San Miguel FAQ

Bonnie Lee Black wrote: Ask any Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) what the biggest, longest-lasting personal benefit of their two-year service overseas has been, and my guess is most will answer in one word: adaptability. Spin RPCVs around, toss them in the air high enough to drop them into another country, and they’ll likely, like cats, land on their feet and adapt to that new culture in record time. Why? Because we’ve learned how.

We learned how, I believe, early in our PC service, to let go of American expectations of what’s “normal.” That word quickly flies out the door of our cement-block houses or mud-and-wattle huts in towns and villages seldom shown on printed maps. “Normal” becomes a nonword, meaningless as a measure.

My favorite example of this comes from my experience in the middle of the rainforest of Gabon, Central Africa, where – after having given up a ten-year career as a caterer in New York City to join the Peace Corps at age fifty-one – I found my little house on the hill had no refrigerator. And I was unable to buy one. ...

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