Peace Corps Volunteers Honored by the Korea Society

Former Peace Corps Director Kevin O’Donnell Accepts Award on behalf of Peace Corps/Korea Volunteers

WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 15, 2008 – Former Peace Corps Director Kevin O’Donnell will accept the 2008 James A. Van Fleet Award tonight at the Korea Society’s 2008 Annual Dinner. The Award, presented to O’Donnell, will honor the work of the over 2,000 Peace Corps Volunteers who served in South Korea from 1966-1981.

The Korea Society is the leading organization in the United States devoted to promoting U.S.–Korea relations. The Korea Society 2008 Annual Dinner will be held at the Plaza in New York and feature notables as South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who is visiting the U.S. on his first official visit since his inauguration in February, Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez and Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill.

The Korea Society’s Van Fleet Award is given to prominent Korean and American individuals or organizations for outstanding contributions to the U.S.–Korea relationship. Peace Corps/Korea brought over 2,000 Americans to serve in Korea’s classrooms, farms and industry. From 1966-1981, the assistance provided by these Volunteers, at a critical period in Korean history, helped to cement U.S.–Korea ties. Kevin O'Donnell, the first country director of Peace Corps/Korea, and fourth director of the Peace Corps, will accept the award on behalf of the Volunteers.

Peace Corps Deputy Director Jody K. Olsen said, “We are delighted that the legacy of former Director O’Donnell and the Peace Corps/Korea Volunteers will be honored at this very special Korea Society event. Peace Corps/Korea Volunteers formed long lasting friendships and deep respect for the people of Korea and we are grateful for the warmth and hospitality that they demonstrated during our time there.”

As the first Peace Corps Country Director for Korea, O'Donnell faced the formidable challenge of establishing a new program in an unfamiliar country, including negotiating with government ministries and building curricula that addressed Korean needs in math, science, English and physical education. He also had to make provisions for meeting the physical requirements of the 300-plus American Peace Corps Volunteers who came to Korea on their missions of peace and friendship during his tenure as Country Director.

For his exemplary work, O'Donnell received the Republic of Korea's Order of Civil Merit from President Park Chung-hee in 1970. The legacy of the example O'Donnell set in his devotion to public service is best exemplified by his daughter Megan O'Donnell and granddaughter Allison O'Donnell, both of whom have followed in his footsteps to become Peace Corps Volunteers. Allison O’Donnell is currently serving in Honduras as a Health Projects Volunteer. She works with an NGO that provides water filters to families in communities without access to potable water, as well as health and hygiene education. She also works with HIV/AIDS prevention NGOs and local and international Rotary Clubs.

The Korea Society is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)(3) organization that is dedicated solely to the promotion of greater awareness, understanding and cooperation between the people of the United States and Korea. In pursuit of its mission, the Society arranges programs that facilitate discussion, exchanges and research on topics of vital interest to both countries in the areas of public policy, business, education, intercultural relations and the arts.

The Peace Corps is celebrating a 47-year legacy of service at home and abroad. Currently there are 8,000 Volunteers abroad, a 37-year high for Volunteers in the field. Since 1961, more than 190,000 Volunteers have helped promote a better understanding between Americans and the people of the 139 countries where Volunteers have served, including South Korea. Peace Corps Volunteers must be U.S. citizens and at least 18 years of age. Peace Corps service is a 27-month commitment.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1322

Wheelchairs from Washington

The Santa Barbara Rotary is really good at getting groups from the states and Canada to come down to do projects and give donations. They have been doing it for the past 20 years. Unfortunately none of them have learned English over the past two decades so they always need translators (aka Peace Corps Volunteers) to help out. The first phase is planning, which is almost entirely done by e-mail with a few phone calls. The e-mails can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. On one hand I understand their desire to have everything well planned and organized, especially if they have a tight schedule, on the other hand some of their questions and requests are absurd. I got one e-mail asking if there was enough bottled water at the hotel. Of course there is bottled water! It makes me wonder what people think about Honduras…

Then we have to find translators, because groups usually don’t bring fluent Spanish speakers. The Rotary Club usually knows about these trips for month in advance, but usually wait until the last minute to ask people to translate (in this case three days advance notice). This time, Katie and I translated for most of the time, as well as the adopted son of an American woman that lives in Santa Barbara who speaks English. I don’t mind translating that much but I feel that the Rotary Club relies too heavily on Peace Corps volunteers and not enough on other bilingual Hondurans. For example, the president of Rotaract (Rotary for younger people) speaks English and Spanish, yet they rarely ever use him to translate.

