Peace Corps service recalled
Local volunteers look back on their time overseas
By Tom Burke
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The biggest challenges come from within.
It is "becoming a bit more modest about what one person can do," said Peace Corps veteran Richard Wines of Jamesport, who served in southern India from 1968 to 1970.
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Challenging Americans to "serve their country in the cause of peace by living and working in developing countries," President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in September 1961. More than 190,000 Americans have accepted his challenge in the 47 years since, serving all over the globe, and more than a dozen returned Peace Corps volunteers live locally.
They include Cutchogue resident Jennifer Monahan, who served in Kenya and now heads up the Long Island chapter of an organization of Peace Corps veterans called the National Peace Corps Association, which has organized a campaign called "More Peace Corps." They want to see the Peace Corps doubled in size and budget by the time of its 50th anniversary on Sept. 6, 2011. To bring attention to the campaign, the group is throwing 100 house parties throughout the 50 states this Sept. 6, including one at the Cutchogue home of Michael Gill and Barbara Butterworth, who met while serving in the Peace Corps in Nepal.
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"I can't imagine myself without the experience," Ms. Monahan said. "I don't know what my attitudes would be. It's such an integral part of me. It almost scares me to think of me without the experience."
Serving in Kenya from 1986 to 1989, Ms. Monahan was called a "town planner." Her real job, however, was "teaching the use of appropriate building techniques (homemade bricks and mortar)," she said.
On arrival, Ms. Monahan was greeted by officials carrying a dusty, more-than-20-year-old, grandly designed British development plan. She was told the town's first priority was to "build a subway." She discreetly pointed out the community had no electricity. She suggested energies be redirected into upgrading local community neighborhoods, building by building.
They agreed and, with aid from the University of Nairobi and a local technical college, she helped introduce a "stabilized soil block" compressor -- a machine to make building bricks without baking them. Bricks, instead of sticks, were an essential element in the reconstruction process.
Then, using the homemade bricks (quality tested by dropping them on the ground; if they didn't break, they were OK to use) and "cowcrete" (mortar made from animal manure), she began upgrading village structures.
"First I had to get them to trust me," Ms. Monahan said. "I had to build credibility before they let me build houses."
Even though their service was 30 or 40 years ago, many volunteers speak of their time abroad as if it were yesterday. Clearly, the experiences were vivid and the memories strong.
Bruce Ferguson of Jamesport served as a business development mentor on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. Thirty-three years later he speaks with great clarity of relics from World War II still scattered over the island, of wrecked warships still visible in Ironbottom Sound (the scene of great World War II naval battles), and of meeting England's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on their yacht. He can still speak the local dialect, Pidg'n English, with ease.
One of his first tasks, he says, was to teach nascent entrepreneurs the idea of profit and markup. On one remote island, a budding storekeeper would buy a case of tinned meat (his entire inventory was that one case of meat) for 43 cents a can and sell it for 43 cents a can. He was complaining he wasn't making any money for all his hard work and capital investment.
Mr. Ferguson tried to explain "markup," expenses and profit.
"Where-em now, dis fella expenses?" his student asked him.
Greenport resident John Quinlan's service in Nigeria was cut short by a year in 1967. He vividly recalls how the Peace Corps was forced to leave during the civil war between the Muslim Hausa tribe in the north, were he was stationed, and the Christian, professional-class Ibo tribe in the south. The war over Biafra and America's apparent antagonism against the Hausa made the country unsafe.
Learning to live with the local mores and traditions in their countries of service could be "challenging." Gloria Groocock of Cutchogue served in Mbeya, a village in the southern highlands of Tanganyika (today called Tanzania) from 1963 to 1966, where she met her future husband, a British veterinarian. Like her female counterparts serving in other countries, she reported prejudice against women in male-oriented societies, as well as prohibitions against women wearing slacks and shorts. Modest dress was the order of the day. But many returned volunteers report their biggest culture shock was returning to life in America. Ms. Berry says upon returning to the U.S. she found she was "shocked by the amount of choice we have and how much we take for granted. People in rural Morocco, where I worked, had nothing. Yet they thought they had everything simply because they had running water," Ms. Berry said.
For some, the Peace Corps was a direct path to a career. For others, it simply built the confidence that they could handle anything that came along.
"People who want to make a difference overseas, make a difference at home and make a difference in themselves should consider joining the Peace Corps," Ms. Monahan said.
Peace Corps veterans downplay the idea of making huge, world-challenging changes and speak instead of smaller personal victories and individual accomplishments.
"Anyone with an interest in learning about another culture, experiencing real life in another country at the village level ... who doesn't want to be insular or provincial in their understanding of the rest of the world" is a good candidate, according to Mr. Gill.
He and his wife encourage anyone interested in learning more about the corps to attend the house party they are hosting Saturday night.
Peace Corps house party
All returned Peace Corps volunteers and anyone interested in the Peace Corps are invited to the celebration of the corps' 47th anniversary and the start of a campaign to double Peace Corps membership by 2011.
"More Peace Corps" house party
Saturday, Sept. 6, 4-6 p.m.
12030 New Suffolk Ave.
Cutchogue
For more information, go to www.peacecorps.gov or www.morepeacecorps.org
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