During Pre-Service Training, soon-to-be Peace Corps Volunteers are provided a diagram charting their likely upcoming peaks and valleys on the journey to cultural adjustment. They can expect to start off their service with initial enthusiasm, followed quickly by initial culture shock. Eventually they can look forward to some adaptation and language and cultural competence, punctuated by further culture shock. The goal is to level off at some combination of acceptance, adaptation, and integration.
While most Volunteers expect the physical conditions to be challenging, the emotional conditions can be just as challenging. After twenty-seven months or so on that emotional rollercoaster, the Volunteer receives no “Diagram of Cultural Adjustment” for coming home at the Close of Service (COS) Conference.
Brad Williams (Peru, ’12-’14), Noah Brod and Hilary Jacobsen (both El Salvador, ’13-’15), and Kitaho Kato (Mongolia, ’12-’14) all took an active step towards reintegrating into the Bay Area by attending last year’s second annual Recently Returned Thanksgiving Celebration and Transition Workshop. The event was graciously hosted by Paul Reinhart and Susan Sumner (RPCV Kazakhstan ‘10-‘12) who cooked a huge Thanksgiving dinner. Tess Marstaller, Davin Lal and Sarah Keyes developed the workshop agenda. The workshop focused on the struggles Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) have once they come back to the United States after service.
There is definitely a need for RPCVs to lean on each other when they first return. Brad recalls of coming back to the United States, “It was joyful, overwhelming, exciting, and frightening all at the same time.”
Kitaho found transitioning back to life here complicated, “It was disappointing, exciting, confusing, awkward, and gradual.”
Noah and Hilary feel like only after they found a permanent home in Alameda could they even begin thinking about redefining the notion of “home.”
Home during Peace Corps service includes one’s whole community. Invitations to sit and talk are routine. Noah found Peru’s culture very welcoming: “From the first day until the last, I was constantly greeted with respect and friendliness and families would invite me into their home for tea, bread, and good conversation.”
Similarly, Kitaho misses going to people’s homes and eating together: “I miss drinking tea, each family’s being unique to them. I miss the holidays and all the ceremony that accompanies it.”
As a result of living in a culture that places value on greeting and talking one on one, both Hilary and Noah have found themselves more interested in people and their stories, and more comfortable talking and sharing with new people than they were before service.
Relationships formed in close-knit communities are the currency that pays off doing local projects. RPCVs leave behind those challenging projects that they organized, only to be forced to translate those experiences shelling peanuts under a mango tree into bullet points on a resume. Finding a job can be a difficult part of re-adjustment, but at least each RPCV has some unique advantages such as fluency in a second language and experience adapting to unexpected challenges. Brad and Kitaho both used another RPCV advantage, their Noncompetitive Eligibility (NCE), to land jobs with the federal government. Brand became a Program Specialist at the USDA and Kitaho works for Medicaid.
The hardest adjustment in Peace Corps can indeed be coming home. To read more about Brad, Noah, Hilary and Kitaho’s homecoming experiences, please visit: norcalpca.org/blog.cfm.
Tea, Bread, and Conversation
Brad Williams (Peru, ’12 – ’14) was a Community Economic Development (CED) Volunteer.
My site was in the small town of San Miguel located the northern Sierra region of Peru located 9,000 feet above sea level.
In Peru, each Volunteer must live with a host family for the entire two year service. I lived with a host family of seven. My host family gave me a small room, about eight by ten feet, on the side of the house. The rest of my family slept upstairs in a separate area. This allowed me to have peace and quiet at night, but during the day there was a lot of action outside of my room.
Every night we ate dinner at 7 pm, almost on the dot. This is surprising because Peruvians can be known for their lack of punctuality. The dinner table at which we dined was about the size of a poker table. With eight people crowded around and all speaking to each other, it was an overwhelming experience.
Luckily, my host family was very understanding and gave me my space, letting me get comfortable. Speaking of getting comfortable, when I arrived to San Miguel my host dad, Segundo, gifted me a mattress made of hay. My room smelled like a barn for about two weeks before it finally aired out. Say what you will, but hay mattresses are great for your back.
