Tag Archives: David Jarmul

Mountain Views

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When I visited the Andes and Patagonia’s rugged landscape recently, I said the same thing as when I first saw the Grand Tetons: 

“You call these mountains?”

They were spectacular but I couldn’t resist pointing out they were much lower than the Himalayas of Nepal, where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer 47 years ago and have returned regularly since marrying Champa. I still speak Nepali, am close to our family there and think of Nepal as my second home.

Like many converts, I’ve become a zealot, in my case about Nepal’s status as the home of the world’s highest mountain, Everest, and eight of the top ten overall. I promote them even when I should be praising others.

As you can see from these photos from our trip last month, the mountains of Argentina and Chile are actually stunning. I was spellbound by the snow-covered peaks of Patagonia. When we drove across the Andes from Argentina to Chile, the views were magnificent, such as at Bariloche, below.

The same was true of the Alps when Champa and I hiked there on previous trips (below).

I loved the Cascades, too, when we visited Oregon recently. Despite being less than half the size of the Himalayas — Mount Rainier’s peak is 14,411 feet compared to 29,029 for Everest — they were glorious to hike or just admire from a chair (below).

It’s not like I’m a mountain climber myself, especially at this stage of my life. The highest I ever got in Nepal was 18,519 feet at Kala Patthar, overlooking the Everest base camp. That’s where summit expeditions start, not finish. I could barely walk in the thin air.

Moreover, altitude doesn’t define beauty. Nor does location. The highest peaks, like those in Nepal, can be more deadly than delightful.

Sunrise at Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, near Champa’s home.

My comments are just Himalayan chauvinism and, as Champa reminds me, they’re ridiculous. She glows whenever she visits mountains, whether in Nepal or elsewhere.

In comparison, I sound like a Parisian who sneers at someone else’s cuisine or a New Yorker mocking life beyond the Hudson River. It’s not a good look, so I’m confessing to it here and vowing to finally overcome it. 

In that spirit, let me now state clearly what I thought of the Andes: They were gorgeous, marvelous and impressive. 

That is, if you like hills.

(Top two photos by Nancy Collamer)

What’s On My Plate

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I never ate tacos, ramen or a Cuban sandwich when I was growing up. I didn’t even know what they were.

By contrast, it was unremarkable the other night when Champa and I stopped for dinner and ordered fajitas and enchiladas.

It also felt routine when I cooked Thai food for dinner guests recently: basil chicken with eggplant, Pad Thai with shrimp, coconut-flavored meatballs and sticky rice with mangoes, all served with Singha beer.

Champa and I have sriracha sauce in our cupboard, mango kefir in our refrigerator and phyllo in our freezer. They’re as normal to us as Nepali food is to my sons and their families. When they visit, they look forward to eating curried chicken, lentils, vegetables and rice. The only question is whether Champa will also prepare momos, Nepal’s delicious dumplings (as she’s doing in the photo).

For them, “exotic” might be the meatloaf or chicken with canned fruit cocktail that my mother used to cook for my sisters and me.

Few things have changed as much in my lifetime as what I eat. I grew up in Freeport, Long Island, a suburban town more diverse than most of its richer neighbors. My parents were relatively worldly. Yet we rarely ate “ethnic food” and, when we did, it was pizza or American-style Chinese food. We didn’t go out to dinner much and it was usually at an Italian place where I’d eat spaghetti and meatballs. Quiche and fondue were the height of sophistication.

When I went to college in Rhode Island, my horizons expanded to include quahogs and Portuguese sweet bread. But it was only after graduation in 1975, when I backpacked around the world with a friend, that I truly began to appreciate other cuisines, from pulaos in Afghanistan to shawarma in Egypt. I still remember the Kwality Restaurant in New Delhi where I tried tandoori chicken and naan. They were so good.

My culinary awakening coincided with the broadening of American cuisine generally. From bagels to burritos, foods that were once “ethnic” became widespread. Newer foods like phở and bibimbap entered the mainstream. My daughter-in-law, whose family came from Puerto Rico, introduced me to pasteles and tostones. Now I see these around town, too. Here in Durham, a mid-size city, we have restaurants offering cuisines from Austria to Zimbabwe. Our supermarkets have aisles of international foods. We have several specialty groceries, too. 

