The journey, in what might be euphemistically called a worn-out micro-bus, was challenging but riveting.  The rough dirt road wound through mountains and across a river bridged by a stone bridge that was built by enslaved Indians for their Spanish overlords 300 years before.  When I finally reached the village, about 30 miles down the track, all the women and girls in town were there to meet me and escort me to my lodging.  That turned out to be a storeroom full of huge bags of sorghum, rice, and wheat, donated by various aid groups.  There was no electricity or running water, and I was told that two girls would take me down to the river to bathe every morning at sunrise.  Sleeping on bags of sorghum proved to be surprisingly comfortable, and bathing at sunrise was one of the most enjoyable parts of my day.  For the next four days I taught the most attentive group I have ever met everything I knew about first aid, and threw in presentations about hand-washing, boiling drinking water, and  eating protein as well.  Few of the residents had ever seen a gringa before, and my every movement and action in the village was followed with fascination.  When the time came for me to take the bus out, the entire village threw me a “despedida”, a going-away party, where the village girls and women stayed up with me until 2:00 AM, when the bus came through town.  When the bus door opened, there was angry talk between some of the matrons and the bus driver.  They didn’t want me to get on the bus, and wanted me to wait another week until the next bus.  But I wanted to get home, I thought I’d be fine , and I insisted on boarding.  A few minutes later, I realized why they were so upset.  The driver and most of the men on board were drunk.  The two women passengers were huddled on the floor next to the door, obviously terrified.  I ordered tthe two men sitting directly behind the bus driver to move back and show some respect for the women on board.  (It was late, I was tired, and I didn’t take much crap in those days!)  They did, and the bus started out with the women sitting on the inside and me on the aisle.  For the first ten miles, the driver managed to keep the bus on the road, and I was lulled into a false sense of security.  But he fell asleep and the bus skidded off the road, then into a shallow ditch, then came to rest partially on its side against a titlted rock face.  All was still for one moment, and the next moment, the men on the bus erupted in panic.  I had been thrown onto the floor in the impact, and now men were treading heavily on me as they raced for the exit or jumped out of windows.  There was no reason to panic: the engine died immediately and there was no chance of us tipping any further.  But drunken campesinos tend to be a panicky lot.  The two women at my side began piteously keening and moaning, although they had kept their seats and hadn’t been stepped on.  I was disgusted at the lot of them.  I got my pack from the overhead rack and climbed down off the bus to a scene of drunks throwing up, yelling, and cursing.  Without even a backward glance, I started down the road on foot, wanting only to put some distance between me and the hellish scene.  Setting off alone, on foot, at three in the morning over a deserted road was dangerous, but seemed the better option.  This was, by far, the worst moment of my Peace Corps career.

There was enough moonlight to let me see a bit of the road ahead, and for some time, I walked at a good pace.  But as my adrenaline rush subsided, I became aware of aches and bruises all over my body.  One foot hurt horribly every time I put weight on it.  I walked as long as I could, and finally found a dirt path leading up to a solidly-built, but seemingly deserted house.  There was a stone porch out front, and I lay down on it, put my head on my pack, and fell asleep within moments, too worn out to think of anything else.

When I awoke at sunrise, it was to the sight of a large family looking at me.  As I sat up, I was given a cup of coffee and a stack of tortillas.  As soon as I came to my senses, I explained what had happened, and why I was sleeping on their porch.  A middle-aged lady brought a basin of water and a clean towel, waited as I washed my face, then she set about washing the crusted blood off my feet, which were quite bruised.  I let despair set in – I was sure I had broken bones in one foot, I hurt all over, and it even hurt to breathe.  But the man of the house finally showed up, and told me to have no fear;  he and his family were at my service.  He disappeared, but came back in a few minutes mounted on a horse, and leading a second horse, bridled but with no saddle.  He lead the second horse up to the porch, and the mother, grandmother, and kids all helped me heave myself up.  As the daylight spread, we were off down the road.  Riding was better than walking, but I still hurt with every jolt of the horse.  Just when I thought I could stand no more, we rode up to a bigger house with a truck parked out front.  In five minutes, I was in the cab and we were bound for the highway.  I barely had time to thank the rider for his and his family’s kindness.  When we got to the road, the man with the truck refused payment and waited with me till a bus came by and I was on it.  Before I knew it, I was back home.  My landlady heated two big buckets of water for me so that I could have a warm bucket bath.  By the time I finished, she had made off with my filthy clothes and brought me clean ones.  She helped me to bed, where I found a plate of yellow cake and a glass of hot milk waiting.  I slept for the next twelve hours and awoke to the sight of my landlady dozing in a chair next to my bed, waiting to help me out to the bathroom.  When I thought of the kindness of the people who had come to my aid, I broke down in tears.  That was the best day of my Peace Corps experience.

