In this interview, we hear from Finn Maunder. Finn is working as a Peace Corps Health volunteer in Peru. What Finn shares gives us a better understanding of the work volunteers do. We learn about the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that happens from volunteering in a new place. Finn talks about living in a different country, working with local people, and dealing with surprise situations. Join us as we learn about Finn’s journey and see how volunteering with Peace Corps can change lives.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. Tell us more about serving as an Health volunteer in Peru
Health Volunteers in Peru: Working Across Communities
Health volunteers in Peru collaborate with two primary counterparts – nurses and obstetricians in our local community health posts, and life skills teachers in the local high schools. As such, one day can often look very different from another.
What We Do at the Health Post
In our health center, my day-to-day involves accompanying local health workers on house visits to visit pregnant women and mothers of kids under 5, with the aim of providing them with a solid base of nutritional knowledge and helping prevent conditions such as anemia and chronic malnutrition, which are two of the most common childhood illnesses in Peru’s rural areas.
We also provide trainings to volunteer health promoters or agentes comunitarios. These are unpaid volunteers who often live far away from the health center but have agreed to assist with house visits and position themselves as an additional information resource for their neighbors, and we make sure that they receive basic training in early childhood development and childcare (danger signs during pregnancy, breastfeeding, and nutrition for kids aged 6 to 24 months are some of the most important topics).
Lastly, we provide educative and demonstrative sessions to local mothers and pregnant women, which generally focus on similar topics, and include a demonstration of how to prepare a healthy meal with the proper quantities and consistencies for different age groups of infants.
Our Role in Local Schools
In the high school, on the other hand, our main goal is reducing teen pregnancy, cases of which are also higher in rural communities than in urban areas. To that end, we co-teach classes on reproductive health, not only alongside school-based staff but occasionally with health center colleagues as well.
However, sex-ed is not the only issue. Mental health and nutrition are also areas of concern particularly among Peruvian adolescents, and I’ve taught sessions about building better habits, responsible use of technology, and alcohol and drug abuse as well.
In our second year of service, health volunteers select interested students and provide training in session facilitation so that the students themselves can also provide reliable and safe information about some of these topics, the thinking being that good advice can be more impactful coming from a peer than from a teacher.
Expanding Our Impact Through Data and Peer Support
I’m just about to start implementing this project, and I’ve also been developing a nutritional survey that we use on our house visits with the health center to verify what factors, aside from lack of information, impede rural families from consuming more iron and preventing anemia amongst their kids.
Based on the early data, it appears that access, chiefly the large distances between the rural outskirts of our community and the nearest market, is a significant barrier.
2. What motivated you to join the Peace Corps and choose Peru?
A Global Upbringing and a Kennedy-Era Dream
I actually grew up in the U.K., as the son of an American mother and a British father, and learned about the Peace Corps while studying the Cold War when I was in high school. I suppose it would be accurate to describe myself as something of a romantic for the optimism of the Kennedy Era and everything it encompassed – civil rights, the space race, international friendship, and all the rest.
Peace Corps inflamed my imagination as a 17-year-old and I was determined that one day I might be able to apply, live, and assimilate within a new culture, and provide my knowledge and skills to a community for two years. I wasn’t sure exactly when or what I would work in, but I was interested in joining ever since.
I applied during the pandemic after my online teaching job had left me somewhat disenchanted with education, and after a few delays during which I also served as an Americorps member with Washington Conservation Corps, I was finally accepted to Peru.
Choosing Peru and Focusing on Health and Water
I decided on Peru because I already had an intermediate grasp of Spanish (I had also been interested in Peace Corps China, having also studied Mandarin, but that program had been closed before I applied), and their health program intersected with a lot of their WASH program, which had been my first choice.
Water-borne illnesses are a huge challenge in the areas in which we work, and therefore I’ve been keen to foster collaboration between the local municipality and the health center to increase awareness about water treatment methods, and the impacts of climate change in our region on water accessibility and cleanliness.
History, Culture, and the Joy of Peruvian Cuisine
Lastly, Peru is such a fascinating country with an incredible history. The human civilization of the Americas is thought to have begun here with the Norte Chico civilization around 3500 BC, and while the Incans are by far the best-known examples of historical Peruvian civilizations, in reality, there were many others, far more ancient and just as intriguing.
The story of the Spanish conquest beginning in 1531 is essential reading for anybody interested in history, and in many ways marks the dawning of the world we still live in today. I’d suggest John Hemming’s *The Conquest of the Incas* if anyone would like a recommendation.
