I have been spending some time lately trying to figure out what I want to do next with my life. I have one friend in Africa serving in the Peace Corps. He likes it for the most part, and thinks it is something he could see me doing.
I always thought the Peace Corps is one of those organizations that helps so much with the poverty throughout the world, bringing knowledge and education to places that have previously been considered unreachable.
However, I recently become friends with a man from Tanzania. He just graduated from a university in Japan. We have shared many stories of our differing childhoods and home communities. One topic we often discussed was service work, as that is something we have both been interested in. I would like to go to somewhere like Tanzania to do some work, and he would like to go back to his home to do similar works.
He always rolled his eyes when the subject of the Peace Corps or similar organizations came up. The first time he did this, I was shocked. How could he roll his eyes over the idea of people helping his community? Then he explained, and it made a whole lot of sense.
The Peace Corps doesn’t necessarily demand the best applicants as far as qualifications are concerned. Volunteers may have very little or practically no knowledge about the area in which they will be serving and the subject matter they will be sharing. Peace Corps volunteers may enter an area in a state of cluelessness, and without really having an understanding about the way of life of the area, they’ll try to change things. Especially in countries like Tanzania, people have acted and lived a certain way for ages. An often young, white person bouncing in trying to stir things up for a couple years and then leave can quickly get old for the locals, according to my friend.
What countries like Tanzania need is not some naïve youngster to come in, spend a few months trying to get people to plant a garden, and a few months trying to save the monkeys. Who can respect a whirlwind of trying to “make a difference” from one outsider who isn’t sufficiently prepared or given enough time to do what they were put there to do? People in Tanzania have been living in their way forever. How can someone go for only two years and expect to change that? Even if another volunteer comes right in to replace the previous volunteer, the person, methods, education, etc, will all be different.
These countries need more steady help. Not “help” that comes and goes, staying only for a short time before changing to some other “help.” That’s just not as helpful as it could be. Serious volunteers need to be qualified, and need to have a stronger understanding of what’s going on in those countries in regards to individuals, families, communities, governments, international relations, traditions, etc. To really “make a difference” in these countries, we need to show them respect by sending volunteers who know what they’re doing and who are going to stay longer than two years. Really, it takes more than two years to make the huge differences some volunteers in the Corps would like to.
Now, I’m sure the Peace Corps is a great program and I totally respect all its volunteers. However, I would love to see the Corps revamped, improved and updated to meet the needs of countries today. They need to get more qualified volunteers and need to rethink strategies of how to really make more of a positive impact in the lives and communities where volunteers are sent.
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