A Peace Corps Diet

You might be surprised to learn that for me and many of my fellow Comarca volunteers the most difficult parts of being a Peace Corps Volunteer have been food related. As Peace Corps mandates, PCV's must spend their first three months living with host families, working with them, and eating their food. Everyone gets sick. Bacterial infections, e-coli, giardia, and amoebas are all common (i've had three of them) and essentially unavoidable. They all lead to uncontrollable and uncomfortable bowel symptoms. I know at least five people just from my group in the Comarca who have pooped their pants and nearly everyone has been very close. One pooped herself twice in less than half a hour on her way to pooping thirty-two times in a single day. As my friend Chris says, "I never thought it would happen to me but then I literally could not pull my pants down fast enough."

We volunteers find these stories hilarious to the point of tears. It's all in the details. In the Peace Corps you get comfortable talking about your bowel movements. For me, though, the biggest problem with the first three months was the amount of food I was getting. I come from the Mortensen clan of impressive eaters and two meals per day just wasn't enough. Between sickness and "starvation" I lost fifteen pounds in two months.

That all ended nine months ago. Now my weight is back and I cook for myself, although I am still given a lot of food (I consider this the perfect combination). The culinary highlight of every day is breakfast. I make a big bowl of oatmeal with sugar/honey, bananas/raisins, crunchy peanut butter, dried milk, and cinnamon. Compared to the rest of my diet breakfast is D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S. Lunch and dinner are almost always a variation of rice whether I cook it or not. Rice with beans, lentils, wild meat, squash, sardines, and noodle soup are very popular foods. I usually prepare my rice by throwing some fried or steamed veggies on top.

Recently harvested rice with sardines. Very popular. Not very good

There are also foods that are prepared for special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. These include spaghetti made without meat and my favorite, fried rice with chicken and vegetables (called "arroz con pollo"). This new years we are going to kill and roast a pig my neighbors have been raising to celebrate the return of their daughter from Switzerland.

Lela showing Kate how to make "arroz con pollo"

Kate serving two bowls of the delicious dish

Fruits available here include pineapple, banana, mango, orange, guava, passion fruit, and "mamun chino".

"Mamun Chino". Bitter, sweet and delicious 

Wild meats include paca, armadillo, agouti, iguana, peccary, squirrel, birds, river shrimp, and "conejo pintado". Many of them are endangered.

Three "conejo pintados". Cute, endangered, and good eatin'

Delicious non-rice staples are cassava, ñame, ñampi, otoe, and pixfae.

Pixfae with salt.

Happy 50th Peace Corps!

As 2011 nears its end I feel obligated to publicly wish Peace Corps a happy golden birthday. You see, this is no ordinary birthday -the Peace Corps is big. And its ideals are bigger. My Peace Corps birthday blog:

Quick Facts:

• over 200,000 PCV´s have served in 139 countries the past fifty years
• currently 8,655 PCV´s serve in 77 countries
• across the world PCV´s are taught over 250 languages
• the oldest PCV was Arthur Goodfriend, who was 87 when he finished his service in 1994
• there have been four PCV´s in congress (including Christopher Dodd and Paul Tsongas)
• the average age of PCV´s is 28 years
• 7% of PCV´s are serving with their spouse
• "Volunteers" (1985) with Tom Hanks is the most famous ´Peace Corps´ movie
• Famous PCV´s include Chris Matthews, Lillian Carter (Jimmy´s mom), Bob Vila, Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix), and Richard "Kinky" Friedman

A History:

The first time the Peace Corps was  mentioned publicly came during an impromptu speech to the students at the Universtiy of Michigan on October 14, 1960. The speech was a response to Richard Nixon, who thought such ideas were nonsense and would lead to a haven for draft dodgers. Riled up, at two in the morning JFK challenged to Wolverines to give two years of their lives toward helping people in the developing world improve their lives. What Nixon viewed as a bad campaign move by Kennedy was met with resounding positive feedback not only from the U. of M. students and other universities but from Americans all across the country. They swept the charismatic JFK into office in January of 1961, and when he said "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" many people believed the Peace Corps embodied the perfect answer to that challenge.

The Peace Corps "official" mission (quotations will be explained shortly) of world peace and friendship revolves around three goals: 1) to help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women; 2) to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the people served; and 3) to help promote a better understanding of other people on the part of Americans. The current Peace Corps director, Aaron S. Williams, holds goal three as the most important to focus on. I agree.

Now why did I put ´official´ in quotations? Because until Jimmy Carter granted the Peace Corps full autonomy in May of 1979, the Peace Corps was run by the State Department! Needless to say, many PCV´s were involved in -and accused of- some secret and sketchy activities those first two decades. Not only were those activities directly antagonistic to the Peace Corps´ stated mission, they also weakened the legitimacy of the entire agency. The Peace Corps is not proud of this but does not deny it either. They focus on the fact that they fixed their mistakes.

When Ngäbes ask me if I am part of the US military (and they do) I usually respond "Are you serious? My agency is called the PEACE Corps! Of coarse not." But then I get honest and say that in the past we were connected to it but that changed a long time ago. Most respond simply "that´s good because peace is better than war." But on one occasion a person responded "but I´m sure the PCV´s back then said the same things you do now -how am I suppossed to trust you?" At that moment I realized two things: 1) maybe he´s not suppossed to trust me after what I just told him; and 2) that actions thirty to fifty years ago still threaten the legitimacy of the entire agency. So I said. "lets go harvest some mangoes," determined to let my actions speak for me instead.

Back to the story. After his inauguration, JFK  asked his brother-in-law, R. Sargent Shriver to lead a task force looking into the Peace Corps idea. Six weeks later "sarge" (as he is affectionately referred) said in a report "Having studied at your request the problems of establishing a Peace Corps, I reccommend its immediate establishment." Sarge was then appointed the agency´s first director and his can-do attitude and commitment to public service are credited as being the right potion to get the nascent agency on its feet and running. For these reasons he is considered the father of the Peace Corps.

R. Sargent Shriver died this year -on January 18- at the ripe old age of 95. His friend and colleague who helped found the Peace Corps, Senator Harris Wofford, said in a recent interview "there is something special about a long journey that is part of one´s education. There should be long journeys in your life, whether in your own country or abroad. In the early Peace Corps years we turned Shriver´s name into a verb: to "shriverize" was to make something bigger and bolder, and do it faster."

Shriver´s son, Tim Shriver -who is CEO of the Special Olympics- spoke to everyone when he said "I hope you, too, will carry a little shriver in you."

Cheers to the Peace Corps and all the volunteers -past and present- who are proud to answer JFK´s call. I am confident in and humbled by your determination to ensure that Shriver´s spirit never dies. Happy Birthday.

Now go shriverize something.