Mariah Lafleur spent more than three years in the Peace Corps, conducting nutritional and health education in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic



We're not just talking distance here. We're talking about life and outlook. After all, dispensing advice about HIV/AIDS to prostitutes and intravenous drug users in a clinic for Spanish-speaking people in Oakland is a world apart from life in the small northwoods town of Tomahawk. But that's what happens to a person when a sense of adventure, openness and curiosity blend with a driving need to help other people.

Mariah Lafleur spent more than three years in the Peace Corps, conducting nutritional and health education in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic

For Tomahwk grad, Peace Corps is life

Caption: Irma native Mariah Lafleur is shown here with some boys she befriended in the Dominican Republic. She spent more than three years in the Peace Corps, conducting nutritional and health education in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy of Mariah Lafleur

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Mariah Lafleur is a long way from home.

We're not just talking distance here. We're talking about life and outlook. After all, dispensing advice about HIV/AIDS to prostitutes and intravenous drug users in a clinic for Spanish-speaking people in Oakland is a world apart from life in the small northwoods town of Tomahawk. But that's what happens to a person when a sense of adventure, openness and curiosity blend with a driving need to help other people.

Lafleur (her maiden name is Wise) grew up in Irma, and graduated from Tomahawk High School in 1999. She earned a bachelor of science degree in biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003, and a few months later went to Haiti as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Joining the Peace Corps wasn't so much a choice for Lafleur as an expectation.

"It's been an interest since I was little," Lafleur, 26, said in a phone interview from Oakland. "My family always traveled. ... And I have an uncle who was in one of the first Peace Corps groups in the '60s. He went to Africa, and I loved his stories. It was really inspiring."

She also wanted to see the world. "My family always traveled," she said. "But it was not just travel; the Peace Corps is living. I really wanted to learn about a country from the inside."

Her first Peace Corps stop was Haiti. She was a health education volunteer and counseled people about malnutrition and AIDS. "I was beginning a project to improve an aqueduct system with an engineer," she said.

But then, after seven months, politics intervened, and the president of Haiti was overthrown in a coup. All Peace Corps volunteers were pulled from the country. "I left with 10 minutes notice," Lafleur said. "It felt like an unwanted divorce from the community. I was really getting started in my projects. ... It was devastating. I was so upset. It wasn't easy in Haiti, but I really loved it."

After a short stay in Washington D.C. as the Peace Corps regrouped, Lafleur was sent to the Dominican Republic. She stayed there for about three years, working in a variety of capacities. She did more nutritional education, more HIV/AIDS work. Toward the end of that stint, she traveled the entire country, working as a volunteer coordinator.

Along the way, she met and fell in love with a Dominican man, Franquel Lafleur. They married a little more than a year ago.

"I wasn't looking for anybody," she said. "It just sort of happened."

She left the Peace Corps last December. "I came back a different person, quite literally," Lafleur said. "It's been said the hardest thing about going into the Peace Corps is coming back home. ... I still have reverse culture shock, almost daily."

Lafleur will study public health and nutrition in a graduate program at the University of California-Berkeley beginning in August. In the meantime, she found the job at the street clinic in Oakland, trying to help people who cling to the some of the lowest rungs of American society. "I see a lot of things that people don't even think exist in this country," she said.

She's not exactly sure what she'll do in the future, but it's likely she'll continue working on an international level with nutrition and HIV education.

"Both are very near and dear to me. It would be interesting to work with both," Lafleur said. "Maybe the biggest thing I've learned from all of this is that you never know what's going to happen."

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Headlines: July, 2007; Peace Corps Dominican Republic; Directory of Dominican Republic RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Dominican Republic RPCVs; Peace Corps Library; Peace Corps Directory; Peace Corps History; Peace Corps Message Board; Recent Peace Corps News

When this story was posted in July 2007, this was on the front page of PCOL:




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