Spring/Summer 2003, Volume 9 Number 1

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Peace Corps Volunteers Over 60 Years of Age…

By Kathy Baker

Peace Corps volunteers of every age are asked why they decided to join, but people like ourselves, in the over-60 category, are especially objects of curiosity.  Why would anyone leave the comfort of retirement to go live in a strange and perhaps primitive country for      two years?

There are so many answers to that question.  One is that we’re not dead yet, and are still ready for adventure.  Another is that we are eager to travel and learn more about the world, and while it is fun to be a tourist, only when you live in a country among its people do you truly begin to understand it.  A third is that we, like you, want to make a difference in this world, and hope that through two years of Peace Corps service we might be able to do that.  Yet another is that we know that we have lived very privileged lives and we want to pay back in some small part all the good fortune that has been ours.  And so on, answers you might expect.

We have been Peace Corps volunteers in Romania for a year and a half now, and we’re still trying to find our own personal answers to the question of why we are here.  Even now, as we walk the streets of Botosani, the city in the northeast corner of the country where we live, we sometimes ask ourselves, what in the world are we doing here?  We still don’t speak the language very well; we can’t possibly make a dent in the problems of a country with so much poverty; we could live here for twenty years instead of two and still we would be seen as rich Americans; people have been very warm and welcoming but, in fact, we will always be strangers in a strange land in Romania.  But these moments of doubt pass and we keep going on our way to work, I to the middle school where I teach English and my husband John to the company from which he does business advising.

Each day brings its learning, its surprises.  We do not live in primitive discomfort here; we have an attractive two-room apartment complete with heat, hot water, television, a telephone.  Romania is not a so-called third world country, although in its villages and farm areas most people live as they did a century ago, heating their homes with wood, hauling their water from wells, raising all their own food as well as the food for their livestock, traveling everywhere on foot or by horse cart.  But here in town our greatest hardships have been no greater than growing accustomed to shopping for groceries in small shops and vegetable stalls, walking everywhere instead of driving locally, and traveling from city to city in trains that are too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.  There has been pleasure inherent even in these experiences, however.  Train travel may have been arduous at times but we were rewarded by Romania’s beautiful Carpathian mountains (by legend the home of Count Dracula), its well-preserved medieval cities, its rolling farmlands.  And since few people in Botosani own cars we found ourselves on the streets with many other pedestrians, shoppers but also people out walking just for the exercise and to meet and greet their friends.  Most American neighborhood streets seem empty and lonely by comparison.  Romanians love Americans and we have been welcomed into many homes where we were fed 5-course meals, invited to weddings and other celebrations where we were encouraged to dance until dawn.

So whatever we may possibly have to offer Romania, Romania has had much to offer us.  Romanians know how to have a good time, to live in the moment, in a fashion that some Americans would do well to emulate.  The United States could learn something from Romania about education, from this country where children begin studying at least one foreign language in the second grade and by the eighth are fluent in two or more.  Our country could learn a great deal from Romania about suffering, and perhaps begin to realize that our September 11^th horror has sister tragedies all over the world, both past and present.

So in the end the answers we come up with are two: first, to be able to bring home with us our new awareness of the world beyond the U.S. borders and to share it with other Americans.  The second comes from a story about Itszak Perlman, who once, right before a concert, discovered that one of the strings on his violin was broken.  He went ahead and played the concert on the broken violin because, he said, “Sometimes it’s important to find out how much music you can make with the strings you have left.”

So we will keep on trying to make a little music here, and will have many new songs to sing when we return home.   

Kathy Baker is a Peace Corps volunteer in Botosani, Romania. She can be reached at jhardeeb@aol.com.

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