What the Peace Corps meant to me

It wasn’t until I returned home from the Peace Corps that I noticed the eatery down the street from my house. The white sign read “Darou Salaam Restaurant.” Like many Senegalese restaurants trying to make it in America, it promises “African food” and “food from all over the world.” It eschews the specificity of a West African country most people haven’t heard of for mass appeal. 

I had never even noticed the place before. But now, I instantly knew this was somewhere I could speak Wolof and order a plate of thieb, a local dish made with fish, vegetables, and rice. I proceeded to do both, to the pleasure and confusion of a kitchen staff who’d never seen a white American speak their language.

I joined the Peace Corps in 2018 for the opportunities: to live in and learn about West Africa, to improve my French, to learn a new language on top of that, and to do some meaningful work along the way. While adjusting to life in a rural village, I never thought lessons learned there would be applicable back home. But here I was, two neighborhoods over from my childhood home in Cincinnati, speaking Wolof with a set of neighbors I had never known I had before.

If my time in Senegal was the Peace Corps at its best, Wednesday’s lead story, which I co-wrote with our Johannesburg-based staff writer Ryan Lenora Brown, probes a bit deeper. We find global citizens and do-gooders, yes, but also people who are disillusioned, unsure if their work is actually helpful, and questioning what representing America means in such a divided age. 

The Peace Corps has always had two missions: to build literal bridges through volunteer work, and to build more figurative cultural bridges. In many ways it’s been successful. In many ways it hasn’t. What I learned reporting this story was the danger of generalizing, whether positively or negatively. No single experience with the program seemed to be universal.

Amid drastically competing visions for the program, then, what is the Peace Corps supposed to do? There’s no shortage of ideas. In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, where I live now, I was out recently with some other former Peace Corps volunteers. We debated whether the organization should exist and whether it was effective – a classic Peace Corps pastime. In some ways, it felt a bit rich – benefiting from the program, moving to Dakar, and then pondering whether we should pull up the ladder behind us. But most crucially, we debated what we meant by “effective.” One can easily log the number of wells built or mothers trained in nutrition classes. It’s harder to measure the impact of cultural exchange carried out, cross-border friendships made possible, or worldviews expanded. 

In many ways, the figurative bridges that the Peace Corps builds are exactly what today’s divided yet shrinking world needs a heavy dose of. That can only happen if volunteers coming into the program bring humility, rather than elitism or saviorism. The challenge for the Peace Corps will be making sure its ideals are being lived out in the field, and not just on paper in Washington.

What I know is that I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything. And I hope, when speaking Wolof in Cincinnati, that I can light that same spark in my Senegalese neighbors as I felt on the rare occasions in Senegal when I had the opportunity to speak my language, English – a feeling of instant relaxation, and a sense that I belonged.