Peace Corps Volunteer Danielle Palmer's dispatches home from The Gambia would turn just about anyone's eyes into saucer plates



There's the details of daily marriage proposals and learning the native phrase for "I don't love you, and I won't marry you." Or tales of a man who offered her a flashlight - and possibly batteries - in exchange for taking him back to America with her. And there were the children unfamiliar with white skin who kept their distance armed with sticks because they thought the Otisville native, 26, was a ghost or had a pigment-draining disease.

Peace Corps Volunteer Danielle Palmer's dispatches home from The Gambia would turn just about anyone's eyes into saucer plates

Volunteer will come out of Africa a changed woman, parents say

THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION

Monday, August 20, 2007

By Chad Swiatecki
cswiatecki@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6237

Danielle Palmer's dispatches home from The Gambia would turn just about anyone's eyes into saucer plates.

There's the details of daily marriage proposals and learning the native phrase for "I don't love you, and I won't marry you."

Or tales of a man who offered her a flashlight - and possibly batteries - in exchange for taking him back to America with her.

And there were the children unfamiliar with white skin who kept their distance armed with sticks because they thought the Otisville native, 26, was a ghost or had a pigment-draining disease.

But Palmer, who is at the beginning of a 27-month stint with the Peace Corps, also writes of breathtaking sunsets, the simplicity of bathing with a bucket of water and the joy of life's simple pleasures.

"She loves it there and keeps thanking the people for the chance to help them," said Palmer's mother, Cherie. "She says it's her chance to make a difference in the world."

She's had some practice already.

A LakeVille High School graduate, Palmer graduated with a biology degree from Humboldt State University in northern California. She soon joined AmeriCorps for a pair of yearlong assignments, building bridges in Massachusetts and working for Habitat for Humanity in Los Angeles.

Because of communication difficulties - Gambian stamps take weeks to obtain, and Palmer estimates she'll get to use e-mail only every two or three months - Palmer was unable to be interviewed for this article, but her parents supplied The Flint Journal with several letters and photos she has sent home.

Palmer was altruistic almost from the time she could talk, her parents said. So they weren't surprised when she told them she was heading to The Gambia in June, where she's going to teach math or science to girls in a village of 45,000 people.

And they're not surprised when she tells them she's given most of the money and other luxuries they've sent to the children in the desperately impoverished western African country.

"I know I've lost the daughter who left, but I truly look forward to meeting the daughter who comes back because she's learning and doing so much," said her father, Gary.

"She's truly going to be a citizen of the world who from now on won't be able to look at a $30 meal in a restaurant as anything but an extravagance."

Not when her main food staple since arriving has been couscous, mixed with sand to make it last longer. Her vegetarian stance has relaxed because meat adds precious nutrients to a sparse diet.

In a recent e-mail to friends and family, Palmer talked of shrugging off finding maggots in rice because it was a chance to get some rare protein.

And she recounted seeing a young girl with a badly infected ear and paying for two 10-mile rides to take her to a clinic to get it treated because locals were resigned to "maybe leave it like that until she lost her ear."

"The doctor looked at her and prescribed medicine, but by the time we got the prescription the pharmacy was closed," she wrote. "So we had to bike back that long distance the next day... the little girl (Manjara) her ear healed up instead of falling off once we got medicine for her so that was good."

Even though she's early in her service, it's clear to Palmer's family that she's growing fond of her surroundings.

Her aunt, Joyce Winchester of Clio, jokes that she expects her to come back with no clothes and possibly with a child she'll rescue from poverty.

Gary Palmer's not ruling anything out.

"From here on out, her life will never be about how much money she'll make, though she was never that way to begin with," he said. "I can't see her being able to just walk away from this kind of experience and not be really changed from it."

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Links to Related Topics (Tags):

Headlines: August, 2007; Peace Corps The Gambia; Directory of The Gambia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for The Gambia RPCVs

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