The job was dirty, frustrating, and lonely.  I was often sick, and there were nights when I realized I had never before felt so alone, and would never feel so alone again.  I doubted myself and my worth every day, and was tempted every week to call it quits and go home.  But I knew somehow that if I could get  through it, I’d never doubt myself again, and would always have the stories to tell.  And I was right.

The best day: when I met my wife Kate, a volunteer in the next group.  We have four or five 30 year + marriages between vols in our Bahraini group of like 20 people. My worst was the day I left, although I didn’t realize it at the time.  By far THE best two years of my life.

It was the last race I ever ran.

I had only been at my site for a few months when I decided to enter a 10K in Cuenca, Ecuador. In retrospect, it was a huge mistake. I hadn’t trained since college; my New Orleans lungs were still ill-equipped to extract oxygen from the thin mountain air; and my flatlander muscles could hardly summit a curb less clamber up steep cobblestone mountain roads. Nonetheless, I was, well, Peace Corps confident. Like so many new volunteers, I had set my sights on saving the world; so surely, a piddling Andean road race would be nothing more than an effortless (and triumphant) walk in the park.

It wasn’t.

From the get-go, an endless stream of barrel-chested descendants of Atawalpa and Pizzaro blew by me as though I were plodding on a treadmill. Battling cramps, altitude sickness and, more painful still, humiliation, I wearily soldiered on. When I finally approached the finish line, (I’d prefer not to divulge my time) there were only two other non-contenders left in the running, an old man wearing rubber boots and a little girl without shoes. In an all-out “sprint” for the final 20 meters, I just barely managed to pull ahead of the barefooted child. Unfortunately, the old man, obviously inspired by the raucous cheering from his great grandchildren, clipped me at the already well-trodden tape.

With my deflated ego in tow, I endured the hour and a half bus ride and the forty-five minute walk back to my site thinking, “Surely, this will be the worst experience of my entire Peace Corps career?”

It wasn’t.

The next morning I woke up in a sea of sweat. My lungs, two waterlogged Nerf footballs, struggled to absorb even the smallest droplets of air. I had a fever of one hundred and five and my body felt as though it had been run over by every Ecuadorian who had passed me the day before. On top of the shame from Saturday’s drubbing and besides the ever-present and occasionally brutal giardia, I now had pneumonia, and without immediate medical attention, would most likely die.

Lucky for me it was Sunday, el día del mercado, and my landlord, a renowned curandero or shaman was in town and stopped by for a quick visit. “El joven Leonardito*,” he said, “You look muy mal. Que pasó?” Delirious, I couldn’t manage even a syllable in Spanish, English or Quechua. “No hay problema,” he said, “I’ll make you feel better muy rapido.” He then beat me about the head with a severed sloth paw, spit trago or South American moonshine in my face, said a short prayer to Saint Joseph, and then gave me a rusted cup of lukewarm herbal tea (spiked with trago no less). “You’ll be mejor in a couple of hours,” he assured me as he shut the door and headed off to the market.

I wasn’t.

When I finally came to the stark realization that the curandero’s “cure” had failed, I dragged myself from the grass-filled futon, toweled off and began the slow, serpentine stagger into town. Along the way, I passed, (or I should say, “they passed me”) a number of campesinos. “¡Que boracho Leonardito!” they said and cheered. “How drunk you are. Good for you!”