If you’d told me when I was younger that I’d enjoy khinkali from Georgia and jerk chicken from Jamaica, I might have guessed you were talking about Atlanta and a stop on the Long Island Rail Road. Little did I know that poke, focaccia and macarons would all become part of my vocabulary. I’d witness the rise and fall of pepper-crusted tuna and molten chocolate cake. I’d buy an Instant Pot and an air fryer. I’d fall in love with Moldovan cuisine and crave Carolina barbecue as a local comfort food.

I don’t consider myself a “foodie.” I haven’t yet embraced some trends such as bubble tea and kombucha and I’ve only tried a few vegan recipes. I still enjoy an occasional burger or Subway sandwich. But I plan to keep an open mind (and mouth) about whatever comes next.

Maybe I should offer a toast to this. Maybe even with avocados.

Posts I’ll Remember

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A family reunion in the Himalayas. An emotional return to Moldova. A big birthday. I wrote about these things and more this year. As we now turn the page, here are excerpts from some of my favorite 2023 posts:

Our family reunion in Nepal: “We heard the drums as our car pulled up to Champa’s family house in eastern Nepal. Then we saw the dancers. Champa’s brother appeared with an armful of flower garlands. His wife held colorful scarves. We’d arrived in Ilam, where Champa grew up and the two of us met when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Now it was 45 years later.”

Vietnam: “People seemed genuinely happy we were there and not only because we were bringing them business after the pandemic. They were proud of their history, their culture and their progress. They wanted us to know they are more than the place where America fought a misguided war.”

Discovering craft beer in Phnom Penh: “As an American who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, I’d associated Vietnam and Cambodia with war and genocide, not with IPAs. I was glad to update my perspective. If I go back, though, I’m still not asking for the fried insects.”

Returning to Moldova: “We returned to our Peace Corps workplaces and learned, after more than five years, that our impact has endured more than we’d realized.”

Visiting Ukraine’s neighbors: “My friends in Moldova, and those on the front lines in Ukraine, don’t know anything about the dysfunction in our Congress. They just need help, and fast.”

Oregon: “At first glance, Oregon matched its stereotype when we visited last week: a coffee-sipping, beer-brewing, wine-tasting paradise filled with hikers and bicyclists wearing Patagonia jackets and REI backpacks. But then we discovered an Oregon far more diverse.”

Hip replacement surgery: “The experience has reminded me of something I haven’t wanted to think about, which is the inevitability of physical decline. No matter how active, engaged and ‘not exactly retired’ we aspire to be in this stage of life, we cannot avoid life’s frailties forever. We’re all in the lobby for the organ recital.”

My 70th Birthday: “I hadn’t been looking forward to this birthday. A decade ago, when I turned 60, I was still working. Five years ago, I was wrapping up my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Moldova. But now, I was entering a decade that used to be synonymous with old age.”

Giving Away My Grandfather Clock: “It’s a reality many older Americans eventually confront: Our adult children don’t want our stuff. … We all fill our lives and hearts in different ways. As I’ve been reminded this week, it’s all stuff, and it doesn’t last forever. Time passes even if the clock breaks. Tick tock.”

Keeping Active: “I wonder sometimes whether I’m trying to prove something, to myself above all. Maybe I’m compensating for the fact that I no longer have the title and recognition of a formal job. Indeed, when I return these days to the campus where I used to work, few people recognize me. They just see a random retired guy. So maybe I’ve been filling up my schedule as a way to say: ‘Hey, I’m still here.’”

Favorite Books: “Bless your heart, Demon Copperhead. You’ve beaten my annual Top Ten book list like a borrowed mule and now I’m madder than a rattlesnake in a forest fire.”

Travel Tips

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Travel is my passion and I’ve learned a few things while visiting more than 60 countries and all 50 U.S. states. Looking ahead to 2024, I thought I’d share some “lessons learned” you might find helpful, too,

First, some caveats. Your preferences may differ from ours. Champa and I enjoy planning our own trips, exploring cities, hiking in beautiful places and exploring local cultures and food. We’re less interested in theme parks, spas, shopping and luxury. We prefer a new destination over returning to the same beach every year. We join groups only in certain situations. And, especially as older returned Peace Corps Volunteers, we know how fortunate we are to do any of this.

