By Wayne Laepple
LEWISBURG -- Peace Corps volunteers hope a newly formed alumni organization will provide an avenue to pool their spirit of service to help neighbors in the Central Susquehanna Valley.
Ben Hoskins, who was in the Peace Corps in Cameroon, Africa, from 1966-68, is coordinating a meeting tonight of returned Peace Corps volunteers, or RPCVs, at 5 p.m. in the Lewisburg Hotel.
"There's always an affinity among returning volunteers," he said. "There's always a celebration when we get together. Everyone's welcome."
Today's gathering is the second hosted by Hoskins. A similar gathering on March 6 brought in almost a dozen RPCVs, Hoskins said, and he hopes a number of others he's learned about since will attend today's meeting.
Serving in Cameroon
Hoskins was a teacher in a training college in Cameroon's capital city, teaching English, history, geography and literature, and he also was a basketball and soccer coach at the school.
"It was a great country to be in," he said.
His time in the Peace Corps launched him into a career of helping people, he said. He worked for several nongovernmental organizations, including Food For Peace and World Vision. Hoskins now is coordinator of the Merrill W. Linn Land and Waterways Conservancy.
While the gatherings are social in nature, Hoskins hopes to find something the group can do to help others in the region.
"We're meeting to try to connect with others," he said.
Among those who are taking part in the local RPCV group are Teri MacBride, Bea Spielman and Paul and Pam Mauger, all of Lewisburg.
A volunteer at 70
Spielman, 90, made quite a splash when she volunteered for the Peace Corps at 70 in 1988.
"I wasn't a typical volunteer," she remembered.
She spent two years on the island of Yap in Micronesia in the South Pacific. She taught English as a second language and community development.
"It was very primitive, the most traditional of the islands," she said. "I slept on the floor, and there was no toilet."
After several months, the man who was director of education for Micronesia built a house with a room for her that included a door and a toilet, she said.
"It was an absolutely wonderful life," she said. "Age commands respect in their culture."
Spielman decided to go into the Peace Corps after her husband died. She had heard stories from her daughter-in-law, one of the earliest volunteers. Now, she said, she'd like to persuade her granddaughter to volunteer so there would be three generations of volunteers in the family.
Driving peril in Albania
Teri MacBride spent 27 months in Albania, from the middle of 2003 to 2005.
She had worked at SEDA-Council of Governments before she volunteered, so it was only natural that she would work in government. She was in a city of about 40,000 people, helping officials deal with decentralization of their government.
"They had to figure out how to prioritize services, how to work with a budget, everything," she said.
Among her memories, traffic accidents stood out. Volunteers were not allowed to drive, so they rode in cabs or minivans.
"There had been no private automobiles under communism," she said, "so no one knew how to drive. The condition of the roads and the vehicles was awful."
The first accident was a chain-reaction crash on an icy road, when the minibus she was riding in slammed into other vehicles that had stopped. In the second accident, the car spun around 360 degrees, bouncing off a rock wall and barely avoiding dropping off a cliff. Another accident was just due to bad driving.
In spite of it all, MacBride loved Albania. The kindness and respect shown toward her as she learned the customs of the country were important to her.
She laughed as she remembered eating a sheep's head at a meal. "I loved living with Albanian families," she said. "I learned that you always leave something on your plate, or your host will feel that he didn't feed you well. What you didn't eat, someone else ate later."
Farming in Lesotho
Paul and Pam Mauger were volunteers in Lesotho, in southern Africa, in the mid-1990s.
"We were advisers to a compound up in the hills that included a school, a demonstration farm and a conference center," Paul said. "We were helping the people there get their work done."
He said their time in the tiny country was a good experience. "We were totally immersed," he said. "The comparison of how they lived and how the rest of the world lives was a valuable experience."
Mauger, Spielman and MacBride all agreed that getting together with other RPCVs is a great deal of fun.
"We all have stories to tell," Spielman said.
