Life Abroad: Regent Square Peace Corps Volunteers Share Their Stories

Every Peace Corps volunteer tells a different story about the time they served overseas.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps, and returned volunteers are sharing experiences from their service at events throughout Pittsburgh.  

Three returned volunteers now living in Swissvale, Regent Square and Edgewood took the time to tell their tales about their time abroad.

Joan Eichner of Swissvale served in Guyana, a small country in northeast South America, from June 2004 to July 2006. Regent Square resident Mary Carroll served in Turkmenistan from August 2009 to September 2010. And Edgewood resident Kira Hall served on the island nation of Grenada in the eastern Caribbean from July 1994 to July 1996. 

Since 1961, more than 200,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries. Volunteers work in different fields, including health, education, agriculture and business. Volunteers integrate themselves into the communities they serve, learning how to live in a new culture and communicate in the native language. 

Most volunteers serve for 27 months, which includes two years of service and a three month in-country training session, but some volunteers get their time cut short.

Eichner, 30, said she left a month early because Guyana’s elections were coming and her safety might have been an issue. Carroll, 26, said she had to leave a year early because she moved to a city apartment from a rural village, but the government did not approve of the move.

While abroad, the three women worked in education fields—Eichner serving as a community education volunteer, Hall, 40, working as a language arts resource teacher and Carroll teaching Russian sign language to deaf students.

Each of the women had their own motivations for joining. Eichner, a recent college graduate when she applied, said she was just looking for an opportunity. Carroll heard stories about service from her uncle, a volunteer in Mali, while she was growing up. Hall has wanted to join since sixth grade, when her substitute teacher came back from service.

“I deeply believe that all Americans should do something overseas,” Eichner said.

Culture Shock

Adjusting to the culture and getting to know coworkers and students is necessary before a volunteer can make an impact in their communities. Eichner said her 12 to 16-year-old students had behavior problems that limited their learning. Being a creative writing major at Colorado College, she had no formal classroom experience and had to learn how to manage a class before she could teach.

“Getting to the point of being able to teach them was hardest because of behavioral problems,” Eichner said. “You bring with you the way you were taught in school—anyone can be successful in a classroom.”

She said not having prior classroom experience enabled her to develop lesson plans and teaching methods as she went. Out of her group of 22 volunteers, two were trained teachers, she said, and both left within the first year of service because they could not utilize the teaching skills they learned in college.

Eichner never struggled with a language barrier. Much to her disappointment, Guyana is the only English-speaking country in South America. She said one of the reasons she joined the Peace Corps was to learn Spanish.

But volunteers are advised from the first step of a six-step application process to be flexible and open-minded because the country of service and job description can change quickly.

For Carroll, the guesswork and ambiguous job descriptions made her hesitant to join. 

“At first, I didn’t think it would be useful for me since a lot of times you don’t end up doing what you wanted to do,” Carroll said. “But I knew I wanted to live in a country for more than a year and learn another language.”

So, she joined and she worked with the Peace Corps to arrange a midwife job. For the first half of her service, she worked in a rural village hospital, helping the local nurses and doctors deliver babies.

Being a linguistics major at the University of Pittsburgh, she wanted to learn another language. She learned to speak Turkmen, the native language of Turkmenistan. And after moving to the capital city of Ashgabat, she learned Russian sign language and taught deaf students.

Living in a Middle Eastern country that used to be controlled by the Soviet Union exposed Carroll to Russian, Arabic and Turkish traditions. Although she only lived in Turkmenistan for a little over a year, she said her first few months in the village helped integrate her into the country’s diverse culture.

“There was an exchange of culture,” Carroll said. “We did Christmas and sang Christmas carols, and I taught them about Halloween and trick or treat.”

Hall emerged herself into the local culture of Grenada as much as possible during her service. The small island is largely Catholic, but their Christmas is more of a party atmosphere while their New Year's is family-oriented. She said she spent a lot of time “liming” with the Grenadians, which is the equivalent of hanging out in the States.

“I like learning about other places and cultures,” Hall said. “It was about doing what the Grenadians do—I wanted to learn what was important to them.”

Hall also learned to speak like the natives. The small island speaks an English dialect not immediately recognizable to tourists, but Hall caught on to the language after living there. Speaking the language helped her in her work instructing native teachers on the island to read, write and improve their teaching.

Hall worked as a teacher before joining the Peace Corps, but the school in Grenada consisted of one big room separated by chalkboards. She said books, pencils and paper were the students’ responsibilities, so many of the kids couldn't afford them. And Hall was not always accepted with open arms by the teachers.

“You have to establish yourself and get to know (the teachers) as people,” Hall said. “I was 24 years old at the time and working with people that were 60 years old who taught for years.”

Back Home

The transition back into American life is sometimes as hard as learning to live in an entirely new culture. Eichner works for the University of Pittsburgh’s child development program within their School of Education. Going from the Peace Corps to a desk job is an abrupt change and she said she is considering serving again.

“The Peace Corps is frustrating but it’s incredibly rewarding,” Eichner said. “Each day I did something, I was working.”

Carroll was planning on extending her stay in Turkmenistan if she would not have had to leave the country. Now, like Eichner, she works for the University of Pittsburgh as a research assistant. She also works as a doula, a person who assists with child birth as an extra support system for the mother and father.

“I got a lot of good experience [in the village,] I saw a lot of natural child births,” Carroll said. “During my first birth, the electricity went out so I brought in my bike’s flashlight and we delivered the baby with that.”

Hall works for Pearson Education, a textbook company, helping to develop math curriculum. She also has a 4-year-old girl who is already asking if the Peace Corps is “something she can do.”

The women worked in different areas of the world, taught different students and experienced different cultures, but they bring back with them more than just work experience. They bring stories and snippets of cultures that continue to enrich their lives.

“When we think of third world countries, we think about them in terms of what they don’t have, but we have so much to learn from them,” Eichner said.

But some standards of living are cross-cultural.

“The Peace Corps gives you a different perspective on everything. We learn different ways of communicating with each other,” Hall said. “But there is also a lot that is universal. People everywhere like to laugh and share stories with each other.”