Some of our friends, and friends of friends, have asked us
if Peace Corps might be ‘right’ for them. We’ve been here almost a year, so we
thought it was time to talk about being Peace Corps Baby Boomers.
Why did we consider PC? We have enjoyed international travel
for a long time – Steve has been in 39 countries on 5 continents. About 8 years
ago we were traveling in Peru and stopped in a small rural town where we shared
a simple meal with a local family. We were drawn to the people, and especially
the kids who were so interested in learning. On our tour bus ride back to the
city, we chatted with another ‘older’ couple and we said how great it could be
to come back and help – and they said, “It’s not too late.” They had been PC
volunteers themselves. So, when we returned home to Denver, we signed up for a
PC orientation.
Irene was actually better qualified because of her Dental
experience, but I needed to complete at least my college degree. We both went
back to college, and Irene earned a BA in Interior Design, and Steve did
complete his BA International Studies and added his MPA in local government.
So, in August 2012 we completed our preliminary
applications. The rigorous process felt like a combination of a job application
and a graduate school application. Today, the PC application process is more
streamlined, and you can also indicate your preferences for location and type
of work.
During that year we also sold our house and most of our
belongings, and we moved to a small apartment on the Medical Centre campus in
Aurora. This was also a ‘test’ of how we might ‘get along’ in a small place
without getting in each other’s way. (By the way – we loved living the simple
life and our tiny apartment too!)
We also organized our ‘affairs’ – simplifying our bank,
investment and credit accounts; and creating Power of Attorney for 2 of our
sons. Also, we directed all mail to a PO Box, set up online payment/billing for
any ongoing expenses, changed our insurances, and eventually rented a storage
facility (about a 1-car garage size) to keep what we had saved. We had already
offered our kids the chance to come get any furniture they wanted, and we gave
one of our cars to a son too. We also updated our wills. And, since so much of
our ‘stuff’ including photos is now digital, we spent some time organizing our
own ‘cloud’ storage – one copy with us on a 2TB disk, and one copy stored with
our son.
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| Round the World - Colosseum in Rome |
Once we had a firm invitation to become PCTs (Peace Corps
Trainees), we moved out of our apartment and planned our own ‘bucket list’
trip. The idea was to visit family and friends and do a little sightseeing.
Well, it grew a bit, so we ended up actually flying all the way around the
world – visiting family and interesting places in the USA, UK, Europe and Asia
over almost 2 months’ time.
We arrived in Miami in March, 2014 for our first meeting
with the other ‘government issued friends’ in our cohort – 30 people (mostly in
their 20s) from all over the USA. After
2 nights, we all flew to Kingston, Jamaica. We lived with host families and attended
training in culture, Patwa language, and PC processes for 10 weeks – all day, 5
days a week. We did have 4 PCTs resign during that time (not an unusual
number), but all of us became close and mutually supportive. Irene and I were
the oldest of the group, but we found it easy to be accepted. As a couple, we
decided to be sure that we sat apart in the classroom and didn’t try to always be
each other’s helper – we were individuals, each going through our own training
just like the other ‘single’ volunteers. With both of our host families, we had
a private room and bath in their house. We ate meals with the family, did our
own hand laundry, and walked through town to our training site at a local
church.
We were sworn in as Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) on May 22nd,
2014 by the Chargé d’Affairs of the U.S. Embassy in a beautiful formal ceremony
attended by all our new supervisors and project partners from around Jamaica.
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| Swearing In - with our school principals |
We arrived in Adelphi, a small rural (Jamaican’s say ‘bush’)
village in the very western province of St. James. We are 10 miles from Montego
Bay (40 minutes on bad roads) where there is a very large open market and even
western style grocery stores, banks, and yes – computer stores too.
We live in an apartment - 1 of 3 apartments on the lower
level of a large house. Our landlord ‘host mom’ is wonderful. We have a
kitchen/living room and a bedroom and a bathroom with shower. Some articles
have been written about “Posh Corps” – and I know that living arrangements can
be very different for PCVS; we have running water (cold only), electricity
(most of the time), a 4-burner propane stove, and even a microwave. We also
have internet access and a TV at home. We enjoy our small veranda (where we
usually eat our meals and watch the view, and we’ve even started a good sized
vegetable garden and we compost all of our kitchen scraps as fertilizer. And,
we just got a new puppy dog – right now she is still learning to behave, but
she will be a good watch dog later.
