Wendy Schmidt s half-way through a two-year service as a Peace Corps volunteer in central Madagascar, where her idealism and gusto is colliding with the health care woes of a small village
Peace Corps takes her a world away
By Mark Baylis - Staff Writer
02/27/05 When Wendy Schmidt celebrates her 24th birthday this week she will be at approximately the farthest distance from Lompoc on the globe.
The Cabrillo High School and Cal Poly graduate is half-way through a two-year service as a Peace Corps volunteer in central Madagascar, where her idealism and gusto is colliding with the health care woes of a small village.
It's the rainy season now in Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast of Africa, and the rolling hills have turned a lush green, terraced by rice paddies. The horizon is dotted with two-story mud brick houses with thatch roofs.
The area is as exotic as it sounds, but the thrill is tempered by the daily grind of village life. There's no electricity in Schmidt's village, no running water. She hauls her own well water in buckets, cooks over charcoal and uses a latrine. She contracted malaria recently, not a surprise considering the "eight billion" mosquito bites on her body that became infected and "festering with pus."
College girl, meet Africa.
Every year, thousands of college graduates trade in their creature comforts for the adventure and altruism of international volunteer work with the Peace Corps. There are 7,733 volunteers currently serving in 72 countries. California leads the states in Peace Corps volunteers with 873. California also has the most volunteers to serve since John F. Kennedy started the volunteer organization in 1961, with 24,266 total.
Five California colleges rank in the top 25 college recruitment centers in the United States, including the University of California at Santa Barbara and led by University of California at Berkeley, which ranks fourth. The University of Wisconsin at Madison is No. 1.
Schmidt is practically a poster girl for the typical volunteer, who is predominately white, single, a median age of 25, and has an undergraduate degree. Only 13 percent have a graduate degree. Fifty-eight percent are female.
Volunteers' initial visions of bringing their education, idealism and hard work to non-industrialized countries to make a positive impact is often met with the blunt realization of the depth and nuances of each location's challenges and their own limitations as volunteers.
"I had the very idealist and cliché goal of making a difference in the lives of people who weren't as lucky as I was to have been born in the United States," Schmidt wrote via e-mail on one of her monthly trips to the capital, Morondava. "Never in my life could (I) have imagined the disparity that exists in the world without seeing it first hand."
Schmidt primarily serves as a health volunteer with a focus on child and maternal health. She works with a nongovernmental organization (NGO) sponsored by the World Bank and World Food Program with the aim of monitoring the growth and development of children under 5 years old. The NGO selects a local Malagasy woman to head up their community's program.
Schmidt's typical morning consists of weighing about 50 babies, documenting their height and weight. If a child is underweight, Schmidt counsels the mother on nutrition and breast feeding and tries to follow up with them later at their home. Schmidt also teaches English at a village school and tries to incorporate health messages into her lessons.
Education and health are the largest two Peace Corps programs, accounting for the work of over half of current volunteers. Africa is the largest program.
Schmidt frets sometimes about whether her presence in the village is accomplishing anything, said her mother Penny, who gets a phone call about once a month, as well as e-mails.
"I think she thought she'd really make a difference," Penny Schmidt said. "Some days she's not sure she's made any difference at all, but I think that goes with the territory."
Schmidt gives regular talks and presentations on health care, maternity and AIDS, but says the real rewards come through one-on-one interaction, like when she tracked down a girl who received a calcium injection from a dentist for a toothache. She demonstrated proper dental care and gave the girl a toothbrush, which she didn't have.
Not everyone is so appreciative. While Schmidt says most are welcoming to her, there are others who resent her for a slew of reasons.
"Their perception of my wealth, the fact that they don't believe in the health practices I'm teaching about (usually concerning AIDS or family planning)," Schmidt wrote. "And just general dislike for anyone who is white (I suspect due to the colonization of Madagascar by the French.)"
The experience has solidified Schmidt's interest in health care, and she plans to go into nursing school when she returns to the Central Coast in January 2006.
As for the Peace Corps slogan of "The hardest job you'll ever love," Schmidt says it couldn't be more accurate.
She just hopes her efforts bear fruit.
Staff Writer Mark Baylis can be reached at 736-2313, ext. 105 or by e-mail at mbaylis@pulitzer.net
