Things were great in Dantchi. But on Jan. 8, two French citizens were kidnapped and killed in Niger's capital. Al-Qaida claimed credit. It was the first time they had struck in Niamey - and the men were taken from a bar frequented by Peace Corps volunteers. Mangan and other volunteers had gathered at a Peace Corps training center 40 minutes from Niamey for additional training. The director, a Nigerien, was called to the American embassy. On his return, he asked the volunteers to gather. He told them they had to leave. A United Nations plane would fly them out. "We all broke down and started crying," Mangan says. "One of the blessings was that I was with all these other people. In my village, it would have been just me, and I don't know how I would have handled it." The 98 volunteers were transported to Morocco and given the opportunity to leave the Peace Corps or request reassignment. Mangan decided on the latter, but the day she was to leave she was told that medical problems - she had been treated for an eating disorder almost 10 years earlier - meant she could not go to her new country. Along with other volunteers, she traveled to Egypt while deciding what to do. But protests in that country meant the volunteers could not stay there either. "In two weeks I got kicked out of two countries," Mangan says, ruefully. Mangan restarts two years as a Peace Corps volunteer next month when she moves to Lesotho in southern Africa. She admits to feeling more fear this time, but a sense of peace also will accompany Mangan. "It was really hard to figure out why this was happening, why I had to leave, and it still is," she says of her interrupted Peace Corps stint. "But the months I had at home and the months where I have been watching my hometown fight for its life with this flood and the way I've been able to develop better relationships with my friends and my family have all kind of made this evacuation worth it."
Heather Mangan has coped with a dream deferred since she was evacuated from the West African nation of Niger
Callison: Evictions from nations fail to kill Peace Corps dreams
11:22 PM, Sep. 12, 2011 |
Comments
Caption: Heather Mangan, a South Dakota native and SDSU grad. Photo: Devin Wagner / Argus Leader
Written by Jill Callison
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up - like a raisin in the sun?
- Langston Hughes
Heather Mangan has coped with a dream deferred since January when she was evacuated from the West African nation of Niger.
Her dream of service through the Peace Corps didn't dry up or fester or crust, as the Hughes poem suggests, however.
Instead, the Pierre native persevered and made it come true.
Mangan restarts two years as a Peace Corps volunteer next month when she moves to Lesotho in southern Africa.
She admits to feeling more fear this time, but a sense of peace also will accompany Mangan.
"It was really hard to figure out why this was happening, why I had to leave, and it still is," she says of her interrupted Peace Corps stint. "But the months I had at home and the months where I have been watching my hometown fight for its life with this flood and the way I've been able to develop better relationships with my friends and my family have all kind of made this evacuation worth it."
She feels less like a victim of circumstances and more as if it was all planned.
Her early, temporary return from Africa meant that Mangan played a major role in recording the record-setting flooding that Pierre experienced this summer.
She had offered to help at the Pierre Capital Journal while waiting to return to the Peace Corps, expecting to write feature stories. Instead, she put in 80 hours a week recording the stories of those affected by a too-full Missouri River.
Mangan describes herself as an "off-again on-again journalist and off-again on-again Peace Corps volunteer."
Now, she is setting aside the notebook and taking up lesson plans as an English teacher.
She first considered the Peace Corps while attending South Dakota State University but became a sports reporter after graduating.
"But I felt tugged to do something bigger, where I could help people and give back," she says.
In May 2010 she received an invitation to serve in Niger with the Peace Corps. After three months of training, she was assigned to the small village of Dantchi in the Zinder region.
"I loved it," Mangan says. "Every day I woke up and thought, 'I am so lucky. This is amazing. I cannot imagine anywhere else I'd rather be.' "
The Peace Corps, established in 1961, has been sending volunteers to Niger since 1962. Dantchi had not had a volunteer stationed there for 10 years, however.
The villagers embraced her and swept her into their lives, Mangan says.
That doesn't surprise her friend Lucy Albers, who met Mangan in 2004.
"She's so enthusiastic and caring," Albers says. "She's very easy-going, but at the same time she has so many ideas and thoughts and plans. She just wants to do the best she possibly can in bringing those ideas out."
Things were great in Dantchi. But on Jan. 8, two French citizens were kidnapped and killed in Niger's capital.
Al-Qaida claimed credit. It was the first time they had struck in Niamey - and the men were taken from a bar frequented by Peace Corps volunteers.
Mangan and other volunteers had gathered at a Peace Corps training center 40 minutes from Niamey for additional training. The director, a Nigerien, was called to the American embassy. On his return, he asked the volunteers to gather.
He told them they had to leave. A United Nations plane would fly them out.
"We all broke down and started crying," Mangan says. "One of the blessings was that I was with all these other people. In my village, it would have been just me, and I don't know how I would have handled it."
The 98 volunteers were transported to Morocco and given the opportunity to leave the Peace Corps or request reassignment.
Mangan decided on the latter, but the day she was to leave she was told that medical problems - she had been treated for an eating disorder almost 10 years earlier - meant she could not go to her new country.
Along with other volunteers, she traveled to Egypt while deciding what to do. But protests in that country meant the volunteers could not stay there either.
"In two weeks I got kicked out of two countries," Mangan says, ruefully.
She returned to Pierre and decided she was done. But as the days passed, Mangan realized that dream had been deferred, not destroyed.
She reapplied to the Peace Corps and in May learned she had been reassigned to Lesotho. Her only request was to delay her departure until after her brother's Oct. 8 wedding. She leaves Oct. 12, two days after her 27th birthday.
The most difficult part, Mangan says, is that she was unable to accomplish all that she had hoped in Dantchi.
She worries that she will become "that girl," the one who talks about what she had in the past and forgets to appreciate the present.
Spend a little time with Mangan and you know, even if she doesn't, how unlikely that is.
"She can adapt to anything," Albers says. "I think she considers this part of her journey."
The "dream deferred" is coming true for Mangan, and she intends to make the most of it.
"My Peace Corps experience, I think, will eventually be defined by Lesotho, not Niger, because I will have two years there," she says.
Reach Jill Callison at 331-2307. Follow her on Twitter at JillCallison.
