On a Google map, one road leads to Moma, a tiny village in northern Mozambique. And then … nothing. Regional Road 260 dead-ends into a blank swath of gray, with a simple red dotted line encircling the emptiness.
“It was pretty far from everything,” says Yao-Chieh “Jack” Cheng (CWR ’11), who traveled to Moma as a Peace Corps volunteer in June 2011. He had just completed two bachelor’s degrees at Case Western Reserve: a BS in biochemistry and a BA in medical anthropology and biology.
During his pre-service training, Cheng lived with a Mozambican family in Namaacha. In addition to studying Portuguese, he learned to hand-wash his clothes, cook using wood or charcoal, and take a bucket bath, among other skills. Courtesy of Jack Cheng.
Jack Cheng stands beside a sign welcoming visitors to Moma, the village in northern Mozambique where he completed his Peace Corps service. Courtesy of Jack Cheng.
“One of the reasons I joined the Peace Corps was to see if working in the field of global health was something I was interested in, and to see if I could handle it,” he says. “And one of the ways to see if I could handle it was to be isolated.”
Whether volunteers wind up in a remote village or a city, isolation is a common feature of their experiences. The Peace Corps doesn’t send them out in teams. Instead, they arrive alone in an unfamiliar place and must integrate themselves into the local community. Some may have colleagues a bus or car ride away or even in the same town. But in Cheng’s case, there wasn’t another Peace Corps volunteer within 80 miles.
When he first went to Mozambique, Cheng lived in a town called Namaacha, where he spent 10 weeks studying Portuguese, the country’s official language. No one in his host family spoke English. Before his arrival, he had been given a list of phrases for making introductions, but he’d only looked at it briefly. “I didn’t remember anything when I met my host mom,” he admits. “I remember walking with her down this dirt road, and being very awkward. She went to carry one of my bags, and I wanted to say, ‘No, it’s very heavy.’ It was a 15-minute walk to the house—15 minutes of awkward smiling.”
Still, Cheng didn’t panic, or second-guess his decision to travel halfway around the world to a rural village. Instead, he says, “My thought was, ‘I really need to learn Portuguese.’”
One of Cheng’s projects in Mozambique was to organize workshops for community leaders to reduce the stigma and discrimination experienced by people with HIV/AIDS. He also assumed a leadership role in an initiative called JUNTOS (Youth United In Working for Opportunities and Success—also Portuguese for “together”), organized by Peace Corps volunteers. JUNTOS seeks to reduce HIV transmission among Mozambican youth by promoting healthy behavioral changes. With a local counterpart, Cheng formed a youth group in Moma that engaged members in journalism and theater projects to educate their peers about HIV/AIDS.
Jack Cheng and his JUNTOS youth group tie-dyed shirts that the members wore when they performed skits about preventing HIV transmission. Courtesy of Jack Cheng.
Ultimately, Cheng became JUNTOS’ national financial coordinator. “We were on a mission to restructure the organization,” he explains. JUNTOS had several regional programs, and Cheng devised a system to allocate money fairly among them. By the time he completed his service in 2013, he had acquired the project management skills to obtain another position overseas. Today, he works for CWRU’s School of Medicine, coordinating three research projects in Papua New Guinea. These involve field studies of new treatment strategies and drug combinations to combat and prevent lymphatic filariasis—most commonly known for its clinical presentation as elephantiasis.
During his stint in the Peace Corps, Cheng learned that he really could handle a career in global health. Just as important, he acquired the expertise he needed to pursue it.
“I don’t see how a Peace Corps experience couldn’t be transformative for someone,” he says. “If it wasn’t, they weren’t paying attention. At all.”
A cool-headed, can-do spirit is crucial for success in the Peace Corps. In addition, volunteers must have “the best skills” and a passion for service, says Northeast Ohio field recruiter Annabel Khouri. In recent years, rising numbers of CWRU graduates have demonstrated these qualities and made their way into the Peace Corps, prevailing in what Khouri calls an “extremely competitive” selection process. In 2011, CWRU debuted on the program’s list of the top 25 volunteer-producing small colleges and universities. In 2012, the university placed 10th in the rankings.
Rebecca Ciciretti (CWR ’10) was about to graduate with majors in sociology and environmental studies when she applied to the Peace Corps. The summer before her junior year, she had traveled to Nicaragua on a service trip organized by American Jewish World Services. There, a chance encounter with a Peace Corps member had opened her eyes to the opportunity. In July 2010, she landed in El Salvador as an environmental education volunteer, leading a program to build stoves for families accustomed to cooking over open fires.
During her time as an environmental educator in El Salvador, Rebecca Ciciretti (right) stayed with a host family in Pueblo Santa Maria Ostuma. Courtesy of Rebecca Ciciretti.
