WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009 - (Page 39)

Book Trunk Life is calling. IN ThE BEGINNING (ThERE WAS JOhN ) The one thing about her Peace Corps interview she didn’t anticipate was falling for her recruiter by Eve Brown-Waite “T hank you, Eve,” John said, rising and shaking my hand at the end of our two-hour interview. “Thank you for being different from the other thirteen candidates I interviewed today. I think you’d make an excellent Peace Corps volunteer. I’ll forward your application, along with my letter of support, to the placement office in D.C.” Then he said something about medical clearance and forms, but I just kept thinking how nice my little hand felt in his big, strong hand. “The process can take a while, so be patient,” he said. “In the meantime, call me if you have any questions.”. “Um . . . I am a little worried that my jail time might be a problem.” A criminal record, I was pretty sure, can keep you out of the Peace Corps. “I think between what you wrote in your application and what I’ve learned about you,” he said, tapping his pen on the yellow legal pad, now quite full, “we can adequately explain your time eve Brown-Waite in jail. Spending ten days in jail for a civil disobedience charge shows that you are committed to your beliefs.” He smiled. I didn’t try to disabuse him of his noble image of me by informing him that I could have gotten out of jail by paying the $50 fine, but that the ten days in jail got me a lot of publicity, and like I said, I didn’t like to do anything in a small way. “Well, maybe I could call you in a week or so, just to check?” He said to call if I had any questions, and I was going to have lots of them. “That’d be fine,” he said. “And call me if you ever come down to the city. We could meet for lunch or something.” Yeah, or maybe we could pick out names for our children, I thought. Driving home that evening, I wondered if I really would go through with this. Joining the Peace Corps someday had always been part of my plan. As in “I hope to join the Peace Corps someday,” which is what I said when I won an all-expense-paid trip to Israel as a high school exchange student. And “I’m thinking of joining the Peace Corps someday,” I said ever so coolly the fall I came back to college after spending the summer picking apples and scraping up chicken shit on an Israeli kibbutz. And “I’ll be joining the Peace Corps in a couple of years,” I answered when asked my long-term plans when I interviewed for the job I had now at the Rape Crisis Center. So I had long been about the Peace Corps—in concept. After all, it never failed to get an approving smile and an admiring “oh, isn’t that wonderful” when I said it. But the reality of the Peace Corps—the sweating in a buginfested jungle and being deprived of Togo SPEA Peace Corps Fellows/USA & Master’s International Programs Lauren Anthony, MPA ’10 So is SPEA. New Concentration Sustainable Development “The balancing of human needs with the protection of the natural and social environments so that these needs can be met in the present and also in the indefinite future.” Kindred spirits, a stellar education, and the new Peace Corps Fellows Program— just some of the benefits awaiting you as a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University. Contact us for information on our Master of Public Affairs (MPA) or Master of Science in Environmental Science (MSES) program. www.spea.indiana.edu speainfo@indiana.edu (812) 855-2840 • (800) 765-7755 WorldView 9 http://www.spea.indiana.edu http://www.spea.indiana.edu

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009

WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009
Contents
More Peace Corps Campaign: Better and Bolder!
Africa Rural Connect
Readers Write
You Too Can Be Bill Gates
Taking Peace Corps Back into the Field
Come for the Information, Stay for the Dancing
A “Green” Community Rising
Microfinance Pioneer Receives 2009 Shriver Award
The Colombia Project
A Voice for the Unheard
Hear Ye, Hear Ye: Microfinance Podcasts
Selected Microfinance Resources
Bicycle! Bamenda! Orange!
Luck and Fame
A Step in the Right Direction
Bringing What She Loves
Letter from Botswana: First Tongues of the Kalahari
Letter from Tanzania: Homo Sapien in Africa
In the Beginning (There Was John)
The Peace Corps Community Making a Difference
Community News
Advertiser Index

WorldView Magazine - Summer 2009

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