One of the most rewarding aspects of the Peace Corps experience is that you live life as close to a “local” as any foreigner ever could. Your housing, your transportation (horses, the bed of a pick-up, motorcycles from 1972, your own two feet), your food, your network of friends, they are all local. By the time you finish your two years, you are an insider. And it gives you a tremendous feeling of pride.
Living and working in a small community is a uniquely exquisite experience and I recommend it to anyone with the time or career-leanings to make the commitment. It’s an intimate experience we can’t match in the US; it’s just not feasible. For those thinking of working outside the US, especially those looking to developing countries, there is no better destination. Leave the capital and its crime, pollution and chaos behind. You won’t regret it.
After beginning in Haiti’s crowded capital before relocating to the countryside, I’ve had a second awakening of sorts on the capital-countryside issue. The air is cleaner and the people are friendlier. And in Haiti where it can be so difficult to move beyond being generally referred to as “blan” – a general term for foreigner - the countryside offers me the chance to be “Kaveh” or also acceptable “blan Kaveh.” It’s all very refreshing.
Filed under: Community Development, On Poverty, Peace Corps, Ultra-poor | Tags: Development, FONKOZE, Haiti, Peace Corps, Ultra-poor
The poorest of the poor are what fuel the West’s development aid to the Rest. They are the faces we see when we are asked to spare the equivalent of a cup of coffee to vaccinate a child or pay to send her to school; it’s this sector that galvanizes large multilateral efforts to alleviate poverty worldwide. Even amongst the “bottom billion,” it’s they that compose the lowest rung.
Yet even with all this attention, many don’t seem to understand the depths of deprivation and injustice that the poorest of the poor have endured and how it affects their psyche and hence our development projects.
The poorest are timid, they lack self-confidence and they lack self-esteem. Besides not having productive assets, besides not having land to harvest, besides not having a formal education, besides being consigned to a general lack of opportunity, they often carry broken spirits. History, both across generations and in an acutely personal sense, has mistreated them. (more…)
