Working for Peace

The first “aha” moment came when the flight attendant handed out customs forms as the plane neared Bangkok.

“I don’t have any foreign currency to declare,” I said. “All my money is American.” My seatmate laughed. “What do you think American money is in Thailand?” she asked.

I suddenly realized my perspectives were going to have to change.

I was 24, on my way to teach English in a rural Thai high school for two years. Never mind that I had never set foot outside of the United States, spoke not a word of Thai, and had never been a teacher.

I was on my way to becoming a Peace Corps volunteer.

Fifty-one years ago this month, on March 1, 1961, President John Kennedy signed the executive order creating the Peace Corps. In the ensuing half century, more than 200,000 Americans have taken up that challenge, serving as volunteers in 139 countries. They have taught school, worked in public health and toiled in agriculture.

In 1980, I was among a group of 30 volunteers headed for Thailand.

The Peace Corps trained us well. Two months of intense language and cultural training, with a little practice teaching on the side, and we were sworn in as volunteers and sent off on our own.

My village was Kosum Pisai, an eight-hour bus ride from Bangkok, in the country’s poor northeast. The village had  a school, a bank, a post office, a market and not much else.

My two-room house, shared with a Thai teacher, had electricity, but no running water. The closest phone was an hour’s bus ride away. Transportation in the village was by foot or bicycle.

I loved it. I loved the students. I loved pumping water. I loved learning the language, making the slow transition from tongue-tied to Thai-tongued.

I loved riding my bike into the countryside, listening to the monkeys screaming from the trees, watching the water buffalo working in the rice fields, hearing the chanting of the monks as I passed the temple.

It all seemed so exotic. And yet, I was what was foreign to the landscape.

That was reinforced when my Peace Corps supervisor, a Thai woman, came to visit. She got off the bus and asked a woman at a food stall how to get to the school. After giving directions, the market lady added, “And we have a farang (a foreigner) there. She speaks Thai and eats spicy food, just like us.

A foreigner who speaks the language and eats the food. In essence, that’s what the Peace Corps is all about.

That’s what Sargent Shriver, the agency’s first director, believed. I interviewed Shriver, who died last year, on the Peace Corps’ silver anniversary.

“The Peace Corps represents an attitude which respects other people and cultures,” he said. “The Peace Corps says we can work with you toward a solution of common problems. It holds out the hope that together we can create a better world for everyone.

 “It’s a commitment of love,” he added. “You become fond of the people you work with and involved in their lives. You find that this service you went to give to someone else becomes the greatest benefit to yourself.”

That is certainly true.

On the 30^th anniversary of our departure for Thailand, my Peace Corps group had a reunion in San Francisco. We gathered in the same hotel we had first met in three decades earlier and talked about the difference the Peace Corps had made in our lives.

Many of my friends have careers shaped by the volunteer experience. Some are teaching English to immigrants and refugees. One is an immigration lawyer; another works in public health.

But even those of us who cannot trace our current livelihoods directly to the Peace Corps still feel its influences.

The Peace Corps has provided me a different lens through which to see the world. I see immigrants and remember what it feels like to be the foreigner. I see people of other faiths and remember the warmth with which I was greeted in Buddhist temples.

 I remember that just as American money is foreign in another country, so are American ideas and attitudes. The Peace Corps taught me that there is more than one way of doing things, and that other ways may be just as valid as mine.

 The annual budget of the Peace Corps is about $400 million, approximately the cost of five hours of war in Iraq. A small price to pay for the cause of peace.

 Happy 51^st birthday, Peace Corps. May you live long and prosper.