In this interview, you’ll hear from Will Gifford, a Peace Corps Youth Development volunteer in Peru. Will shares what daily life looks like, the work being done, and how service has shaped their personal and professional growth. You’ll learn about housing, cultural differences, project work, language learning, and what it’s like to live and work in a new country. This interview offers a real look into Peace Corps service and what future volunteers can expect.
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. What do you do as a Peace Corps Youth Development volunteer in Peru?
Technically, I’m a Youth Development volunteer, not an Environment volunteer — although, as it turns out, the two have overlapped quite a bit during my service.
Living at 13,000ft
I live in Carhuamayo, a small town perched some 4,100 meters above sea level in the central Peruvian Andes, near the shores of Lake Junín (or Chinchaycocha, as it’s known locally). My primary work has involved collaborating with local schools to promote young people’s social-emotional skills, leadership, civic participation, and vocational development. I’ve taught workshops, supported student government initiatives, coached basketball, and helped coordinate youth leadership and civic engagement activities.
Many projects
But one of the wonderful things about Peace Corps is that your service can take you in directions you never anticipated. Carhuamayo sits in a pretty incredible corner of the Andes, surrounded by three nationally protected areas (ANPs): the Santuario Nacional de Huayllay, the Reserva Nacional de Lago Junín, and the Santuario Histórico de Chacamarca. Through partnerships with SERNANP (Servicio Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas, or basically, the Peruvian National Park Service) and with local conservation NGOs like Grupo Rana and the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance (or DZCA, which is affiliated with the Denver Zoo in the States, but has a field conservation office in Junín), I’ve participated in some pretty amazing environmental leadership and conservation work.
Much of that work has involved the critically endangered giant frog of Junín, alongside projects involving Chilean flamingos and the always-emblematic vicuña. (I’ve written about some of these adventures on my blog — click for the flamingos 🦩and the vicuñas 🦙)
Prison outreach
Working with my friends and counterparts at the DZCA, I’ve also helped develop an educational program at a women’s prison in nearby Cerro de Pasco, working with incarcerated women on life skills, financial education, and entrepreneurship. DZCA also introduces them to local wildlife and conservation, and the women make little frog and flamingo plushies that we help them sell! The proceeds from the sales go back to the incarcerated women.
Eclectic mix
So yeah! My weeks are an eclectic mixture of teaching and coaching, researching and writing, coordinating and occasionally wandering around trying to find the person I’m supposed to have a meeting with (or just waiting for them — ever heard of “la hora peruana”?). If I’m lucky, it might even involve hopping into a creek in some waders to try and grab a few frogs. It’s not always glamorous (I go more days than I care to admit without showering)… But it’s been an education in how community-based development actually happens: through relationships, patience, and a healthy tolerance for uncertainty.
2. Why did you decide to join the Peace Corps and serve in Peru?
First applied in 2018
I actually first applied to Peace Corps back in 2018, when I was accepted for a position in Community Economic Development in Paraguay. Unfortunately, some health difficulties in my family meant that it wasn’t the right time to leave home for two years. But the idea never really left me.
Work and travel
In the years that followed, I worked in community organizing, environmental activism, conflict mediation (briefly), and (equally briefly) participatory action research. I also spent a fair amount of time backpacking around the world, including through South America. Traveling taught me a tremendous amount, but it also left me wanting something more: the chance to stay somewhere long enough to become part of the rhythms of daily life, to develop meaningful relationships, and to understand a place beyond the perspective of a passing visitor.
Applied again
Peace Corps seemed to offer a beautiful opportunity to do exactly that, while also contributing to work that mattered to a local community. I was especially drawn to its emphasis on cultural exchange and working with people, rather than arriving as an outsider with a ready-made set of solutions.
In Peace Corps, for example, one of our first tasks upon arriving at site is a Community Diagnostic: getting to know our communities, interviewing residents, and developing a shared understanding of local needs and priorities before proposing projects. If you’re interested in that process, you can also read my blog post about it here 📖
I wanted to build on the skills I’d begun developing in community organizing and participatory research, this time in a cultural context very different from my own.
