Get an unfiltered view of Peace Corps service through this straightforward interview with Jon Hamilton, a passionate Agriculture volunteer in The Gambia. Driven by the goal to create positive impact, Jon shows the realities of volunteering in a faraway place. From profound interactions with community members to practical tips for future volunteers, Jon gives us raw insight into the tests and triumphs of their experience.
We learn how Jon has adapted to cultural surprises, overcome challenges, and started community initiatives. Most of all, Jon shares an inspiring account of personal evolution through immersive service. Join us as we uncover the essence of the volunteer journey and see how Peace Corps changes lives on both ends.
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Can you tell more about your experience serving as an Agriculture volunteer in The Gambia?
In three words, my experience serving as an Agriculture PCV in The Gambia has been challenging, meaningful, and transformative. The challenges are manifold, but I found the hardest to be having a lack of fulfillment for much of the first year.
However, once I was able to build my schedule around productive projects, including the replacement of two community garden fences, the creation of a local marketplace, and extensive tree planting, I found that the experience became significantly more meaningful.
This has allowed me to renew my commitment to service and to look forward to the latter half much more than I had previously. In doing so, the experience has started to become nothing short of transformative. I have found the line of work that I want to be in, a sense of intrinsic purpose to my days, and a commitment to bettering myself and the lives of others.
I can only hope that this transformation continues to take place and that on the backend of service, I emerge a stronger, more dedicated individual—and fortunately, all signs point to that being the case.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose The Gambia?
I was motivated to join the Peace Corps primarily out of a sense of purposeful work. Having come from state government, I wanted to try the other side of the equation through on-the-ground, development work, and I wanted to further expand my expertise in the environmental space. With that in mind, I actually applied first to the Peace Corps, Senegal to work in their agroforestry program.
However, my brother’s wedding was the same month as their departure date, so the recruiting folks sent me an invitation to The Gambia to do the same type of work but leave one month later. It worked out perfectly!
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Can you tell us about your host and how you cross that cultural divide?
I am currently living with a host family, which is predominately comprised of women and children. They are a delightful and hard-working group, and I have enjoyed spending time with them most evenings.
During the days, I generally either do work in the village or post up in my room, which is contrary to the culture, but necessary for my sanity. For the most part, they are quite respectful of that boundary. Then, in the evenings, I will sit with them around dinner time and play a film for the children on my laptop. I think the consistency of routine allows for those norms to exist.
Surprises, Challenges, and Personal Growth
4. What has surprised you most (or least) about The Gambia or culture?
The most surprising aspect of Gambian culture is how friendly and helpful people are. While of course, you need to have your guard up in larger populations, even still, I have never felt much at risk for crime. Rather, I feel like if I really needed something, there would be several individuals willing to assist. This has certainly influenced the trust I have in my community and the comfort I feel while traveling within the country.
5. What challenges have you faced while working with community members, and how did you overcome them?
The main challenge I’ve faced while working within my village is the lax attitude shown toward community service work. Many folks are excited by the ideas of village development, but mobilizing groups of people beyond my counterpart and a few other highly motivated village members is incredibly difficult. A lot of overcoming this issue has to do with reframing expectations.
For instance, I have had to extend my work timelines and become more comfortable with smaller workgroups than would otherwise be sufficient. However, I feel like this represents a great experience in building resilience and persistence for community service and development work that I wouldn’t want to change.
6. How have you grown and developed during your time as a volunteer?
I have absolutely grown and developed over the last 15 months. I think one of the most important ways I’ve grown is simply by having an expanded perspective on what life is like around the world. Seen from the outside, the United States appears to have become peculiarly myopic, with folks across the country consistently failing to see the beauty of life in America. Of course, there are many problems, but I also feel that this experience has made me feel significantly more empowered to tackle them.
Being a PCV acting on issues that matter at the community scale provides a lot of optimism, even if alongside a heap of realism, that we can make this world better with the right attitudes and a dedication to action.
Jon providing a guest, best-gardening-practices workshop for his girlfriend’s school. Some practices include double-digging and using green manure, organic pesticides, and extensive soil amendments.
Community Projects and Interactions
7. Can you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved in?
Some of my secondary projects involve external projects in my village that I find interesting or useful, both for the country and my fellow PCVs. For instance, I worked with a PC staff member on creating a reasonably robust government bus schedule for the use of PCVs and staff to promote road safety, and we plan to present it to the bus company for posting on their website (a full-country schedule doesn’t yet exist). I’m also working with another volunteer on creating a website for a national park to promote ecotourism and hopefully increase their income.
8. Can you tell us about any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had?
The most memorable experiences I have had with my community have come from the process of replacing a community garden fence (the previous fence had broken down to the point of being completely unusable). Throughout the project, it has been incredibly rewarding to see how people have responded to the work. At first, my counterpart was the only one who truly believed in the work, and we became significantly closer as a result. As we progressed in planning, our Garden Committee Task Force believed more, and several members became instrumental in both the work and my community integration.
Once the work took off, the skilled laborers of the community became friends, particularly the mason. Finally, after the fence became visible to the general population, an uncountable number of members of the community became more welcoming and excited to see me both at work and just around the community. I think the most lasting effect of this ever-expanding circle of belief in me and my counterpart is its ultimate expansion to myself—I have never felt more confident in my ability to serve.
