She truly wanted this with all her heart," Susan Jenison said of her daughter's Peace Corps assignment. "It was where she thought the Peace Corps was going to lead her, to help her decide her path in life. We have no anger. We're just so glad she pursued her dreams."
Peace Corps volunteer Lena Jenison marveled over things great and small in a country she was growing to know
UW grad Jenison loved her new Peace Corps life
By Bill Glauber of the Journal Sentinel
Dec. 24, 2011
In her blog about serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mozambique, Lena Jenison of Hartland marveled over things great and small in a country she was growing to know.
She learned how to kill a chicken ("I'm still traumatized") and got through the dreaded fourth week in the program ("We're all on language overload, host family overload, and rice overload").
But mostly, she wrote about what she loved about Mozambique, including "petting my host sister's afro when she gets her braids taken out, hanging out with my topless host grandma while she slaughters countless chickens, my model school students saying 'hello teacher Lena' on the street, feeling like I'm camping when I hike outside to the bathroom at night with my headlamp . . . "
Jenison, 22, died from injuries suffered in a vehicle accident Tuesday in Mozambique. The accident claimed the life of another Peace Corps volunteer, Elizabeth Alden Landis, 23, from Yarrow Point, Wash.
Jenison was a 2007 graduate of Arrowhead High School.
In May, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she majored in biology and Spanish. She displayed a zeal for adventure, spending a semester abroad in Peru, where she traveled down the Amazon and hiked through a canyon.
In September, she arrived in Mozambique for training, was sworn in as a Peace Corps volunteer Dec. 8 and started her two-year assignment teaching biology in a community in Gaza province in southern Mozambique.
"She truly wanted this with all her heart," Susan Jenison said of her daughter's Peace Corps assignment. "It was where she thought the Peace Corps was going to lead her, to help her decide her path in life. We have no anger. We're just so glad she pursued her dreams."
Susan Jenison said her daughter "was living in a cement house with a tin roof and cooking on charcoal and had no toilet and she was happy as could be."
"She was so open," she added.
Jenison's blog posts revealed a perceptive eye as well as a healthy sense of humor about coping with culture shock and austere living conditions while also yearning for the comforts of home.
Among things she missed about home were "multi-ply toilet paper, cheese, Grandma Carita's furry, snowmobilin' boots, Food Network, comfy beds, pretzels, peanut butter toast, ugly Christmas sweaters, waffles on Sundays, and Papa J's coffee."
For Thanksgiving, she drew up a "Green Bay Packers turkey, complete with cheese head that said, 'I am thankful for Aaron Rodgers' hot bod and smokin' right arm.' "
Jenison's writing from Mozambique was treasured by her family.
"I could hear her in those posts," her mother said. "I don't know how I can convey to you that she loved the experience and the newness and trying things and understanding how different people work."
Besides her mother, Jenison is survived by father Leigh; sister Anna; brother Tomas; and grandparents Roland and Phyllis Jenison and Jack and Carita Hoffman.
A visitation will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday at Krause Funeral Home, 12401 W. National Ave., New Berlin, followed by a celebration of life service.
