Before I begin, I should explain the term “returned” Peace Corps Volunteer. That’s not as in “This volunteer isn’t working. I’d like to return it.” I think the reason the Peace Corps chose returned over former was that they wanted us to be Peace Corps Volunteers forever, never formerly.
Here's the rough draft of what I'm writing for City Currents, CCSF's faculty newspaper. It needs a lot of editing. I'd like to list all the countries represented by our faculty and staff. But...I'm behind in my homework!
I’ve always said that one reason I like teaching ESL is because I get to travel without leaving the classroom, so I was really happy to both travel and eat “ethnic” dishes by just opening my door to a group of City College’s Returned Peace Corps Volunteers on Sunday, September 18, when we got together at my home to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Peace Corps. The next week some of our RPCV colleagues would be heading towards Washington, D.C. for the national –and international –gala, so we wanted to see them off, too, and maybe travel with them vicariously, keeping a low carbon footprint.
I’d spent the morning preparing Tongan dishes with recipes furnished by ‘Ana Taufe’ulungaki, the wonderful Tongan woman , now the Minister of Education, Women Affairs, and Culture, who hosted me when I returned to Tonga in 2008, almost forty years after I finished Peace Corps service there. (She and I began teaching English in the same village in the same year, 1970.
As our colleagues arrived, my ‘otai and ‘ota ika were joined on the table by Robert Griffiths’ spicy Kenyan soup, an array of other dishes, San Miguel beer from the Philippines, flowers from Chris Bunn and Will Risseeuw’s garden, and even some relics like Tom White’s statue from Kenya and a no-longer-an-ashtray figurine used for a tuna dish. We had the predictable good food and drink, but even better were the Peace Corps stories.
Our youngest Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Denise Maduli-Williams, Botswana '94-'96, had helped organize Botswana’s "Discovering Her Future Workshops" so that young girls in schools across Botswana could be exposed to all types of future professions. She also participated in several AIDS Awareness activities because the HIV rate in Botswana was one of the highest on the continent. She says, “In between teaching, I learned how to walk slowly in the hot Kalahari sand, extreme patience while hitching for a ride, and spent many a fun weekend in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.” That’s where she met her husband, who was a PCV there. After returning in 1996 she was accepted as a Peace Corps Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University.
“I moved from the middle of the desert to the city that stays up all night!” she said, adding, “I was thrilled to join the CCSF faculty in Fall 2008.”
Robert Griffiths, Kenya 1984-1986, was in the Education sector, teaching English language and literature for 2 years at a rural Harambee public school in the countryside—a school founded by the Quakers in the 1960s. He also built a basketball court, with hoops and a basketball brought by his mother when she visited, and started boys and girls teams that made the district playoffs even though most had never played basketball before. He also coached volleyball. But the accomplishment that most impressed us was the difference he made in the lives of some great students who, being from poor families, got kicked out of school every few weeks when their school fees had not been paid. Robert made use of his contacts at Stanford University, where he had worked in a billing office and where his mother was working during Robert’s PC service, to seek donations that lead to putting eight of the school’s best students through the next level. Six of them then went on to the university, and one became a published poet in Swahili. Robert told us about going back ten years later and visiting some of his students.
“One was a Physics teacher at one of the best government high schools. He introduced me to his staff mates and was so proud to explain how I had helped him through school, to get where he was. He had come from a family of eight and his father was an alcoholic. He had often missed school because of school fees or having to work on the farm, but he was always an eager student. It was great to see his success and meet his wife, kids, and colleagues and see his stable life.”
Emilie Krustapentus, Thailand 1980-83, was an ESL instructor at an Engineering Institute near Bangkok and an EFL Instructor at a University in southern Thailand as well as a Teacher Trainer for Thai secondary teachers in Bangkok at the British Council. She said she wasn’t sure she would be going back to Bangkok, but she and her wife Yvonne are planning a trip to Yvonne’s country of service.