The program addressed health concerns as well as environmental ones. When Ciciretti visited houses with cooking fires, she saw that the walls were black with soot. Mothers and children, who spent the most time in the kitchen, often suffered from respiratory illnesses. It was hoped that stoves, which let off less smoke and use less firewood, would reduce the incidence of these illnesses while also conserving trees, Ciciretti explains. During her 18 months in a pueblo called Santa Maria Ostuma, her program provided stoves to more than 50 community members.
Like Cheng, Ciciretti carved her own path through the Peace Corps, pursuing initiatives beyond her initial assignment. When she would walk by the local school, she noticed that students were often late and seemed to spend as much time at recess as they did in lessons. She volunteered to teach English, and then instituted English classes on Saturdays for children of all ages. Ciciretti knew that her students would benefit from learning the language, but that wasn’t her only motivation. She also wanted them to develop habits that would help them get more out of school.
In March 2012, toward the end of her Peace Corps service in El Salvador, Rebecca Ciciretti organized an Ultimate Frisbee camp for 65 children. She solicited donations of T-shirts and discs for the all-day event.
Her first strategy? Awards for arriving on time.
“I raffled off something they could use in school: a pen, a pencil, a notebook,” she recalls. “It got to the point where kids were coming half an hour early—and those were the kids who then started showing up to school on time. That was very rewarding for me, to instill that mentality.” Ciciretti later organized a scholarship fund so that one of her students could go on to college. She and the student are still in touch.
Ciciretti also established her village’s first coed sports program: an Ultimate Frisbee camp. She had been an avid player throughout her college years, and now she amassed donations of jerseys and Frisbees so that Salvadoran children could learn the game.
Like Cheng and other former Peace Corps members, Ciciretti says that her experience shaped her goals. In December, she will graduate from Indiana University with a master’s degree in environmental science and public affairs. Then she will head to Chile on a Fulbright scholarship to study the effects of air pollution on children’s health.
“The Peace Corps inspired me to apply for the Fulbright,” Ciciretti says. “It opened my eyes to what people in the developing world deal with on a daily basis.”
After returning to the U.S. from Cambodia this summer, Saeed Rahman stopped by Kelvin Smith Library, where he once worked as an undergraduate. This fall, he entered a master’s program in public health at Columbia University. Picture by Mike Sands.
“Find what you love, and do it” is the unspoken motto of the Peace Corps. Even before Saeed Rahman (CWR ’10) became a volunteer in Cambodia, he had figured out what he loved: practical work to benefit a community.
He made the discovery during his junior year, when he helped plan a water-supply project for a village in Cameroon with the CWRU chapter of Engineers Without Borders. After completing a degree in chemistry, he entered the Peace Corps and was assigned to the Cambodian province of Kampong Chhnang. His job was to help with health education at the community level.
“There wasn’t much structure in place,” Rahman recalls. “The job description had not really been processed yet.” It was a challenge—but one that Rahman relished. “You have a lot of freedom to do what you want, to figure out how you want to do things,” he explains.
One focus area for Rahman’s program was maternal and child health. He and local volunteers in several villages worked with pregnant women, young mothers and children. They made sure the women had regular checkups and gave them advice on how to wean their babies. They also held cooking demonstrations so that mothers would know how to prevent malnutrition—a major problem in Cambodia for children under five.
Healthy living practices were a second focus area. “Obesity and diabetes are a major problem in the developing world,” Rahman explains. The program worked with young people to promote habits that mitigate the risk of these conditions.
Once he became adept enough in the Khmer language, Rahman was able to conduct workshops and collaborate effectively with the local volunteers. When his term of service ended, he was unwilling to leave.
“After two years, I knew how I should be doing stuff,” he explains. “I figured, ‘I need one more year to use what I’ve learned.’” Also, he had come to appreciate Cambodia’s family-oriented, conversational culture. “As difficult as it can be for a foreigner to adapt to a new culture, I loved being in the community and pushing myself to understand people,” he says.
As a Peace Corps volunteer in Cambodia, Rahman learned to speak, read and write Khmer. “I never thought I would be adept at languages before I came,” he says. He applied his skills when he gave presentations and led workshops to promote community health. Courtesy of Saeed Rahman.
His two-year stint turned into three years, then four. Rahman traveled to other Peace Corps sites to help train local volunteers and eventually became a program assistant. When he finally left Cambodia in summer 2014, he headed to Columbia University, where he is now working toward a master’s degree in public health.
Reflecting on the impact of his extended stay, he says, “I feel like I understand myself better. I have more confidence. The experience pushes you. I never thought I would be adept at languages before I came, and now I can speak, read and write Khmer.”
The Peace Corps, he continues, “is very effective in changing your perspective. They say in their ads that it’s a life-altering experience, and it sounds like something they would say just to get you to join. But it’s one of the few ways people can get to know a place inside and out, and actually understand it. I wish more people would want to see the world that way.”
Amber Matheson is a freelance writer in Akron.