Peace Corps gives us money for rent, utilities and food. PC
also provides all our medical and dental care. Our budget is based on living at
the level of the local community – about the same as a newly graduated Jamaican
teacher, so we are good at re-use and even creatively using food containers for
all sorts of storage. The large open market has 100s of sellers, but we have
found a great “Rasta Man” named Mark who has the best fruits and
vegetables…each week we go to town to buy food for the coming week…and as
regular customers he’ll add a ‘brawta’ or freebie; we got the best breadfruit
from him a few weeks ago.
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| Primary School students |
We both teach in local schools – our PC training helped us
understand the needs of students in Jamaica; we did get to design our
programmes (notice the Jamaican spelling like the British) with our principals
and counterparts. Education is ‘free’ but parents must pay for transportation,
books, supplies, and so many other things that some kids can only afford to
come to school occasionally. And, some students are far behind their grade
level in reading – so our teaching is focused on those ‘pickney’ (Patwa for
kids). Family life for our students can be challenging – often unstable with
different ‘baby daddies’ or aunties/grandmothers bringing up kids whose mommies
were teens. Yet, each day we come home with at least one small success – that’s
the time when it is wonderful to be a PC couple…we have each other for support
and encouragement.
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| Vegetable seller in the market |
“The hardest job you’ll ever love” is what Peace Corps calls
volunteer service. Coming from middle-class America, we have given up some “luxuries”
like driving a car (PC does not allow us to drive a vehicle as a volunteer), so
we take public transportation everywhere – this is mostly ‘route taxis’ and vans
which squeeze in as many people as possible along fixed routes. To go shopping
for groceries we travel about 45 minutes each way and then each of us carries 2
canvas grocery bags up the hill to our house. We have ‘piped’ water – but only
cold. We take cold showers and do all our laundry by hand in a tub outside and
hang it on the line. We also have started a home garden and are able to reap
(harvest) some great vegetables.
Working in Jamaican schools is often a challenge. Budgets
are very tight, most education materials are old and the curriculum is designed
for learning by rote memorization – sadly Jamaican primary students have a
difficult time applying learning to problem solving. Discipline is a huge
problem – corporal punishment used be the norm in schools (it still is in most
homes), but even though the Ministry of Education prohibits physical
punishment, using the belt or the ruler for discipline still happens almost daily.
Being a Peace Corps Volunteer means we are employees of the
U.S. Federal Government (even though we do not receive a salary, we have
Jamaican ‘work’ visas in our passports). The bureaucratic process is similar to
being in the military or a government job in the U.S. There are forms to be
filled out for many things and strict safety and security rules for keeping PC
Jamaica informed about our daily whereabouts.
The rewards do outweigh the challenges. We are making a
difference – if just a couple of our kids are able to pass their high school
entrance exams because of our teaching, then maybe they will go on to good jobs
or even, as we often say, “become Prime Minister!”
We are living a very healthy lifestyle. Since we walk most
places and eat fresher home cooked meals than at home in the U.S., we have lost
excess weight and have more energy. We still have excellent medical and dental
care provided by PC including all regular meds (for us boomers, that’s
important).
We are well respected in our community. We are the only
white people in Adelphi (even though Irene is Hispanic and we’ve both been
asked if we’re Chinese). So many Jamaicans find it difficult to believe that we
would volunteer to be here for 2 ½ years since they are too familiar with ‘volunteers’
who come for a few weeks ‘holiday’ and bring a few donated books or even run a
medical clinic while here. Being older adults is an advantage – age brings respect,
and our experience ‘getting things done’ in our past business lives is useful
when dealing with local rules and regulations. Integration into the community
is important – we participate in local meetings: PTA, Community Development,
and attend funerals. With our host family, we even cooked an American Thanksgiving
dinner for neighbours age 10 to 84.
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| Dunn's River Falls - Ocho Rios |
Can we live on the PC allowances? Well, yes and no! We’ve
used public transportation to travel for a couple of weekend getaways – to Ocho
Rios (“Ochi”) and Negril. Both times we stayed in local upscale hotels and had
some meals in tourist style restaurants. Occasionally we will splurge on a meal
in Montego Bay in one of the fancy restaurants catering to Cruise Ship visitors
(menu prices are in US$ or Euros and similar to US beach resort prices). We pay for these out of our US bank account
when the Visa bill comes. And, for Steve’s birthday, Irene took us out for
dinner to a very fancy hotel/resort where international movie stars hang out –
beautiful evening, good food, and worth the cost. And, even though we still
have US expenses – property insurance, cell phones (we brought them with us),
storage rental, and investment management fees – Steve’s monthly social
security benefit goes right into our bank account, and our SEP/IRA continues to
grow.