Yvonne Duncan, Lesotho 1978-80, was a Teacher Trainer at the National Teacher Training College of Lesotho, where she worked with two groups of teachers: young interns who had just completed a year at the college and were out in the mountain villages of Lesotho doing practice teaching, and older, seasoned teachers who had never been certificated who were doing intensive short trainings once a month at the college. She and the other supervisors conducted intensive trainings and then visited both sets of teachers weekly in their areas. Yvonne traveled by horse, foot and motorcycle to eight different schools in the mountain peaks and valleys of her area. Supervisors were also responsible for conducting workshops at a resource center which they each built and developed at their sites. Yvonne said, “I learned more about teaching than I did in both my studies earning an elementary teaching credential and a Master's in ESL! This was an incredible hands-on experience.” She described her living conditions as “primitive and at times dangerous.” She lived in a mud hut with a thatched roof with no water, plumbing or electricity. “I helped to dig my own outhouse, which was the only one besides the chief's in my village.” She said that even though her subsequent jobs were more "up scale" in comforts, “nothing ever matched those incredible two years where I found my strength, spirit and love for simplicity.”
Yvonne Duncan, Lesotho 1978-80, was a Teacher Trainer at the National Teacher Training College of Lesotho, where she worked with two groups of teachers: young interns who had just completed a year at the college and were out in the mountain villages of Lesotho doing practice teaching, and older, seasoned teachers who had never been certificated who were doing intensive short trainings once a month at the college. She and the other supervisors conducted intensive trainings and then visited both sets of teachers weekly in their areas. Yvonne traveled by horse, foot and motorcycle to eight different schools in the mountain peaks and valleys of her area. Supervisors were also responsible for conducting workshops at a resource center which they each built and developed at their sites. Yvonne said, “I learned more about teaching than I did in both my studies earning an elementary teaching credential and a Master's in ESL! This was an incredible hands-on experience.” She described her living conditions as “primitive and at times dangerous.” She lived in a mud hut with a thatched roof with no water, plumbing or electricity. “I helped to dig my own outhouse, which was the only one besides the chief's in my village.” She said that even though her subsequent jobs were more "up scale" in comforts, “nothing ever matched those incredible two years where I found my strength, spirit and love for simplicity.”
“Yvonne and I met in a refugee camp in Thailand,” Emilie told us.
“Where were you refugees from?” quipped Chris Bunn.
Chris Bunn, The Philippines XIIIB from 1964-1966, was also a teacher trainer but may not have travelled on horseback to observe her teacher trainees. In addition to teaching students ESL at the Lubao Central Elementary School while living with a family in Lubao, Pampanga, she did teacher training at her school, at other schools in her province, and at provincial training programs.
“I felt that it was a little presumptuous of Peace Corps to send young people fresh out of college with little training and less experience to train teachers who had been teaching longer than we had been alive. It was very uncomfortable to have women in their sixties call me ma'am.”
When she returned to the US, she went to San Francisco State to get her MA/TEFL and taught at CCSF for the next 30 plus years with one year out to teach EFL in Italy. She described herself now as “very happily retired.” She, like Yvonne and Emilie, was on her way to Washington, D.C. for the festivities there.
Others in our group were Janet Thornburg, Tunisia 1969, whose program--teaching birth control in hospitals--lasted only a year, after which “the Tunisian government canceled it because they decided Tunisians should have large families after all. At that time I hadn't finished a B.A., so I couldn't switch to teaching.” She could be with us only one hour because she had to attend a gathering of graduates of the Warren Wilson MFA in Writing Program.
We were also happy to see retirees Maureen Rooney, Venezuela, CD/Co-op III, 1967-1969, Dennis Johnson, Korea 17, and Karen Batchelor, Korea 25. Karen, who missed her own retirement party due to illness, has made it to gatherings for others, and we presented her to the “newcomers” at City College as someone who, as an author and as a presenter, made a major contribution to our lives as ESL teachers. Dennis, retired in Placerville, brought Karen, now in Cotati, to our gathering.
We were all disappointed that Marion Morrison, Ghana 1 1961-1963, wasn’t able to join us because of her preparations for D.C. She was in the first Peace Corps group ever sent abroad. She told me in advance that she had been part of a Secondary School teaching group and taught English and English literature at a boarding school modeled on the British system. Ghana, called The Gold Coast in its days as a colony of Britain, was the first Sub-Sahara country to gain independence, so the government was making a big push for universal education. Marion was about 40 miles north of Accra, the capitol, on the Akwapim Scarp. Her town, Akropong, was the seat of the Paramount Chief of Akwapim region, where she lived in a very comfortable house with a Peace Corps roommate.
