Why Peace Corps Makes Sense to Me

Why Peace Corps Makes Sense to Me

August 4, 2009, 11:21 am
Filed under: Peace Corps Romania | Tags: community, happy volunteers, living abroad, Peace Corps, Peace Corps Mission, Romania, tourist

I have identified only a single, sort-of-consistent correlation amongst the happy and productive volunteers that I know. This common characteristic is a sense of ‘community’ at site, with host-country colleagues and friends.

Volunteers that feel well integrated are typically the ones that can smile and speak of their service with words like, “love,” “friends,” “happy,” and, “here.” I acquiesce that a volunteer doesn’t necessarily need to be well integrated into their community to enjoy their service. I have not met a single well-integrated volunteer, however, who has struck me as cynical, or pessimistic. Hence, I think that community may be the ‘magic word,’ for Peace Corps service, as it extends through all aspects of the Peace Corps’ mission.

The first goal of Peace Corps is to help “the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.” I think this is an admirable thing, but the beauty of Peace Corps is that the cultural immersion almost necessitates that service be more than just a ‘job.’

I believe that Peace Corps volunteers begin to feel most successful when they break from the ‘tourist realm.’ The tourist realm is that place where each of your interactions is at face value, and success is assumed for the most minor of exchanges and purchases. There is an inherent distance between you and the culture surrounding–a bubble that holds you in place as an outsider. There is no deep sense of ‘sharing,’ except in the most spectacular of interactions and coincidences. For me, I began to break out of the tourist realm after six months in Romania. I’m sure for others it can be more, or less.

Hence, the Peace Corps immersion for two years (or longer) forcibly pushes the volunteer out of that place. No person really wants to be a tourist for 24 months, as a sense of belonging and home is incredibly difficult to attain. Instead, volunteers learn the language, and develop a routine. They get ‘adopted’ by caring and concerned families, and become sensitive, and even accustomed, to cultural differences that all but confounded them, at first. A Peace Corps volunteer may arrive as a tourist, but, in the best cases, they leave as a member of their community.

And while the technical exchange of a community integrated volunteer is more potent than that of an outsider, I think this really reveals the most important thing that Peace Corps does, as emphasized by the second and third goals: “Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served,” and “Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”

The most important part of Peace Corps, for me, is again that magic word: community. A volunteer willingly removes themselves from the familiarity of home, and suddenly their little life bangs up against an entire community which, in most cases, is chosen for them. In the states, a PCV has the benefit of common language and culture for cultivating relationships with strangers. But in the scope of the Peace Corps, none of these similarities may exist. I think that my tried and true attempt at integration into a foreign culture with a new language is one of the most difficult things I have ever done as all comfort zones and senses of “this is familiar” security were ground down.

What’s left? Where can a volunteer and their community develop a relationship if environmental similarities are few?

What Peace Corps may teach you, is to build relationships with your community from no more than your common humanity to one another. This is how a volunteer truly begins to become a community member. Peace Corps can show you that environmental similarities are comfortable and easy, but not all that necessary. It is possible to become a better human being because, through the Peace Corps experience, a volunteer becomes assured that friendship and goodwill are universal characteristics found in every single small corner of the world.

Not to say that Peace Corps is right for everyone, or the only way to become a ‘good person.’ I know this isn’t true. The same brilliant development of empathy can be achieved in any number of ways, but Peace Corps happens to be a pretty fantastic and well developed opportunity to do so. I believe fully in the Peace Corps, and thus it makes sense to me. It is extremely solid in its mission to bestow technical skills and willing hands to those that request it. However, I think that the true transfer of humanity between two different cultures (under the pretense of a skill exchange) is where the Love is really at.

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