I also wanted to improve my Spanish, deepen my understanding of Latin American history and society, and learn what community development looks like in practice — with all the complexity and contradiction that entails.
So yeah. When the opportunity to serve in Peru finally came along, I jumped at it.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. What is your housing like in Peru?
I live with a Peruvian host family, which has been one of the great joys of my service (though admittedly, it has also been one of the great challenges — more on that in a moment).
Cold nights
Carhuamayo is cold. Really cold. Despite being only about eleven degrees south of the equator, we’re over 4,000 meters above sea level (to translate, about 13,700 feet), where the nights are freezing, and central heating is nothing more than a distant fantasy. So I generally wait for the sun to come up before extracting myself from bed.
Daily routine
My mornings usually begin with some meditation or journaling, followed by breakfast with my host family. I shuffle around in a pair of cat slippers, affectionately known as my mishis (from the Quechua word for cat), while my host dad catches up on the news. Around 8:30, I head to the local secondary school for classes, meetings, and whatever else the day has in store. At recess, I often play basketball with my students, and around lunchtime, I return home to eat with my family, then head back out for afternoon activities (if I have any that day).
Host family life
But host family living is complicated. It can be challenging, and it can also be deeply rewarding.
In Peru, it’s common for young adults to live with their parents well into adulthood, sometimes until they marry and start families of their own. This can be, in many ways, wonderful. It’s been lovely to get accustomed to the deep family ties this builds.
On the other hand, having entered Peace Corps at 30, after years of living independently or with friends, I found it challenging to adjust to different expectations around privacy and independence. Sometimes I sensed disappointment if I wanted to spend a weekend away with my girlfriend or travel, or even if I simply wanted time to myself. These are natural bumps on the road of building relationships across cultures, and it’s worth it to work through them.
Changing host families
Of course, sometimes, you can’t. When I first arrived in my town, I had a challenging host family experience. My host parents were quite kind, but I had some challenging relationships with their children (who were about my age, early 30s). I’m still not entirely sure what went wrong, but somehow, in those first few weeks, I seem to have stepped on some toes. I tried to talk things through, but we never quite found a way to resolve our differences. In the end, after many months of trying to sort out how to repair those relationships, I decided to move out and live with a new family.
New host family
The new situation is really great! One of my favorite parts of the day is spending time with my younger host nephew, who’s a budding rock-and-roll enthusiast. He’s 10, and not especially interested in studying English through grammar and vocabulary. So instead, we’ve been learning through music, singing songs by the greats like David Bowie and the Beatles, while I accompany him on guitar. I used to play in a band in college, and it’s been a fun way to connect with him. We’ve even performed together a few times at his elementary school (I’ve become something of an accidental rock-and-roll celebrity in his 5th grade class). It’s a lovely little example of cultural exchange happening without anybody needing to call it cultural exchange.
As a family, we usually eat dinner around six, sometimes watch a movie, and then retreat to our beds and blankets before the cold gets the better of us.
Of course, living with this new family means sharing more than meals and happy moments. We’ve had disagreements and misunderstandings, too. But there’s something deeply meaningful about building affection through the ordinary business of living together. My younger host nephew has come to feel like a genuine nephew of mine, and I intend to hold onto these relationships long after I’ve left Peru. I wouldn’t trade that for the world.
4. What moments or interactions stand out during your service?
Geez, there are so many. Playing music with my host nephew is one, of course. Traveling across Peru, from the coast to the Andes to the Amazon, and discovering the country’s extraordinary cultural and ecological diversity is another. But let me tell you about something different.
Prison outreach
Some of my most memorable experiences have come from working with the women at a prison in Pasco (mentioned briefly above), where, alongside fellow Peace Corps volunteers and my friends at DZCA, I’ve helped develop and facilitate a program called Ecoemprendedoras. We work with women on personal development, financial education and entrepreneurship, and environmental education, all with the hope of supporting women as they prepare for life after incarceration.
