Peace Corps Connections
A Message from Professor Nancy Mezey
Have you ever thought about joining the Peace Corps? When I graduated college, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life. I was graduating with a degree in sociology and knew that I wanted to do something that contributed bettering people's lives in some way. My sister had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mauritania, and I had visited her during my junior year in college. Mauritania is a very poor country in Northwest Africa. I found the people there to be wonderful, but with the conditions, it was a pretty overwhelming experience even for a short visit. So I put the Peace Corps out of my head as a future option. But when I found myself working in a Spanish-speaking section of New York City, I decided that the best way to learn Spanish was to be fully immersed in the language and culture. I looked into a variety of programs in which I could travel to Latin America in some service learning capacity. Unfortunately, most overseas programs were short term and required that I pay a lot of money to participate. So my thoughts returned to the Peace Corps.
Volunteer Experiences
When I applied to the Peace Corps, I indicated on my application that although I would go anywhere I was most needed, my choices of geographic location were Latin America, Asia, and then Africa, in that order. Because I spoke some French, and perhaps because I had already visited my sister, the Peace Corps sent me to Mali, West Africa. I am sure that I would have loved Latin America or Asia, but I absolutely fell in love with Africa over the next three years in which I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).
I was an agricultural volunteer, teaching people to garden, making sure they had a water source and secure enclosure to keep the vegetables we grew safe from roaming domestic animals like sheep and goat and donkey. By far the best part of my job, however, was living with Malians, learning their language, being immersed in their culture, and making lifelong friends. Over the past 25 years since I was a volunteer, I have kept in touch with the family that cared for me while in Mali.
Future Opportunities
What I didn't realize about the Peace Corps is that my experiences there and the skills I gained as a PCV opened so many opportunities for me when I returned home. I was hired almost instantly as a special education teacher for an adult day program. Later, I paid my way through graduate school by being a Peace Corps recruiter, and later by earning an African language scholarship that built on the Bambara language I had learned in Mali. I also received several grants and scholarships, including a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship, to travel back to Mali in order to conduct my master's and doctoral research. In fact, one of my first publications as a graduate student was a chapter in a book on Mali, in which I published findings from my master's research on Malian healthcare.
Once at Monmouth University, I was able to serve first as the associate director and later as the director of the Institute for Global Understanding, a position that most likely would have passed me by had I not lived and worked overseas. This is not just my story—most of my friends with whom I served in Mali often found many work opportunities because of their Peace Corps experience. In fact, I don't know of anyone for whom the Peace Corps reduced their opportunities.
So are you interested in the Peace Corps? Then what are you waiting for?! Visit the Peace Corps online at http://www.peacecorps.gov. And if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at nmezey@monmouth.edu or visit me in Bey Hall 234.
