Why You Should Hire A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

Applying for jobs after the Peace Corps can be a daunting task.  After all, Peace Corps is advertised as “the toughest job you’ll ever love.”  What work experience could possibly live up to that?  And how on earth do you explain to potential employers what kind of expertise you will bring to the table?  Here’s my list of reasons why YOU should hire a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. 

1.        We are cross culture experts.

This claim is flung around quite loosely these days by every college senior who spent a semester downing cervezas in Barcelona or pints in Dublin.  But Peace Corps Volunteers have gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to working in cross-cultural environments.  We’ve woken up before sunrise to harvest maize by hand and worn long skirts and headscarves in 110 degree heat.  We’ve learned obscure languages and acquired the blessings of local chiefs.  We’ve tried the local delicacy and spent the following 24 hours running back and forth to the latrine.  We’ve done our jobs in countries where conceptions of work and time vary drastically from our own.  We’ve bitten our tongues when our looks are dissected by total strangers, we’ve waded through marriage proposals during business meetings, and we’ve sat for hours in the uncomfortable local sitting position.  And we’ve (hopefully) done it all without offending the locals.           

2.       We don’t sweat the small stuff.

The projector is broken and we have a presentation in 15 minutes?!  Peace Corps Volunteers don’t sweat it.  If we can’t fix it with some spare parts we find in the trash bins, we’ll wing the presentation with grace and style.  We have seen too many truly tragic and heartbreaking things to get lost in the minutia of everyday life.  We work hard but can recognize the difference between a minor episode and a major emergency.       

3.       We are generalists, not specialists.

Our wide range of skills can be deployed at any moment.  Just because our official Peace Corps job was “Community Health HIV/AIDS Educator” does not mean we just went around slapping condoms on bananas for two years.  We’ve written grants, negotiated contracts, organized professional workshops, and taught classes.  We’ve babysat, experimented with permaculture techniques, and provided career guidance.  We’ve gathered statistics and created organizational linkages.  And we did all of this in a foreign culture without easy access to internet or other resource materials.  Oh- and we also know the proper way to butcher a goat. 

4.       We are patient and tenacious.

How many times have we walked many miles to get to an important meeting?  And at those meetings, how many times did we wait four or more hours for it to start?  And how many times did we get turned away after waiting those four hours when the meeting was postponed?  It has happened more times than we care to count.  But we don’t give up.  We keep walking those miles; we keep calling the people we need to talk to.  We bring other work with us to do while we wait; we get our male colleagues to call on our behalf so that the contact will take us seriously.  We see delays and problems which try our patience as a way to work even harder.  Our tenacity will win out in the end. 

5.       We’re grateful for what we have.

A Peace Corps budget is hardly luxurious.  We’ve eaten around the moldy bits of bread and vegetables and washed our hair in a bucket with less frequency than anyone should disclose.  We’ve squatted for four hours on overcrowded public transport downwind of a poopy diaper and we’ve cried with joy when the rains finally came.  These may sound like hardships, but we know we have it better off than many people.  If you give us a job, we will always be grateful for that.  

6.       We believe in community service.

We care about our neighbors and do what we can to help them.  We can put our egos aside to work for the common good.  We feel good when we do well unto others.  If you hire us, chances are that we will be heavily involved in community service initiatives at work as well. 

7.       We follow the unofficial Peace Corps motto: “Make it work.”

We see solutions where others would throw up their hands and walk away from a problem.  We’ve crossed rivers lugging bags of cement and managed to keep the cement dry.  We’ve made model cars out of old wire and turned cardboard juice boxes into beautiful wallets.  We’ve had plans go horribly wrong, but adapted our approach to turn our failures into successes.  We’ve thought outside the box while still remaining within the appropriate cultural framework. 

So there it is, folks.  Seven big reasons why Returned Peace Corps Volunteers make great employees.  If you’d like to hire me, let me know! 