“No, estoy infermo,” I slurred in protest.

“Right?” they countered sarcastically. “We’ll have to discuss this over cervezas in town. Vámonos!”

When I stumbled into Jima, the principal of the elementary school, who knew I didn’t drink, or at least not at that hour, immediately recognized the severity of my condition. She took me into her office and had me lie down on a long white plastic table. “Señor Dunbar,” she announced, “I have good news and bad.” Starting with the latter, she said, “The doctor did not come this week; but you are in luck, the curandero is here.” Already treading water, my heart sank.

“I’m pretty sure I’m gonna need modern medicine?” I suggested. “How about El Veterinario?”

“I believe he’s in Zhamar vaccinating alpaca. I’ll send one of my students to retrieve him PRONTO.”

Shivering, sweating and gasping for breath on the cold Formica, I vaguely made out an announcement over the church loudspeaker, “Ven a ver, el gringo va a morir! Come see the Gringo die!” Even in my delirium, I found it just a tad disconcerting.

Much later than “pronto,” the vet finally appeared. By then, I had become the town’s most popular market-side attraction and the room was packed with pedestrian rubberneckers. The vet herded them away and started digging around in his saddlebag. He pulled out a huge thermometer obviously designed for a part of a large animal’s anatomy I didn’t possess. After causing me to grimace and tear up, he told me the first of two things I already knew: “You are very sick Señor Dunbar and if you do not receive treatment I am afraid you will die.” He then took out a jug of penicillin and a syringe with a needle the size of a chopstick and told me the second: “This may hurt.”

It did!

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, my scream could be heard in all twelve towns of the parroquia. It’s also worth pointing out that several English curse words are well understood in even the most far-flung parts of the non-English speaking world.

Soon after the shot heard round the Equator, my fever miraculously broke. The vet left and the crowd, a bit disappointed, dispersed. About a half an hour later though, my temperature began to rise again and the principal called for the priest.

Father Meyer, a large German with an insatiable appetite for roasted guinea pig and Scottish whiskey, burst into the room and bellowed, “Señor Dunbar, I am here to give you your Last Rites!”

Remembering the priest had the only car in town, I countered, “How about a ride to the hospital instead?”

Bouncing down the road to Cuenca in the back of Father Meyer’s dusty Mercedes Benz SUV, I thought to myself, “If I survive, surely my Cuerpo de Paseo will improve?”

It did. A lot.

Happy birthday Peace Corps and thanks for the memories! I’m glad I lived to have had them.

* Most Ecuadorians had trouble pronouncing my first name, so I went by Leonardo in honor of my favorite Renaissance man. The “ito” had to do with my slight stature.

Note: In some parts of Latin America “gringo” is considered a derogatory term. This was not the case in Ecuador. (We were also known affectionately as “Misters.”)

When I introduced myself, in the Punjabi dialect I thought I had forgotten, I was greeted with smiles, salaams, and warm-hearted courtesy. Within minutes, the headman’s nephew, transformed from a shy schoolboy into a handsome white–haired gentleman, was standing by my side. His polite conversation quickly became peppered with recollection. Soon we were surrounded by young women, children, teenagers all eager to claim my attention. More family members and neighbors crowded in.

“Come visit my grandmother. She lived in the house next to you.”; “My father’s second wife remembers your lessons; she wants to visit with you.”, “You came to my grandmother’s wedding; she is waiting to greet you.”, “We know you like spicy spinach and village chapattis to eat; please come eat with us;” “My father is very ill but he brought you vegetables from the market, please come to him” and, poignantly, “My mother is the headman’s first wife and she wants to bless you for all the women and girls in our village.”

As I walked around my former village, now twice as large and boasting, finally, a girls school, two boys schools, a health clinic, many small shops, and a cell phone tower taller than the minaret of the mosque, I remembered everything. I felt again the loneliness, homesickness, frustration, joy, and sense of commitment and love for these generous and good -hearted Muslim men, women, and children that I had known as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Not only did these people remember me, but their children and grandchildren knew about me–and about the possibilities I had brought to them from my very mysterious and far-away life in America.

