2006.01.12: January 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Fiji: Interent: Podcasts: WNEG: Fiji RPCV Dr. Donna Gessell has featured podcast on the Peace Corps website
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2006.01.12: January 12, 2006: Headlines: COS - Fiji: Interent: Podcasts: WNEG: Fiji RPCV Dr. Donna Gessell has featured podcast on the Peace Corps website
Fiji RPCV Dr. Donna Gessell has featured podcast on the Peace Corps website
Even though she's been back in the states for 25 years, her work with the Peace Corps continues unofficially. To her, a big part of the Peace Corps' mission is to tell people in *her* community what the rest of the world is like. Ten years ago, she wrote an essay to do that. This week, that essay was posted as a featured podcast on the Peace Corps website. "Of all the academic work I've done, this piece, which is somewhat nonacademic, has been what's gotten the most notice. I get emails all the time from total strangers," she says. And it has reenergized her students' interest too. They're asking her about the Peace Corps all the time. "I tell them it's scary because it's going to change you. And change is not scary, but what's scary is you have no idea how you're going to change," she says. She's happy with the way she changed. Her time with the people in Fiji helped bring her closer to people here at home when she came back.
Fiji RPCV Dr. Donna Gessell has featured podcast on the Peace Corps website
Georgia Journey: Peace Corps Podcast
Scott Myrick
WNEG NewsChannel 32
Friday, January 12, 2007
Peace Corps Podcasts
http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/multimedia/podcasts
Dr. Donna Gessell's work as an English professor and Director of Graduate Studies at North Georgia College and State University is a far cry from the adventures from her youth.
"We were doing pretty much what the chief wanted us to do," she tells NewsChannel 32.
In 1979 -- right out of college -- Donna joined the Peace Corps. They shipped her off to Fiji, where she lived and worked in a small mountain village for three years. The experience changed her life.
"Prior to that, I really didn't understand what community was or how it worked and now I know I can't live without it," she says.
She earned English degrees in college and took her passion for the written word overseas.
"They'd say, look at Daiana -- that was my Fijian name. She does everything by the book. She's even cooking by the book," she says.
When she helped build a new school for the village, she made sure it had a good library. She wanted to make a lasting mark.
"It was very gratifying when the headmaster had all the dignitaries out to open up the school, he very proudly said, look, here is our library," she says.
Even though she's been back in the states for 25 years, her work with the Peace Corps continues ? unofficially. To her, a big part of the Peace Corps' mission is to tell people in *her* community what the rest of the world is like. Ten years ago, she wrote an essay to do that. This week, that essay was posted as a featured podcast on the Peace Corps website.
"Of all the academic work I've done, this piece, which is somewhat nonacademic, has been what's gotten the most notice. I get E-Mails all the time from total strangers," she says.
And it has reenergized her students' interest too. They're asking her about the Peace Corps all the time.
"I tell them it's scary because it's going to change you. And change is not scary, but what's scary is you have no idea how you're going to change," she says.
She's happy with the way she changed. Her time with the people in Fiji helped bring her closer to people here at home when she came back.
Living by the Book
Read the original essay.
* By Donna Gessell
* Country: Fiji
* Dates of Service: 1979–1982
Books were scarce in our village, Naqelewai, in Fiji. All material possessions were scarce because of the village's remote location. Despite the two-day journey involving dusty bus rides and a muddy Land Rover trek, I brought in five cartons of books, many of them Peace Corps issues with titles like Small Business Projects for Rural Villages and Raising Chickens in the Bush. I also tucked in books for comfort, like The Joy of Cooking, The Tao Te Ching, and War and Peace. Later I picked up junk, mystery, and romance novels from other Peace Corps Volunteers and from bookstores in the capital. During my two years in Naqelewai, I read everything I could find, including Newsweek, furnished by the Peace Corps, and National Geographic, sent by my parents. National Geographic may seem a strange choice, given my exotic surroundings, but reading it and piling past issues beside my bed reminded me of my childhood and home.
