Peace Corps Expansion Act is Rejected

The Peace Corps Expansion Act was up for approval last week. It would have increased Peace Corps’ budget by more than $33 million in 2010, and gone a long way towards increasing programs and services, and supporting the work of volunteers like me.

Unfortunately, it didn’t pass.

It didn’t pass because while the Peace Corps mission has remained the same since 1961, the world has changed. And Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds foreign assistance programs, thinks it’s time we change too.

He’s right. The world is different now. It’s become more of a global community. So it sickens me to hear that Leahy believes there “are hundreds of volunteers serving in countries with little if any strategic importance to the U.S. Government.” At a time when the health of others—particularly in terms of drug resistant TB and HIV—greatly impacts the health of many, Peace Corps volunteers are doing their part at a grassroots level to increase awareness, educate the people and prevent the spread of disease. In one sense, we are fighting against a global epidemic. And we are doing so with few resources and very limited financial support.

Leahy’s suggestion that Peace Corps make moves to serve only in countries that will ultimately offer financial benefits or natural resources to the American people goes against all that Peace Corps stands for. It suggests that the main objective of the organization should be to offer volunteers and their services in return for something greater than a strengthened global community.

I’m in favor of expanding Peace Corps; of enlisting more volunteers and starting programs in additional countries. That’s one thing Leahy and I have in common. But what he fails to recognize in his quest to increase presence in Muslim countries (undoubtedly a move to strengthen foreign relations), is that their governments must be stable and perhaps more importantly, they must invite Peace Corps in. Sadly, in many of these places—particularly after the last eight years—America is not always welcome.

A letter from Senator Patrick Leahy:

Thank you for contacting me about funding for the Peace Corps. As Chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds foreign assistance programs, I have recommended $373,440,000 for the Peace Corps for fiscal year 2010, which is equal to the amount requested by President Obama and is $33,440,000 above the fiscal year 2009 level.

I strongly support the mission of the Peace Corps, which can be as relevant today in promoting American values abroad as it was when it was founded almost a half century ago. But the world has changed significantly since then, and the Peace Corps needs to adapt to the 21st Century. However, past efforts by the subcommittee to encourage the Peace Corps to reform and make better use of resources have been ignored. A new Director with a new vision, who recognizes the need for reform, supports transparency, and seeks a constructive relationship with Congress, is urgently needed.

I am aware that some have called for a large increase in funding above the amount requested by the President for fiscal year 2010 in order to send volunteers to new countries. Very few of such countries are safe enough or otherwise ready to host volunteers, and there are hundreds of volunteers currently serving in countries with little if any strategic importance to the United States who could be used more effectively. At a time of intense pressures on a limited budget, each volunteer costs the U.S. Government $50,000 a year. Each dose of vaccine for measles, a virus which threatens hundreds of millions of children in poor countries and needlessly kills 200,000 children annually, costs a few dollars. This is but one of the many difficult funding choices our subcommittee faced, yet the recommendation for the Peace Corps is the largest percentage increase in the Peace Corps' budget since 1993. I and other members of the subcommittee believe that reform, not dramatic increases in funding in a single year, is the Peace Corps' most urgent need.

I expect to recommend additional increases in funding to support the goal of doubling the Peace Corps, including sending more volunteers to countries with large Muslim populations, once it is clear that a new Director is providing the leadership that the Peace Corps needs.

Again, thank you for contacting me.

Is There Anger Over Cruelty?

When I was growing up we spent Sunday mornings in church, and the ride home listening to Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion. Sitting through one sermon was enough, and I loathed the wet voice and studio audience that came with tuning in to another. My parents loved his down home anecdotes and witty soliloquies, but for the 10 minutes it took to drive from the parking lot to our house, I’d desperately try to ignore the frequency.

However I enjoy Keillor’s writing more than his voice, and found a point worth reiterating in his most recent column: Where's the Anger Over Cruelty?.

Keillor laments the fact that today, we readily fume over store fronts that close too early and packages that arrive too late. We scream at drivers who cut us off and belittle baristas who accidentally use whole milk instead of skim.

[We] have less interest in war crimes and criminals than, say, in a furtive romance between a president and an intern, or the machinations of Richard Nixon. Those are good stories...whereas the slaughter of 100,000 is a statistic. You wish people got angry about cruelty and not many do.

We get angry, he says, about the wrong things. And because of this, we have nothing left when it comes to getting mad about the right ones.

The lack of affordable and accessible healthcare.
The warped policies of our past president.
The women being murdered in Khartoum for merely choosing to wear pants.