I think one of the most important way in which I made it feel like home was to have my music with me. I brought an iTouch loaded up with all my favorite music. Being able to play all my favorite songs whenever I wanted was a great way to give me a sense of comfort and security. Also, it was pretty fun showing Peruvians the magic that is “When the Levee Breaks” by Led Zeppelin.
I became more and more accustomed to my new surroundings as I developed my routine. I began waking up at 6 am every morning to go on a hike through the town, before most people woke up. That gave me time to find some solace and clear my head.
My main counterpart was a man named Cesar Gutierrez, the Director of Economic Development in San Miguel. In my second week at site, I visited the municipality to introduce myself and he greeted me with a tour of the building and a desk in his office. This meant that he expected me to come in for work every day. I explained that there were projects outside of the municipality that I was working on and might not be able to make it in every day. Cesar is an understanding man and offered his assistance on any municipality or outside projects I was working on. Thinking back, I am grateful for the desk and his expectations. It gave me a sense of structure and a sense of dependability.
In the beginning of my service, I primarily worked with the local artisans in my town. I taught the women classes on how to price their goods, how to better market their goods, and other general business concepts.
Towards the end of my first year, I worked with the local farming institute and taught an entrepreneurship course. Over four months, I helped the students, who were also dairy farmers, create unique business plans that consisted of a product they would make and sell in San Miguel. We held a competition at the institute to see who came up with the best business plan, and I took the winning group, a fruit yogurt business, to compete with other students from all around Peru in a Peace Corps funded business plan competition.
One of the last big projects I focused on was the Business Consulting program for the CED Peru program. A fellow volunteer and I used our prior business knowledge and the resources we had at the Peace Corps to develop a business consulting program that would allow volunteers to work one on one with business owners in their site. The volunteer would identify priorities, create goals for the business, and hold weekly one on one teaching sessions with each business owner.
My most significant project, however, was working with the local church organization helping them construct and run a rehabilitation center for the people of San Miguel. There were over 85 children and adults with physical and mental disabilities in San Miguel and most of the families could not afford to travel to the capital city for therapy. When I got there, I worked as a middle man between the municipality and the organization to finish the construction. Once the construction had finished, I had about six months left in my service for teaching the folks at the center how to run the center.
There were two seasons in San Miguel, the rainy season and not the rainy season. The lack of irrigation in San Miguel made it hard to leave the house if a sizeable rain storm passed through. I would always tell people that I was going to buy a boat during the rainy season so I could get from my house to the municipality.
During the dry season, the weather was much more enjoyable. One of my fondest memories of service is sitting in the plaza on a warm day and people watching. In such a small town, I knew practically everyone. I would get a cold Coca-Cola (from the only shop that had a refrigerator), sit in the plaza, and watch everyone go about their business. Once in a while, someone would sit next to me and strike up a conversation.
I enjoyed the COS conference because it allowed for some closure between fellow volunteers and it gave everyone a time to reflect on their service. No matter how much preparation any volunteer receives, I do not think anyone can be ready for the transition back to America.
I will never forget the feeling of coming back to the United States. It was joyful, overwhelming, exciting, and frightening all at the same time. Once the honeymoon period ended and reality began to kick in, I quickly realized that I needed to get on with my life.
For me, one of the biggest challenges was overcoming the realization that everyone else’s life had continued on without me. Not to sound like a narcissist, because I truly do not think the world revolves around me, but I felt as if everything in the States would sort of wait for me while I was in the Peace Corps and we could pick up where we left off when I returned. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. It was quite humbling. It made minor challenges seem greater and it also made me feel like I was all of a sudden behind in life.
At COS I was told how much I had accomplished and all the good I did, but when I returned home it didn’t seem to matter much (at the time) and it felt more as if those two years had been lost.
Over the past year and half since I have been back from the Peace Corps, I have realized more about myself and more about my view of the world than I did in my entire life leading up to the Peace Corps. During my service, I went through many ups and downs, as all volunteers do. But during the service I mainly focused on making it through those downs and enjoying the ups. I did not find time to do much reflection.