Then there is the issue of picking them up at the airport and getting rental cars and drivers, etc. It really makes me appreciate people who are not scared to drive in foreign countries.

Then the wheelchairs…The group from Washington donated 280 wheelchairs through an organization called the Wheelchair Foundation and came to Santa Barbara for about two and a half days to deliver them (they delivered about 10% of them). Before the group arrived, the local Rotary got in touch with community leaders of the different municipalities around Santa Barbara and asked them for a list of people who could benefit from wheelchairs. Then we split up into three teams, loaded the back of the rental trucks with wheelchairs and headed out.

When we got to the community we met with the mayors office and then got somebody that knew the community to help take the chairs to the people on the list, and some not on the list. As I have learned from delivering filters, delivering things to people’s houses is always easier said than done. Nobody has an address and they all live in hard to reach places.

Anyway, once we got to somebody’s house we would go in and introduce ourselves and talk to the family and see if they needed a wheelchair. Unfortunately, it often turned out that once we got there we found that many of the people on our list couldn’t actually use the wheelchair because they couldn’t sit up by themselves. We also met a few people who had disabilities but could still walk. However, many others were able to benefit, young and old. As the translator I did most of the talking to the family and with the people from the mayor’s office that came along to help us out. It was a good feeling because I realized how comfortable I felt going into people’s homes and talking to them with ease. It was also depressing to see people with debilitating illnesses that probably could have been prevented or reversed in the states. We gave a wheelchair to one old man who was covered with a rash from head to toe. I asked his family what he had and they said “El tiene un gran picazon” (He has a big itch) and it made me so sad because there must be a treatment for it, but most likely he will never get it.
Then a woman came up to us with her four year old child that looked like a two year old and still couldn’t walk, asking for a wheelchair. We suspected that the child was malnourished and developmentally delayed so I tried to talk to her about nutrition and she just looked at me with a forlorn and helpless look. I wanted to yell at the rest of the community to help their neighbors, that there should never be a malnourished child among them…As the translator I would be the one to stay and talk to people like this while the rest of the group would move on to the next house and I would have to say I’m sorry, we can’t help you and know that probably nobody else will help her either and her children will never grow up strong and healthy.

Alright, even though it was depressing in many ways I loved being with the people in their homes and being able to help many of them and receiving gratitude from them. The group from Washington also enjoyed the experience and were touched that they could have such a personal experience with the people that they were helping. Although many of them had delivered wheelchairs in Vietnam and Africa they had never been in such a rural situation and been so close to the people.

Whenever working with Rotary there is always profound confusion. Sometime I actually wonder how they manage to be so bad at communicating and how they haven’t changed after so many years of working with groups. The first night in town the local Rotary planned to have a meeting with their guests after dinner. So, I went out to dinner with the group from Washington and then arrived at the meeting. Turns out the local club had prepared a dinner and didn’t tell any of us, so after finishing our first dinner we were served a second one at the meeting (which I graciously declined since I have gotten over being polite about eating food that I don’t want). The second night one of the Rotary members invited everybody over for dinner and I specifically told him that we wouldn’t eat dinner because he was going to serve it. Well, turns out he forgot to tell his wife that she had to cook for twenty people, so she didn’t have anything prepared. After about an hour of chitchatting and snacks I went into the kitchen to see what the deal was and found out what had happened. So, then they went and bought fried chicken from down the street and served it up.

The last day is when things really started to get complicated. Originally the group had agreed to donate mattresses, food and clothes to a local orphanage (that is technically a day care center for children of single mothers who can’t afford day care) that one of the local Rotary Club contacted. Well, Dolores, an American that lives in Santa Barbara and does charity work, decided that that orphanage didn’t need help, so she got in touch with the group from Washington and told them they shouldn’t help them and that she worked with people who really needed help. So, the Washington group started to have second thoughts…we did buy the mattresses and delivered them to the orphanage and then while there the group from Washington decided that the orphanage didn’t need help and they really wanted to donate to a real orphanage (like a place where kids with no parents live). So they told the director they wouldn’t be donating the clothing or food and would be donating things to Dolores instead because they believed she helped people that really needed more help (the leader of the group referred to these needy people as hill people).
Actually, I told the director and then she proceeded to try to convince me (the translator) that they really do need help, and again I start to feel very awkward and helpless because I don’t have the decision making power, yet people talk to me as if I do. Most of the time they don’t even realize that I am a Peace Corps volunteer living in Santa Barbara, they just assume I came with the group.

