This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 30, 2011 - Every Peace Corps volunteer has one. Or 100.
They're moments that teach something vital, show something about a host culture, the people, even life in general.
For Larry Taylor, it was the hot cup of Milo a poor Malaysian family offered him in their only mug, which was broken, when he visited. Though they had nothing, they showed dignity, he says, treating him the best they could.
This month, the Peace Corps celebrates its 50th anniversary. Since its inception in 1961, more than 300,000 Americans have served in 139 countries, having moments of their own. In St. Louis, Linda Locke says she isn't sure how many residents are returned Peace Corps volunteers. A few hundred are on the e-mail list for the St. Louis Peace Corps Association, of which Locke is the secretary.
Despite having a group, they're somewhat informal. In fact, because of their experiences in the Peace Corps, they're very independent and hard to organize, says Taylor, who has tried in the past. "They are so very diverse," he says.
Volunteers come from all age groups, serve in different countries and come from many backgrounds themselves.
"So we have almost nothing in common except the Peace Corps experience."
Returned volunteers may not talk about their experiences every day, he says. Instead, many use the skills they gained then in their daily lives now, from the career paths they've followed to the way they view the communities in which they live.
Brick By Brick
After college, Taylor found himself trekking through a swamp to the home of a man who wanted to start a farm in Malaysia. The man and his family offered Taylor that cup of Milo.
Taylor, who has a degree in agricultural economics, worked with the Peace Corps as a credit officer with the National Agricultural Bank of Malaysia from 1973 to 1976.
"I never came back, in a way of speaking," he says.
He went on to work as a trainer for the Peace Corps, then worked in Singapore, Indonesia and Japan. He spent more than 20 years working in Asia, he says, and 20 years working with Monsanto.
Now, Taylor runs a consulting firm in St. Louis called Aziotics, which uses his knowledge of Asian cultures and the market there to help American businesses, as well as helping Asian businesses get established here. His work includes market research, business planning and site selection.
Looking back on his career today, Taylor understands why people would see his path, starting with the Peace Corps, as linear.
Instead, he thinks of each experience, each job, as a bricks that have built his life. Those on the ground floor, he says, include experiences from his time in the Peace Corps.
Seeing For Herself
Shanti Parikh worked as a small business adviser in Kenya from 1990 to 1992. In that time, she worked with social workers aiding women's groups and small entrepreneurs. But it was what she saw day-to-day that shaped the direction Parikh's life took.
In many households, health expenses were the No. 1 cause of stress. HIV wasn't widely talked about at the time, but Parikh began to see how it impacted the lives of people first hand.
Then a good friend came by her house with a towel draped over her arm. She told Parikh her arm felt like it was on fire. Parikh checked with a book given to volunteers called "Where There is No Doctor." It looked like her friend had shingles.
"And then the last line said this could be an early symptom of HIV."
Parikh sent her friend to the clinic to get tested. Out of respect for her friend's privacy, she never asked the results.
Now, Parikh works as an associate professor of anthropology at Washington University. Her first book, "The Secret: Love, Marriage and HIV," came out last year and examines married women's risk of HIV in five different countries.
In St. Louis, Parikh has a community-based learning course called "Sexual Health and the City," and is working with the Center for Health and Gender Equity to revise the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief guidelines to more accurately meet the needs of people's true risks.
She is also this year's recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Award.
"It was a great experience for me," Parikh says of her two years in Kenya. "It really shaped my professional career, as well as my personal outlook on life."
Found In Translation
Today, Larry Ley works as the program manager for global programming with Boeing. But in 1979, he was just out of college and living for four months in Costa Rica, fully immersed in intensive language training. He spent the next two years working in tropical agriculture in Ecuador.
Ley can attribute much of what he learned in the Peace Corps to his career successes, and speaking a foreign language is one of those things.
"When I came back from the Peace Corps, I was very fluent in Spanish," he says.
Ley eventually went on to interview for a job with McDonnell Douglas, and the confidence he had in both his Spanish and his ability to step into a new culture and get to work helped him get the job, which took him to Madrid.
When he worked for six months in Italy, the experience proved relevant then, too, once again knowing how to adapt to a culture. By the time he left, he could speak Italian.
Some 30 years later, he says, those same skills help him look at things from inside a culture and translate that back to his company.
For Locke, who served in Morocco from 1975 to 1977, it wasn't the technical skills she gained from her Peace Corps experience that made it a valuable one.
"But what I learned in the Peace Corps about myself and others had a profound influence on how I see myself and the rest of the world," she says.
Everyone interviewed agreed. They learned to listen. To navigate local politics. To see beyond their own experiences into other people's.
On March 31, the St. Louis Peace Corps Association will celebrate the Peace Corps' 50th anniversary. In some ways, the work has evolved from the days when President John F. Kennedy challenged young Americans to go out into the world, from increased technology and interconnectedness to Master's programs and short-term crisis service.
But perhaps the appeal of the Peace Corps, of having those significant moments, hasn't. "For me," Locke says, "a part of it seemed like an adventure."
Note: Kristen Hare served with the Peace Corps in Guyana from 2000-02.
Global Stewards
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, the St. Louis Peace Corps Association will honor two people with Global Stewardship awards. On March 31, Sen. Christopher S. Bond and Dr. Pat Wolff will be presented with the awards at a dinner that evening at the Gephardt Institute for Public Service.
Bond is being recognized for his advocacy on behalf of the Peace Corps during his time in the U.S. Senate, and Wolff for founding Meds and Food for Kids, which works with malnourished children in Haiti. Speakers at the dinner include Kevin Quigley, president of the National Peace Corps Association.
The dinner is sold out. For more information, e-mail STLPeaceCorps@gmail.com, or go to www.peacecorpsstl.org.