When I left these villagers the first time, I thought that only my life had changed. Forty-five years later, I realize that they too had been changed by me. Not the lessons in sewing or hygiene or reading that I had labored to impart, but the lessons of caring and giving and opportunity that I modeled by just living among them, trying my best to be accepted and to accept them for who they were and what we had to learn together. When I left my village in Pakistan the second time, my friends thanked me for showing them, once again, that not all Americans are afraid to know Pakistanis and to visit Pakistan. “We are not terrorists,” the schoolmaster said. ” We are all one family on this planet, still learning how to live together in peace.”

Thank you, Peace Corps, for giving us the opportunity to learn this together.

You said it all — the first and last days – so well and in so few words.! Thank you. Its exactly how I feel and I think how a lot of others also remember their own fantastic experiences! Good job!

It’s hard to pick out a best or worst day for my time (Swaziland, 1988-1990) in the Peace Corps. The memories of it blend together now, but thinking back I realize that some of the best moments involved moving in some way…

In a van the first night in country and Thad, an older fellow volunteer, telling Nadia (a veteran volunteer who would help us in our training at Sibebe) that he’d feel a whole lot better if she turned around and looked at the road while she was talking to us (he had forgotten that in Swaziland the person in the left front seat was a passenger and not the driver).
Seeing a day at school dissolve into pictures that i carry on a Friday afternoon bus ride to the capital. I see the faces and the eyes of my students as they had worked on a test I had given them that day. It felt good that I had gotten through another week of teaching and done my best, and that the students in turn had tried to do theirs.
Bump starting the headmaster’s old car, our only mode of transportation to a big district wide track meet, where our best runner, Lindiwe Khumalo, broke away from the pack in the 1,500 meters. She had no shoes, but she ran her heart out and won, Max, another volunteer I worked with, and I jumping and running (albeit much more slowly) with her as she took off like the wind.
Epic walks with fellow volunteers, or the Swazi people I came to know, or alone through terrain that was at once strange and oddly familiar. Are those really fireflies down by the river? Is that really the bay of Cape Town down below as we stand atop Table Mountain?

On the flip side, trying to recall the worst day or moments, I think that some of them were in situations when i found myself incapable of helping or contributing in any signficant way:
When i lacked the medical skills to help those kids who had been hurt in a car accident we came upon on an Easter Sunday. All we could do was put them in our car and drive them to the hospital.
When that girl, Nomsa, who was brilliant but that liked to cause trouble in class got meso disturbed that i threatened to use corporal punishemnt, a common practice in Swaziland schools, on her (even though I never did).
When my Grandmother died while I was over there and I couldn’t see her again before she did or be there for the rest of my family during that time.

Despite those difficult times and some more sad ones too, here now, nearly 20 years post my close of service, I know that I have never regretted joining the Peace Corps. It was such a blessing for me to becoming part of their team, their legacy, their dream.
I know others have not had the same net positive view of the organization or their time in it, still, for all its drawbacks or faults I think it/they/we have done some great things in the world and bridged gaps between peoples that could not have been bridged so wonderfully in any other way.

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As for the idea of a ‘best day or time,’ that is hard to quantify. From the first time I heard about Peace Corps, back in ’61, I looked on it as an adventure. Eventually, I served in Fiji, Jan.’69-Dec.’71, on Kadavu at Namuana District School and taught a variety of subjects to grades 3-6 and History/Geography to grades 7/8. Fiji is just enough south of the equator so that in February the sun will pass directly overhead. One of my BA majors is in Geography and early on, that first February (we arrived 23 Jan.’69), I would stand outside our tin/timber house around noon while the sun passed directly overhead and I stood on my shadow for a few minutes. Too cool!

