a1358: Peace Corps recruits to Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(Miami Herald, 19 March 02)


                        Recruits going to Haiti get send-off

                        BY EUNICE SIGLER


                        Reliving memories of when she lived in Iran as a
Peace Corps volunteer, University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala gave
a sentimental send-off Monday to 32 new volunteers headed for Haiti.
                        The Peace Corps -- one of the surviving relics of
the Camelot era of President John F. Kennedy -- is celebrating its 41st
anniversary this month.
                        Shalala said serving in Iran in the early '60s was
a ''high point'' in her life and made her realize she was a ``citizen of
the world.''
                        ''I was envious,'' she told the group, who are from
around the nation. ``I was envious to have that sense of adventure again --
to go off to a different country to make a contribution.''
                        UM hosted a going-away party for the new
volunteers, who will spend two years in rural areas of Haiti helping
farmers, small business owners and youth groups.
                        Shalala, who was in Iran from 1962 to 1964, urged
the volunteers to be open to new cultures and different ways of doing
things.
                        She said she empathizes with the mixed sense of
anxiety and excitement that many of the volunteers were feeling on the eve
of their two-year commitments abroad.
                        ''I understand that feeling at the pit of their
stomachs,'' she said. ``Forty years ago, I had that same feeling.''
                        Farley Ferrante, president of the Returned Peace
Corps Volunteer Association of South Florida, told the volunteers that the
experience would change their lives.
                        Members of the Louines Louinis Haitian Dance
Theater from Pembroke Pines, dressed in colorful traditional clothing,
closed out the ceremony by performing Haitian dances to the spirited
rhythms of drums.
                        ''I think most of the fear has been squashed, but
there is still some anxiety,'' said Jennifer LeMahieu of Grand Rapids,
Mich. ``But it's a great group of people and we're all in the same boat.
That helps a lot.''
                        LeMahieu, a recent graduate from Valparaiso
University in Indiana with degrees in international economics and French,
said she joined the corps because she loves to travel and wants to
''experience how the rest of the world lives. ``I know America is not a
good representation of what the rest of the world is like,'' she said.
                        Another volunteer, 35-year-old Tracy Pollert, also
from Grand Rapids, said it was something she had been wanting to do for
years, but work and personal relationships had always given her reason to
put it off.
                        The marketing expert finally sold her condo and her
car and said teary goodbyes recently to her mom and two nieces and a
nephew, ages 2, 4 and 6, in Michigan.
                        ''They were so happy that I was finally doing it,''
she said.
                        Pollert doesn't speak French or Creole but is
confident the initial three-month technical, cultural and language training
offered by the Peace Corps will prepare her for the job.
                        ''There are other ways to communicate than just
words,'' she said.