Reading, however, is not part of the Fijian culture, historically or currently. Before Europeans arrived in the last century, Fijian was not a written language. Early missionaries soon developed English-Fijian dictionaries and translated the Bible into Fijian, so that now almost every rural Fijian home has a copy of the Bible as well as a Fijian hymnal. Few other books find space in the clutter-free house. Newspapers brought in by travelers are read and passed on, then used for a variety of nonliterary purposes, including stencil designs for decoration under the tin cans that hold house plants, and as crumpled balls used in place of tissue in outdoor toilets. Few rural Fijians read for pleasure, other than the occasional letter from family, although elementary education is almost universal.
Pleasure reading is made difficult because of the lack of electricity. With little artificial light, people in Naqelewai get up with the sun and do most of their activities during daylight. After dark, dinner is served by the light of kerosene lanterns. Conversation follows, sometimes late into the evening, lit by that same dim light.
Despite my investment in a propane lantern, the inevitable eyestrain cut short my periods of night reading. I sometimes read during the after-lunch rest, but reading at other times of the day, when everyone else was working, put me at risk of being thought strange. Wanting to fit in, I tried to limit my appetite for the written word to leisure time.
Sundays, always a favorite day for me to relax with a good book, was not conducive to reading. The day was dedicated to visiting—that is, sitting around and talking for what seemed interminable hours until I finally learned to discuss issues, gossip, and tell jokes in Fijian. During those visits, I learned invaluable information about village life that aided my work, but I often found myself longing to be tucked away with a book.
I enjoyed the intimacy of community discussion, but I missed the intimacy of reading and identifying with fictional characters. My longing made me question my basic assumptions. Which was healthier: participating in community talk or solitary reading?
At times my solitary reading habits became occasion for community talk: "There's Daiana. She always has a book in her hand." In fact, one afternoon when my next-door neighbor came by and found me reading, she voiced her curiosity. She asked if all Americans read as much as I did, if Americans ever neglected their household and family duties to read, and if Americans ever missed work to read a good book. Her questions reminded me of the list of questions posed to suspected alcoholics.
Indeed, other incidents reaffirmed my suspicions that I was a book junkie. One day as I was preparing dinner, a friend came by with out-of-town relatives. After the usual introductions ("Here's our Peace Corps—Daiana"), the woman ventured to demonstrate just how exotic a specimen a "Peace Corps" was. "Look at her," she said, pointing out the cookbook lying open at my side. "She does everything by a book. She even uses one to cook."
Indeed, I began to realize just how much I did "by the book," or "books," to be more precise. For instance, if I wanted to work with the village nurse on a nutrition education project, I consulted the Lik-Lik Book for information from projects conducted by village development workers in Papua New Guinea. I looked up food information and recipes in the Fijian Women's Club Kakana Vinaka and Susan Parker's Fijian cookbook. I consulted food leaflets my Peace Corps Volunteer friend Sikandra Spain was developing for the South Pacific Commission. I used Peace Corps manuals to get ideas for poster presentations. And it wasn't just Peace Corps projects that sent me to books. I read for pleasure, falling asleep and waking up with books.
It is no wonder that, when my house accidentally caught fire, the first items the Fijians rushed to save were the books. They knew what was important to me. Despite the almost irreplaceable pieces of Fijian tapa cloth and a war club hanging in the house, they reached for my books first. They recognized my values even though they did not share them.
It is ironic that, of all my projects in Naqelewai, the primary school library is my lasting legacy. When the school was being rebuilt, the headmaster requested a library. He set aside the space in the building, and I contacted agencies that collect and distribute new and used books. Ten chests of books arrived, and some fifth and sixth graders helped sort and process the books. When the new building was finished, the headmaster declared the library the most important part of the new school, and he predicted a long future of reading for his students.
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About the Author:
Donna Gessell was a community development Volunteer in Naqelewai, Fiji, where she worked with five villages on development projects, and in Suva, Fiji, where she helped train women community leaders from across the Pacific at the Community Education Training Center of the South Pacific Commission. Gessell has a doctorate in English literature from Case Western Reserve University and is a professor of English at North Georgia College & State University.
Links to Related Topics (Tags):
Headlines: January, 2006; Peace Corps Fiji; Directory of Fiji RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Fiji RPCVs
When this story was posted in March 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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