We do accrue 24 vacation days per year. We did travel home
over the Christmas break for almost 2 weeks. We also had been home in September
on emergency leave when Irene’s dad passed away. We had started planning an
international vacation for summer of 2015, however, we have a new grandchild
due in August, and so we may decide to coordinate travel home for the new baby
instead. There are some extra steps in planning international travel –
including a requirement that we check in with the local Peace Corps office in
any country we visit so that they can track our whereabouts and include us in
safety plans while we are there.
Did we ever come close to quitting? Sure…there have been
frustrating times, and yes some had to do with our being adults and not ‘kids’.
Peace Corps regulations apply universally to 8000 volunteers serving worldwide,
and we have had conflicts over living allowances which we even escalated to PC
in Washington. The younger single female volunteers all have to deal with ‘unwanted
attention’ – anything from catcalls to persistent sexual harassment on the
street or even at work. Jamaica is a Christian country – and since we do not
see ourselves as ‘religious’ we are happy to attend churches occasionally with
our Jamaican friends, but we choose not to go often. Jamaica also is very
homophobic – there are still laws against homosexual behaviours. Political
elections are highly competitive – sometimes even leading to violence and
murders; we are instructed by PC not to engage in politically pointed
discussions. Things here run on “Jamaican Time” – the answer to many requests
is ‘soon come’ which can mean today or next week, or maybe not. Right now
(Sunday) Irene is baking and the eggs we were expecting on Friday didn’t come,
so I just walked ½ mile to the “Chinese Shop” in Adelphi to buy a dozen. Also,
garbage (rubbish) is everywhere. Throwing trash out of car windows is normal –
we are beginning recycling programs for plastic bottles in our schools, but
things like millions of Styrofoam boxes for school lunches still litter the
roads all over this country.
Do we communicate with friends at home? Yes, mostly by
social media, email, SKYPE, and even telephone calls (our cell phones allow us
free US calls when we are connected by internet Wi-Fi). We also get to see
other PC volunteers at meetings – typically at least each quarter. Mail is
difficult to use – we get about one package every 6 months with stuff we’ve
ordered on Amazon…we are ‘duty free’ as PCVs, but it still costs over $80.00 US
Postage to send a ten pound package to Jamaica. Also, the
“Third Goal” of Peace Corps is to help Americans at home learn about people in
other nations – hence our continued posting on FB and this blog – as well has
more direct connections like SKYPE-ing with students in U.S. schools through
the World Wise Schools programme.
Do we have time for recreation? Yes. Obviously we’re busy
with a full-time job Monday through Friday, and Saturdays are often reserved
for shopping and laundry. Yet, we make time to go to the beach, and we have fun
hobbies: for Irene this includes a lot of scratch cooking – she’s even making
wonderful Jamaican rum raisin chocolate chip cookies and also Mexican style
homemade tortillas. She’s also continued crafting and has come up with lots of
great projects which she is now teaching in her parenting class. Steve loves
his garden; we had some good harvests last year, and we did buy some seeds in
America to plant for our next crops. We did buy a small TV and we have cable
access to US and Canadian networks – even CNN and some NFL football games.
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| Round Hill Resort - Steve's Birthday |
Would we do it again? Probably YES! Our commitment is up in
May 2016 – our choices might be to extend in Jamaica for an extra year if our
projects warrant that, or we could go home and apply for either another 27
month assignment in another country, or qualify for a “Peace Corps Response”
assignment which requires specific skills and is typically about 6-9 months. We
really do love our lives here, we are very fulfilled in our work, and we
amazingly don’t feel that we have ‘hardships’ to endure.
So, that’s a bit about our first year as Peace Corps Baby
Boomers. We always welcome your comments or questions. As Jamaicans say, “Walk
Good and Respect!” Steve and Irene
Irene and I travelled 6 hours from our home in rural St.
James Parish all the way to Kingston. With our colleagues we met at the Peace
Corps offices, and then went to the Embassy. There we boarded special buses to
travel, escorted by police, to the Pegasus Hotel in New Kingston where we went through a couple of levels of
security and then waited in a meeting room watched over by Secret Service until
the President travelled from the airport to our meeting.
