April 15, 2003 - TheDay.com: Volunteers evacuated from China hope to return

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By Admin1 (admin) on Tuesday, April 15, 2003 - 9:14 am: Edit Post

Volunteers evacuated from China hope to return





Read and comment on this story from TheDay.com about PCV Bryan Rashleigh who is one of the volunteers evacuated from China on April 6 due to the risk of SARS. The Peace Corps has offered him other postings — in Romania and Bulgaria — teaching English. He prefers Asia. He said he loves China, its culture, history and people. He's inclined to return on his own to find work. The risk of SARS apparently is not a deterrent. In any event, the government has not closed down China to U.S. citizens. The Peace Corps proved more cautious. Read the story at:

SARS Forces Volunteer To Give Up Post*

* This link was active on the date it was posted. PCOL is not responsible for broken links which may have changed.



SARS Forces Volunteer To Give Up Post

By STEVEN SLOSBERG
Day Staff Columnist
Published on 4/15/2003

One casualty of the sars outbreak in China arrived at his parents' home in Mystic over the weekend, evacuated by government precaution and left with his future in limbo.

Until April 5, Bryan Rashleigh had been a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English at a public college in Chongqing, a municipality of some 30 million people between the provinces of Sichuan and Hunan in southwest China.

Rashleigh, who is 27 and graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1997, taught English in Thailand before joining the Peace Corps last June. He learned Mandarin, at least as facilely as nine months' study and practice affords, and was content teaching classes of 18- to 22-year-olds, almost all of them women. Everyone in China, he said, learns English.

On April 3, a Thursday morning, he talked to a friend about a State Department advisory issued the day before regarding all nonessential personnel leaving China. They joked about whether it would include them. The next day, he received the call. Be in Chengdu, about five hours away, on Saturday, divested of apartment and possessions, packed and ready to leave.

On Sunday, Rashleigh and the other volunteers in the region were flown to Beijing, and then to Chicago and finally to Washington, D.C., None of them was infected.

But that abruptly, his Peace Corps service in China, due to end in September 2004, was likely over.

Peace Corps volunteers in areas of political hostility are routinely recalled from their villages or more urban postings, but usually kept wherever the headquarters are until things quiet. Occasionally, the Peace Corps pulls out of an area because of ongoing tensions.

For Rashleigh, there is still the prospect of returning to China as a volunteer. That is contingent on Centers for Disease Control inspections and, of course, the government's blessing. He'd heard about one case of SARS — Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome — in Chongqing, in a hospital south of his college. The respiratory illness has infected about 3,169 people globally and has killed at least 144, mostly in Asia. The first cases were detected near Guangzhou, the provincial capital in Guangdong Province in southern China. Close by is Hong Kong, where 48 people have died and 1,190 cases of the infection have been reported.

The Peace Corps has offered him other postings — in Romania and Bulgaria — teaching English. He prefers Asia. He said he loves China, its culture, history and people. He's inclined to return on his own to find work. He did it before, securing the teaching job in Thailand at a college outside of Bangkok. That lasted two years.

What he doesn't miss about Chongqing, an industrial city, is the pollution. In the winter in particular, said Rashleigh, the unwashed coal, which is burned to produce electricity, blankets the city in fogs and smog. He came down with a number of colds, but no serious illness. Nevertheless, he lost about 20 pounds. He likes the diet of rice and noodles, and abundant chilies. Meat also is prevalent.

The English he taught was mostly conversational. The Chinese, he said, are well schooled in reading and writing English from early on. He called the culture “goal-oriented.” What his students lack is oral English. His job was to inspire them to talk among themselves.

Other volunteers uprooted with him are planning to return, regardless of the State Department's recommending they not. The risk of SARS apparently is not a deterrent. In any event, the government has not closed down China to U.S. citizens. The Peace Corps proved more cautious.

Rashleigh will wait a few months to hear from the Peace Corps, but the sense is he is on his own. China, for all that it holds, is where he wants to be.

This is the opinion of Steven Slosberg.

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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - China; SARS; Infectious Disease; Safety and Security of Volunteers

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