As a Peace Corps Volunteer of color, I experience unique challenges during my service. One such challenge is when host country nationals question my nationality as American. My skin is not white; therefore, I don’t fit their stereotype of what a “typical” American looks like.
All Maternal and Child Health Volunteers in Rwanda work on behalf of the First 1000 Days Program, which addresses the issue of childhood stunting that results from chronic malnutrition. This includes a wide umbrella of target areas such as preventing childhood illness, improving levels of nutrition, and increasing attendance levels of antenatal care visits.
The room was silent, the head judge was announcing the third-place winner in Advanced level for the second annual Speak Up! competition. It wasn’t her.
I recently finished reading former First Lady Michelle Obama’s stellar memoir, Becoming. In it she expressed her feelings about being an African-American in Africa when she visited Kenya with President Obama. Mrs. Obama writes:
In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, in the Voyages of the Dawn Treader, to be precise, Aslan the Great Lion declares: “You have returned for a reason. Your adventure begins now.”
Peace Corps Volunteer Alex Wang, a Maternal and Child Health Volunteer in Southern Rwanda, and his health center are in the process of building 25 latrines using a Peace Corps grant for at risk families. We sat down with him to find out more about the project.
Click here to download the mp3 audio file of Home Sweet Staff Room, by Lia Russell.
School’s been in session for almost a month, and the first of our three terms will end in just a few weeks. I haven’t accomplished much as a teacher in this short time, but I’ve been experiencing what I longed for and optimistically predicted early on, when the walk to school still wracked my nerves: I'm gradually getting used to this and feeling an increasing sense of ease.