If any of that resonates with you, here are my dozen tips:

Use local experts. If you’re heading someplace where travel is relatively simple, you can probably plan and book everything yourself. Dozens of sites offer information about where to visit, stay and eat in, say, London or Toronto. It’s easy even in a place like Bruges, above, where English is widely understood. For more challenging spots, you might want to use a local planner, as I did for China, Vietnam and Romania. Local experts are easy enough to find online, do a great job and generally cost much less than a U.S. company (which may be using these same people as subcontractors). Why pay for the intermediary?

Take advantage of online itineraries. I check the online itineraries of trips from Rick Steves, Odysseys Unlimited and other companies. Then I work with a local company, or on my own, to plan the trip. I don’t feel guilty about using their information because I am willing to book their trip if their itinerary and price are good. We did this with an excellent South Africa trip from Friendly Planet.

Be wary of visits to arts centers. Your planner may suggest visits to local studios specializing in a region’s artistic specialties, such as porcelain or textiles. It can be fascinating to watch these artisans and you’re under no obligation to buy anything from them. But if this is going to make you uncomfortable, spend your time elsewhere. Tell the planner in advance about your preferences and review the itinerary carefully

Use free walking tours. As I’ve written previously, I’m a big fan of the free walking tours offered in many popular destinations. The guides work for tips, so are motivated to provide excellent service. (We always tip them generously if they’ve done a good job.) We usually take the tour soon after we arrive. It’s a great way to get the lay of the land and identify local highlights for possible return visits.

Note where walking tours start. If you’re wondering where to stay in a new city, use a trick we learned from our travel heroes, the Senior Nomads: Look for a hotel, Airbnb or hostel near the walking tour’s starting point. This puts you within walking distance of many sights. If these places are too expensive for your budget, you’ll still have a valuable reference point as you consider other locations.

Use Google Maps. You probably use Google Maps already to plan driving trips or find a friend’s house. But it’s more powerful than that. I use it to explore cities on foot and find things I need, like a restaurant in Riga, a winery in Williamette or a tour in Tbilisi. You can also check the weather, find the best times to visit places, create a custom map or download maps for cities where you may have limited Internet access. I stay connected with an international plan from T-Mobile.

Use Google Translate. Online translations have improved dramatically. I now feel much more comfortable traveling in places where I don’t know the local alphabet or language. If I need to communicate, I just speak or type into Google Translate and show the translation. If I can’t understand a local menu or sign, I point my phone camera at the text and read the translation. It’s usually imperfect but good enough.

Charge in local currency. In many countries, cash remains the best way to buy things, whether because of custom (as in Nepal), rapid inflation (Argentina) or limited technology and connectivity. Generally, though, you can pay with a credit card. Be sure to get one that doesn’t add fees every time you use it abroad. If the merchant asks whether you want to process the transaction in dollars or local currency, choose the latter, even though this may seem counterintuitive. The credit card company will convert the charge into dollars at the international exchange rate whereas a transaction made in dollars uses a rate set by local banks or merchants, which is usually worse.

Take advantage of travel credit cards. If you’re a loyal customer of an airline, hotel chain or other travel company, you may already be using their credit card and enjoying the benefits. If you’re less loyal, like me, you can take advantage of introductory offers. United Airlines gave me enough miles to book two long flights after I made some purchases with their Visa card. Before my free year expired, I canceled that card and took advantage of a similar offer from Delta. After Champa and I visit South America next month, we’ll fly home for free.

Use taxi apps. Until recently, I was nervous about taxi drivers in foreign countries, wondering whether they would cheat me. Uber and similar services have eased that problem. When we were in Qatar last year, for example, I used Uber to travel from the airport to the hotel, and then around the capital city, Doha. The driver understood where I wanted to go and the price was fixed. Uber doesn’t work everywhere so, if necessary, I download a local app in advance. In Moldova, I used Yandex Go; in Thailand, I used Bolt. You pay with cash with these apps but they work fine and are much less stressful than haggling with a foreign driver.

