PCVs Katie Jens and Becky Kinsey learning environmental and agricultural skills in Haiti
Young Lancastrians meet in Haiti
Feb 28, 2003 - Sunday News Lancaster, PA
Author(s): Jack Brubake
Today is Peace Corps Day. That designation meant little to two Lancaster County families last Feb. 28. Today it is cause for celebration in both.
Two young women from Lancaster began serving as Peace Corps volunteers in Haiti last fall. They did not know each other before then, but they sure know each other now.
Katie Jens grew up outside Millersville and graduated from Lancaster Catholic High School and Millersville University.
Becky Kinsey grew up near East Petersburg and graduated from Hempfield High School and the University of Virginia.
Both are surprised that two young women who lived most of their lives so close together, without knowing each other, would wind up in Haiti as part of a group of 20 trainees learning environmental and agricultural skills.
They have passed through the roughest part of the Peace Corps program -- acclimation and education and moved to separate towns to share their knowledge with the natives. Katie lives in Perches and Becky in Pilate.
Through a series of entertaining e-mail messages, Katie has kept her family up to date on her adventures, including observations on periodic riots and strikes, and encounters with monstrous insects and rats.
"Ah, Haiti," she wrote in one message, "the only place I've ever been where my conversations include, "So is the coup today or tomorrow?"
Becky has been through her ordeal by riot and rat as well, according to her mother, Donna. "She says she's starting to laugh," Donna reports, which means Becky has come to terms with her new world.
Katie's parents, Kurt and Nora Jens, and her siblings will travel to Haiti to see her next month. Neil and Donna Kinsey and their children will take the same trip to see Becky in the summer.
Happy Peace Corps Day to all!