In the beginning, the ‘word’ wasn’t with me, that’s for sure. Susan said all I did was sit and smile, so for the longest time, all questions were directed to her. Sometime in our second year, I became the one to whom they turned for responses. You know you are accepted, inasmuch as outsiders can be, when they tease you and tell you jokes, particularly in their mother tongue. Or, when there is a group sitting around at a ‘karti vei-talanoa,’ and they allow you to sit there and contribute, or not, without making a fuss about you as the only ‘English’ present. And sometimes, people from the Island, who knew us, would tell other Fijians to just let us be, we knew what we were doing. One time, we, among others, were passengers on one of the government boats which travelled around the islands. After much consultation, we were allowed to join other Fijians in sleeping on the deck that night, (as ‘English’ they would have turned some of the crew out of their cabin to accommodate us), anyway, the next morning as we were folding our mats, tucking everything in, and tying it all up with coconut twine, we could hear a discussion about what, and how, we were doing and those who knew us told some others, to just let us be we knew how to do it. The conversation was conducted in Fijian.

Independence Day, 10 Oct. 1971, was going to be Fiji’s first as an independent member of the Commonwealth. Back in September, friends of ours (the chief Agricultural Officer and his wife, both from the Tovalea region) had invited us to join them and others from Tovalea to learn a “lakalaka,” a Tongan dance done originally for Elizabeth when she made her first foray around the Commonwealth as Queen. There were carpenters up in Vunisea doing work on the government station who knew the dance and would teach us. We, ‘Tovaleans’, learned it, hand-made our outfits (chaba, sulu, and ‘grass’ skirt with flowers) and a terrific time was had by all.

On ordinary days, we got up, had tea and set off for the day. Susan would go up the hill to KPS, the junior secondary school and I just out the door to my elementary classroom. My third grade students could explain things to me in both Fijian and English. They would say, “Madam, it’s like, ….” then explain in two languages what it was like. They loved it when I would take down my Fijian-English dictionary from the shelf behind me and look up words. On the days when it rained, it was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, and it dripped. Most days the sun shone and the breeze blew, the ocean about two football field lengths out the front door (used only by chiefs, not that we had any exalted visitors) of our tin and timber house with its 11 windows and three doors. Chickens (we had a half dozen Rhode Island Reds) would come in and lay their eggs behind a wooden box in the corner. My headmaster told us to leave an egg or two there at all times so they would know it was the right place. Watching them was a good solid hour’s entertainment. We had to sit on our beds and watch slant-wise through the curtain across the one end of the house. They’d trot up the steps and stop, look both ways along the inside wall to be sure there were no suspicious characters lurking about, hop up the last step into the house and trot over to the box, hop on top and down the other side, all the while twisting their heads about checking for trouble and talking a mile a minute. They’d lay an egg and leave in the same agitated fashion. Egg-laying times advanced through the day, sort of like the tide. Once, we left for the day, pulled the curtains across the windows, and closed the door, but somehow the hen made her way in, but had difficulty finding her way out. What a mess she left behind, what a mess!

It was a big adventure, a watershed experience, and nothing but good has ever come out of it.

As for the idea of a ‘best day or time,’ that is hard to quantify. From the first time I heard about it, back in ’61, I looked on Peace Corps as an adventure. Eventually, I served in Fiji, Jan.’69-Dec.’71, on Kadavu at Namuana District School and taught a variety of subjects to grades 3-6 and History/Geography to grades 7/8. In the beginning, the ‘word’ wasn’t with me, that’s for sure. Susan said all I did was sit and smile, so for the longest time, all questions were directed to her. Sometime in our second year, I became the one they turned to for responses. You know you are accepted, inasmuch as outsiders could be, when they tease you and tell you jokes, particularly in their mother tongue. Or, when there is a group sitting around talking, and they allow you to sit there and contribute or not, without making a fuss about you as the only ‘English’ present. And sometimes, people from the Island who knew us would tell other Fijians to just let us be, we knew what we were doing. One time, we, among others, were passengers on one of the government boats which travelled around the islands. After much consultation, we were allowed to join other Fijians in sleeping on the deck that night, (as ‘English’ they would have turned some of the crew out of their cabin to accomadate us), anyway, the next morning as we were folding our mats, tucking everything in, and tying it all up coconut twine, we could hear a discussion about how we were doing and those who knew us told some others, to just let us be we knew how to do it. The conversation was conducted in Fijian.