Think twice before pre-ordering a visa. If you’re traveling to a country that requires a visa, you’ll probably buy it online — a process that’s become much simpler. Countries now send you QR codes or downloadable visas after you submit the paperwork. Sometimes they require you to do this before you travel. If you can wait until you actually arrive, though, that’s often the best option. It’s usually quick and you’ll avoid paying the fees, which can be substantial, until you’re sure your plans haven’t changed. Check online beforehand and see what other travelers suggest.

Buy a luggage scale. Everyone has their favorite travel device: a pillow, a cosmetics kit or something else. Mine is the small hand-held luggage scale I use to weigh suitcases before heading to the airport. It shows the weight in both pounds and kilograms. No longer do I approach airline counters wondering whether my bags are too heavy and subject to hefty fees

I know these tips address only some of the many questions you may have as a traveler, but I hope you found them helpful. If you have tips of your own, please share them here for me and others to use.

Happy travels in 2024!

Top 2023 Books

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Bless your heart, Demon Copperhead. You’ve beaten my annual Top Ten book list like a borrowed mule and now I’m madder than a rattlesnake in a forest fire.

Barbara Kingsolver’s brilliant novel about young Demon’s perilous life in Appalachia was published last year but I read it too late for my 2022 Top Ten list. It turned out to be my favorite book of the year. I also admired its co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Trust, Hernan Diaz’s novel about wealth and deceit in New York. Likewise for another prize-winner, Nobel Prize recipient Abdulrazak Gurnah, whose spellbinding Afterlives transported me to colonial East Africa.

I’m not a professional critic who receives free advance copies, so I read these three books too late for my list. So, too, for some other excellent novels: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; Olga Lies Dreaming; The Trees and The Measure.

My new list again highlights ten books published during the year but, as in 2022, 2021 and 2020, it’s limited to those I read by mid-December. Here’s my 2023 Top Ten: 

James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was my favorite (so far). Set in Pottstown, Pa., it unravels the mystery of a skeleton found in the bottom of a well. McBride draws on his own Jewish and Black heritage to paint a rich portrait of Chicken Hill, a neighborhood whose diverse residents grapple with poverty, discrimination and a rapidly changing world. It’s a whodunit with a huge heart

My other favorite was Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, an eco-thriller set in New Zealand. A guerrilla collective of environmental activists forms an uneasy alliance with an elusive American billionaire who wants to build a survivalist bunker. His real goals prove more sinister, leading to an apocalyptic confrontation. The title comes from Macbeth and the final act is just as bloody.

Action and violence also abound in Small Mercies, but here the conflict revolves around the Boston school desegregation battles of the 1970s. As in Mystic River, author Dennis Lehane captures that city’s voices. His central character is Mary Pat, a tough “project chick” from Southie with two failed marriages and a son lost to heroin. When she learns her daughter may be involved in the murder of a young black man, she is caught in a whirlwind, just like the city around her.

In Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano tells the story of a boy growing up in a loveless house who finds refuge among his basketball teammates. William goes to college on a scholarship and seems to finally find happiness with an ambitious classmate whose Chicago family embraces him. When their marriage falls apart, he discovers even deeper love — and then tragedy — with an unexpected partner. He nearly dies before reconciling at the end with a figure from his past.

Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett,is set mainly in a cherry orchard in northern Michigan. The farm’s mother, Lara, slowly shares with her daughers — and us — the story of her brief acting career and love affair with an actor who became one of the world’s most famous movie stars. One daughter thinks the actor is her father. Her mother reveals the truth while gently prodding her daughters to contemplate deeper truths about family and what matters in life.

For more action, consider All the Sinners Bleed, the latest thriller from S.A. Cosby, whose Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears appear on my previous lists. This time Cosby opens with a shooting at a rural Virginia school that leads to chilling revelations about the murders of local Black children. The sheriff slowly makes sense of the case while confronting racism, religious zealots, snake charmers and a former girlfriend who became a podcaster.