Peru’s culture is very welcoming. One thing I will truly miss is the generosity, care, and goodwill of everyone in my site. From the first day until the last, I was constantly greeted with respect and friendliness and families would invite me into their home for tea, bread, and good conversation.
From a Family of Two to Twelve, and Back to Two
Noah Brod and Hilary Jacobsen (El Salvador, ’13 – ’15) were Community Economic Development Volunteers. They served in the Peace Corps through the Masters International program, working towards Masters in Public Administration during their service. This married couple was also a grantee of the Nor Cal PCA grants program during their service.
We served in a small town called La Tejera, in the Municipality of Perquin, Department of Morazan, El Salvador. Our town is located in the northeast corner of the country, near Honduras. The town is nestled in the mountains, about 4,200 feet up, deep in coffee country.
Our primary project was to work with a local development council (called Asociacion de Desarrollo Comunal or ADESCO) on improving their practices and capacity for community projects. This included some basic training on the role of an ADESCO, effective meeting management, and transparent financial practices, among other things.
Noah did some work with their local school, helping them find money to start a small garden as well as develop a sister school relationship with a school in Yuma, Arizona. He also worked with some women in his community to solicit a series of trainings in professional cosmetology and sewing from a state-sponsored program.
Hilary worked with a women’s group that created beautiful products from recycled materials. She helped them with quality control, financial practices and connecting to potential markets.
Another large secondary project we did was a Business Basics and Startup course we taught at two local high schools. We actually won funding for this project from The NorCal PCA in October 2014. It was a six month course in which our students created their own businesses and prototyped a product or service that they presented at a fair.
Neither of us spoke much Spanish when we arrived, so getting up to speed on the language was initially challenging. We lived with a host family for our whole service (which was part of the security policy in El Salvador). Ours was a truly wonderful family who generously embraced us from the beginning. When we first moved in, the living situation wasn’t ideal because we had twelve people all living in a four-room adobe house. We were actually going to move out because of this, but when we talked to the family, they offered instead to build us a small room set slightly apart from the main house that we could live in. This made a hugely positive impact on our comfort living with our host family.
Our host mom had eighteen children and was considered one of the matriarchs of the community as well as a midwife and local healer. She helped out the local clinic with outreach and taught people about family planning.
Hilary struggled at first getting used to living in a big family and having little privacy. It was really important to her to carve out personal space and some quiet time each day, which helped her feel more at home.
COS conference was great if only because we got to see everyone in our cohort again in one place two years later. Our cohort was very small (fifteen people) so we all got to know each other well.
Noah felt like the most important message they gave was that the re-integration process was something they should expect and that he shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t feel comfortable being home right away.
They don’t have that awesome cycle of vulnerability graph for the transition home though, which was something that everyone was tracking themselves against during our service.
For Hilary, going from rural El Salvador to her job in the financial district in San Francisco was a very brusque change. Being in a traditional office setting has taken some getting used to, especially the pace of work and the high demands of a competitive city.
Though we have been back for six months, we only recently found a permanent place together, so the transition has really only just begun.
Noah had a bit of a breakdown in the detergent aisle of a Target and now he doesn’t want to go back there. Other than that he had the good fortune to come back and have one semester of grad school to finish up. There are a lot of RPCVs at his school, and he found them to be a sympathetic bunch.
We miss pupusas, the national dish of El Salvador. They are corn tortillas stuffed with cheese and meat or vegetables, fried and served with salsa and pickled cabbage. We miss fried plantains with salsa; that was our snack every afternoon. We miss having a pot of fresh beans over the fire at all hours of the day. We miss fresh corn tamales and mangoes from the mango tree. The coffee, roasted fresh that morning, basically everything. The food was really fantastic.
Hilary also misses being part of a small and tight-knit community. Our Salvadoran friends and neighbors were incredibly generous and caring people, and I miss being a part of their community.
Hilary finds that she is more interested in people and their stories, and more comfortable talking and sharing with new people than she was before service.
While Noah was a patient person before, he feels like he’s even more so now. Also, when someone he doesn’t know just starts talking to him on the street in San Francisco, he doesn’t feel weirded out. He just talks back. Oh yeah, all of his hand gestures are different now too. It’s been difficult to unlearn those.
