June 20, 2004: Headlines: COS - Kazakstan: Older Volunteers: Newsweek: Joan Lowell says "When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59."

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Kazakstan : Peace Corps Kazakhstan : The Peace Corps in Kazakstan: June 20, 2004: Headlines: COS - Kazakstan: Older Volunteers: Newsweek: Joan Lowell says "When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59."

By Admin1 (admin) (pool-151-196-45-115.balt.east.verizon.net - 151.196.45.115) on Sunday, June 20, 2004 - 5:49 pm: Edit Post

Joan Lowell says "When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59."

Joan Lowell says When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59.

Joan Lowell says "When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59."

My Turn: Have Experience and Wisdom, Will Travel

We've found a way to see the world, meet new friends and make our golden years meaningful

OId is the new young: Joan Lowell joined the Peace Corps

June 28 issue - There are many different portrayals of aging adults. There are the sad, incompetent, forgetful elderly who must be protected from thieves and swindlers. Then there are those featured in advertisements, their white or blond hair beautifully coiffed, playing golf or tennis outdoors, or dining grandly in their gated retirement home. I would like to suggest another option for those of us in retirement: we can share life-learned skills with people in other countries who have never seen a retirement community.

When my husband and I became Peace Corps trainees in Kazakhstan in 1994, he was 65 and I was 59. Even so, we weren't the oldest in our group of 53 trainees. Marge was a 69-year-old retired economics professor, and Marianne, 71, was a retired schoolteacher. All of us—the seniors and the twenty- and thirty-something volunteers—made a two- year commitment to live in a country we knew little about, in small apartments, often without heat or hot water (when there was water), and to learn Kazakh and Russian. Every one of us had something to contribute. My husband and I used our experience—mine as a former administrator of a large hospice and his as a former distributor of laundry and dry-cleaning equipment—to help entrepreneurs draw up business plans and get financial backing.

It was a funny, emotional and educational time. We laughed when, during the mandatory health training, my husband won the contest for the best technique for putting a condom on a cucumber, and fellow trainees dubbed him "the condom king." I cried when the shoe repairman didn't understand what I thought was my perfect Russian. And I learned how to make borscht and plov and pick the stones out of the beans before soaking them.

We came to appreciate this new country, as well as the one we had left behind. We realized how little we needed to be happy and that age is irrelevant when a group shares a goal. We found out that our families understood why we went, and our grandchildren didn't forget us.

Our friend Marianne died a year after we returned from Kazakhstan, but she left behind a library that she had developed with teachers in a school in Semey. When word of her death reached her friends there, the teachers wrote to us and said, "Marianne will never be forgotten." I believe that.

I also believe that those of us in the business-development program made a lasting impact. We helped people of all ages start up businesses in a country that, under communism, had considered such activity a crime. We saw the light in their eyes when they realized they could shape their own futures.

Since our return in 1996, we have spent weeks and months in other countries as volunteers with various aid groups. In Kazakhstan we often heard older people express concern that their government was taking away their financial safety net, but fiveyears later, when we were in Ukraine, we heard an elderly woman say, "I wish communism had ended when I was younger." She had used her new freedom to develop a business that made small loans to young businesswomen using pensioners' retirement funds as capital.

Last year I spent my 68th birthday in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I was helping a nonprofit organization that educated people in rural areas about AIDS prevention. I sat on the floor, surrounded by 10 employees, beautiful and energetic young men and women who sang "Happy Birthday" to me in heavily accented English. They taught me to say "Mai pet" when ordering food so the spice wouldn't burn my palate, and how to ride on the back of a motorcycle.

No matter where we have lived, we have been feted by new friends who put on their very best clothes and served us their tastiest food. On the outskirts of Almaty, in Kazakhstan, we had picnics in the mountains, attended parties where we danced until dawn, bathed in banyas fired up in our honor and traveled by train across the steppes. In Thailand we walked on beautiful beaches. Most recently we rode an elephant in the jungle and took a boat ride on the Mekong River.

We continue to receive e-mail from the friends we've made. They tell us that they are following the plans we developed together. They send pictures of their children and reports of their successes as well as their disappointments. We share the disappointments.

Of course, we are very happy that we have our health and the ability to travel. I'm grateful that I have an employer who lets me leave my part-time job now and then, and colleagues who encourage me. This beats any other form of retirement I've seen. As Ken Dychtwald, noted gerontologist and author, wrote, "Old simply isn't what it used to be."

Lowell lives in Scottsdale, Ariz.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.




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Story Source: Newsweek

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Kazakstan; Older Volunteers

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