A crowd gathered in the Mills International Center to hear returned Peace Corps volunteers speak about their experiences with the 47-year-old organization Tuesday night.
The panel discussion was part the worldwide celebration of this week as “Peace Corps week.”
“There is no typical day,” said Heather Gurewitz, who served in Honduras from 2004 to 2006. “Anything can happen.”
Evangelina Sundgrenz volunteered as an English teacher in Uzbekistan from 2000 to 2002. Her host was the director of a school where she taught.
“If I was sick or if I was late,” she said, “he would be knocking on my door.”
Dana Berglund, a teacher trainer who worked in 31 different schools in Uganda from 1998 to 1999, spent her days visiting schools.
“Sometimes,” she said, describing her trips, “they’d see me coming up the road and quickly clang the bell and everybody would go running to the classrooms because they knew that was what I wanted to see.”
Chris Bayham volunteered from 1989 to 1991 as a forester in Niger. He worked on a large-scale re-vegetation project that included restoring the soil.
The volunteers told the audience about the low and high points of their experiences.
“I cut my knee open,” Gurewitz said, “and they had to sew it up with a fishing hook and dental floss.”
Sundgrenz said living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, was “incredible” because it is one of the oldest cities in the world.
Berglund spoke about the time she was evacuated from the village where she lived because of a violent situation in a nearby city that had already led to the murders of several Americans.
“I had 36-hours notice,” Berglund said. “I got a letter that said, ‘We’ll be there to pick you up at four o’clock tomorrow afternoon. Be ready.’”
Bayham, who said he had been assigned to a director who didn’t like him, talked about having to work in an office space in a former grain storage building.
“The backside of the building was used as a latrine,” Bayham said. “I couldn’t open my windows for cross ventilation.”
An audience member asked how the Peace Corps is received in other countries.
Gurewitz explained that the Peace Corps has had volunteers in Honduras for the last 40 years, and each community had been exposed to it.
“So, what happens,” she said, “is people’s perceptions are not necessarily of Peace Corps as an institution but of whoever was the previous Peace Corps person before you.”
Sundgrenz said the volunteers were well-received in bigger cities in Uzbekistan, but that people in rural areas and areas with different racial tensions had a harder time accepting the volunteers.
The panel ended the discussion by giving advice to those considering joining the Peace Corps.
“Definitely do it,” Gurewitz said. “No excuses. No reasons not to.”
Sundgrenz said, “Be open to the fact that it does change you in a very good way.”
“Keep yourself open to things not going the way that you expect them to,” Berglund said.
Bayham said that taking two years off and devoting it to the Peace Corps “is the best step you’ve ever taken, career-wise.”
The next information session on campus is Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Walnut Room in the EMU.