Social injustices, cruelty and indifference surround us every day, yet we elect to raise our voices at our sons and daughters for leaving dirty dishes in the sink. At our friends for arriving ten minutes too late. At the man on the street for driving too slow.

But when the time comes for us to really get angry—to pound our fists and scream out loud—

Only then do we choose to be silent.

Reflections of a Recreational Reader: Part V

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or your predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

-William Faulkner

The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity.

-Eustace Conway

A big heart is both a clumsy and delicate thing; it doesn't protect itself and it doesn't hide. It stands out...where you can see the soul pulse through.

-Bird by Bird

Above me, wind does its best
to blow leaves off
the aspen tree a month too soon
No use wind. All you succeed
in doing is making music. The noise
of failure growing beautiful

-Bill Holm

It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch.

You have to be stronger than your fears if you want anything done in this life.

-The Interpreter

Everybody is going to be what they are, and whatever they are, there's not going to be anything to apologize about. What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip.

-The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Sometimes I go about pitying myself and all the while I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

-Lakota Sioux Saying

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed our soul.

-Bird by Bird

We all must suffer one of two things: The pain of great discipline, or the pain of great disappointment

We used to live on less than what folks throw away these days.

-The Last American Man

If you think about the world of a preschooler, they are surrounded by stuff they don't understand--things that are novel. So the driving force for a preschooler is not a search for novelty, like it is with older kids, it's a search for understanding and predictability.

-The Tipping Point

Just because your voice reaches half way around the world doesn't mean you are any wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

-Edward R Murrow

So Long Speech!

Today was a pretty big day, because today, I said goodbye to my very first Nam Friend.

I met Speechless (who, for the record, is anything but) a couple of days after arriving in Khorixas. He did everything possible to make this strange place feel like home. He dropped by my old flat for visits, introduced me to everyone he knew, invited me to help out with weekend soccer tournaments and volunteered to assist me with after school programs.

He was hardworking and enthusiastic—not to mention the fact that he was really fun to be around. He was the youngest facilitator at Camp GLOW in 2008, but he was also one of the best. The kids loved working with him and he took his job as a role model and team leader seriously. He encouraged everyone on his team to work hard and do their best. And he expected the same from himself.

Last month, when my family came to visit, he and Boois organized the cooking crew for our braai without even being asked. Speech spent most of the night hunched over a fire, and seemed more than happy to do so.

My point is—Speech is amazing. And now, he’s gone.

Today we said goodbye. He headed off in a taxi for Windhoek, where he’ll board a bus and cross the border to South Africa. He’ll spend the next year there as a SCORE volunteer.

I was sad to see him leave—he was my first friend here in Khorixas and one of my best friends in Namibia. But I was also excited to see him go. Excited, because he’ll be leaving the country for the first time, moving away from his family and friends and the place he grew up, and heading off to new experiences in a new place with new people and a new culture.

I was excited, because I know exactly what that’s like. And while it’s hard to say goodbye (and I imagine even harder when you’ve never left before), in the end it’s truly worth it—for every friend I’ve made. For every story I’ve ever told here.

I know Speech, and I know the lives he’ll touch, the kids he’ll inspire and the message he’ll bring back to the people of Khorixas. I know that while he was sad to leave and nervous to go, he’ll grow more in the next year than he has in any other. His world will get a little bigger, and the lives of those he meets will get a little brighter.

And while he may still miss Khorixas, something tells me there’s no place a soccer fan like him would rather be than South Africa in 2010.

Nawrockis in Namibia Part V: Back to Khorixas

Because one day in Khorixas is never enough, we stopped back for a visit on our way to the coastal town of Swakopmond. My family had met a lot of friends and colleagues during the braai, but had missed out on one major part of my Namibian life: Learners.

We'd been in such a rush to see the place and prepare for the evening's events that we'd avoided the school almost entirely.

But this time around, Eddie Bowe was top on our list of priorities.

Jessica helped round up the school choir for an impromptu concert outside the main office (I'd upload a video if I had any kind of bandwidth). The kids sang traditional songs in Damara, as well as some random American pop tunes, too.

It's the kind of experience my family had seen on television. When Oprah visited her school in South Africa or some nightly news special stopped by another African village. It was the kind of experience--strong voices from small bodies and a harmonization most professionals can't even achieve--that makes a trip to the continent complete.



It makes a family feel like they've been welcomed home.


(And my mom even managed to find a fan club.)