As for the idea of a ‘best day or time,’ that is hard to quantify. From the first time I heard about Peace Corps, back in ’61, I looked on it as an adventure. Eventually, I served in Fiji, Jan.’69-Dec.’71, on Kadavu at Namuana District School and taught a variety of subjects to grades 3-6 and History/Geography to grades 7/8. Fiji is just enough south of the equator so that in February the sun will pass directly overhead. One of my BA majors is in Geography and early on, that first February (we arrived 23 Jan.’69), I would stand outside our tin/timber house around noon while the sun passed directly overhead and I stood on my shadow for a few minutes. Too cool!

In the beginning, the ‘word’ wasn’t with me, that’s for sure. Susan said all I did was sit and smile, so for the longest time, all questions were directed to her. Sometime in our second year, I became the one to whom they turned for responses. You know you are accepted, inasmuch as outsiders can be, when they tease you and tell you jokes, particularly in their mother tongue. Or, when there is a group sitting around at a ‘karti vei-talanoa,’ and they allow you to sit there and contribute, or not, without making a fuss about you as the only ‘English’ present. And sometimes, people from the Island, who knew us, would tell other Fijians to just let us be, we knew what we were doing. One time, we, among others, were passengers on one of the government boats which travelled around the islands. After much consultation, we were allowed to join other Fijians in sleeping on the deck that night, (as ‘English’ they would have turned some of the crew out of their cabin to accommodate us), anyway, the next morning as we were folding our mats, tucking everything in, and tying it all up with coconut twine, we could hear a discussion about what, and how, we were doing and those who knew us told some others, to just let us be we knew how to do it. The conversation was conducted in Fijian.

Independence Day, 10 Oct. 1971, was going to be Fiji’s first as an independent member of the Commonwealth. Back in September, friends of ours (the chief Agricultural Officer and his wife, both from the Tovalea region) had invited us to join them and others from Tovalea to learn a “lakalaka,” a Tongan dance done originally for Elizabeth when she made her first foray around the Commonwealth as Queen. There were carpenters up in Vunisea doing work on the government station who knew the dance and would teach us. We, ‘Tovaleans’, learned it, hand-made our outfits (chaba, sulu, and ‘grass’ skirt with flowers) and a terrific time was had by all.

On ordinary days, we got up, had tea and set off for the day. Susan would go up the hill to KPS, the junior secondary school and I just out the door to my elementary classroom. My third grade students could explain things to me in both Fijian and English. They would say, “Madam, it’s like, ….” then explain in two languages what it was like. They loved it when I would take down my Fijian-English dictionary from the shelf behind me and look up words. On the days when it rained, it was so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, and it dripped. Most days the sun shone and the breeze blew, the ocean about two football field lengths out the front door (used only by chiefs, not that we had any exalted visitors) of our tin and timber house with its 11 windows and three doors. Chickens (we had a half dozen Rhode Island Reds) would come in and lay their eggs behind a wooden box in the corner. My headmaster told us to leave an egg or two there at all times so they would know it was the right place. Watching them was a good solid hour’s entertainment. We had to sit on our beds and watch slant-wise through the curtain across the one end of the house. They’d trot up the steps and stop, look both ways along the inside wall to be sure there were no suspicious characters lurking about, hop up the last step into the house and trot over to the box, hop on top and down the other side, all the while twisting their heads about checking for trouble and talking a mile a minute. They’d lay an egg and leave in the same agitated fashion. Egg-laying times advanced through the day, sort of like the tide. Once we left for the day, pulled the curtains across the windows, and closed the door, but somehow the hen made her way in, but had difficulty finding her way out. What a mess she left behind, what a mess!

It was a big adventure, a watershed experience, and nothing but good has ever come out of it.