Peace Corps' Mission - To promote international peace and friendship by:

1. Helping the peoples of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women;

2. Helping promote a better understanding of the American people on the part of the peoples served; and

3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of the American people.

(Karen Preskey is a United States Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. She graduated from Bismarck High School and studied biotechnology and Spanish at North Dakota State University.)

I joined the Peace Corps straight out of college, looking for adventure and with the idealistic desire to do some good in the world. I arrived in Ethiopia in the fall of 2007 to work in HIV education, care and support.

Ethiopia is a diverse, fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking country. It has breathtaking landscapes and a rich traditional culture, and it was an ancient center of civilization. Yet it is now better known for its poverty.

It is extensive and in your face. But people are very warm and hospitable. It's common to meet someone, and within minutes share their meal or go to their house for tea.

Adventure I have been granted. Sometimes I find myself stopping a moment and wondering, "Am I really here?" The idealism is still there but tempered. It took me most of my first year to learn how to get things done within the Ethiopian cultural context, get my colleagues to accept my ideas and feel like I am finally doing what I came here to do.

The extensive down time is sometimes frustrating. I just want to do something! But the coffee ceremonies, weddings to attend and afternoons spent at the office simply chatting are all vital parts of the process.

Without that, I would never be seen as a member of the community and therefore someone with whom it is desirable to work, rather than just an outsider trying to tell people how to live their lives.

Living in the community, working alongside Ethiopians, witnessing the day-to-day struggles gives me a better perspective about why development work is so hard. Life moves at a different pace and change is incremental. Small successes seem miraculous. Once you accept that, everything seems more manageable. And you're on your way to passing along the skills you came here to share.

Cultural exchange

(Goals 2 and 3)

As the sole non-Ethiopian in my town, you could say I'm a bit conspicuous. Glow-in-the dark white skin, pale blue eyes and light straight hair. Children are especially intrigued. They'll sneak up to rub my arm. Will the color rub off? Or they'll pet my hair. Why isn't it crimpy?

They all seem to know my name too. Whenever I go out, I'm treated to a chorus of "Keri! Keri!" (Their version of my name.) Greetings in the local languages of Amharic and Oromifa, the ubiquitous "You! You! You!" and of course "Ferenji! Ferenji!" (foreigner).

Sometimes the constant attention is too much. It's easier now, after a year, as the effort I've put in trying to integrate into the community and culture. I speak some of the two local languages, cook with kerosene, go to the farmers market for food, wash my clothes by hand, eat injera with my fingers and can do a proper Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

Of course, that doesn't mean the constant attention goes away. It just means that I understand it when people are sitting around discussing me in my presence!

They are very proud of their culture and love it when we adopt aspects of it. So by now the whole town seems to know everything about me and they love to discuss the fact that I speak their languages and cook their cultural foods.

I've spent entire bus rides overhearing the other passengers discussing me. It's a rather strange experience; amusing, but a bit disconcerting at times. I celebrated Timkit (Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Epiphany) this year and my presence elicited the following comments. "Abesha camise allech." "Ow, inga ferenji nat." ("Look, she is wearing our cultural clothes." "Yes, she is our ferenji.")

Everyone dresses in their cultural clothes and takes to the streets. There is a procession through town led by priests in multicolored robes carrying bright parasols, giant crosses, replicas of the tablets of the Ten Commandments and the Arc of the Covenant, and wafting incense. The church choir, in their own special robes, follows while leading the crowd in song. Singing, chanting and drumming fill the air as everyone dances in the street while proceeding to the church.

The Peace Corps also sponsors a program called WorldWise Schools in which classrooms in the States are paired with a serving volunteer. So I am a pen pal to the classrooms of family and friends from North Dakota. I try to share my experiences to give the students an image of life in Ethiopia.

One friend, serving as a "Teach for America" volunteer in Louisiana, sent a packet of letters from her students, which I shared with members of the Girls Club from our high school. They loved hearing from American students and had a great time writing responses and preparing a video response. Both classes enjoy the cultural exchange; the American students learning about Ethiopia and my girls learning about America.

Technical skills

exchange (Goal 1)

I live 400 kilometers (approximately 248 miles) southwest of Addis Ababa in a town of about 60,000 people, doing HIV/AIDS outreach work. My primary assignment is with the HIV office at the local health center. Lately we've been working together to start a support group for mothers living with HIV.

In Ethiopia, married women of childbearing age are the largest demographic infected with HIV. Therefore, prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV is a major focus of ours. It is extremely difficult because women have very limited contact with health care. Many never seek prenatal care and less than 4 percent of women give birth in the presence of a doctor.

