2007.02.24: February 24, 2007: Headlines: COS - Senegal: COS - Sierra Leone: RedNova: Bryn Cain serves as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Senegal, just as her mother served in Sierra Leone in the 1960s
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2007.02.24: February 24, 2007: Headlines: COS - Senegal: COS - Sierra Leone: RedNova: Bryn Cain serves as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Senegal, just as her mother served in Sierra Leone in the 1960s
Bryn Cain serves as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Senegal, just as her mother served in Sierra Leone in the 1960s
Nancy Cain is proud of that connection with her daughter, though she marvels at the differences between serving now and 40 years ago. "We had one telephone in our entire town, and she has her own cell phone," Cain said during a recent presentation to a dozen people thinking of joining the Peace Corps. "They have all this stuff we never had." Bryn Cain's life in Senegal is anything but luxurious, though, despite her mobile telephone and laptop computer. Responding to The Oklahoman via e-mail, she wrote that Peace Corps volunteers there often "live without electricity or a clean water supply, have holes for toilets, eat the same terrible food every day, and are learning languages no one speaks outside of Senegal." Yet mother and daughter, a half-world away from each other, agreed Peace Corps service provides an experience of a lifetime. Nancy Cain believes in it so much, she speaks occasionally at Peace Corps recruiting meetings in Oklahoma.
Bryn Cain serves as a Peace Corps volunteer working in Senegal, just as her mother served in Sierra Leone in the 1960s
Peace Corps Service Crosses Generations: Daughter Continues Mother's Volunteer Legacy
By James S. Tyree, The Daily Oklahoman
Feb. 24--Bryn Cain is a Peace Corps volunteer working in western Africa, just as her mother was in the 1960s.
Nancy Cain, an Oklahoma City resident, is proud of that connection with her daughter, though she marvels at the differences between serving now and 40 years ago.
"We had one telephone in our entire town, and she has her own cell phone," Cain said during a recent presentation to a dozen people thinking of joining the Peace Corps. "They have all this stuff we never had."
Bryn Cain's life in Senegal is anything but luxurious, though, despite her mobile telephone and laptop computer. Responding to The Oklahoman via e-mail, she wrote that Peace Corps volunteers there often "live without electricity or a clean water supply, have holes for toilets, eat the same terrible food every day, and are learning languages no one speaks outside of Senegal."
Yet mother and daughter, a half-world away from each other, agreed Peace Corps service provides an experience of a lifetime. Nancy Cain believes in it so much, she speaks occasionally at Peace Corps recruiting meetings in Oklahoma.
Nearly 8,000 volunteers Cain said she applied for the Peace Corps in 1961 before Congress passed the legislation that created it, though she didn't join until 1965 when she finished college.
If the Peace Corps of today seem diminished compared with those early years, the numbers say otherwise. Laura Booher, a recruiter from the Dallas office, said the U.S. government's international service agency currently has nearly 8,000 volunteers -- the most in 20 years -- serving in more than 70 nations.
"So the Peace Corps is alive and well," she said.
Bryn Cain ventured to Senegal in September.
Teaching basic skills The agency considered Bryn Cain ideal for its Small Enterprise Development Program in Senegal. The program teaches women's groups, students, community leaders and other would-be entrepreneurs the basic skills to operate businesses.
"Basic concepts of the customer as a priority, financial planning, understanding indirect costs, etc., are much more foreign to the Senegalese than I ever imagined," she wrote.
The fact Cain spoke no French or Wolof, the local dialect, added to the massive challenge. But thanks to the Peace Corps' extensive volunteer training, she now is "more than capable of expressing my ideas and communicating basic concepts of my work."
There is at least one similarity between Senegal and Oklahoma -- the terrain.
"We definitely have a lot of flat plains here, so the landscape is pretty similar," she wrote. "Oh, Senegal has red dirt! Lots of people point out how odd it is, but I always chime in that it's completely normal for me."
Rain on the roof Forty years earlier, from 1965 to 1967, her mother worked at a hospital operated by CARE and the Peace Corps in Magburaka, Sierra Leone. During a video presentation that accompanied her recent presentation, Nancy Cain nodded and smiled when she heard a volunteer describe the loud rapping of rain on a metal roof.
It reminded her of training in St. Croix and her eventual assignment in Sierra Leone, a place she said receives on average 108 inches of rain during six months, and then almost none for the next six.
"When we were in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, we lived in a cow pasture," she later explained. "We constructed things with tin roofs and when it rained, you literally couldn't even hear the person sitting next to you."
Her daughter posts photos of Senegal and writes about her experiences there in a blog at bryncain.blogspot.com.
Booher said the corps' top goal in placing volunteers, regardless of nation or language, is matching one's skills with the needs of a particular region. Many volunteers are young adults, but some are in middle age and even retired.
Ironically, that long-range empowerment can be one of the biggest negatives for volunteers, next to missing family and friends at home.
"It is difficult to feel our work has a purpose because the Peace Corps emphasize long-term, sustainable development, and our impact may be small and only felt years after we're gone."
Bryn Cain has no regrets, though. Joining the Peace Corps "will stretch every part of you and make you question yourself, the world, and your place in it, and will provide some very interesting answers," she wrote.
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Daily Oklahoman
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Headlines: February, 2007; Peace Corps Senegal; Directory of Senegal RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Senegal RPCVs; Peace Corps Sierra Leone; Directory of Sierra Leone RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Sierra Leone RPCVs; Oklahoma
When this story was posted in March 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:
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Story Source: RedNova
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