor of doing it.

ETA: The PC community is great, too. He just got back from NYC where he spent the week with a guy he served with, and a month or so ago, we hosted two ex-PC people at our house who were travelling crosscountry. It’s like a great big, global family.

14

My father-in-law was in the Peace Corps in the early 1970s. He was stationed in Peru. The most useful thing he did, in his opinion, was provide contraception and information about birth control to the people in the area. It was also not at all sanctioned by the Peace Corps, but something he got involved with on his own. He was supposed to be building sanitary latrines and teaching English (which he did as well). When he visited the area again in the 1990s, he was very dispirited to find that none of his work seemed to have had a lasting impact.

Being in the Peace Corps made him realize how few useful skills he really had and spurred him on to become a doctor, but beyond that, he seems to have very mixed feelings about his experience. He liked the people he met, but I think he feels that he was performing less of a useful service and functioning more as a propaganda tool of the U.S. government.

Mind you, this was all over 30 years ago, so things may have changed a great deal.

15

I was in the Peace Corps (China, 93-95) where I taught English as a Second Language at a very rural medical college. I’m not really sure why we were there in the first place. My students lived in such a remote area of China and were so poor that the chances of them ever using English in any meaningful way were very slim - they had no computers, no passports, no hopes (or probably even chances) of traveling to an English-speaking country.

I remember when I was in college, I always dreaded running into my Spanish teacher on campus. I did what I had to do to pass the class but I was in no way fluent in the language. Whenever I saw him, I knew he would want to speak Spanish with me and I always sounded like such a moron. And judging by the look on his face, I imagined that the student I ran into about a month after he left my class felt the same way when I ran into him on campus. It was then that I realized I wasn’t changing any lives - I was just the kooky foreign teacher on campus that would be going home in the very near future.

On a personal level, I enjoyed my time there. It is very humbling to spend time in a country where you do not fit in and never will. I stuck out like a 6-foot white chick in a southern Chinese farming province. One of the reasons I went was to get away. College was tough and I was hoping to go to medical school so I wanted a break. When I was in China, we didn’t have email, internet or easy access to phones. However, I think now it’s a very different experience. I have a friend who came back from Cameroon about 3 years ago. When she left, she took a laptop and cell phone and lived a life very similar to her life in the US. She really enjoyed her time in the Peace Corps as well. In fact, she liked Cameroon so much, she brought back a husband.

16

i was in zambia with the peace corps from 2002-2005. i loved it. i lived in a hut, feasted on bugs and had some really awesome festering wounds on my extremities (it’s hard to keep your feets clean when prowling around the bush in flip flops).

there were definitely frustrations and exasperations, everything from the trivial (many people could not tell if i was a boy or a girl: i had short hair, and wore pants. i also had (have, even) breasts and a high-pitched voice. this wasnt even frustrating, so much as funny.) to the really obnoxious (my freshly re-thatched roof leaked more than my old roof, especially over my bed. it is not fun to sleep in a puddle.) to the cultural-differences stuff, which could drive you squid-shit-bonkers.

but still i loved it.

as for how much good i did - i didnt have super a lot of success in my specific program, for a whole variety of reasons, but there was a lot of good one-on-one stuff (tutoring my neighbor kid in english, for example). like a lot of things, i think peace corps is kind of what you make of it - you can go to a beautiful country and have a two year vacation, you can devote yourself wholeheartedly to Saving the World, or somewhere in between.

more than anything else, it made me realize, like burundi’s dad, that i dont have a whole lot of really useful skills, which is why i am going back to school (pre-med postbacc stuff first, with the eventual goal of med school). i would do peace corps again in a heartbeat, but i realized that while i definitely want to go back to africa, i want to go back in a more useful capacity.

hawksgirl, i totally say go for it. the agricultural programs are the best, anyway. in my opinion.

and as a total hijack - i just registered today, but due to a long story, i have the wrong user name from what i want. i posted a plea for help in the about this message board board - is that the best way to go about it?

love
yams!!

