Happy Peace Corps Day!
July 4st, 2011, I was standing next to a brick wall in Buthe-Buthe, Lesotho. I was not alone. I was surrounded by some of the best people I have ever known. Some were local, some were from the U.S.A. All of us came with a mission: to Celebrate 50 years of Peace Corps service in Lesotho with a very simple piece of art.
Today is not July 4th. It’s March 1st. But I’m writing about it now because it’s Peace Corps day!
It’s also, nearly, 14 years later. Which is remarkable to think about.
For 64 years now, Peace Corps Volunteers have traveled around the world with three primary goals:
1. To help other countries meet their needs of trained people.
2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans amongst people around the world.
3. To help promote a better understanding of people around the world to Americans.
This is simplified, and it’s put in my own words, but those are the goals. There’s a longer-term implication of that first goal, which is sustainability. And the truth of that, I think, is often lost on those who see the continued mission of the Peace Corps extending, now, to 64 years. The ultimate goal of every Peace Corps volunteer is to help build capacity. When things are working out, eventually, the job that a former Peace Corps volunteer once had will be filled by someone local. But there will often be somewhere else that new Peace Corps volunteers can go. The groups we send are small, the mission is big. There are talks that the dream was that someday Volunteer numbers would rival the military until their missions were both lesser needed. But that never happened, and with a smaller but determined number of volunteer the goal of building sustainable capacity takes longer. Even past that point goals one and two are ever worth continuing.
That’s not the only rub. Goals one and two, (until recently.) were basically finished once a Peace Corps Volunteer leaves their position. But goal three never really ends. (Fortunately, with the rise of the internet, goal two doesn’t have to end either, and I encourage new volunteers to share their email address and socials before they leave country!)
I wrote about my service while I was in Lesotho. I kept a website: alienjest.com. I kept a blog. It was rushed, it was poorly spellchecked, and far too random. (I was often running off of too little sleep. I had to catch the early bus into town if I wanted to make it in time to stop by the internet Café.) And it was never updated as often as I would have liked.
Recently, I’ve been wanting to write about that service again. For many different reasons. I want to dust off those old blogs. I want to remember and catalog more about one of the most defining periods of my life. I want to give Lesotho and many of the people I met there the recognition they deserve. And, I want to help people become a little more aware of the rest of the world.
I can’t accomplish that all today, because time is short and the hour is late. I have to get up tomorrow (later today) rather early for something else entirely. But I wanted to start here, on Peace Corps Day, and talk briefly about s 4th of Julay nearly 14 years ago, when Peace Corps volunteers, and Basotho from Buthe-Buthe came together to make a simple mark of partnership between two countries reaching for further understanding.
I remember the people who were there, (though time might make me miss one or two) but I don’t want to share their names without permission. I remember that there was a giant bull nearby, most of the time that we are painting (unfortunately I did not get a picture.) I still have the shirt I wore, with white paint stains. (It was a nice shirt, several of the volunteers suggested that I change out of it before painting but, if I remember honestly, I was too cold to git rid of the long sleeves. (July is winter in Lesotho.) I remember also, how happy I was to share the occasion, and how it felt nice to be tied through 50 years of people working to extend a bridge between Lesotho and the U.S.A.
Little did I know, I was dying. But that’s a story for another day, (and obviously it didn’t happen.)
The symbol is a merger of the old Peace Corps flag symbol (inspired by the US flag) and the Lesotho flag. The saying is “Re Sebetsa Moho” – “We’re working together”
Well, I probably could have taken a better picture or waited to take it until after we’d cleaned up the leftover supplies, and the boxes on which we’d stood, But since I can’t go back in time, here’s a picture from my office, when my students at the Ha Sefako High School lined up to sing before class started for the day. To show the country off in it’s better angle.
And here’s a picture in the valley, where I taught.
And here’s a crazy picture I got to take while flying back to Lesotho after a brief medical hiatus.(see teaser above)
Green is the country border. (I think? The Caldon River, (the boundary) is hard to trace once the it flows into the larger valley.) The blue arrow is where I lived.
I also wanted to announce that I will be writing about my time in Lesotho, and my Peace Corps service more readily throughout the year. Like the park service, it is something I love. Like the park service it definitely has flaws. But at the end of the day, Lesotho is a part of me now, much as our parks are in my blood. Besides, we could always use more mutual understanding across the world, and if I can share a few stories and help then that would be great.
I think that’s all for now.
Khotso, Pula, Nala
(peace, rain, prosperity)