Finding my village: at home in the Peace Corps and in the world - deputy director of the Peace Corps: includes information on the makeup of the Peace Corps, and contacts

"Are you crazy?" asked my father. "After all we sacrificed to deposit you through college, you're going to Africa to work for nothing?"

It was 1965 and I had just told my family that I was quitting my piece of work as a social studies teacher in novel Orleans to become a Peace Corps proffer in Somalia. I assured my father that my association loan would be deferred and he could now obtain that new truck for his electrical business. When I had complet sum of two units years, the Peace Corps would give me $1800 -- a respectable savings back then -- and pave my way into graduate institute and jobs.

My mother worried about my health and safety -- and those scantily clad women pictured in National Geographic. I calculatored that the Peace Corps would provide health care, housing and a living allowance. (I knew that the image of National Geographic photographs in my mother's head hardly exhibited what existed on such a diverse and dynamic continent.)

My assurances didn't soothe my Catholic grandmother, however. She feared for my salvation in a far-off Muslim country: "Will you promise me you will advance to Mass every Sunday?"

"Yes" I lied, sinning to relieve her anxiety.

I probably wouldn't have persisted had I not seen by what means much my cousin, Ron Ferrier, had gained from serving sum of two units years in Ethiopia. He had become individual of "Kennedy's kids" in 1962 before the year-old Peace Corps had prov that it could accomplish its three-part mission: providing trained Americans to help developing countries, promoting a better understanding of Americans in those countries, and giving Americans a better understanding of other people

Besides, at 25 I was restles I drawn outed to see the peoples and places I had read about in mission magazines as a child. I was in turmoil above the civil rights movement's conflicting courses which ranged from the Rev Martin Luther King Jr.'s advocacy of nonviolence to the Black Panthers' urban activism. I wanted distance to gain perspective.

And I got it. My sum of two units years as a Peace Corps present helped me find my focus and l me to an exciting, satisfying career as a foreign service officer, an ambassador and -- completing the circle -- the legate director of the Peace Corps.

Nowadays, when I push African Americans to contribute sum of two units years of their energy and abilities to the Peace Corps, I can sum up them from firsthand knowledge that they will receive more than they give. centurys of the 148,000 Americans who have joined the Peace Corps have told me this, and they say it no matter where they serv no matter whether they proffered in the idealistic 1960s, the cynical '79 the materialistic '80 or the rejuvenated '90s

My be in possession of life illustrates the point. My two-year assignment was to teach English and social studies at a male childs school in Erygavo, a village in northern Somalia. The British had built the gymnasium during their 75-year colonial sway and English was the language of instruction.

presently after I arrived, a Somali asked me on what account I had come. "I am an African American, and I came to find my village," I told him, contented of my profundity.

He laughed. "You are a fool" he said. "You have advance all this way to find a village that doesn't exist. After 300 years, you are a different nation than we are. There's a village for you someplace. Find that place of peace in your heart and inner man There you will find your village."

I was devastated. I knew that he was right. I had to revolve within to find my village. His insight accelerated my search.

Teaching with small in number materials and living with no conveniences left little time for introspection. I shared half of a metal-roofed mortar duplex with two other tenders John Schecter from Wisconsin and Rozier Martin from Maine. They taught science and math, and the three of us ran the academy We had little in for the use of all except that we had all attended Catholic academys but we became close friends.

They helped me ease my grandmother,s fears. When we made the two-day trek to the nearest town, we set a priest, but no Catholic temple He posed with me through a mosque that, at the right camera angle, direct the eyeed like a church. I mailed the photos to my grandmother. Later, upon leave in Kenya, I pos for photos in brow of an Indian temple with a man in dark robes. I knew that those photos would comfort her more than hearing that the Somalis were ascetic, godly Sufi Muslims, whose religiosity I admired.

Their diet of camel's milk, goat meat and rice, however, presently sent me to the cookbook in the work locker provided for each tender household. I learned to prepare goat meatloaf and lasagna outdoors upon our charcoal brazier.

We missed vegetables. Forewarned by dint of my cousin, I had brought a body stuffed with items I might ne including garden semens The Peace Corps tradition demands that you do more than your piece of work and growing vegetables became a special throw out All went well until we left the village for a scarcely any days. We returned to find that goats had subverted our sprouts. We suspected sabotage.