As hostilities rapidly intensified and Russia sent forces deep into Georgia, the Peace Corps scrambled to get its volunteer trainees and other personnel, out of harm's way in a hurry. "It was emotionally very difficult and it still is for us," Shaub said in an interview from her family's home here last week. "But we were always physically out of harm's way." The Peace Corps whisked Shaub, and the other volunteers with whom she trained, to a remote mountain resort that became a pit stop to their bus ride out of the country a week later into neighboring Armenia, where the Peace Corps evacuees stayed for about a month. From Armenia, Shaub and many others in her group returned home to the United States or landed new Peace Corps assignments abroad outside Georgia, Shaub said. But it remains hard to accept the abruptly abbreviated service mission to Georgia, she said. It's still emotionally difficult "because we didn't get to do what we were sent there to do. We didn't get to say goodbye to our (host) families. We were just starting our new lives there that were supposed to be for two years," Shaub said.
Gretchen Shaub's Peace Corps mission in Georgia cut short by conflict
A Peace Corps mission cut short by conflict
Ewing High graduate had planned to teach English in Georgia
Sunday, September 28, 2008
BY ROBERT STERN
EWING -- An emergency evacuation from one former Soviet republic to another in the face of war this summer was not what Gretchen Shaub had in mind when she signed up for the Peace Corps.
Shaub, a 2004 Ewing High School graduate, had expected nothing more daunting than cultural and language challenges as she began what should have been a 27-month Peace Corps assignment in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in June.
But she barely got a chance to put her training and skills teaching English to Georgian students to the test when long-running tensions between Russia and Georgia over the Russian-backed Georgian region of South Ossetia erupted into war between the two nations in August.
As hostilities rapidly intensified and Russia sent forces deep into Georgia, the Peace Corps scrambled to get its volunteer trainees and other personnel, out of harm's way in a hurry.
"It was emotionally very difficult and it still is for us," Shaub said in an interview from her family's home here last week. "But we were always physically out of harm's way."
The Peace Corps whisked Shaub, and the other volunteers with whom she trained, to a remote mountain resort that became a pit stop to their bus ride out of the country a week later into neighboring Armenia, where the Peace Corps evacuees stayed for about a month.
From Armenia, Shaub and many others in her group returned home to the United States or landed new Peace Corps assignments abroad outside Georgia, Shaub said.
But it remains hard to accept the abruptly abbreviated service mission to Georgia, she said.
It's still emotionally difficult "because we didn't get to do what we were sent there to do. We didn't get to say goodbye to our (host) families. We were just starting our new lives there that were supposed to be for two years," Shaub said.
Shaub, who received a bachelor's degree from New York University, where she studied psychology and business, had been assigned to teach business English at a vocational school in Georgia once she completed her volunteer training. That was to have happened the week the Peace Corps volunteers were relocated to Armenia.
Amanda Rees of Houston, another Peace Corps volunteer in Shaub's training group whose mission was cut short, said both the Peace Corps personnel and the Georgians with whom she had come into contact were surprised by the degree of Russian engagement.
"At the time, nobody felt Russia would be involved in a physical sense," Rees said. "Russia's kind of had its hand in it (backing two pro-Russian separatist regions of Georgia) for a while, kind of 'puppeteering' the breakaway regions. So everybody just thought it was another conflict like they have every year and it would be over in a couple of days."
Rees said the village where she had been staying near the city of Gori was bombed a couple of days after the Peace Corps personnel left.
"The day that we were being pulled in (from the villages), we saw Georgian troops, and you never see Georgian troops, and they were just filling the streets," Shaub said. "It was kind of nerve-racking. But Peace Corps did a great job of keeping us safe, getting us out when we had to be taken out."
Contact Robert Stern at rstern@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5731.