“I came here just to see her!” Tom White said.
“So did I,” I said, failing to note that I was hosting from my home.
But her absence gives a good segue into a list of our City College colleagues who couldn’t make it to the gathering but let us know that they are Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.
Sally Gati, Nigeria; Bill Shoaf, Thailand; Steve Spurling, Micronesia; Melanie O’Hara, Colombia; Jill Bond, Belize 2001-2003; Lori Cabagsag, Liberia 1989-1990; Delicia Camins, Caper Verde, 93-95; Carol Badran, Ecuador 1979 - 1981, who served again as a Crisis Corps Volunteer back in Ecuador from April 2004 - October 2004.; Ruth Shelby , Turkey; Mario Quevedo, Bolivia 1967 -1970; Steve Spurling, Chuuk, Micronesia, early 1970s; Jessica Buchbaum, Kazakhstan; Bill garrison, India 1970-1973, who also worked at PC headquarters in D.C. for another couple of years; Darrel Hess, Korea 46, 1978-80; Robert Manlove , The Philippines, Joan Savory, The Gambis 1987-1989; Jill Bond, Belize 2001-2003, who also had a grad school fellowship related to social justice in American urban areas at the Univ. of MD for RPCVs.
John Oliver, Tanzania, reported that he and his wife Faina would be in Chattanooga for his mother's 100th birthday, after which they would be in D.C. for a reunion of their Columbia Teachers College training group for Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Betsy Portaro, Guinea, was also already on the east coast getting ready for the D.C. festivities.
Naoma Mize, The Philippines 1967-1969, said that she set up a program in a university to train teachers to Teach English as a Second Language and then oversaw the lab school with the student teachers and interns in Lucena City, the Philippines, 1967-1969. Jessica has been an adjunct counselor at the DTN Campus since 1980 and also has a fulltime counseling job at Chabot College.
We looked at a collage of pictures of Peace Corps Volunteers back in the days of their service—some days going back further than others. Clare Morgano, who served in Tonga before I did, is pictured in the center of the collage under a palm tree looking beautiful and content. Her illness made it impossible for her to leave her home, but people spoke about her warmly.
We even heard from someone, Carojean Wisnieski, who never served in the Peace Corps but said that she has been thinking about joining, a thought all of us are glad we had and carried through on.
Of course, as I indicated on my application back in 1968, I was thinking of “Any Spanish or French-speaking country” and got invited to Tonga, which sent me to a map to see where in Africa that was. In turned out to be in the South Pacific, and so did I! I learned at the age of 21 that not getting what we ask for is sometimes a blessing, especially when we don’t know what all the options are.
But when we looked at an ad Returned Peace Corps Volunteers had placed in the New York Times in February of 2003, the month of our previous CCSF RPCV gathering, we wished we had gotten what we were asking for then. It was a statement opposing a war on Iraq. That was a somber reflection in an afternoon of mostly very happy ones.
Although our gathering got listed online as being from 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.—something people who know my ghoulish hours might really believe--I’d chosen 5:00 PM for the end of the party because 5:00 looked like 50, the number of years since the Peace Corps was started. We ate, talked, laughed, played PEACE CORPS BINGO, shared our stories, and drank a cup of ‘otai (Tongan punch) to our colleagues who would be going to Washington as well as to the Peace Corps and City College, two of the best adventures of our lives.
And what would I say about myself
Tina Martin, Tonga V 1970 and 1971, taught children and trained teachers on the island of Tongatapu in the Tongan Isles, where she returned in 2008 for the coronation of Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Manumataongo Tukuʻaho Tupou V (King George Tupou V) and to see people from her village. She participated in a reading from Peace Corps journals in the Capitol Rotunda in November 1988 at an event commemorating the 25th anniversary since President Kennedy’s assassination. A more detailed description of her Peace Corps experiences can be found online.
“God, President Kennedy, and Me” (self-mockery)
“Under the Tongan Sun” (self-mockery)
“Eco-Bore Takes the Good Old Days Back to Tonga” (still more self-mockery)
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