One Mother’s Day, we arrived at the prison with a workshop planned, only to discover that our agenda had been completely steamrolled by a dance competition. Naturally, I ended up as one of the judges. The women had put together elaborate costumes and choreographies, and the energy in the prison yard was giddy with infectious anticipation. Before long, some of the dancers drew some of us judges out onto the floor, and there I was, doing my best to dance a traditional huayno of the Peruvian sierra, alongside everyone else. (Needless to say, the audience loved the image of the gringo doing his best out there.)
But another moment from the program has stayed with me even more deeply. At the end of our most recent series of workshops, one of the women became emotional while thanking us. She explained how difficult it was to be incarcerated so far from her family, in a cold city that wasn’t home. Visits and calls from loved ones were infrequent, and she told us that the time we spent together sometimes felt like the closest thing she had to a family visit. I found that profoundly moving.
We spend a lot of time in Peace Corps talking about outcomes, indicators, sustainability, and measurable impact — and understandably so. Washington has reports to file. But experiences like this remind me that there’s another dimension to the work, one that isn’t so easily captured in a spreadsheet. Sometimes the simple act of showing up, of treating someone with warmth and dignity, matters in ways we can’t easily measure.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about living or working in Peru?
Well, for starters, I didn’t expect to spend two years shivering in a country that sits well within tropical latitudes.
But the more interesting surprises have been social rather than meteorological. I arrived with plenty of enthusiasm, and a set of ideas about youth leadership. I knew, too, that the work I would be doing would require a significant amount of relationship-building. What I didn’t fully appreciate was just how difficult that relationship-building could sometimes be.
Spy? McKinsey? Mr Monopoly?
Looking back, it feels almost naïve, but I hadn’t anticipated how much my projects would depend on existing institutional priorities, or on people’s expectations of who I was as a gringo and what I was supposed to bring to the table. There were rumors going around that I might be a CIA spy, for example (to which I often responded: “Who, me? I can’t even keep my own secrets…”). At other times, I felt that I was expected to be this McKinsey consultant-type figure, coming in, making an analysis, and giving my community the magic code to fix all their problems.
At other moments, I felt I was expected to be Mr Monopoly —I remember attending a meeting during my first month at site where people were discussing how to pay for a graduation party costing thousands of soles. Within minutes, someone proposed a solution: why not have the gringo foot the bill? I had to explain that I had fewer than 1,000 soles to my name, but I’d be happy to help in other ways. I’m none of those things (spy, management consultant, or Mr. Monopoly), but I don’t hold those assumptions against anyone. The American pop culture machine is a powerful beast. In the end, what it took was time: showing up day in and day out until, little by little, people began to meet me on my own terms (and I, of course, had to learn to meet them on theirs too).
I’ve learned to be more patient in understanding a community, and more skeptical of my first impressions. You can have a wonderful idea and all the motivation in the world, but if the people you’re hoping to collaborate with have other priorities, none of that guarantees much. Sometimes what appears to be an obvious problem from the outside looks quite different when you begin to understand the histories and circumstances behind it. I suppose that’s one of the great gifts of living somewhere for an extended period: the world becomes more complicated, but also more interesting.
6. What challenges have you faced in your work, and how did you respond?
One of my biggest challenges was an institutional partnership that never quite got off the ground (to elaborate on the theme mentioned above).
I was assigned to work closely with the tutoría coordinator at my local secondary school, whose role involves overseeing student guidance and social-emotional development. Unfortunately, despite repeated efforts, we struggled to establish a productive relationship (he was also the person who apparently suspected I might be CIA), and several projects I’d hoped to pursue at the school were stalled or blocked. It was frustrating. I cared deeply about the work, about wanting to build strong mentoring relationships with the kids at my local high school, and there were real needs among the students that I felt we could help address. Eventually, though, I realized that I could either spend my entire service banging my head against the same wall, or I could look for another door.
Other ways to find work
So I began collaborating with other teachers. I worked with the English department. I worked with the Municipio Escolar (student government). I reffed, and I coached basketball. And I also developed partnerships outside the school, particularly with Grupo Rana and the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance. Those relationships eventually led to some of the most rewarding experiences of my service, including conservation fieldwork and our educational program at the women’s prison.