The remaining four books on my list are nonfiction, led by Jonathan Eig’s masterful biography of MartinLuther King Jr., which draws on a trove of previously unreleased White House telephone transcripts, F.B.I. documents, letters, oral histories and other documents. I thought I knew a lot about King, but I learned many new things about him as both a man and historical figure, as well as about Malcolm X, the Kennedys and others. Most of all, Eig shows us King’s incredible determination and heroism. I came away with even greater gratitude for his life.

Considerably less admirable are many of the characters in David Grann’s The Wager. Set mainly in South America in the 1740s, it’s a page-turner about a British vessel that wrecks off the coast of Patagonia while pursuing a Spanish galleon. Its survivors are marooned and then embark on a harrowing journey. Those who reach Brazil are hailed as heroes until several other castaways appear and accuse them of mutiny. Who is telling the truth? Author Grann, who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon, presents the evidence he uncovered during years of research.

Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartland takes place closer to home, in Indiana during the 1920s. A charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson leads the Ku Klux Klan to national power, culminating with a march through Washington, D.C. He recruits politicians and others to his movement, which appears unstoppable until his abuse of a local woman leads to his downfall. Especially in today’s world, it’s a sobering reminder of how easily hate groups can attract followers.

My final book, also nonfiction, is a memoir by the historian Drew Gilpin Faust. Necessary Trouble describes her childhood in rural Virginia, a life filled with horses, privilege and racism. Young Drew is a precocious child, as you’d expect of someone who would become Harvard’s president, and she struggles to make sense of her life. Her perspective keeps changing as she travels to Eastern Europe, gets involved in the Civil Rights Movement and protests the Vietnam War. I was moved by her empathy and beautiful writing.

I’ll also salute two excellent nonfiction books that didn’t make my Top Ten: The Undertow, Jeff Sharlet’s journey into far-right extremism, and Traffic, Ben Smith’s origin story about online disinformation, featuring his time at Buzzfeed.

Equally disturbing, although fiction, was Emma Cline’s The Guest, about a young woman who uses sex and manipulation to con her way through the luxurious world of the Hamptons. I was engrossed by her odyssey of desperation and, after finishing it, went on to read Cline’s earlier (and even more chilling) The Girls, based on the women who followed Charlie Manson.

Other novels I enjoyed were much lighter, such as Pineapple Street, about Brooklyn’s wealthy elite; Romantic Comedy, featuring a writer who finds love at a show resembling Saturday Night Live; and The Chinese Groove, about an overly optimistic immigrant who confronts the realities of America.

I love crime fiction and this year discovered Don Winslow, specifically City of Dreams and City on Fire. They’re both set in Providence, where I once lived. I also enjoyed a pair from Ruth Ware: Zero Days and The It Girl. I liked two other thrillers, Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead and Every Man a King by Walter Mosley, but found both less compelling than previous work from these two distinguished writers.

A book even older than those I cited at the beginning is Richard Ford’s 2014 novel Let Me Be Frank With You. It’s the fourth in Ford’s series of novels about Frank Bascombe of New Jersey, who is now confronting the indignities of older age. It made me laugh (and cringe) more than any other book this year.

I was less enthusiastic about two of the year’s most honored books, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (too long; couldn’t finish) and The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk (an overdue history of Native America but too scholarly for me). I also gave up on Under the Wave at Waimea by Paul Theroux, usually one of my favorites.

Finally, a salute to Cormac McCarthy, who died in June. I’d read several of his books but never All the Pretty Horses, whose brilliance reminded me of his singular talent. I will miss his voice even as I look forward to 2024 and a new year of great books — regardless of their publication dates.

As always, if you have suggestions of your own, please share them here.

Peace Corps Macho

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I received a message recently from someone thanking me for an article I wrote in 1979 before returning home from my first stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer, in Nepal.

The message came from a woman in Tennessee who served in Swaziland (now Eswatini) around the same time. “I pulled out a scrapbook and found a copy of your Peace Corps Macho article,” she wrote me. “That saying has reminded me many times not to get too caught up in myself over the years. I thought to look you up and I’m glad to see that you are still writing thought-provoking words on a very interesting life.”

