An Old Guy And The Youth Culture Of Peace Corps

El Viejo

     Another volunteer, Danica Liriano, recently asked me if I would write something for the Diversity Committee about "ageism". This request got me thinking, even more than I usually do, about being the oldest volunteer in Nicaragua. (Every new volunteer group causes me a little nervousness that someone might show up and take the title away from me!) Let me start by saying I have not experienced anything that felt like prejudice or even stereotyping based on my age. In fact, I have felt very accepted and valued by my training group, my sector, my site mates, and Peace Corp staff. I think, I've made some great friends, maybe some life long friends. In my case, if I'm lucky, I might have these people as friends for ten years!

     So, I don't see the dynamic as being "ageist" in the sense of being discriminatory. That being said, there is a pretty pervasive assumption of youth in Peace Corps. I have felt like I had two cultures to adjust to; the Nicaragua culture and the youth culture of the organization. There is a default setting, where norms and expectations are based on everyone being in their twenties, since I haven't been in my twenties for forty years, it can be a little disorienting. I'll realize that something is going on that makes me feel out of step, then I'll think, "Oh yeah, that's because you're older than the parents of everybody else in the room!"

    Let me give some examples.

    The whole language of host families doesn't work for me. During training I lived with Reyna and Pedro, a great couple in their early fifties. There was no way I could think of them as "mom" and "dad". We turned it into a kind of running joke about the "hijo" being older than the "padres", but the assumption of youth was built into the vocabulary in such a way that I felt different when the topic of the people who were hosting us came up. "Dueno" and "duena" or "amo" and "ama" might have worked better for me, but my Spanish isn't good enough to know for sure what the connotations of these words are.

    Soon after arriving in Chinandega, the Volunteer Support Committee announced an outing. The summary of the invitation was that the group would go to Leon, stay at a hostel, climb a volcano, go boarding, camp out overnight, and descend the next day. My reaction was, "You mistake me for a much younger man!" Here's my idea of a great outing in Leon: stay someplace air conditioned, have a leisurely latte in front of the cathedral, go to the top of the cathedral, go to the art museum (world class if you haven't seen it!), take a nap, look for a cultural experience in the evening, and end the day with a game of Oh Hell. (I got to add that while this outing had no appeal for me and made me feel a little invisible, my wife, Deb Drew, who is only two years younger than me, was very excited by it. She went and had a great time.)

      Our site mate, Zach Moore, came back from his COS conference and was very enthusiastic about the focus on post Peace Corps planning. He said they had workshops on things like resume writing, networking, government job searches, etc. I turned to Deb and said, "There's no way in hell I'm sitting through two days of career planning! I've had a career! I'm retired for Christ's sake!" She said, "Calm down, honey. You don't really need to worry about that now. Its two years away." I said, "But... but... if I have to sit through that, they have to hear about organ donations, living wills, and pre-paid mortuary services!" She patted my hand.

    The young volunteers are much more sexually active than I am. In my opinion this is as it should be. It is biologically determined. The survival of the species depends on young guys taking every opportunity that comes their way to spread their seed and young women fertilizing as many of those eggs as possible. The biology is not hip to the fairly new phenomena of birth control. So it keeps going, “Procreate, procreate, procreate, you little bastards!” To me, the biology says, “Take it easy old guy. You’ve done your part. Put your feet up. Take a load off.” I’ve heard more than once that making love is the Peace Corps hand shake, that may be an exaggeration, but there is that kind of energy buzzing around, and sometimes it is like a fly annoying me while I’m trying to nap in my hammock.

I haven’t been drunk in forty years. A couple of times a week, I have a beer or two or on a big night a couple of rum drinks. What I’m after is a little relaxation, a slight blurring of the sharp edges. Being around people who are drinking to drunkenness, until they pass out, until they throw up, until the bouncer threatens to throw them out is so culturally discordant to me that I’d be lying if I said I was acceptant of it, but here I am in a setting where it is not at all out of the norm.

Here’s how technologically inept I am compared to volunteers in their twenties: I had no idea what a “#” was or what it could do. I’d heard the expression used, but it went right over my head. Polly Wiltz had to explain it to me and she did it without condescension! (I still haven’t used one. #can’tteachanolddognewtricks.) It seems like every week someone expects me do be able to do something technologically that is a struggle for me. For example use Brigit, SurveyMonkey, and all that shit you can do on Google, File a grant on the Peace Corps website, order medications online, etc., etc. Actually, I like learning all this stuff, but that is the point; I have to learn it and in the youth culture of Peace Corps it is assumed that everyone already knows how to do it.

    None of the above is meant to say that anybody is doing anything wrong. Rather, my point is that when you're in a minority, in my case being an old guy in an organization where most people are much younger, you may have to be assertive about getting the majority to be inclusive of what you need. For example, I'm going to have to say, "So, look, what is my COS conference going to consist of, because there is no way in hell I'm sitting through two days of career planning!"