It's difficult to help an HIV-positive mother prevent passing the virus to her baby if she never comes to the health center. So we are starting a support group for HIV-positive mothers based on successful mothers support groups in other countries.

We are training a couple of HIV-positive mothers to be mentor mothers who will counsel others. All pregnant women are tested for HIV in our prenatal clinic, which is able to refer those who test positive directly to our mentor mothers. The peer support aspect is very powerful for the women because they can see an example of people like themselves living positively and healthily.

Furthermore, they are more inclined to follow the mentor mother's advice about how to protect themselves and their baby because they trust them. Our program lasts during the pregnancy and throughout the first year of the baby's life. This way, in addition to receiving peer support, mothers also learn how to decrease the risk of transmitting HIV to their baby in the womb, during birth and while breastfeeding; the three major routes of mother-to-child transmission.

After graduating from the program, mothers also act as community educators to encourage all women to seek antenatal care.

Learning that you have HIV is very frightening and there is still a lot of stigma and discrimination attached to the disease. Many people are afraid to let anyone find out they have HIV because they may be kicked out of their home or abandoned by their friends and family.

So support groups help give people the courage to seek treatment and take the measures necessary to prevent further transmission rather than never returning to the health center and ignoring the virus.

I compiled the HIV data kept by our health center in the form of raw data located in several different logs in different offices. Once we were able to analyze the data, we realized that nearly half of all people that test positive for HIV at our health center never receive treatment. Either they never return to start taking the anti-retroviral therapy or they do begin ART but eventually quit taking the drug.

My current focus is on retaining the HIV-positive mothers in order to prevent mother-to-child transmission; however, I hope to expand my program in the future in order to increase the retention of all patients in our ART program.

In addition to a primary project, Peace Corps volunteers are expected to conduct various secondary projects. So, beyond my HIV work with the health center, I am also working with community members to train local volunteers to provide care and support to orphans and vulnerable children.

The tragedy of AIDS has left many children in need of support to meet their material, educational and psychosocial needs. Youth outreach activities at the high school also have been rewarding. I have been teaching a couple of English classes as an extracurricular for students eager to practice their English.

All secondary education is in English, but they get very little opportunity to practice spoken English. This makes it very difficult for them because, due to a shortage of teachers, many classes consist solely of videos of the lectures. So we use a content-based English curriculum which develops language skills through discussions about HIV.

I also help run a life skills program for the high school's Girls Club. Girls aren't generally encouraged to finish high school or attend college, but rather to get married and stay home. The average marriage age for girls is 16 nationally. Our goal is to empower them to continue their education and lead healthy lives by teaching them life skills and about reproductive health.

I've had the opportunity to participate in a few polio vaccination campaigns. All throughout my region, health care workers were going door-to-door administering the oral polio vaccine to all children under 5.

Again, due to limited contact with health care, there is low overall coverage of childhood immunizations. It is common to see people, who have polio, on a crutch or using their arms to get around.

For one campaign, I went to some rural areas to monitor the vaccination teams assigned to the area. We were able to get part of the way there by car, but eventually came to a river with no bridge. We got out and walked a couple miles through fields, passing farmers using a single ox and plow, and stopping at the grass and mud huts to ask if their children were vaccinated, and vaccinating them in need. Definitely an "Am I really here?" moment.

I also was able to help translate for an Operation Smile campaign in the major city near me in December and am working with my town administration to register residents with cleft lips and palates so that we can arrange transport for them to the upcoming campaign.

They provide surgery for people with cleft lips and cleft palates. The adults' surgeries were done under local anesthetic, so the surgeons needed translators since the patients were conscious during surgery. It felt so surreal standing at the operating table in scrubs talking people through their surgeries!

Families traveled from all over Ethiopia to receive surgery. They came by bus, horseback and on foot. It was wonderful to see people get the first glimpse of themselves in a mirror after surgery. One boy simply stared for a good 10 minutes. Others cried and hugged everyone in sight.

It was especially powerful to see the adults, who had spent 20-30 years outcast due to their clefts, suddenly have everything change. In addition to the social stigma, clefts physically impede speech; sometimes completely preventing it. So, for children, this surgery means a chance to learn to speak and go to school.

Despite the struggles and difficulties, serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia has been an incredibly rewarding endeavor. It can sometimes be lonely but I have made some great friends in my town and I feel like I understand Ethiopia. It is a rich country in many ways and has given me so many opportunities I'd never get to experience otherwise.

(Each Peace Corps volunteer has a unique experience; this story is solely based on Karen Preskey's personal experiences and her views and opinions may not reflect those of Peace Corps.)