Coming Home: Namibia
Namibia | Charles Castillo Home: Medford, New Jersey Watch the video I put together about my unfinished business as a Volunteer and you’ll see and hear me speak a few different languages. The messages all begin: “How are you? My name is Charles Castillo.” First, in American Sign Language. In Namibian Sign Language. In Oshiwambo, a language spoken in my community in Northern Namibia — where the question “How are you?” changes depending on the time of day: “Wa lala po” (morning), “Wu uhala po” (afternoon), and “Wa tokelwa po (evening) amuhe?” Edhina lyandje oShali. My name is Charlie. And in Afrikaans, also spoken in Namibia: Hoe...
Coming Home: Malawi
Malawi | Danny Herres Home: Tryon, North Carolina Danny Herres found out about the evacuation at 4:30 a.m., via group chat on WhatsApp. Malawi is a landlocked nation split by the Great Rift Valley and the massive Lake Malawi, which nearly runs the length of the entire country. Herres had been serving as a community health specialist in a village of about 1,000 people near Lilongwe since June 2019. He was the first Volunteer in the area. “No one had ever come in as a foreigner, built relationships, been a community member,” he says, “and then found other motivated individuals...
Coming Home: Madagascar
Madagascar | Danielle Montecalvo Home: Rochester, New York I had been serving since September 2018 as an English educator at University of Mahajanga. Here’s what I left behind: My 200 first-year engineering, computer science, and applied language students, as well as 275 university students returning for their second and third year. My host family: Papa, Mama, four host sisters—Vesna, Johanna, Fifa, and Anyah. My host cousins, Tafar and Zela. My counterpart, Mrs. Jemima Johnson. University colleagues and staff. Neighbors, market sellers, store vendors, and friends throughout the city. And here’s the unfinished business I’d like you to know about:...
Coming Home: Ghana
Ghana | Meg Holladay Home: Amherst, Massachusets I was serving as a Peace Corps Health Extension Volunteer in southern Ghana, in a farming community of about 1,200 people. When we were evacuated, I had been in my community for a year and had one more year to go. I was the first Peace Corps Volunteer there. I felt like I was just starting to hit my stride, to identify the projects that would be truly helpful and the people who were the most committed to working together for the long term. I was working with community members on a...
Coming Home: Kyrgyz Republic
Kyrgyz Republic | Jae Cho Home: Gloucester, Virginia Hello, my name is Jae Cho, and I'm from Gloucester, Virginia, and I've been serving as a Peace Corps volunteer since July 2019 in the Kyrgyz Republic. I've been serving as a TEFL teacher, teaching English as a foreign language at J. Mukambaev Secondary School in a small village called Kurmonty, in the Issyk-Kul oblast. There I've been working with five other counterparts or who are also English teachers and lovers of the English language: Meerim Eje, Asel Eje, Darike Eje, Symbat Eje, and Saltanat Eje. Through countless hours of training, scheduling,...
Coming Home: Ukraine
Ukraine | Kevin Lawson Home: Greensboro, North Carolina “When will you come back?” I wake up more and more to this question as the days go by since evacuation. I had been serving as a youth development Volunteer since August 2018. When we were evacuated I left behind the promise to play soccer with Dima, Sasha, and Max. I was in the middle of lesson planning with my English teacher, Olena, and organizing a festival at school with my counterpart. As a youth volunteer, one-on-one connections with students were so important to me. No matter the time or place,...
Coming Home: Moldova
Nobody wanted it to happen this way. Evacuation stories and the unfinished business of Peace Corps Volunteers around the world. Moldova | Jeremy Male Home: Roswell, Georgia In a small village in the Soroca region near the Ukrainian border, Jeremy Male taught English at a secondary school alongside two Moldovan colleagues starting in 2019. “I was the first volunteer in my village,” he says. That made him an ambassador of American culture and values. And it put this self-professed introvert very much in the public eye. He quickly learned to roll with it when strangers stopped him on...
Coming Home: Morocco
Morocco | Joshua Warzecha Home: Clayton, California Joshua Warzecha was an Arabic studies and linguistics major at Dartmouth College before joining Peace Corps in September 2018. He was on vacation with his family in the northern part of Morocco when he got the evacuation message and had to race back to his post in Tata, a province in the southwestern part of the country. He worked in the youth development sector, spending much of his time teaching English to teens and young adults. Back at his parents’ home in the San Francisco Bay Area, in the weeks under self-quarantine he...