Somehow You Adjust
Kitaho Kato (Mongolia, ’12 – ’14) was a Community Youth Development (CYD) Volunteer.
I lived in Sukhbataar City, which is the provincial capital of Selenge Aimag. It is located on the northern border between Russia and Mongolia. The Trans-Siberian railroad ran through my town.
I was placed at a vocational school. All CYD volunteers in Mongolia were placed in schools. I worked with school social workers, dorm teachers, English teachers, and teachers from neighboring schools.
I tried to work with various community partners to conduct trainings on topics such as life skills, sexual health, and clinical psychology. I also was on the LGBT task force and helped put together a Safe Zone Training for the Peace Corps staff.
I lived in an apartment with running water, by Peace Corps standards, a mansion! And, being that I have fallen in love with the bay, that apartment may be the largest place I’ll ever live on my own. Even though there was heat from a radiator we still needed to “winterize” our apartment. I didn’t know that the first year and could see my breath in my apartment at times. I did not have the experience of living in a ger (the Mongolian yurt), which I have mixed feelings about.
I feel like the term nomadic is a little misleading when talking about most of the families I knew. Members of my host family, as well as community member families, were herders. As herders, they move locations depending on the season. However the difference between the various locations they lived were about ten to twenty miles. Once they got to the location for the season, they set up their gers and stayed for several months until the season required them to move back to their previous location.
There were so many animals (live stock) just roaming around. It was awesome. Cows, horses, pigs, goats, and sheep just wandering through town, doing their thing. And the dogs… I loved the dogs. They’re a little scary, but they ran wild in packs and just looked so free.
I only got to ride horses twice during my service but both times were incredible. One of the times was to go to a remote community only accessible by horse. I grew up riding horses, and horses in American can tend to be a little particular. But the horses I rode in Mongolia were these strong, small, and well connected animals.
The summers were beautiful and warm. There would occasionally be huge storms that would pass through, and the coolest thing was that you could see the darkness approaching. The rest of the year, it’s unbelievably cold. It reached -40 at least a couple of days both winters and -4 was a warm day! I lived in an area that got a lot of snow and everything was frozen over for about four months straight. That first winter, I slipped at least once a day. Somehow you adjust, and learn to dress for the cold. Both seasons are breathtakingly beautiful.
I was in my mid 30’s during my service. I had read that the average age of a Peace Corps volunteer was 28. So I figured, I would a little bit older but not by much. Wrong. A large majority of my peers had graduated from undergrad one to two years prior. Much to my surprise, they quickly became, and continue to be, some of my dearest friends.
My Mongolian friends and counterparts often did not understand what a single woman my age without children was doing volunteering abroad. Don’t get me wrong they were quite supportive in offering me various husbands I could “take.” My age was often a topic of conversation and it was the first time I really started thinking about it. In a culture like ours that values youth, the process of aging can be undervalued and there is a lot of effort put into denying it. But life is finite, and I really started thinking about what is important moving forward.
I traveled for four months before returning and that was divine, I fantasize about it every day. Transitioning back to life here was complicated. It was disappointing, exciting, confusing, awkward, and gradual.
The biggest challenge of readjusting was figuring out what type of community I wanted to build and how to do that. I loved LA when I left for Peace Corps. I loved my life there and was excited to get back to it. However, when I got back things felt disappointing. The things that excited me were different now and it was a process to sort that out. Moving to a new city and trying to figure out how to relate to people was also difficult. I am just now starting to figure out how to communicate with non-Peace Corps people.
I miss going to people’s homes and eating together. I miss drinking tea, each family’s being unique to them. I miss the holidays and all the ceremony that accompanies it. I miss the lack of personal space and close physical proximity. I honestly miss so much of being there, it’s hard to verbalize it all.
As much as I dislike Facebook at times, I will never get rid of it because that’s how we keep in touch. I miss them, I wish Mongolia were closer (and cheaper). I would love to visit, but just for a little bit. I’m not quite ready to do the whole return visit yet.
By Marlow Shindler