I’d nearly forgotten the article, which appeared in the July/August 1979 issue of Peace Corps Times (which no longer exists). I found it online and, despite some gendered language and outdated phrases (e.g., “Third World,” “villagers,” “far out”), much of it remains timely.

Just in case you missed the article 44 years ago, I’m sharing it here along with some photos of my time in Nepal.

Item: A fellow Volunteer chose one of the most isolated posts here in Nepal. A few months later, he was visited by a Peace Corps staff member. The Volunteer’s quarters were, the staff member later told me, “a hovel worse than anything in the whole village. His kitchen was dirty and he wasn’t boiling his water. It was unbelievable. When I asked him why he didn’t improve his living standard, he said, ‘Well, I didn’t join the Peace Corps to be comfortable, you know.’”

Item: My lifetime friend, Mitch, joined Peace Corps/Nepal a year after me. At the end of his training. he had to choose between Kathmandu and another town, Pokhara, for his post. If he lived in Kathmandu, we could have shared my house and had a great time together. But Mitch chose the other post. One of the main reasons was that we both felt funny about doing something that we would so obviously enjoy. It would lessen the hardship we associated with Peace Corps service.

Item: My first post in Nepal was a village called llam. For medical reasons, I was transferred to Kathmandu. My salary was raised by $16 per month. Now I go to an occasional film or cheap restaurant. When Volunteers come in from their isolated posts, I am sometimes asked whether I have forgotten in my “luxury” what the real Peace Corps experience is about.

The implication is clear: You have to suffer to be a PCV.

It’s an attitude that I call “Peace Corps Macho.” It occurs when the willingness to endure hardship in the course of helping the poor turns into the belief that hardships have an intrinsic worth of their own.

Peace Corps Macho. You have to suffer to sing the blues.

Turning the inevitable hardships of Peace Corps life into a psychic combat medal is, of course, one way to cope with problems beyond our control. We can laugh at our troubles. It gives a sense of camaraderie.

But the problem is that many Volunteers I know — myself included — sometimes feel they have to seek out these hardships to prove how much they can “take,” thus showing how much they are willing to sacrifice to help humanity.

For example, a typical conversation in the Peace Corps/Nepal medical office:

“Hey, guess what? My lab test just came back and I’ve got the amoeba!”

*Oh. that’s nothing. I just got over pneumonia. I almost got a trip to Bangkok out of it, but I got better too soon.”

“Really? Say, did you hear about Bob? He came down with typhoid and had to be helicoptered out. Pretty amazing. First he had hepatitis and malaria, now he’s got typhoid.”

“Well, you know, Bob’s a far-out guy.”

This is the ethic of the missionary. Suffering brings prestige. Like the priest in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, the taking on of suffering elevates the soul.

The trouble with this is that Peace Corps Volunteers are not missionaries. Nor are we in Outward Bound. Nor the army. By the Peace Corps charter, we are here for three reasons. The primary one is to help the poor. Second is to give foreigners a chance to see Americans. And third is to create a body of American citizens sensitive to the needs of Third World development.

There’s not a word about suffering.

The line is not always clear, of course, about when hardship is a necessary part of getting our job done and when it becomes a spiritual ego ride. For example, to live in a simple house is to show solidarity with local farmers. But it’s ludicrous not to do what you can to catch the rats, keep your room clean and be happy.

Likewise, if you eat local foods instead of tinned goodies from home, it is a sign of fellowship with the poor. But some Volunteers carry this to the extreme by eating a protein-deficient diet, well knowing that they are endangering their health. Why? To be like their neighbors.

I feel the pressure myself. My lob and life here have been going extremely well. My teaching is successful, I have launched a series of special projects and have made many friends. And yet I sometimes feel guilty because things aren’t more difficult.

Peace Corps itself is ambiguous in its attitude towards hardship. On the one hand, it frets over Volunteer safety, programs and the like. But on the other, it prints recruiting brochures that ring something like: “Sure it’ll be tough. You’ll be vomiting up spiders and wishing those poisonous snakes would finally put you out of your misery. But you’ll be a Peace Corps Volunteer!”

