I started my Peace Corps application in July 2001. After meeting with a Peace Corps recruiter, I was told I would be going to Bangladesh, Mongolia, Nepal, or Thailand. I wavered between Mongolia and Nepal.
A couple weeks later when I came home from work, my invitation letter from the Peace Corps was waiting for me. Nepal it would be. I was excited. I read about Nepal and Hinduism. I started this blog. I still had months before my departure.
From January 2002 to August 2004, I kept this blog about my experiences in the Peace Corps in Nepal. This is just one experience, my experience, working and living Nepal during its possibly most turbulent period in recent history.
I mention this because folks considering coming to Nepal with the Peace Corps were reading about events happening in Nepal at that time and were alarmed about the security situation—from a perspective in the US.
The Peace Corps office in Washington, DC, thought it was best to quiet those raising alarm. I didn’t raise any alarm. I just wrote about work, life, et cetera, for my friends and family back home.
One final note. Some of the people with whom I worked were extraordinary. Others were, well, less than extraordinary. Peace Corps/Nepal is a wonderful yet flawed organization. Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) are amazing and lazy.
Any person familiar with the situation in Nepal circa 2002–2004 understands that there were no easy answers, no clear questions. Things are built and things are blown up.
So I will dedicate this blog, my experience, to the people who don’t need white SUVs to get things done: the people of Nepal. They are numerous. They are wonderful. They are why this experience was the best experience I’d had.