Now things are really uncomfortable because the local Rotary member had made a commitment to this orphanage and the people from the states just broke that commitment. So, the Rotary member basically stopped talking because he was so upset, so who had to talk to the group…me! I explained to them that they had made a commitment and they are disappointing 50 young children and making the local Rotary look bad by breaking it. Thankfully they understood this and decided to honor their commitment and donate the clothes and food to the orphanage as well as to Dolores. So, in the end the group donated clothes to Dolores and donated clothes and food to the orphanage and everybody was happy.
Above: Seattle group donating clothes

Below: Kids from the orphanage

After the group drove away I went to the river and sat on a rock and sobbed for about 20 minutes, and then walked home, sobbing all the way and then sobbed in my apartment for about an hour. I was just completely overwhelmed by everything and so torn. I understood both sides of the issue and also understood things that neither side understood. I understand the desire to help the neediest people and I also understand the importance of keeping a commitment. I know that both sides (Santa Barbara Rotary Club and Dolores) want to help people and yet both have their own agendas. I have seen sides of both of them that a group from the states visiting for three days will never see. But how do you know who to help? In general, the people farthest from the city center usually find themselves with very little resources or access to support from their local government or NGOs. Yet, people living right in Santa Barbara are also living in desperate poverty and people walk past them everyday and don’t help them. For example, there is a woman that sells chips and cigarettes in the park and has about five little kids who run around the streets half naked all day long. I imagine that these types of children are the children that go to the orphanage/day care that we visited, kids who otherwise would not go to school, bath or eat and would be on the street all day selling gum.

Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by the local and visiting Rotary Clubs and want to tell them that I am only 23 years old and I don’t know anything! I feel like they need expect me to be more like a cultural broker and logistician than just a translator. For example, one of their group members arrived to Honduras a day after the rest of the group, so the local Rotary arranged for somebody to go to the airport and pick him up. Well, nobody told him that he would get picked up at the airport (there goes that pesky lack of communication again) so when the Rotary member got there he was nowhere to be seen. So, they call me while I am in a community delivering wheelchairs to ask me where he is and what they should do. My first reaction is to say I have no freaking idea, why are you asking me! Then I suggest that they call the hotel to see if he went there. Turns out that was exactly what happened and they picked him up at the hotel no problem. Then I start to think that maybe I do have some idea, some of the time.

I sobbed because of the knowledge of how complicated this world is and how charity and development are such gray areas. There are so many people have pure hearts and want to help other people but often don’t know how. They don’t know how because they don’t understand the repercussions of their actions and don’t understand the people they are trying to help. There are also selfish people who want to act as if they are doing charity just for their own self gain. How do we tell the difference between these two people, how do we know who to help and how do we know how to help them?

Even though it was a heart wrenching experience it is always good to know that I still have a heart and meet some amazing people who actually do want to help and realize that my work as a Peace Corps Volunteer is helping me understand some very important lessons in life.
Group from Seattle

Semana Santa

In Honduras Semana Santa (Holy Week) is one of the most important times of the year. Thursday-Saturday is the official holiday, but things start to shut down early on in the week. Public transportation either shuts down or is beyond packed, stores and restaurants close and all of Honduras goes to the beach on the north coast. A few other volunteers and I decided to avoid the beach rush and head to Comayagua, which is famous in Honduras for its alfombras.

Getting there was a fiasco! The bus line that I usually take was going to stop running Thursday and Friday so I had planned to leave Santa Barbara Wednesday afternoon. On Tuesday I went to the bus station just to check the schedule (you can never be too sure) and they informed me that the bus would only be leaving in the morning around 10 or 11. Okay, 10 or 11 is a pretty wide range…so I asked what time I should arrive at the station and the owner told me to come at 10 am. The next day I arrived at 10 am and they informed me that the bus had just left and the guy that told me to come at 10 obviously didn’t know what he was talking about (why should the owner know anything?). So I almost started to cry pondering the idea of being stuck in Santa Barbara by myself with no food for the next two days when some kind ladies told me that I could take a bus to the turn off and then get catch another bus from there that was heading south and then get off on the side of the road and then catch another bus to my destination. So, five hours and three buses later I arrived in one piece and met up with Mary and Kendra.