The tension doesn’t only concern physical health, but mental health, too. Consider the Volunteer who has been at his post for six months, but who is not supposed to come to the capital for another two months. He is lonely and really wants to see his friends and have a decent meal. Too often a Volunteer in that situation will feel that he has to visibly freak out before he is morally justified in seeking relief. So he stays — after all, hardship is what Peace Corps is all about. Maybe he will tough it out after all. But maybe he won’t.

Another example: During my training, we had several conversations about whether there were times when we ought to drink unboiled water. In certain social situations, shouldn’t we just be gracious and take a few sips?

Well, as one who has now been through giardiasis, amoebic dysentery, hookworm and roundworm, I have no doubts anymore what the answer to that question is. What are you going to gain by drinking the water and vomiting for days: impress the villagers?

There seems to be a need here for balance between our own needs and the commitment we feel to help the poor. Too often there is a tendency among those involved in social service to make the worst of things so as to assure themselves that they are genuinely committed.

The issue is even more pronounced these days since many of us (I include myself) feel a certain repulsion toward the narcissism of many in the so-called human potential movement, what Tom Wolfe and others have called the “Me Generation.” For myself, I feel that many such people, well meaning though they may be, have become so wrapped up in themselves that they have forgotten the poverty of half the world’s people.

But they have their point, too. It’s a fool who doesn’t watch out for himself. So somewhere between suffering to show “compassion” for the poor and getting Rolfed and ESTed all day, there’s got to be a balance.

In any case, Peace Corps should face this issue a lot more squarely than it does now. Is hardship to be maximized as a requirement for successful service? If not, why does Peace Corps so often glorify unhappiness? And more important, why do so many PCVs let themselves get sucked in by such self-destructive logic?

Peace Corps Macho, to be sure, is not one of life’s basic human needs.

While I’m Still Able

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It’s a phrase that may be familiar to older Americans wondering how long they’ll be able to maintain a busy lifestyle:

“While I’m still able.”

I realized recently that I’ve been saying it myself when running into old friends. They’ll say something like: “I follow you online and you sure do keep busy traveling and everything else.”

“Well,” I’ll respond, “I want to do it while I’m still able.”

When I said this again the other day, it made me think of Supermarket Sweep, the television show in which contestants race to fill their carts with as much as possible within a brief time. Grab the steaks! Get some lobsters! Don’t let time run out on you!

I thought: Is this what I’ve become — someone frantically filling their cart before the buzzer sounds?

One of my volunteer projects is with this group in Moldova.

I know it can look that way. During the past year, I’ve taken several big trips, which I’ve written about here. I volunteer with local nonprofits, serve on boards, write this blog and a newsletter, go to local events and spend time with family and friends.

This may all just add up to an “active retirement” but I wonder sometimes whether I’m trying to prove something, to myself above all. Maybe I’m compensating for the fact that I no longer have the title and recognition of a formal job. Indeed, when I return these days to the campus where I used to work, few people recognize me. They just see a random retired guy.

Celebrating my 70th birthday with my seven grandchildren

So maybe I’ve been filling up my schedule as a way to say: Hey, I’m still here. Or perhaps I’m overreacting to medical challenges I’ve had over the past couple of years, or to turning 70. My clock is ticking and I hear it even without hearing aids.

Whatever my motivations, I’ve been busy, perhaps too busy.

Speaking at a local retirement community

An older friend told me recently she’s been wrestling with the same issue. She said she’s finding it hard to juggle numerous volunteer roles with the informal help she provides to friends, family responsibilities, travel and everything else. She laughed that it’s hardly what she expected in “retirement.”

I have no regrets about my own “not exactly retired” life, which I’ve pursued since walking away from a busy job at the age of 62. I recognize how fortunate I’ve been to do this. But it’s never been a retirement in the sense of kicking back. Shortly after I began serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in 2016, I wrote about my inability to ease up and move beyond the packed schedule of my previous life. I noted then how “I keep checking my cell phone for messages. I don’t go home until I’ve completed every item on my mental ‘to do’ list.”

I concluded that post by humorously vowing to pay closer attention when the Peace Corps staff told me again to be patient. “Really,” I promised, “I may even put a reminder in my electronic calendar.”