I don’t want to shift all the blame for my difficulties onto someone else, nor do I want to present that experience as a neatly wrapped package. You asked above how I responded, and the honest answer is: imperfectly. Sometimes my frustrations and anxieties got the better of me. There were moments when I avoided conversations I should have initiated, and others when I responded with frustration rather than curiosity or open-mindedness. Some opportunities were genuinely lost, and I sometimes wonder whether I might have connected with more young people if I’d approached certain situations with more tact—standing up for myself in some moments, but swallowing my pride in others.
But the experience also taught me that adaptability isn’t always about finding a clever way to accomplish your original plan. Sometimes it means recognizing that a particular approach isn’t working and having the humility to try something else. And in the process, I’ve stumbled into some of the most rewarding experiences of my service, so… in the end, maybe the most important thing is to keep your eyes and ears open for the people who want to work with you, the opportunities you hadn’t anticipated, and the relationships worth building.
7. What secondary projects have you worked on during your service?
As you might have guessed from my answers so far, I’ve gotten involved in quite a few unexpected secondary projects.
Conservation work
One of these projects has been the conservation work I’ve supported alongside Grupo Rana and DZCA, particularly monitoring the giant frog of Lake Junín. I’ve participated in field censuses alongside conservation professionals and fellow volunteers, helping document the condition of this remarkable, threatened species and its habitat. I’ve also participated in several chaccus, traditional Andean communal roundups in which wild vicuñas are temporarily corralled and shorn for their valuable wool before being released, and in drone-based flamingo monitoring.
Just recently, in October 2026, I was honored to lead one of the volunteer teams at the annual frog census, coordinating a group of Peruvian biologists and environmental scientists — in my second language, no less! — as we surveyed stretches of river habitat. It’s all been a wonderful introduction to the ecology of the high Andes — and to the challenges of protecting a landscape where conservation, livelihoods, and local development are closely intertwined (and often coming into conflict with one another, too).
<caption>Here I am, accompanying my friends at DZCA as a translator. We had zookeeper experts in amphibians and in flamingo conservation visiting from the states, and they needed a translator… so that became my job for a week!
And those relationships have opened an exciting new chapter: next year, I’ll be extending my Peace Corps service for a third year, working directly with my friends at the Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance and at Grupo Rana to support them with their wildlife conservation and school-based environmental leadership and education efforts! I’m psyched!
Basketball
As to my other projects: I’ve also coached boys’ and girls’ basketball teams at my local secondary school, working with students on technique, teamwork, and communication. I’ve never been the sportiest guy (I’m usually more inclined to read lengthy historical tomes or go on long walks), but I’ve always enjoyed a pickup game of basketball with friends. It turned out that at my school, IE Jorge Chavez, there were a lot of young people with an interest in basketball, but very few adults who had much familiarity with the sport. I’ve helped coach the school’s basketball teams throughout my two years in the community (not to mention reffing a few basketball tournaments and running a little basketball summer camp).
What began as a way to support extracurricular activities became one of my most consistent opportunities to build relationships with young people, and it has been downright lovely. It’s still true that I will occasionally call a friend back home to catch up and they will break down laughing: “I can’t believe that you, Will, are in Peru, coaching a sport.” But it remains one of the great delights of my two years here, and the friendships I’ve made through basketball are ones I’m sure I will carry with me long after I’ve left Peru.
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to future Peace Corps volunteers in Peru?
Listen
Listen. Listen a lot. I think there’s a temptation, especially when you’re young and enthusiastic, to arrive in a community with a head full of ideas about what needs fixing. I certainly wasn’t immune to it. That temptation can be especially strong during Pre-Service Training (PST), when your program managers explain the project’s goals and activities.
On paper, it all seems so elegant: Peru needs to promote youth leadership and lower unemployment among young people. We’re gonna send y’all out there to mentor young people, reflect with them, design civic engagement projects with them, find jobs with them… Listo! The whole thing has been carefully coordinated with Peruvian government partners, organized into a neat, internally coherent plan, and all you have to do is make it happen.
