Interview with Mike Lyons, a Peace Corps Dad returned from an eye-opening visit with his daughter Aimee in her small village in Togo, West Africa
Interview with a Peace Corps Dad
NBC: Welcome back. You're looking at pictures from 7,000 miles away. The reason we're showing you these is because from Phoenixville all the way to Africa, Aimee Lyons, 25 years old is serving in the Peace Corps and recently her mother and father went to Africa to see the village she is serving in. And her father joins us this morning to tell us all about it. Mike Lyons
Mike Lyons: Amy great to see you. It's a pleasure to be here.
NBC: Twenty five years old and your daughter is over there for almost two years, or a little over two years
ML: Twenty seven months.
NBC: I can't imagine. You must be a little nervous from time to time having her so far away.
ML: Well, we were very nervous because, obviously, when she first went over there we were concerned about her safety and terrorism and all of those issues. But after having been over there and visiting here we have found that we have no cause for concern because the village she lives in is a wonderful place and the people have embraced her and they really love her, so she is quite safe over there and she's doing some great work.
NBC: She's the only American. Peace Corps is set up to where they're serving over 137 countries. Over 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers like her serving currently. Why did she want to do something like this?
ML: Well it's interesting, we asked her that and she said she started to think about this when she was in the eighth or ninth grade. And the Peace Corps is just a marvelous organization started 43 years ago by JFK and its still thriving today, and I think what people are called to do, it's really wonderful work to go out to these third world countries and help people, educate them, teach them, try to get them on their own feet. Her purpose over there specifically to teach them about AIDS prevention and also nutrition with some of the babies.
NBC: You were there inside the village, what's her day to day life like. I imagine there's no running water, no electricity, roughing it.
ML: I'll tell you, roughing it is not the word. It was incredible. I felt like we had been taken in a time-warp machine and moved 7,000 miles and plopped onto another planet. The thing that really struck us though is the people are so warm and wonderful and even though they don't have anything there, they're incredible, wonderful people. This is a shot of my daughter with a baby strapped on her back, which is how the women of the village, they do all their work with these babies strapped to their back. It's incredible to us, they can carry huge buckets of water on their head and they just go about their business and the babies are very patient, they rarely cry. This is another shot of some of the village children with my wife and Aimee in the background there. And I have to tell you, we were so delighted with the warm welcome we received from the people in the village, roughly 3,000 people in the village. Amy is the only person from the Peace Corps there, so it's taken her a year to become embraced by them, and now she's there for one more year to finish up her work.
NBC: It's really an amazing opportunity to go and do something like this. You said that she's wanted to do it from a young age. Is there a minimum age to do go and serve in the Peace Corps?
ML: Not really, but it seems like a high percentage of the people are college graduates that actually go into the Peace Corps. The median age is about 25, about 60 percent of the people are female. They serve a two year commitment, with a 3 month intense training, because they have to get over there and learn the language, learn the culture, and all the do's and don't of the particular country where they're serving, and then from that point, they are assigned a village all by themselves and they stay there two years and try to make a difference in people's lives. So for us, we were just in awe of our daughter's work. And my wife actually got a chance to help weigh the babies - we were there the day they were doing the vaccinations and weighing the babies and my wife, who was a nurse, got a chance to help in the process, which was pretty neat.
NBC: When you were over there, you had a chance to see your daughter do this, do you think you could do something like that?
ML: Never. Never. It really does take special kinds of people to do this kind of work. Here in the greater Philadelphia region there are quite a few Peace Corps volunteers, so I'm happy to report for all of the Peace Corps families in the region that, all of the people form the greater Delaware valley are out there doing this wonderful work and, as you mentioned, there are 7,000 volunteers all around the world who are doing this kind of work.
NBC: We have one last picture that, I thought, you look pretty comfortable there.
ML: Well I love this shot because, I love children. The children of the village, because we were visitors and, because they don't get many visitors, they really did come up to us and treat us like celebrities, I was constantly surrounded by these children holding our hands and hugging us, and they were so beautiful, we had a great time.
NBC: Well congratulations to you, your family, Aimee, we wish you the best of luck and when she comes back in December from her service we'd love to hear about it and if folks want to learn more about Peace Corps we've created a link on our website. Mike Lyons, thanks so much.
ML: Great to see you, thank you for having me on the show.