(yams!! is the user name i would like, rather than the one i have).

17

What I know about the Peace Corp is based on dating a former volunteer (from the late-1980s, also in Cameroon), having a cousin volunteer who was stationed in Ukraine just a few years ago, interviewing 3-4 volunteers for various reasons over the past decade, and having two former volunteers as college professors. Summarized, what they all told me was:

  • It’s harder than you think it will be.
  • No, really, it’s that hard.
  • Be prepared to do manual labor of some sort, no matter what they sent you there to do as your mission. You might have to cart your own water, etc.
  • If you’re not in a city, be prepared to walk everywhere. Everyone loses weight in the PC.
  • The people you think you’re there to help may or may not understand why you’re there, may or may not care, may or may not like you, may or may not pay any attention to you at all.
  • Don’t expect gratitude, apreciate it if it’s there.
  • If you think you’ve experience sexism/racism/prejudice in the U.S., you’re in for a wake-up call.

A lot of younger people think the Peace Corp is like a fun vacation where they get to help happy, grateful foreigners on the government’s dime. Hardly. The screening process is a PITA for a reason: The job itself will probably be a PITA as well. That’s why they call it “idealism.”

18

I’m here! Any questions for a currently serving volunteer? I’ve been in country for 14 months and have another year to go.

This is what I’ve got as advice:

PC is really, really hard. If you want to do it because you don’t know what else to do and you think it might be cool to live somewhere else and help people, I don’t recommend it. The days where you come home from work and think “man, I’m so glad I’m here, I’m totally helping people!” are a hell of a lot fewer than the days where you think “what the fuck was I thinking, coming here? I want to bang my head against a wall.” One of the main things that keeps me going is the knowledge that this will further my career goals. I’m here for two years. How much can you really do in two years? Considering the huge problems facing Bulgaria (and keep in mind that this is, along with Romania, one of the two wealthiest and most developed countries with volunteers…for some reason we’re even in the EU), not much. I do have some amount of hope that over years, the cumulative effect of thousands of volunteers doing various jobs, does mean that Peace Corps is helping at least a little.

The application process is a total PITA, but as has been said, it’s like that for a reason. If you can’t get through the application process, no way can you handle service. Here’s how it works: you have two and a half to three months of training on your job and the language. Then they dump you off in some little town or village where you don’t know anyone, usually by yourself, and tell you, go do something.

Not to be completely negative, being a volunteer is an amazing experience and I’m lucky to be able to do it. I have learned a lot, but it’s definitely not for everyone.

even sven is a volunteer in Cameroon, but I don’t know how regular her internet access is. As you can imagine, her life in West Africa is pretty different from mine here in the Balkans.

19

This is so true! I would walk down the street and people would laugh, point, stare, stop whatever they were doing to talk about me. The first Chinese phrase I learned was “hen gao” (so tall) because almost everyone I walked by would say it either right to me or to their friends.

I remember one night, just before I left the country, I was with a new volunteer who had just arrived. We had been walking around the city all day and were tired so we sat down. Within minutes we were completely surrounded by a very large and curious crowd. There must have been 30 people just staring at us and talking about us. Of course they assumed that we could not understand what they were saying so I just said “hello” to them in Chinese and they all burst out laughing. Then they all started asking me questions - I suppose it’s what you would feel like at a press conference.

Later, the volunteer I was with said he was totally terrified that we were going to be lynched (even though it was obvious from the beginning that everyone was just curious and did not mean us any harm).

20

Hey, lilflower, how’s your Chinese? For all the complaining I’ve done about how tough Bulgarian is, I have to think that Chinese is infinitely harder. I’m just curious, is it common for people to reach Superior level on their LPIs? Or do most people just learn enough to get by and say “screw this” to studying? (Although it occurs to me that since Chinese is about a thousand times more useful than Bulgarian, maybe people are more motivated to learn the language than volunteers here.)