But youth development work isn’t happening in a vacuum (neither, for that matter, is conservation, or economic development, or the rehabilitation of incarcerated women, or any of the things we do here). It’s bound up with local institutions, individual relationships, and people’s preconceived ideas about what an American volunteer is there to do. It’s also shaped by unfamiliar bureaucracies, rules, and regulations that influence institutional priorities in ways you might not expect.
Before proposing solutions, spend time understanding what people are already doing, what they care about, and how they understand the challenges facing their community. Look for opportunities to build partnerships around shared priorities.
Don’t give up
Don’t give up easily. Keep showing up, even after the hard days. But don’t spend two years on the Sisyphean task of convincing people to invest in a project they have no interest in (however obvious it may seem to you that this is EXACTLY what your school needs). I understand that this is a tough tightrope to walk, yes, and after two years I still haven’t figured out the magic balance.
This advice, by the way, goes for any other Peace Corps project as well. Take conservation, for instance: for too long, international conservation has involved outside experts arriving in communities to tell people how they ought to protect their own lands and wildlife. But the conservation landscape is an ecosystem, too—and a human one, at that (you’d have thought that might have been obvious).
Any conservation project will always be tied in a tight knot with people’s livelihoods, traditions, relationships with the land, local institutions, histories, and sometimes competing ideas about what “sustainable development” ought to look like. (For example, mining remains a major industry in Peru, centuries after Spanish colonizers began extracting silver and other minerals from the Andes. It’s also an important source of livelihoods in my region. So what does conservation look like when mining activity can threaten the very ecosystems that local communities and wildlife depend upon?)
Make new friends
As a last piece of advice, I’d also encourage volunteers to make friends outside their immediate professional circles (Peruvian and American). Don’t just hang out with teachers, and don’t just hang out with other volunteers. Some of my most rewarding friendships and partnerships have emerged through unexpected introductions and conversations. By extension, don’t become so attached to your original plans that you miss the opportunities unfolding in front of you. Flexibility and curiosity will take you a long way.
9. How did Peace Corps training prepare you for service?
Pre-service training (PST) gave me a valuable foundation in language, cultural adaptation, community development, and the practical responsibilities of being a volunteer. But there’s only so much you can learn in a classroom about living and working in a community you haven’t yet met. PST can feel like drinking from a firehose — and somehow, you still leave without half the knowledge you’ll need. That sort of knowledge, in truth, just comes by getting out there and doing the work.
What do you do when your activity runs into a scheduling conflict… for the fifth time? How do you respond when a meeting doesn’t go the way you imagined, or when you discover that the people you’re working with have a very different understanding of the problem you’re trying to address — and things get tense?
I think the most useful thing training gave me was the inclination to approach those experiences with curiosity rather than immediately interpreting them as failures (although don’t get me wrong, I’ve had plenty of days that felt like failures, too). I’d tell future volunteers to take training seriously, especially language learning and community assessment, but not to worry about having everything figured out before arriving. You won’t. And that’s part of it.
If I were to offer one more piece of advice about training, it’s this: the relationships I built during PST — with fellow volunteers and with staff — may have been the most valuable thing I took away from it. These are the people you’ll turn to when you’re back in your community, trying to solve problems you never anticipated. Hell, sometimes you’re not even trying to solve them — you’re just figuring out how to stomach them. It’s important to have people you can turn to; most of your service is learning and adapting, and that’s always better done in community.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
10. What would you tell future volunteers to pack — or leave behind?
Oh, I dunno… this is a tough question because what’s important to everyone is different. I brought my guitar, and it has turned out to be a super fun way to connect with my host nephew. For you, it might be your cast-iron skillet or your trail runners. If there’s something you know you’ll want, try to make room for it. It’ll be nice, too, to have a few items that help you express a bit of who you are to the new world you’ll be entering — it can be a wonderful way to connect with people.
