Polyglot
-
National Peace Corps Association > News > Polyglot > McKayla Is Not Impressed with Peace Corps Volunteers
McKayla Is Not Impressed with Peace Corps Volunteers
By Erica Burman on Wednesday, August 15th, 2012
Peace Corps Volunteers share many qualities with Olympic gymnasts.
- Flexibility. We can adapt to changing priorities and resources.
- Endurance. We spend two years in a developing country away from all that is familiar.
- Strength and Determination. Overcoming mental obstacles is part of daily life.
So, then, why is silver medal winning gymnast McKayla Maroney not impressed with Peace Corps Volunteers?
(Disclaimer: We admire the achievements of McKayla Maroney and don’t really know her opinion of Peace Corps Volunteers. This is meant in good fun, as she herself has embraced this meme. For an explanation of this silly Internet meme phenomenon, click here. Oh, and this blog is NOT produced by the U.S. Peace Corps, the federal agency! )
In 1961, the very first group of Peace Corps Volunteers boarded a plane to Ghana. Going into the unknown…that took real guts, right? But McKayla’s not impressed.
Original photo credit: E. Burman
Peace Corps Volunteers adapt and integrate with host communities overseas. They become fluent in the local language and learn local customs. They even learn the local dances. But McKayla’s not impressed.
Original photo credit: E. Burman
Peace Corps Education Volunteers team-teach or directly teach English, health, literacy, math, and science. They also create after-school programs, clubs, and camps for boys and girls to promote HIV/AIDS prevention and life skills. But McKayla’s not impressed.
Original photo credit: Mark Frazier
Peace Corps Agriculture Volunteers work with small-scale farmers and families to increase food security and production and adapt to climate change while promoting environmental conservation practices. They introduce farmers to techniques that prevent soil erosion, reduce the use of harmful pesticides, and replenish the soil. But McKayla’s not impressed.
Original photo credit: Mae Lindsey
Peace Corps Volunteers promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and youth in development. It’s a global Peace Corps initiative. But McKayla’s not impressed.
Original photo credit: Stewart Brewster
Peace Corps Health Volunteers work at the grassroots level, where the need is most urgent and the impact can be the greatest. They focus on outreach, social and behavior change in public health, hygiene, water sanitation, and HIV/AIDS. But McKayla’s not impressed.
They can even carry stuff on their head… But McKayla’s not impressed.
Awww, c’mon Kayla!! We think Peace Corps Volunteers do great work!
What do you think is most impressive about Peace Corps Volunteers?
Awesome job Erica! I am impressed by all of the above, espcially the photo of the handsome YOUNG teacher.
I’m disappointed that McKayla isn’t impressed by people who help others. Some folks are motivated by personal glory, while others are motivated by making a difference in the lives of strangers. Maybe McKayla’s motivations will change when she grows up, especially since she’s already fulfilled her childhood goal. I can only hope so. The world desperately needs far more of the latter group.
McKayla is not impressed because she needs a coach right beside her telling her what to do every move she makes. Peace Corps Volunteers do it on their own.
LOL this is great, some of the best McKayla memes.
Anyway, I think everything the PC volunteers do is fantastic. I hope to be able to do the same as a volunteer. They are such big helps.
Tom and Russell, look closer, McKayla’s not unimpressed with PCVs.
My husband and I were PCVs before we had children, and we intend to be PCVs after our children are grown. Like being good parents, it takes courage, commitment and resilence. A good sense of humor helps. I recommend it for anyone with a sense of adventure who wants to make a difference and learn more about who they are.
Hah! I think this is one of the funniest posts NPCA has ever done. I love that NPCA has sense of humor. BTW, @Tom, there’s a link at the top that explains the meme, you might want to click on that, although I’ve got to say that your comment made it even funnier.
McKayla’s world is very different from when I served 50 years ago (2+ generations ago). Then there was “The Ugly American” syndrome (if I can call it that), the depression was made very real by my parents’ generation, WW II and it’s aftermath was very real to young adults, and there was a yearning to both learn and serve. JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but can you do for your country” (sic) rang in one’s ears. A very different world!
When I served while being a PCV, I learned and benefited far more than anyone could imagine prior to serving. PCV training broadened my formal education tremendously. Despite having a bachelor degree and two years of teaching experience, the ten week training added so much to my knowledge base. Then the two years in another country living in another culture half way around the world reshaped this accumulated knowledge. I returned stateside with a less parochial approach to my life in America. Graduate school was desired and made possible given the PVC experience. This furthered opportunities to learn and serve.
I made a reasonable living and am now retired. My wife of 52 years (we were married prior to volunteering and she, too, trained and served as a PCV) and I look back positively on our PC experience. While we think we had a positive impact on those we worked and lived with from 1962 to 1964, we know the PC had a tremendous impact on us and our world post PC. McKayla may not be impressed, but I/we are. The PC does make a difference at home and abroad!
I heard that that “look” is because she was sucking on a piece of ice. It has been interpreted as “disgust” and has gotten a lot of “face time” and has become a perhaps temporarily famous image for DISAPPOINTMENT.
i’m “just sayin” that journeys from observation to opinion can drift further, and that a person with beautiful skin and a twist at the jaw seen as a scowl might end another kind of example of the parental admonition: don’t-do-that-or-your-face-could-freeze-up-that-way (now in a photo gone viral).
Hate to be the lone voice in the wilderness, but as a currently serving volunteer (age 68), I find this a little ridiculous and neither cute, nor funny. I read everything only to feel foolish upon finding that it was a hoax.
