Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Andrew D. Cohen can be contacted at adcohenaumndedu
Host Country: Bolivia
Training Group Name: Camp Radley, Puerto Rico, Advanced Training
City (or cities) you served in: Near and in Ancoraimes, 80 miles north of La Paz, by Lake Titicaca
Year you began your peace corps service: 1965
Year you completed your peace corps service: 1967
Peace Corps Work Description:
-- Rural Community Development -- animal husbandry with vet, building latrines.
--Teaching Spanish Speech and Composition at a Methodist Vocational School.
-- Working at a Methodist clinic in tuberculosis control.
Bring us up to date on your life after the peace corps:
Professor of applied linguistics at the U of Minnesota in Minneapolis for 10 years, after being a prof of language education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, for 17 years. Before that, prof of ESL at UCLA for 4 years. Married 33 years to daughter of Holocaust survivors, Sabina Rose Cohen. Two children -- Judy 27 in S.F. and Daniel 23 currently in Tel Aviv.
Anything else you would like people to know about your peace corps service:
I prepared materials on Aymara for my fellow volunteers. When we went into the Peace Corps there was no training in Aymara. Since Aymara I have worked with many other languages, currently studying Japanese, my 11th foreign language. I can't say I have fond memories of those rough times on the Aliplano. Every 6 months I was hospitalized with something -- first strep throat, then pneumonia, then hepatitis and mononucleosis.
Any thoughts you have now looking back on peace corps days?:
How much did I really contribute to those folks? I don't know. Ah, yes. I did write a chapter for a book for the Peace Corps and in it I gave my account of what it was like as an American living with a South American indigenous population.
Anyone you are looking for or would like to hear from?:
No. I am in touch with my two closest buddies from that era -- Israel Gonzalez, who with his PCV wife Sandra, has retired to Puerto Rico, where they have a farm in the rain forest. The other is Peter Brady, who lives in Nantucket.
Any additions or changes you would like to see in Peace Corps Online?:
No.
Originally posted: June 4, 2001