At the same time, I suspect most volunteers end up needing less than they imagined when they were packing back home. Nothing wrong with bringing a few comforts from home, but remember that you’ll have to lug around everything you pack — and Peace Corps will only cover so much luggage.
A few things worth mentioning
I guess there are a few other things that I can mention to consider: First, remember that Peru contains an astonishing variety of climates. Someone serving in the Amazon will have a very different set of needs from someone living at 4,100 meters in the Andes.
For my site, warm layers, wool socks, comfortable shoes, and a good jacket have been essential. For someone in the jungle, it may be extra mosquito repellent. (You won’t know your final site until partway through PST, so it may be worth leaving some room in your luggage to pick up site-specific supplies once placements are announced.) Bring whatever equipment you’ll need for work, though it probably won’t be much. A tablet has been plenty for me, but you’ll want some kind of device for writing reports and planning lessons.
You’ll find most everyday necessities locally, and on an occasional trip to Lima or Trujillo, you can pick up just about anything else.
Oh, and slippers. If you, the reader, applied to PC Peru and have just found out that you’ve been lucky enough to get sent to my old site of Carhuamayo, bring good slippers. My mishis have earned their place in my own personal Peace Corps hall of fame.
11. How has language learning been for you in Peru?
Much richer
Spanish was one of the things that drew me to Latin America in the first place. I’d already spent considerable time studying and speaking it before joining Peace Corps, so I was fortunate to arrive with a relatively strong command of the language. But living here has pushed me into a much richer relationship with castellano.
There’s a world of difference between being able to order dinner or navigate a bus station and being able to facilitate a workshop at a school, navigate a disagreement with a coworker, or share a joke with your host family. It’s the difference between the traveler’s Spanish I arrived with and the “I’ve lived and worked in rural Peru” Spanish I have today.
Learning slang
Part of that difference, too, is learning the jerga, the slang — learning to speak Spanish the way people actually speak it. Look up what it means when a Peruvian says “qué palta” or “qué piña.” Know that you can laugh it off when someone jokingly calls you a “zanahoria” who never leaves their “jato.” If they call you their “causa,” “soli,” or “mano,” it means you’re good friends. And if you hear them call you something that sounds a little less friendly, DM me.
My advice is to use the language as much as possible, even when you’re unsure of yourself. Talk. Ask questions. Make mistakes (and learn to laugh at yourself a little). Pay attention to the expressions people use around you (especially if they all break out giggling afterward and you can’t for the life of you understand why). The most rewarding moments aren’t necessarily when you realize you’ve mastered a difficult grammatical construction. They’re when you find yourself laughing with someone, having a meaningful conversation, or simply forgetting for a moment that you’re speaking a language you once had to study.
Social Identity
12. How has your personal identity shaped your service experience?
Of course, I came to Peru as a white, male American, with all the privileges and preconceptions that can accompany those identities. I’m conscious, for example, of the differences in resources and mobility that shape my experience here. I can choose to live in Peru for a few years and eventually leave. Some of my Peruvian friends have shared harrowing stories of their attempts to reach the United States to find work and support their families. It’s a striking contrast, and one that’s encouraged me to approach my work with humility.
Gringo
And then there’s the fact that I look, well, exactly like what many Peruvians imagine when they hear the word gringo. I’m tall, blond, and blue-eyed (a friend affectionately calls me anqas ñawi, Quechua for “blue-eyed”). My American identity is practically stamped across my forehead.
For some of my fellow volunteers, though, it’s a different story. I’ve seen Peruvian acquaintances express surprise that an Asian American volunteer could be American. “Then why do you look so chino?” Sometimes, explaining their ancestry seems only to reinforce the assumption that they’re not really American. I’ve occasionally pointed out that, by the same logic, I’m not American either, but a mongrel mix of Scottish, Spanish, and German. With varying degrees of success.