Don’t fret, RPCV folks. McKayla’s actually thinking: “Another 4 more awful years of training and then Rio? Uh, . . . there’s gotta be something better.”
The pic you’re not showing, Erica, is of the next second when McKayla’s smile lights up as she thinks: “Where’s that Peace Corps recruitment piece I picked up?”
Anyway, thanks much, Erica! –Tino, Peru 1963-65
Perhaps she realized just how many leftists, progressives and socialists have infiltrated a once highly regarded insitution.
Poor McAyla…she didn’t get the gold medal. I didn’t get one either, but I wasn’t in gymnastics. I was a PCV in Colombia and Ecuador from 1972 to 1975. My Ecuador experience was by request from PC Ecuador to be “on loan” from PC Colombia as the only Spanish speaking nurse in Central/South America who had burn nursing experience. My assignment was to go to Quito, Ecuadaor for 6 months to work in a large teaching hospital and start a burn unit as there were no burn units in all of Ecuador. It was a wonderful experience, starting with getting the unit physically set up and teaching burn care to the nursing staff. When I left to return to PC Colombia, the unit was up and running as expected, and I was quite pleased with the success. After a year of nursing in Colombia, I went back to Quito to visit and was thrilled to see the burn unit functioning not only as I had left it but they had initiated all the improvements I had suggested. To me, this is the way PCVs are supposed to work…go somewhere, teach something and leave with significant improvements in the country of service. No gold medal, not needed.
She is not “impressed” but she is obviously floored by the awesome PCV’s. But gymnasts try to avoid being floored.
This is too funny…to have a sense of humour is the key to being a sucessful PCV, to be an gold medal winner (or ALMOST–sorry McKayla)) and to life. Laugh and the world laughs with you. How many times did a sense of humour get me through those tough days in rural Liberia when i was a PCV?? I still work in Africa – going on 20+ years in development business. And a smile, a prank and a good laugh deep in the belly still does it for me!
Rob PCV Liberia 1985 – 87.
They do a commendable job
Perhaps she’s not impressed due to the current impression that the Peace Corps does not support female volunteers who have been attacked. I personally had no experience of this in Ghana, but my niece who spent her junior year in Ecuador and enrolled in an international development grad program with the intent of doing Peace Corps has opted for an alternate program due to the input from RPCVs from central and South America.
Atlas, poor McKayla, as a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Senegal, West Africa, my training regimen was just as rigorous as yours. I dare say, without the benefit of a coach, my performance was a daily accumulated exercise 24hrs a day and for 2 unbroken years. Notwithstanding,I continue to exercise this training as a life benefit that is immeasurable beyond any gold medal status.
Like Louis S., above, I was one of the hearty “Pioneer/Trailblazer” RPCV’s of the very early ’60′s (Ethiopia-Eritrea I, ’62-64); in fact, the very first to those nations; as well as the largest – before or since – single PCV contingent ever formed (some 325 @starting count!).
But my pre-exposure to int’l. experience was a bit different than most, coming off a 5/Yr. stint in the Navy, most of that spent on a carrier off the coast of Korea.
And perhaps my post PC experience has been a bit different as well, because it was a career decision changer; one that led me to a half-century of Int’l. CED work: Including in over 100 nations (& still counting!) on 5 continents; 105 Native American Tribes/groupings, all over No. & Central America; & 10 years of service in our domestic “War on Poverty”.
So, now as an Octogenarian RPCV, I’m still as fully active as I was in my 40′s & 50′s, at the height of my CED Career: And the major driving force that KEEPS me going (great good fortune in the health dep’t ALLOWS me to keep going!), was what I saw, learned & experienced in that PCV stint (augmenting what we were able to do as “extra-curricular” activities, in Orphanages, Leper colonies & with street kids in the Far East): I.e., that EVERY person CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
I welcome anyone that feels up to it, to tag along. I met with former Sr. Presidente Toledo of Peru, as well as the current VP of Liberia, when they were our guests at the PC’s 50th Anniversary event in DC last Fall: They both invited me to visit their countries, as their guest; & I’m sure they’d welcome any RPCV’s that served their nations, as well.
[NB: Pres. Toledo - who told me he was 1 of 11 siblings, half of whom never lived to adulthood, due to infectious diseases, which I'm demonstrating how to avoid/cure - was taught by PCV's, & credits much of his governmental success to that experience.]
In summary: I know of no other international service – even though many, if not most, are wonderful efforts as well – that has had the extent, length & depth of impact, as has our own PC efforts/history.
The wonders of photoshop
I guess this is an innocuous ad; however, my reaction is that a better way could have been found, and will be found, to place Peace Corps Volunteers in favorable light. Yesterday afternoon Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy and Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams hosted an event at Burlington, VT’s ECHO Center, commemorating the service of over 1400 RPCVs from Vermont. Both gentlemen lauded the service of RPCVs everywhere and each other’s lifetime services to humanity. About 150 RPCVs present clapped and hurrahed during the event, acknowledging it was a nice way to recognize Peace Corps’ players and 50 year role. I believe this ad’s creator should reflect on some of its nuances and find a less ludicrous way to promote the virtues of RPCVs and those currently serving. I do have a sense of humor… in spite of my frowning on the ad… and recognize it is in no way a putdown. Any effort to recognize Peace Corps as one of our best institutions for mutual understanding and acceptance between our people and all other cultures is welcomed.
I guess imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!
http://americorpsalums.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/mckaylas-not-impressed-with-americorps-alums-day-at-the-white-house/