Within 36 hours, Rebecca Balmer said, the Peace Corps was discussing optional postings in Azerbaijan, Mozambique and the Ukraine. "It was particularly impressive after this whole debacle that they made us a priority," Balmer said. "They felt a lot of responsibility to take care of us." By this Friday, Field said, he expects that 39 of the 47 trainees will have new job assignments, departing no later than March. Twenty-seven will be abroad by Thanksgiving. And Balmer? She left Wednesday morning on a Delta flight to Atlanta, and subsequent connections to Johannesburg, South Africa, and Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. For the next 27 months, she will teach English, exercise her sense of humor, practice her leaps of faith ... and make America -- jaded, divisive America -- proud.
14 hours before their trans-Atlantic flight, the director of the Peace Corps' Asian operations arrived with brutal news: The Turkmenistan government had informed the agency that this group of volunteers would not be permitted to enter the country
Extending the peace to the world
By Steve Duin, The Oregonian
October 07, 2009, 6:22PM
Caption: Turkmenistan Women by veni markovski Flickr Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Last Tuesday, Rebecca Balmer and 46 other Peace Corps volunteers arrived in Philadelphia, the staging area for their launch into Turkmenistan, one of the more isolated former republics of the Soviet Union.
The eclectic group had a memorable day bonding in the heart of a city that lends itself to reflections on what it means to be born in America and why some are inspired to leave it. Balmer, a 22-year-old Oberlin College graduate, met people who had quit jobs, sold houses and ended long-term relationships en route to Turkmenistan.
And the young liberal -- Balmer revived the Amnesty International group while at Grant High School -- was encouraged by how much she had in common with fellow volunteers who led with their conservative credentials on their Facebook pages.
"I confronted a lot of my own biases," Balmer said. "We're different. We come from different places. But all of us are devoting two years of our lives to this."
The sense of expectancy over this joint adventure was peaking, then, 14 hours before their trans-Atlantic flight, when the director of the Peace Corps' Asian operations arrived with brutal news:
The Turkmenistan government had informed the agency that this group of volunteers would not be permitted to enter the country.
"It came as a complete surprise," Josh Field, the Corps' press director told me later. "They didn't give us a reason."
They just left 47 strangers stranded with their idealism in a Philadelphia hotel.
"If you've planned your entire life around getting on a plane the next day, and then you're suddenly coming home, it's a real shock to the system," Balmer said.
Forty-nine years ago, John F. Kennedy laid down the challenge, in a brief speech to students at the University of Michigan, that spawned the Peace Corps. I wonder which he would find more surprising today, the evolution of his vision on service and sacrifice or the erosion of our belief in common ground.
Very little still brings liberals and conservatives together to confront their biases and the possibility that endeavors remain that put those biases to shame. Very little has the stature to defy those who will whittle anything into a partisan cheap shot.
The Peace Corps is in select company. With 7,500 volunteers at work in 74 countries, including Turkmenistan, it continues to promote understanding between the haves and the have-nots in the world.
It continues to attract optimists who will abandon their comfort zone if that's what it takes to ease the pain of a village in Ghana.
And it persists in rescuing the lost and stranded, wherever they may be, as the agency proved again last week when the Turkmenistan trip collapsed.
Within 36 hours, Rebecca Balmer said, the Peace Corps was discussing optional postings in Azerbaijan, Mozambique and the Ukraine.
"It was particularly impressive after this whole debacle that they made us a priority," Balmer said. "They felt a lot of responsibility to take care of us."
By this Friday, Field said, he expects that 39 of the 47 trainees will have new job assignments, departing no later than March. Twenty-seven will be abroad by Thanksgiving.
And Balmer? She left Wednesday morning on a Delta flight to Atlanta, and subsequent connections to Johannesburg, South Africa, and Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.
For the next 27 months, she will teach English, exercise her sense of humor, practice her leaps of faith ... and make America -- jaded, divisive America -- proud.
