Two former members of the United States Peace Corps told 20 students and faculty members last night that the most profound lesson they learned from their service was the “similarity of humanity.”
“Whatever type of food you’re eating, whatever type of shoes you’re wearing — if you happen to be wearing shoes — people are the same,” said Allison Dewey, a BU graduate student who spent three years with the Corps in Senegal.
“All people like to laugh,” added Dewey, 27, who served in West Africa from March 1997 to Aug. 2000 and is now studying international relations and international communications.
David Montgomery, who worked for two years in Kyrgzstan with his wife, agreed his most lasting impression was “the similarity of humanity.”
But Montgomery, 33, also a BU graduate student, was hesitant to so narrowly quantify what he learned from his experiences in the central Asian nation. He said it was two years worth of experiences, and even a year later he is still learning from them.
The Kyrgzstan program has been suspended since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Montgomery said. Kyrgzstan is located several hundred miles north of Afghanistan.
The forum, which took place yesterday afternoon at BU’s Center for International Relations on Bay State Road, was prompted by President Bush’s recent initiative to double the Corps’ size.
Dewey admitted joining the Corps for selfish reasons after graduating with a degree in anthropology from St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
“I wasn’t expecting to change the world,” Dewey said. She said she wanted to travel, build solid relationships and learn a new culture.
“I wanted to travel, and I wanted someone to pay for that travel,” Dewey said. But she soon realized that would not be enough.
“I realized I really did want to help these people and that maybe I could make a difference,” Dewey said.
Dewey served as an agricultural volunteer, though she said had virtually no experience in the field. She said she spent her first three months in Senegal receiving a crash course in language, culture and agricultural techniques with the other 60 volunteers in her group.
Dewey’s primary responsibility was providing local farmers with improved seed and suggesting new farming methods. During the harvest, she collected data on crop yields to gauge if the methods had worked.
But the rainy season in Senegal is only four months long, so Dewey said she spent most of her time doing other things, such as organizing seminars about family planning, STDs, AIDS and lotion making.
Montgomery said his most redeeming projects were his secondary functions, including as consulting small businesses on moving to a market economy, organizing the country’s first marathon and teaching a poetry class at a Russian university.
Montgomery’s primary assignment was to aid the local government in privatizing the property of the former Soviet Republic. However, his master’s degree in philosophy left him ill prepared for the task, he said.
“They wanted someone to give legitimacy to the privatization work, and an American looked good,” said Montgomery, who worked briefly for Congress before joining the Corps.
Montgomery questioned the training process that trained him to work with non-governmental organizations but placed him with the government.
Dewey said the hardest part of the job is figuring out what the people want.
“The first three months are the most difficult,” Dewey said.
Montgomery saw it differently.
“The best advice I received from a volunteer was to do nothing for the first three months,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery said during the first three months you don’t know enough to accomplish anything, to know whom to be involved with and whom to avoid. Once they knew he was there, the people came to him, he said.
Dewey said learning the language was the most frustrating problem she faced.
“I can have all these friends and I can barely talk to them,” she said.
Montgomery said readjusting to American life was one of his biggest problems. After living off of his $42 a month living allowance and buying things off the street for two years, he said he felt lost in Stop ‘ Shop.
“I felt like I needed someone to walk me through the store,” he said.
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