We spent Thursday through Saturday in Comayagua and were able to partake in a real live cultural event/tourist attraction. Every year the night before Good Friday different organizations or families make elaborate alfombras (rugs) out of sawdust. There is a silent procession Thursday night after mass (which lasted four hours…we only went to one hour of it) so they start working on the rugs close to midnight and work throughout the night to finish by morning before the next procession walks over them. The idea is that the rugs are supposed to soften Jesus’ journey to the cross.
The groups start designing their rugs months in advance and start dying sawdust and creating stencils for their designs, then they work like mad all night long without sleep and then watch their rug get destroyed immediately after. Mary, Kendra & I were lucky enough to be able to work on the largest rug in the procession; it was an entire block long. I actually didn’t stay up all night, but I worked on if from about 3-5 am and then 8-10 am. It was so big and involved that we were finishing it just as the procession was starting, it was pretty amazing. First, they put down a base layer of sawdust and smoothed it out and assembled the stencils.

Mary working on an angel.

Then we got to work…They spray the sawdust with water to keep it moist and to keep it from blowing away in the wind.

And ended up with this:

And then watched it be walked onI know that these white hats don’t mean the same thing they do as in the states, but it was a little eerie. From left: Mary, Allison, the artist, Brian, Kendra

The group that worked on the rug

Here are some of the other rugs that I liked.


Saturday we headed to Tegucigalpa in hopes of going to La Tigra (a national park outside of Teguc) on Sunday to go hiking, but we didn’t exactly make it there. We got on the wrong bus and only made it halfway up the mountain. Then we waited around for a while for another bus, but another bus never came so we got a jalone (ride) another quarter way up the mountain and waited there a while longer. Then we started to contemplate the possibility that we might not be able to get back down the mountain if the bus schedule was changed since it was Easter Sunday. So we started walking back down the mountain and then caught a bus back to Teguc and went to the pool (which turned out to be a very popular way to spend Easter Sunday).

Overall it was a great vacation and I wished I could have stayed longer. Unfortunately all hell was breaking loose in Santa Barbara so I had to go back and work with Agua Pura.

Child Labor

So, child labor is bad, right? Your typical American seems to think so anyway. Well, while Kevin was here visiting me in Santa Barbara I took him to the filter workshop to check it out and as we walked in we saw three little boys moving cement bags in a large dusty warehouse. My grandpa asked who they were and I said I had no idea. Later he mentioned that something like that could cause a scandal for the Peace Corps and for Rotary (since the filters are supported by Rotary grants). I had never thought about it that way, in fact I had never thought about it at all. Seeing little kids working at the filter workshop didn’t faze me at all, probably because I have become so accustomed to seeing little kids working all the time. Young boys often work on buses taking ticket money, small children work in the park selling Chiclets and lots of kids work in the markets to help out their parents.

Child labor is bad. Children should not be working at a young age, especially in dangerous situations. They should be in school so they can learn how to read and write. But what if their parents don’t have enough money to send them to school or feed them and if they have them work they can make a little extra money?

Rolf, the Canadian Agua Pura volunteer that was here at the time didn’t like the situation either so he talked to the filter owner about it. The boys were 6, 9 and 12 and were the sons of one of the workers. Rolf didn’t like this so he went to the authorities to denounce the owner of the filter workshop for breaking the law by employing minors. The owner obviously wasn’t too happy about this. I have learned time and time again that going behind somebody’s back is not the way to go, you need to address the situation first, tell the person that if no change is made you will have to take more drastic action, so that they have a chance to fix the problem. Whether or not this happened with Rolf and the workshop owner I am not quite sure, but either way he probably could have used more tact.

About a week after all this happened I talked to the filter workshop owner and asked him about the kids and he told me that they didn’t work there anymore…that was easy. So, now that they don’t work there anymore, what are they doing? Are they in school, did they find other work, are they on the street? I realize more and more that nothing is simple here, nothing is black and white.