It’s been a reminder of how much our assumptions about nationality depend on appearance, and of how powerfully American popular culture shapes the image of who an American is. It’s also made me examine my own biases. Sometimes I catch myself assuming, for instance, that a more European-looking person from Lima is somehow less “truly” Peruvian than someone with more visibly Indigenous ancestry from the region where I live. But, of course, Peruvian identity is far more complicated than that. As in the United States, many Peruvians have complex family histories and mixed ancestry. Nationality and ethnicity are imperfect categories, and our assumptions about them don’t always reflect how people understand themselves.
And there’s an interesting tension in being an outsider and, gradually, something a little less than one. You learn the streets, the jokes, the rhythms of daily life. You develop friendships and a sense of belonging. Yet you know your experience will never be quite the same as that of someone who’s lived there their entire life. I’ve tried to approach that tension with curiosity rather than needing to resolve it.
13. Did your identity lead to specific challenges or situations?
Two aspects of my identity have challenged me in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
Personal relationships
The first concerns my personal relationships. When I arrived in Peru, I was in a polyamorous relationship. Ethical nonmonogamy isn’t something I’ve encountered much discussion of in my community, although infidelity, here as elsewhere, is certainly familiar.
For the first time, I felt as though I had to keep part of myself in the closet. Initially, I worried about being judged negatively for who and how I’d chosen to love. But eventually I began worrying about something almost worse: that people might mistake consensual nonmonogamy for cheating and welcome me as “one of the guys.” In other words, I wasn’t only worried about being judged negatively. I was worried about being seen as tacitly endorsing infidelity. That troubled me, especially as someone working with young people. The distinction between consensual nonmonogamy and dishonesty is enormously important to me, and I didn’t want my students to misunderstand my values.
But how do you explain that distinction without sharing more of your private life than you’re comfortable with? I never found a satisfying answer. The pressure I felt wasn’t the only reason that relationship eventually ended, but it was part of it. It was a difficult lesson in what it feels like to fear that being open about yourself might carry consequences you’re not prepared to accept.
Politics
The second challenge has been political. Before coming to Peru, I’d spent years involved in community organizing and environmental activism. Politically, I belong to what most Americans would recognize as the progressive left.
But Peru has a very different political history. The violence perpetrated by the Maoist insurgent group Sendero Luminoso, along with serious human rights abuses committed by state forces during Peru’s internal armed conflict, left deep scars on the country. Those experiences have shaped how many Peruvians understand and respond not only to their own politics, but global politics as well.
I remember having dinner with some new friends shortly after arriving in Peru when the grandfather at the table suddenly announced that anyone who was “left-wing” was a terrorist and ought to be thrown in jail.
I bit my tongue.
Did he mean me, too? Here I was, eager to make friends and learn about my new home, suddenly wondering whether some of my deepest ethical convictions might make me unwelcome at the dinner table.
And here’s the funny thing: I love that guy. I still visit him whenever I’m in town.
Learning history
At the time, his statement left a nasty impression on me. But as I’ve learned more about Peru’s history, I’ve also come to better understand the fears that can lie behind such attitudes. I don’t agree with him, and I wouldn’t presume to know everything that shaped his views. But I can understand how someone who lived through that period might have developed associations with certain political labels that are very different from my own.
Both experiences have taught me something about the complicated relationship between honesty, belonging, and cultural difference. Sometimes listening matters more than declaring where you stand, and sometimes trust needs to come before the difficult conversations.
14. What advice do you have for volunteers who share your identity?
I’d encourage future volunteers to find a balance between humility and authenticity, while respecting their own physical and emotional safety.
Be who you are…
Living in another culture asks us to question our assumptions and recognize that our ways of seeing the world aren’t universal. But cultural adaptation shouldn’t mean erasing yourself. There may be parts of your identity, relationships, or beliefs that aren’t easily understood in your host community. You don’t owe everyone an explanation of your private life, nor do you need to turn every disagreement into a debate. But you shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of who you are, either.
I’ve learned in a new way that it’s possible to love people deeply without agreeing with them about everything. That’s true at home, of course, but disagreement can feel more vulnerable when you’re a lone volunteer, operating in a language and cultural context that aren’t your own. The grandfather I mentioned earlier is a good example. I held my tongue partly out of fear, but I’ve also come to appreciate that our differences don’t have to obscure everything else we share.