On What We Leave Behind

The less time I have here, the more I find myself wanting to leave a legacy behind.  Legacy is such a formal word, though.  It’s a word you hear at funerals and monument unveilings.  It is something permanent that shows that all your efforts were not in vain.  I don’t think it’s vanity to want to leave a legacy behind in Swaziland.  If I didn’t, would the blood, sweat, and tears I’ve spent in this country mean nothing? 

Whenever you get two or more volunteers sitting around together, we debate the potential futility of our efforts.  We struggle with different philosophies of development, and we secretly hold our own philosophy as superior to those of other volunteers.  We all find our philosophies superior to those of the big NGOs and missionaries.  By the time two years are up, we want to punch anyone who dares to utter the words “sustainable projects” in our presence without ever having done one on the ground. 

I’m not naïve about the outcome.  Twenty years from now, my village will probably still look the same.  The road leading to it will still be dirt, most parents will still struggle to feed their children and pay their school fees, and electricity and water will only be available to the lucky few.  I haven’t uplifted my entire community.  If someone ever claims to have done this, I would be very skeptical.  So what have I done?  What is my “legacy”? 

·         I will have built a library- the first one in the entire chiefdom. 

 

·         I taught about 20 adults and around 150 teenagers basic computer literacy.

·         I directed Peace Corps Swaziland’s female empowerment initiative and increased our camp size by 1/3.  Check out the video:

http://youtu.be/CLvGt7bOXdY

·         I started a community garden for orphans and vulnerable children.

·         I educated our soccer league (12 teams) on reproductive health. 

·         I kept a previous volunteer’s income generating project alive against all odds and acquired a grant for it.

·         I conducted a business management and fruit tree propagation training for the seedling nursery.

·         I planted two orange groves for two different communities. 

·         I helped many students pass English with nightly tutoring sessions.

·         I introduced worthy people to scholarship opportunities and competitions.

·         I helped with small tasks at the clinic.

·         I provided fun activities for Kindergartners on a daily basis.

·         I started a girls’ club in my community.

….But all of this will be forgotten soon, probably not long after I board the plane home.  So this is not a legacy, because a legacy is something lasting. 

What I admire about Peace Corps is that we live in the communities we work in.  When you mention Peace Corps to rich city-folk, though, they don’t understand how we are different from any of the hundreds of NGOs or (terrible) missionaries which roll into the village in their big white SUVs and roll out again before dark.  We stay.  We learn the language and understand the needs and power structures within our communities.  We strive to be a part of the community- to be (almost) Swazi.  City people cannot know the daily struggle for tiny increments of progress nor can they achieve the accomplishments listed above.  Perhaps they see me as merely a tourist in these peoples’ lives.

So what is my legacy, if only intangible? 

My legacy is simply that I was here.  How many times have I been approached by a man or woman, grinningly asking “Are you a volunteer?”

“Yes,” I would answer nervously, wary of a long conversation about sponsorship. 

“I knew a volunteer once,” that person would say.  “His name was Frank.  I miss him too much…”

Or they would say: “I once had a Peace Corps teacher.  Mr. Johnson cared about us a lot.  He thought I was brilliant at school and even wanted to pay my school fees.”

Or: “My friend Welile was my best friend.  My very best friend.”

Or: “We once had a volunteer stay with us.  Her name was Ashley.  Do you know her?”

Or: “I worked with Bob.  He did HIV testing with me at the clinic.  He really loved it here.”

See, Peace Corps Volunteers have been in the rural areas for generations now.  We’re not centered in the towns and we’re not flashy like MSF or ICAP, so no one has heard of us there.  But in the rural areas, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who at one point wasn’t taught by a Peace Corps Volunteer. 

I love those conversations, as they are the most positive affirmation one could ever get.  It is affirmation that years-decades even- after you leave, someone still thinks of you fondly.  That is what I hope my legacy is.  That one day, 20 years from now or so, my little host brother (by then a grown man of 27) will spot an American walking down by the soccer pitch.

“Hey you!” he’ll call out, running over to some nervous Peace Corps Volunteer with a backpack on. 

“Are you a volunteer? …I knew a volunteer once.  Her name was Zanele and she was my sister.”