At 62, Geraldine Brown joined the Peace Corps and went to a Romania that still was reeling from the ravages of communism and the darkly secretive government of Nicolae Ceausescu
Only in Santa Fe
It is never too late to pick up and follow your lifelong dreams
Apr 18, 2004
by Denise Kusel
Sometimes life needs to intervene and upset the apple cart before we give ourselves permission to do something we only dreamed of doing.
For Geraldine Brown, it took a divorce and relocating to the eastern seaboard of her youth before setting out on a two-year mission she heard about more than 40 years ago.
Geraldine left both Santa Fe and her married name of Faires behind. She bought a cottage on the cape of Massachusetts but quickly found gardening and hiding out from life were just not for her. Geraldine's roots were in the 1960s and, for a lot of people who spent formative years in that decade, life became synonymous with activism.
At 62, Geraldine joined the Peace Corps and went to a Romania that still was reeling from the ravages of communism and the darkly secretive government of Nicolae Ceausescu.
"I went to Romania in February 2002," said Geraldine in her telltale Boston accent. "I learned Romanian in an intensive 10-week language-training course. By the time I got out, I was able to talk like a 1-year-old, and by the time I left the country two years later, I talked like a 2-year-old. It was a difficult language."
Geraldine explained that a number of older Americans have opted to leave retirement, choosing to serve in the Peace Corps.
This especially is true in Romania, which is about the size of Oregon and exists on the fringes of the European Union, where there is a dire need for business-development skills and people to serve in the social services. She said the age range of Peace Corps volunteers in Romania was 22 to 74.
"I did anything that was asked of me. I was assigned to an environmental agency because I had worked for the New Mexico State Park system for seven years as a program budget manager," she said.
She found herself working with women's groups in the center of the country in Transylvania in the Carpathians.
"In some of the smaller villages, people still wear their tribal dress. The young man I worked with was a well-educated Roma," she said. "The Roma have an incredible amount of problems throughout eastern Europe. The largest number live in Romania, which once was part of the Ottoman Empire."
She noted it was incredible to see the meager subsistence level of the average person under the oppressive Ceausescu regime, when people were forced to keep their opinions silent and look over their shoulders for the secret police.
"For women, Romania is still a very masculine-oriented society," she said. "While I was there, I was able to set up programs to work with domestic and family violence, which are two of the major social problems that grow out of poverty, drinking and frustration."
After two years of reflecting on her own life, Geraldine Brown is planning to relocate. This time back to Santa Fe.
"I've learned that this is where my friends are," she said. "Santa Fe is home."
Denise Kusel's column runs Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. You may reach her at 995-3832.