Visiting the Suomenlinna fortress in Helsinki

Now, seven years later, I remain just as persistent about making my days productive, whether it’s assisting a local community group or traveling to some foreign destination with Champa. I’m doing this mainly for myself but, at some level, I suppose I am also asserting my own relevance in a world that can make older people feel invisible.

In any case, I’m determined to make the most of this precious “not exactly retired” stage of my life when I no longer have the responsibilities of a formal job but am still able to contribute and thrive. All of these activities give my life meaning and I plan to keep doing them while I’m still … well, you know.

Beyond Ukraine

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I saw while traveling in Moldova and the Baltics recently what President Biden asserted in his Oval Office speech last night: Russian aggression in Ukraine threatens security and democracy far beyond Ukraine.

“If we don’t stop Putin’s appetite for power and control in Ukraine, he won’t limit himself just to Ukraine,” Biden said in his speech, which linked the conflict there to the horrific crisis in the Middle East (which I’ve also been feeling personally).

Street sign in Tallinn, Estonia

Moldova and the three Baltic countries — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — have not forgotten what it was like living as Soviet states under Russian domination. They treasure their independence and strongly support Ukraine. They understand what’s at stake, and so should we.

Champa and I saw Ukrainian flags everywhere during our trip this month — on public buildings, on churches, in shops. 

Chişinǎu, Moldova’s capital, hosted a “Ukrainian Day” while we were there. Ukrainian families that fled there after the Russian invasion celebrated their homeland with dances, food and traditional costumes. 

This young woman wore a dress and wig that resemble Ukraine’s flag.

Social service groups set up booths to provide refugees with resources and information.

We saw Ukrainian assistance centers throughout our trip, such as at this storefront in Latvia’s capital, Riga. 

Ukrainians even receive special parking benefits in Riga.

This message atop a building in Vilnius, Lithuania, reflected the popular sentiment that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine.

My friends in Moldova, and those on the front lines in Ukraine, don’t know anything about the dysfunction in our Congress. They just need help, and fast. As Biden said, “there are innocent people all over the world who hope because of us, who believe in a better life because of us, who are desperate not be forgotten by us, and who are waiting for us.”

Picturing the Baltics

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The three Baltic countries differ. Lithuania is mainly Catholic.  Estonia has a language similar to Finnish. Latvia has the world’s tallest women. (Really.)

Yet all three impressed us when we toured them last week with a local travel company. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and then joining the European Union and NATO, they’ve enjoyed far more prosperity and stability than the former Soviet state we know best, Moldova.

They’re also really interesting to visit, as you can see in the dozen examples below:

Picturesque churches, castles and squares abound. These are just a few of the ones we visited.

Cobblestone streets are also plentiful. They’re charming (but challenging when you’re recovering from hip surgery). This street is in Estonia’s capital, Tallinn.

Some old forts and castles look like Game of Thrones. This one is at a national park in Lithuania.

Lutheran and Catholic churches predominate, but there are also many Russian Orthodox churches, like this one in Tallinn.

Jewish synagogues are scarce. The Holocaust all but wiped out the vibrant Jewish presence here. We visited Jewish museums in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and Latvia’s capital, Riga.

The Nazi occupation was followed by decades of Soviet oppression. The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius included this exhibit showing how the KGB bugged and monitored Lithuanian citizens.

Soviet domination was portrayed artistically in this exhibit of old propaganda posters at the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn.

Traditional baths and saunas are celebrated in the Baltics. This historic display in Latvia shows what people added to their baths.

If you ask for “hot chocolate,” don’t expect something like cocoa. You’ll be served a delicious cup of melted chocolate.

Riga hosted the World Athletics Road Running Championships while we were there. Our hotel was filled with world-class runners, including Olympic champions.

The rappers 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes came to Riga shortly after we left.

The Hill of Crosses is a pilgrimage site with more than 200,000 crosses in Siauliai, Lithuania.

You cross easily from one Baltic country to the other. This sign marks a border between Lithuania and Latvia.

Finally, meet John from Australia, 89 years old, who traveled solo with our group, including this stop at the Baltic Sea. He inspired Champa and me to keep pursuing our own travels for as long as we can.