Who’s a Peace Corps Volunteer Anyways?

What image does your mind conjure when you hear, Peace Corps Volunteer?

Prior to 2019, I would see a white, 20-something with hair in need of a cut (or maybe it’s already been shaved). They’re wearing hiking cargo pants with Teva sandals, holding a Nalgene water bottle—a HydroFlask if they’re fancy. They obviously have wealthy parents because who gets to drop out of society for 27 months to live on less than $100 a month in an underserved, remote village abroad?

When I applied to join the organization in 2018, the only things I had in common with this image was that I was a 20-something who owned a Nalgene water bottle. If you’ve read “Happily Ever Ghana”—my fairytale take on why I ended up applying for a volunteer position in the first place, you know my road to the Peace Corps was a bit unorthodox. Or maybe it wasn’t.

I’m certainly not the first girl who based a major life decision on the fact that she wanted to be with a boy (I bet you want to read that post now. You can pause here and check it out. I’ll wait!).

The first few days in Ghana as a Peace Corps trainee went by pretty quickly. I only have a few concrete memories of the week we spent at that compound (was it even just one week?). I do remember the talent show we held within the first few nights. Two of my colleagues and I sang “My Girl” by the Temptations. I also played the role of background dancer/ hype woman for a little girl who wanted to join the fun.

I don’t know why she chose me for emotional support, but I was more than happy to make a fool of myself to make her feel comfortable. I also remember a colleague and I sneaking in and out of the compound to go into town (that is, unless my former country director is reading this. In which case, my memory deceives me. I never left the compound unauthorized).

The first part of any Peace Corps service is Pre-Service Training (PST). This intensive 10-week training program covers local language training, sector-specific technical training, development skills, and cross-cultural understanding. Only after successfully completing this training and a final test, does one officially become a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). It was a grueling experience marked by day-long, back-to-back training sessions—most volunteers will say this is the hardest part of service.

I would have to agree. This is also when trainees are paired with a local host family. I was placed with the most amazing family, mama Adwoa and her grandson (and my best bud), baby Kobby. Given the intensity of this period, I was blessed to go home to them every day.

Being a black woman in the Peace Corps is not necessarily unheard of, but it’s certainly not the norm. Being in West Africa—I suppose some part of me expected to avoid certain biases. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. A black woman in my cohort dealt with hair discrimination, and I experienced various instances where I was singled out.

There was a specific event where I was called from the training community to the main office in Accra for a disciplinary meeting with the country director and other program leadership. Now, I absolutely engaged in shenanigans that would have warranted this meeting (i.e., the sneaking out), but unsurprisingly, this meeting was centered around the pettiest complaints.

I was able to successfully advocate for myself, and by the time I walked out of that meeting, there was a collective sense that the individual who had bypassed every other staff on site to lodge a complaint against me to the highest authorities in the program, had wasted everyone’s time. A few weeks later, I received an apology from the country director. It sounds like he had been made aware of new information reaffirming that the black volunteers were not always treated fairly.

I wasn’t quiet about what I perceived to be biases and inequality towards the black volunteers. In fact, my outspokenness led to an impromptu meeting among the site staff and black volunteers to discuss these feelings.

I went into that meeting hopeful that the staff had noticed a problem and wanted to promote a real conversation, but when the staff who had facilitated this meeting openly admitted that they “had” to be tougher on black volunteers to prepare them for life in their respective communities, I knew it was a bulls*** gathering and tuned out.

At the end of the day, nothing anyone could say would justify natural hair discrimination or any other type of racial bias, especially as we were literally gathering in Ghana, West Africa.

There is much so more to say about my service. But for now, I will end on this note: Despite the issues I faced as a black woman in the Peace Corps, I have zero regrets about my service. It was chaotic, challenging, frustrating, enriching, eye-opening, and so much fun. For the most part, my default image of the average PCV hasn’t changed, even after my service. But, I am a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, as are the four other black women in my cohort.

We even had a retiree in the bunch, so who’s to say what a PCV looks like? You don’t have to fit the typical mold to belong in this space. After all, the best part of belonging is that you have to be yourself.