Peace Corps: the toughest job you'll ever love and lifelong friends you'll love forever

In July 1999, barely a month after graduating from UCLA, I said a tearful goodbye to my college boyfriend and my ambivalent mother and boarded a plane that would take me first to Miami, Florida and ultimately to Quito, Ecuador to begin my Peace Corps training. I was not quite 22 years old. Peace Corps was something I had planned to do since age 12, when I saw an exhibit on the 30th anniversary of Peace Corps at the JFK Library in Boston. 

After three months of language and cross-cultural training, I was assigned to a hot, dry little town called Los Bajos de Pechiche along the coast of Ecuador in Manabí Province. The saving grace of my assignment was that my nearest neighbor, less than nine miles away, would be a woman named Kristen, a fellow PCV whom I had already identified as a kindred spirit. She and I had been the most "flexible" -- for lack of a better word-- when it came to choosing sites and, as such, we were granted the two least desirable assignments.

We each did our best to settle in to our villages, but within a couple of months, it was clear to both of us that the miserable heat, less than ideal location, and the day-to-day work we were being asked to do -- partnered with a rich, powerful, and rigid NGO --  were not desirable or sustainable. We separately requested site transfers. I was thankfully approved quickly to return to La Josefina, where I had spent a month during our community based training. I loved it here and knew it was the right place for me to serve. Kristen transferred about a month after me to a suburb of Quito, where she thrived as well.

The months we shared along the dry coast were not super happy months, but they planted the seeds for a lifelong friendship -- we stayed unknowingly together in a brothel, we begrudgingly ate mandated lunches in nearby city that had been budgeted on last year's grant proposals, we bonded with the lesbian woman in my town who was understandably closeted, and we grew to appreciate and love each other deeply. I am grateful now for the experiences we shared and for the friendship that grew from them.

Kristen and I have seen each other infrequently over the last two decades but we remain connected. We live on opposite sides of the country, she in Maine, I in California. After Peace Corps, Kristen went back to school and became a nurse. She attended my wedding but I missed hers later the same year because I was a resident. She and her husband and son joined our family in Brazil for the World Cup in 2014.  She visited California, my mom and I visited her in Kennebunkport. And my family saw her and her kids last year for a small 20-year Peace Corps reunion in Colorado that had been delayed due to the COVID pandemic.

Now, 23 years later, Kristen is back in Ecuador with her two kids, Max (age 13) and Sadie (age 10) to visit us for the month. It is her first time back to Ecuador since Peace Corps, and it is definitely special to be here together! Kristen loves pineapple, bubbly water, lentils, and Ecuadorian ají (hot sauce). She is famous in our PCV group for eating a pineapple a day and dumping an entire jar of hot sauce into everything she eats. She is also hysterically funny, refreshingly blunt, and has a wicked sharp memory.

Meeting Kristen and her two kids in the Santo Domingo Terminal Terrestre (bus station) last week felt a bit last flashback to the future. Bus stations are not uncommon places for PCVs to meet up, but of course, two decades ago, we were childless, bright-eyed novice travelers. We also travelled lighter. Now, with kids in tow (and my RPCV husband), we chatted excitedly on the long bus ride to the beach, covering topics from PCV gossip to school choices to marriage. 

We spent a lovely week in Mompiche together (see the previous post); what I didn't talk about there in much detail is how special it is to get to know Kristen's kids and have her kids get to know mine. I know, I know,  it sounds trite, but it is true nonetheless. Max is an energetic kid, full of big ideas and wild plans and super game for just about any adventure. Despite not knowing any Spanish, he did great jumping in with our Ecuadorian friends and doing his best to communicate. He absolutely loved strolls into town to bargain with vendors and dancing at the impromptu birthday party we had for Jessica's youngest daughter on Friday night. Sadie, more reserved, is gentle, kind and sweet, particularly to Brynna. She needs a little more time to warm up to these unusual circumstances. She loved sharing a bed with Brynna as well as playing in the warm ocean waves and quietly said to me a few days ago, "I miss home, but I really like this place too."

Kristen brought us super sweet gifts: new socks for the kids (six pairs each!), two tubs of Skippy peanut butter, real Maine maple syrup, good chocolate, and a pile of hand-me-down dress up clothes, which have already been put to good use in our first day back in La Jos. But the best gift, as I have written before, is their presence here with us.

Kristen and I loved each other back when we could not imagine what the next two decades could possibly bring. "Back when" we would regularly get cat-called by men on the streets. "Back when" there was way less asphalt in Ecuador. "Back when" we did not have professions or careers or care about retirement accounts. "Back when" we may or may not have dreamed of these humans that we have each birthed and are now raising. "Back when" we could not know that we would have yet another shared experience together such as this one. As Kristen remarked several times in the last few days, "My heart is full".

Kristen, Max and Sadie stayed on the coast for a few extra beach days, but they will be joining us in La Josefina soon!