Be an active community member
I’d also encourage volunteers arriving with considerable social or economic privilege to think about what reciprocity means in their relationships with their communities. Who are you comfortable being, in your site? And what are you willing to give of yourself — not just materially, but in terms of your time, openness, and willingness to build relationships?
Find a few close friends, too
Finally, find people with whom you can be fully yourself—and, little by little, try to bring more people into that circle. Having friends you trust makes an enormous difference when you feel lonely, misunderstood, or out of place. I think cultural exchange is most meaningful when it allows us to become more open to others without becoming less ourselves.
Impact of Media and Final Thoughts
15. If you share content online, how has that shaped your service?
Writing has been one of the great pleasures of my time in Peru. I’ve always been something of a journal-keeper, and it’s remained both a fun pastime and a valuable way of making sense of my experiences here in Carhuamayo. Would recommend.
During my service, I’ve also tried my hand at more public-facing writing, maintaining a blog exploring Peruvian history, politics, ecology, and culture, from the remarkable wildlife of the high Andes to the country’s musical traditions and contemporary social questions. You can read that blog here, if you’re interested in learning more! (I also, of course, already hyperlinked a few posts above.) Over the course of my service, the blog has become a way to investigate the questions that have emerged as I’ve gotten to know this country I now call home.
Part of my motivation is simply curiosity. I’ll stumble across something fascinating — an unfamiliar musical genre, a conservation challenge, an economic injustice, a legacy of colonial history — and tumble down a rabbit hole of reading, conversations, and research. Because of that curious itch, I’ve ended up writing about the national political system, translating Andean anthropologists, and listening to a truly ungodly amount of cumbia.
Writing also helps me process my own experience. It forces me to slow down, investigate my assumptions, and acknowledge what I still don’t understand. I try to approach it with the awareness that I’m writing about Peru from my own necessarily limited perspective, not speaking for Peruvians. I am not a Peruvian; I’m not even an expert on Peru. At best, I’m just a guy who likes to follow my questions and see where they lead. If I’m lucky, someone else will find those questions interesting, learn something along the way, and perhaps even follow a few of them further.
At the Margin: Field Notes & Other Meanderings
Will Giff’s personal reflections on life in Peru as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Through essays and field notes, he explores Peruvian culture, politics, music, traditions, and everyday life in the Andes with curiosity, humor, and a thoughtful eye. Read HERE!
16. What final advice would you share with future volunteers?
I’d encourage future volunteers to arrive with curiosity, courage, and a willingness to be surprised. Your service almost certainly won’t look the way you imagined it. Some projects will succeed, others will fizzle out, and some of the most meaningful things you experience may have very little to do with your original assignment. Genuinely — I mean, I’m coaching fucking basketball.
It’s important to take your work seriously, but not to take yourself too seriously. Make friends. Learn the local jokes. Dance when someone invites you to dance, even if you’re terrible at it. You’ll make mistakes; laugh ‘em off as best you can. A sense of humor goes a long way in this job.
And remember that meaningful change is rarely as tidy as we’d like it to be. We work in complicated social worlds, where people’s lives and priorities rarely fit neatly into our project plans. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can offer is a skill or a new opportunity; other times it’s patience, solidarity, or simply our friendship. That, more than anything else, is the work we do. It’s not just the number of kids you taught English, or the number of youth leadership projects you supported. It’s that you showed up, that you cared, that you went out of your way to help and to learn — and that, hopefully, you leave with a little more love for Peru and the people you’ve met than you arrived with. And they, for you.
Peace Corps has challenged me, humbled me, and given me experiences and relationships that I expect will shape the rest of my life. It’s also left me with far more questions than answers — which, for someone as curious as I am, might be one of the best possible outcomes.
Are you thinking about joining the Peace Corps? If you’re curious about service and ready for something new, apply today. Like Will, you can live abroad, work with communities, and grow in ways you didn’t expect. Apply to the Peace Corps and take the next step.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Peru Government.
