At home in the world

Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek, recently published 'The Post-American World.' While I have not (yet) read the book, I did read his excerpt in Newsweek titled 'The Rise of the Rest', which you can read here.

I think in the larger picture--global politics, history- the organization of the world's major players, and how those players interact, is changing.  The European Union now forms a political bloc.  China, India, and Brazil are major economic forces in the global market.  In sum, the United States as the lone superpower is ending.  We are, as Zakaria states, shifting from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism with this rise of the rest.

Which is why now, the United States, and more broadly the world, needs the Peace Corps more than ever.

The United States, as the richest and most powerful nation, has spent a long time setting global priorities and policies. And this is not difficult to see.  In Mali, I often see white people, passing in Land Rovers, stopping to hand out clothes or food supplements.

So it is especially significant when you are a 70-year-old Malian woman, and there is this new American girl that lives with you, one much like the people that pass in those Land Rovers. Except this one asks if she has bought the right soap for washing her clothes, and where to burn her garbage, and how to get to the village 1 km away.

Peace Corps is a humbling experience, to say the least--a village helps you learn a language, a culture, a way of life that is 180 degrees different from everything that you have previously known. It is only after the village has helped you that you can then help them. Unlike the bags of donated food and Land Rovers, Peace Corps isn't paternalism. Living in a village for two years, having their problems then become your problems: this is exchange; and mutual exchange and cooperation--these are the traits required if America's future is to be successful.

Peace Corps is something that shakes you to the core regarding who think you are and what you think you know. As our own Country Director commented, in Peace Corps, we have come out of Plato's allegorical cave. Now with an intimate knowledge of the previously unknown and irrelevant, it's impossible to go back to where we came from, to the former perspective of that American and First World life. Am I still an American? Yes, of course. But I cannot express the sadness I felt leaving my village--leaving people who taught me a language, how to make tea, how to properly tie a pagne. I am leaving people who want me to tell them when I have found work, when I will marry, and when I will start having kids. They want to know these things because they have now become my family and my home.

Further, I recognize that my work is not done. As I explained to my village friends why I was taking pictures of people eating and farming and their daily ho hum life that is so routine to them--there was a sudden realization of what I was doing. "Tell them" they say, "explain how it is, how it really is and how we really are. Because you have lived here with us. You understand. And you must help them understand too."

I'll post an excerpt, made in 2000 at Peace Corps 40 year anniversary, from journalist from Bill Moyer, that makes this statement beautifully:

Sometimes the soundtrack of memories deep in my mind begins to play back the Sixties, echoing the incongruities of those years. I hear the sounds of crowds cheering and cities burning; of laughing children and weeping widows; of falling barries and new beginnings...

But something survived those years, something that bullets could not stop. An idea survived, embodied in the Peace Corps.

...John Kennedy spoke to my generation about service and sharing; he called us to careers of discovery through lives open to others. There was music in this discovery. It was for us not a trumpet but a bell sounding in countless individual hearts, a clear note that said 'You matter. You signify. Make a difference.' Romantic? Perhaps. But we were not then so indifferent toward romance. We watched and cheered as each Peace Corps Volunteer waged hand-to-hand combat with cynicism, and won.

Today, 40 years later, they keep on winning.

...They come-these men and women--from a vein of American life as idealistic as the Declaration and as gritty as the Constitution. I am reminded of an interview I had with Henry Steele Commager, the renowned American Historian. Reviewing the critical chapters of our history, he said that great things were done by all the generations that preceded us. And-said Dr. Commager--there are still great things to be done...here at home and in the world.

So there are. But if from the lonely retreats of our separate values we are to create a new consensus of shared values; if we are to exorcise the lingering poison of racism, reduce the extremes of poverty and wealth, and overcome the ignorance of our world; if we are to find a sense of life's wholeness and the holiness of one another, then from this deep vein which gave rise to the Peace Corps must come our power and light.

..."The dream we must seek to realize," writes author Michael Venture, "the new human project, is not 'security,' which is impossible to achieve on planet Earth in the 21st century. It is not 'happiness,' by which we generally mean nothing but a giddy forgetfulness. It is not 'self-realization,' by which people usually mean a separate peace. There is no separate peace. Technology has married us all to each other, has made us one people on one planet. There is no such thing as going alone. Not anymore. Our project, the new human task, is to learn how to sustain, and how to enjoy this most human marriage."

America has a rendez-vous with what my late friend Joseph Campbell called 'a mighty multi-cultural future.' But we are not alone. We have guides--160, 000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have advanced the trip. They have been going where our contry is going. Out there in the world, as John F. Kennedy might say, is truly a new frontier.

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Peace Corps has never been more relevant. The world needs Peace Corps not because developing nations need assistance in building schools, weighing babies, and teaching English classes. We need Peace Corps because we need to learn to be at home in the world.