Peace Corps celebrates "Parents Day" on July 28. In honor of that, I was asked to write an article and send some pictures to PC Washington (since my parents met in PC). I'm not exactly sure what Peace Corps' plans are for that article, but I figured I'd post it here, too, in case any of you all are interested in seeing it!
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When I was 4
years old, I spent a month living in Bangui, Central African Republic. My
mother, it turns out, was filling in as PCMO as a favor to the Peace Corps
Country Director at the time, but my fuzzy childhood memories hold nothing of
her work or Peace Corps at all. What I do remember of my time spent in Africa
are the torrential rains that turned our house into a mini island and eating hot,
crispy beignets on the side of the road where the neighborhood women fried them
every morning. I remember picking doll-sized green bananas, making lemonade from
the tree in our backyard with my friend Faustin, and playing with Dungba, the
African street dog that had been adopted and so thoroughly spoiled that he was
given his baths in the tub instead of outside like his fellow mutts.
I grew up in a
house where the word mwesi was used
in place of thief and vibrant African
tapestries were draped on our walls. My parents’ time with the Peace Corps was
woven so seamlessly into the fabric of our life that I can’t easily separate it
from other parts of my childhood. From the African paraphernalia that littered
our house, to the semi-annual reunions with RPCV friends, to using Swahili in
place of English when we liked the sound of a word better, Africa and Peace
Corps left an indelible mark, and my parents inspired in me from a young age not
only a love for travel and exploring new cultures, but also a desire to help
others and in some way or another serve.
My parents met
while working at the Peace Corps training center in Bukavu, Zaire (now
Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1980s after finishing their services. My
mother had served training traditional birth attendants in Bossangoa, Central African
Republic and my father taught English professors in Bukavu. Their experiences -
the places they saw, things they experienced, and people they met – gave shape to
their lives, and therefore shaped mine. For me, joining the Peace Corps after
graduating college was an easy decision, although not one to take lightly.
Having two parents that had survived two years of bathing with a bucket,
washing their clothes in the river, and eating their meals out of banana
leaves, not to mention learning a language (or two), integrating into a new
culture, and working hard left me with no illusions that my Peace Corps service
would be a two year vacation; however, the amazing friendships they made, the
things they learned – both about themselves and the world – and the memories
they brought back with them left me certain that two years as a PCV would never
be time wasted.
My Peace Corps
is not my parents’ Peace Corps. I’ve spent my time in El Salvador living in a real
concrete house with electricity, a working shower, and a cell phone that lets
me call my family whenever I want. My counterpart speaks English and lived in
the United States for years, and a 20-minute bus ride away I have air
conditioning and wifi at my disposal. Regardless of these modern comforts and
conveniences, which I worried would somehow invalidate or diminish the
legitimacy my service when brought up in comparison with a remote desert in
Africa, though, I, too, have experienced the essential Peace Corps. I’ve had
the chance to learn a new language and immerse myself in and fall in love with
a foreign culture. I’ve made incredible friends, both in the PCV community and
with the Salvadorans I live and work with, learned many new things, and had
innumerable memorable and life changing experiences along the way. There’s no
doubt in my mind that moving forward I will always carry a piece of this with
me, whether it be the permanent adoption of the word chucho into my vocabulary in place of dog, or future visits to El Salvador with my children.
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| Dad in Zaire in the 80s |
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| Mom in CAR in the 80s |
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| Parents in Zaire |
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| me in CAR, 1993 |
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| The whole gang in El Salvador! 2013 |
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from El Salvador? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in El Salvador in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez