In the frozen streets of Kiev, thousands of protesters old and young from across the country have come to be part of the Orange Revolution, a mostly peaceful conflict between the two Ukrainian presidential candidates. In the churning sea of brightly colored flags and tents, a young man walks dressed in a large winter coat with a hood and scarf. He doesn’t speak to anyone, because to do so would reveal he isn’t a Ukrainian at all, but an American Peace Corps volunteer. The Peace Corps instructed volunteers not to get involved with the political event, but Chad Goeden’s host mother insisted he witness the historic moment and gave him the Ukrainian winter clothing so he would blend in. “I wasn’t really supposed to be there,” Goeden said, now an employee at the International Students and Scholars Office at Washington State University. “But it was an amazing experience. I was able to build a better relationship with my host town — I could tell them that I was there during that historic moment for their country.”
Chad Goeden served as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English to high school students from 2004 to 2006 in Ukraine
Experiencing a different world
Written by Jake Barber - Argonaut
Monday, 20 April 2009
Caption: Chad Goeden stands next to the road that leads to a plot of land owned by his host family near Brody, Ukraine Sept. 2, 2006. Goeden served as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English to high school students from 2004 to 2006. Courtesy Photo
It is early November 2004, and the country of Ukraine is in political turmoil.
In the frozen streets of Kiev, thousands of protesters old and young from across the country have come to be part of the Orange Revolution, a mostly peaceful conflict between the two Ukrainian presidential candidates. In the churning sea of brightly colored flags and tents, a young man walks dressed in a large winter coat with a hood and scarf. He doesn’t speak to anyone, because to do so would reveal he isn’t a Ukrainian at all, but an American Peace Corps volunteer.
The Peace Corps instructed volunteers not to get involved with the political event, but Chad Goeden’s host mother insisted he witness the historic moment and gave him the Ukrainian winter clothing so he would blend in.
“I wasn’t really supposed to be there,” Goeden said, now an employee at the International Students and Scholars Office at Washington State University. “But it was an amazing experience. I was able to build a better relationship with my host town — I could tell them that I was there during that historic moment for their country.”
Goeden applied for the Peace Corps in November 2003 — three years after he graduated with a degree in German education, and was notified of his acceptance in July 2004.
The Peace Corps is an independent federal agency that was started by an executive order from former President John F. Kennedy March 1, 1961. The idea began when he was campaigning for the presidency and challenged a group of University of Michigan students to serve and live in developing countries to promote peace. Since then, 195,000 volunteers have served in 139 countries, working to educate and support economic growth.
The application process is a long and competitive one, according to Goeden. The basic requirements for applying to the Peace Corps are that the applicant be at least 18 years old, in good health and a U.S. citizen. It is preferred that applicants have at least an undergraduate degree and experience in foreign languages and volunteer work. After submitting the application, an accomplishment in itself according to Goeden, applicants are interviewed, sent through a medical and legal clearance process and, if they are found to be qualified, advanced to the placement process.
Applicants don’t get to choose what country they are placed in, but they can state a preference. According to Matthew Hogue, regional recruiter for the Peace Corps in Seattle, new applicants often ask him if they can choose where they get to go. He said they try to place volunteers in their country of preference, but they also look at where they are needed most. He said flexibility is something they look for in new recruits.
However, once applicants are placed, it is not set in stone. Goeden said when he was first contacted, he was told he was going to be teaching an after-school sports program.
“I told them that if they really needed me there, that I could do it,” Goeden said, “but also that I thought they should know that I can’t catch a ball for the life of me.”
Goeden was given a second option of teaching English in Ukraine, and he took the assignment.
Gordon Thomas, the Director of Writing in the University of Idaho English Department, was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon from 1974-78. He said he was originally placed in the Central African Republic. He called a Peace Corps representative in Washington, D.C., with some questions about the post, and the representative indicated he didn’t think Thomas was ready for the difficulties that the country would offer. Thomas was then given a choice among the C.A.R., Chad and Cameroon — he chose Cameroon.
Training
After a volunteer’s location is chosen, he or she goes through a training period. The Peace Corps term of service is 27 months, but the first three are used for training in the host country. Volunteers are trained in the culture of the country as well as an intensive language program. According to Goeden, the language classes are eight hours a day for four days a week.
“I couldn’t speak any Ukrainian when I got there,” he said. “The language program is amazing — I picked it up pretty quick.”
The three months of in-country training are usually in a larger city. Goeden’s destination was a town of about 18,000 people called Brody, but he spent his three months of training with a host family in the capital of Kiev, where he witnessed the Orange Revolution.
Much of the training is determined by what job volunteers will be doing at their destination. According to Hogue, 8 percent of volunteers work in agriculture, 19 percent work in business, information and communication technology, 30 percent work in education, 9 percent work in environmental programs, 17 percent work in health and HIV/AIDS and 17 percent work in youth and community development.
As educators in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language program, Goeden and Thomas taught classes in local, state-run schools to high school-age students. Thomas said one of his classes had about 60 students, and he had no experience teaching at the time.
Hogue was a volunteer in a pilot business advising program that worked with the Thai government to develop business communications and ideas for small enterprise development.
Currently, the Peace Corps also requests volunteers take on a secondary project in addition to their main job. Goeden assisted Ukraine in writing an HIV/AIDS curriculum. The country has one of the fastest growing HIV/AIDS infection rates, and he said sex education in Ukraine is not a common subject. Hogue worked to set up forest conservation projects in Thailand to combat the loss of forest area to encroaching rice fields and logging. As part of the program, he helped determine time periods for forests to be closed to the public for recovery. Thomas did not have a secondary project ,because that was not part of the program during the ‘70s.
As they complete their term of service, volunteers have a three-part mission. The first goal is to help the people of interested countries meet their need for trained men and women. The second is to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the people served, and the last is to help promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans.
“We are kind of like ambassadors there,” Thomas said.
To garner a better relationship with the people they are working with, volunteers usually live as the locals do. They are given a living allowance that allows them to live comfortably, but they do not get special living accommodations as Peace Corps volunteers. Goeden lived with a local family of five whose mother spent two years as an undocumented worker in Israel to raise money for her family.
Safety first
Once volunteers begin with their jobs, they must follow the rules and regulations of the organization. According to Goeden, safety is the biggest concern. Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed to drive at all during their term of service, and if they are caught doing, so they are sent home.
Thomas said in his day, things were a little different. Most volunteers weren’t allowed to drive, but some did anyway, he said. He saw some volunteers doing biology work while he was in Cameroon that couldn’t get to their site easily, so they rode dirt bikes.
When volunteers travel, they must always inform the Peace Corps where they will be. Volunteers get two days of vacation time per month of service, and many like to use those 48 days of vacation to travel around their country or to visit nearby countries. The Peace Corps needs to know the location of all of their volunteers in the case of an emergency evacuation.
“They do come down on you for safety, but it’s for a reason,” Goeden said. “It’s just hard to see with all the other frustrations at the time.”
While the Peace Corps can be a life-changing experience for people like Goeden, Thomas, and Hogue, it isn’t for everyone. Goeden said he saw many people drop out in the first six months of service because they just couldn’t handle it. He said volunteers have to be able to adjust to a completely different world and deal with isolation from other Americans. The closest Peace Corps volunteer to Goeden’s host town was two hours away, and he said the only other English speaker he saw regularly was an old, retired Swedish lawyer who occasionally did charity work in the area. Thomas said a woman he arrived with looked out the window of their plane as they began to land in Cameroon and made a remark about how surprised she was a third-world country was so dirty because she expected it to be pristine and simple. She lasted about two days.
“It is a great experience,” said Thomas, “but you have to make sure that you are psychologically prepared. You have to be mature and have a relative idea of your abilities.”
Culture shock
Goeden and Thomas both said they didn’t have to worry about crime in the local population. It is rare for a Peace Corps volunteer to get into that sort of trouble, though Thomas said he heard a story about a female volunteer who was walking along a river in Zaire when she fell in and was killed by a crocodile. Crocodiles aside, Thomas said the biggest danger to volunteers while he was in Cameroon was vehicle accidents. He said he missed a taxi once by just a few seconds, so he grabbed the next one and found the first had gotten into a head-on collision a few miles down the road.
“My first thought was that someone should call an ambulance,” he said, “but there weren’t any ambulances in Cameroon.”
Cultural differences aren’t always as disturbing as a lack of ambulances and can often provide insights into an entirely different world. Goeden said he was painting a fence in his host town one day when a couple drove by in a horse-drawn buggy. The woman was in traditional dress complete with a “babushka” scarf around her head, but the man was talking on a cell phone as he held the reins.
“That describes the country,” he said. “It is a transition between old and new.”
Coming home
When their term of service is up, Peace Corps volunteers face an entirely new set of challenges and experiences when they come home. Goeden said he suffered from “reverse culture shock” when he walked into a supermarket in England while on the way home. He said he thought, “I can’t be here,” when he saw entire aisles devoted to cereal, while in Ukraine, most people only have two choices for breakfast. While he was uncomfortable with the inequalities that were obvious to him when he came back, Goeden said he eventually grew to accept them — it was necessary to get on with life.
“You remember yourself here before you went. You are one of your own memories,” he said. “You have to find your place in a place you thought you knew.”
To help returning volunteers transition into their lives again, the Peace Corps gives them $6,000 when they have completed 27 months of service. Volunteers are also offered help in obtaining a job, a year of non-competitive eligibility for a federal job, discounted health insurance for 18 months and graduate school opportunities.
Not everyone comes back right away, however. After completing his Peace Corps service in 1978, Thomas took a third of his reimbursement money and traveled Northern Africa for six to eight weeks. He paid a Nigerian driver to take him across the Sahara desert in the back of a truck with a couple of goats that became carsick along the way.
Despite the carsick goats, culture shock and frustrating rules, Thomas, Goeden and Hogue all said the Peace Corps had a life changing effect on them. They said they came back with new skills, confidence and a better understanding of other cultures. Goeden said even if a volunteer doesn’t succeed at their job, they still gain something merely from the mission and the experience.
For more information on the Peace Corps, Hogue will be giving a presentation at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Chiefs Room of the Student Union Building.