A mix of PCVs and staff after a conference promoting better coordination with in-country partners, including Gambian governmental agencies and NGOs.
Advice and Support
9. What advice would you give to someone considering joining the Peace Corps and serving as an Agriculture volunteer in The Gambia?
My main advice would be to prepare for significant independence in terms of work. A major challenge for Agriculture volunteers has been a lack of work, which is best redressed through persistence in planning and implementing projects on one’s own initiative. While all work should be done alongside community members, Ag PCVs often need to go out of their way to get the work started and to maintain it.
However, getting trees in the ground, providing workshops on gardening best practices, building income-generating infrastructure, and more are all worthwhile, even if the sustainability measures aren’t always the most effective. In this, I find that I quite agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “To Laugh Often and Much”:
“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.”
10. What skills or qualities do you think are most important for an Agriculture volunteer in The Gambia?
Apart from self-reliance and an independent spirit, I think the most important skills include flexible thinking and forgiveness. Inevitably, projects will twist and change from planning to implementation, and sometimes they will need to be discarded in their entirety, with naught a scrap salvageable. Thinking flexibly allows a PCV to roll with these punches, both by adapting their plans to new contextual factors and by providing some ability to self-console when a favorite project is eviscerated.
The other key is forgiveness, both for oneself and for community members. Self-forgiveness is so important for persisting even when one fails and for building resiliency. On the other side, forgiveness for community members is important, especially in the most irritating moments when something is breaking down while all the attention remains on you. Letting go of these moments is crucial to showing up for the community each day afterward.
11. How has the Peace Corps provided support and resources?
The Peace Corps staff here, particularly the Gambian staff who tend to be the first lines of support, are incredible. They have a deep devotion to PCVs and often go out of their way to support us, including by providing information (e.g. bus route schedules), resources (e.g. seeds, polypots, etc.), and listening ears. Although the job sometimes feels like it involves learning to live without a robust support network, Peace Corps staff fill in gaps that would make it truly impossible to live without.
Jon and some children of his village between plantings of moringa seeds at each compound of his village. Of the 511 seeds he planted, some 60 grew to become trees over the course of 3 months with little-to-no care, providing benefits without adding to the domestic workload.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
12. Anything yet that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future volunteers?
I was able to travel home for the holidays and the things I was most excited to bring back were over-the-ear, noise-cancelling headphones. For someone who lives about as far up-country as any PCV gets, having those for loud bus and gelegele rides is a major win. I have been able to get more into podcasts, which makes me feel much more productive than trying to listen to the faint beats of a song turned all the way up over the general din of public transportation.
13. How has learning the language been? Any advice to future volunteers?
Learning the language—Mandinka for me—has been a fun adventure, and it can certainly be rewarding when you have a full conversation with a local who cannot speak any English. However, I must say that I have been taken away by projects and other interests and spend far less time actively learning the language, especially since I have a solid base that lets me get by. My advice is thus to spend the early months focused on the language.
Do what you can to support that endeavor—for me, a desk would have done that but I wasn’t able to get one made until after IST, at which point it was somewhat too late—and dig deep for it. Of the volunteers I know who are most comfortable in the language, their biggest strides came during the integration period, and the language came naturally after that. While it’s never too late to learn more, I think time tends to fill up later in service, much more than one might expect.
Jon and Abdoulie (his counterpart) providing a workshop on the benefits of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to women of the village. Afterwards, they distributed 5 cuttings to every woman in attendance to promote vine propagation across the village. After 6 weeks, roughly half of the compounds reported success propagating the vines. More recently, some women have begun harvesting these sweet potatoes and have excitedly shared that they are much larger than the traditionally grown varieties.
Impact of Media and Final Thoughts
14. How do you think your blog contributes to your overall mission as a Peace Corps volunteer? And what advice would you give to volunteers who are considering starting a blog during their service?
I have found my blog to be most helpful in providing reference points for conversations with folks back home. When I have a conversation, I often find myself saying, “Do you remember my blog post?”, and using that as a jumping off point for further discussion. I think it also helps folks back home stay connected to the journey in a way that they otherwise couldn’t through shorter-form communications (texts, Instagram posts, etc.). For folks interested in starting a blog, I’d highly advise setting a regular but reasonable target for posting.
For me, that is once a month. While I don’t always hit it within the month, I try to make up for it the following month with two posts instead. The goal doesn’t feel too daunting and gives me flexibility for working on it within the rigors of day-to-day village life.
Duuto Duuma (or Under the Mango Tree): Life in The Gambia – Join Jon Hamilton’s journey from Harvard grad to Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia. Follow his on-the-ground experiences, insights on sustainable development, and musings on life abroad. Stay connected for a firsthand look at history in the making!
15. Any last comments or observations you’d like to pass on to future volunteers?
Use PCVs new and old to support your work! I know that I, and many others, want to continue to support the mission of PCTG volunteers post-service. RPCVs might be able to provide funding for pet projects, advice for getting on, and more. Meanwhile, PCVs in-country are the best resource for ideas, innovations, quality of life, and everything else you might need.
Being in such a small country further highlights the importance of good relationships with your fellow PCVs, and it seems likely that for many of us, it’s our fellow PCVs that get us through the hard times. Make sure to be kind to one another, and you’ll have a much more fulfilling service 😊
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or The Gambia Government.