Lastly, although it wasn’t initially a reason for joining, Peru also is famous for some of the best food on earth, and it is as varied and delightful as its geography. I feel that volunteers in Peru for the most part, have lucked out when it comes to our day-to-day diet, even if it does lean rather carb-heavy and vegetable-light.
Peruvian cuisine seems to be having a moment in global food culture, and I’d encourage any readers in the U.S., or in my old hometown of London, to look up your nearest Peruvian restaurant and give it a try. *Ceviche* is the best-known dish internationally, but *aji de gallina*, a creamy chicken stew with rice, *lomo saltado* or stir-fried beef with rice and thick cut fries, and *pachamanca*, a mix of spiced meats and veg cooked on red hot rocks, wrapped in aromatic banana leaves, and left to slow-cook in an earth-covered pit for hours, are some of my favorites.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. Tell us more about your home situation
Living with an Unconventional Host Family
About my work when the occasion calls for it. My host family is a little unconventional in that my host father, Don Magno, who lives with his adult son, has a housekeeper in effect whose family also live in the same compound.
Because Graciela, the housekeeper, has a seven-year-old granddaughter, Valeria, living with us, the boundaries between the two families have blurred. The little girl’s mother, Belinda, works most days late into the night, which means that Graciela and Don Magno are essentially the *de facto* parents for Valeria.
Due to this unconventional co-parenting arrangement, my host family’s dynamic doesn’t feel quite as *Upstairs Downstairs* as I had initially worried when I first got to site.
Daily Life, Language, and Chores
My host family switches readily between Spanish and Quechua, and therefore I get unlimited free language practice, and they are always happy to explain the meaning of an unknown word.
I help out with the chores; we have a chakra, or large vegetable garden, up the mountain, and we shuck the corn and feed the chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs (which in the Andes are a staple livestock animal and perhaps the great delicacy of the region), and I try to help out my host Mom, Graciela, with her meal prep when I can, peeling potatoes and things.
A Sisterly Bond with Valeria
Valeria, my little host sister, loves doing yoga with me, though mostly as an excuse to climb on my back which for her is evidently endless fun, and she loves to help me color in my posters for our educative sessions and school classes.
In fact, after dinner, if she asks to help me prepare materials for work and my class is a PowerPoint, I occasionally break out my markers and we make a poster just for the sake of it.
I didn’t realize when I came to Peru I would gain a new little sister, and just thinking about having to say goodbye at the end of my service is already painful to consider.
4. Any memorable experiences or interactions you’ve had?
Exploring the Natural Beauty of the Andes
I’ve been blessed with so many experiences here in Peru. The sierra, or highlands, in the Andes, is home to 70% of the entire planet’s tropical glaciers, and as such, the scenery surrounding my home is utterly magnificent.
During the dry season, I’ve been able to visit glacial lakes, go camping, and even climb an 18,000-foot mountain, all without traveling more than a few hours from my site!
The Amazon River Raft Race Adventure
One of my most memorable (if not entirely comfortable) experiences came when my little brother visited from the U.K., and together with some fellow PCVs, we participated in the Amazon River Raft race, a 100+ mile race down the Amazon on rudimentary wooden *balsa* rafts from the town of Nauta to Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon.
We all got badly sunburned, we had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into, the organization was hilariously out of joint, and we were all very glad to be out of that river after the third day.
On the other hand, we had the Amazon pretty much all to ourselves, we saw thunderstorms in the distance, magnificent sunsets, and the elusive Amazon River dolphins.
It was a superb test of the old Peace Corps resilience and flexibility we all learn about during pre-service training (PST), and I do not doubt it will form a piece of family and Peace Corps lore that will keep us laughing and reminiscing until we are very old and wrinkly.
A Spanish Slip-Up to Remember
I’ll also add perhaps my most embarrassing language mix-up. In my first 9 months of service, I didn’t immediately have to buy my own bed, as my host family had a spare.
However, every year, our extended family descends on our site for two weeks for my town’s biggest religious festival, and therefore eventually the time came for me to shell out for the rather sizable expense of a bed-frame and mattress.
My bank account was pretty low, and not long after while eating dinner together, my host mom mentioned that a female neighbor down the hill had been robbed; someone had stolen her *calzones*.
I confused this word with the word for mattress, *colchón*. To my great misfortune, the word *calzones* refers not to a mattress, but to women’s underwear.
I followed the story of the missing *calzones* with great interest. I was very curious about how this enterprising mattress thief had managed to sneak in, steal an entire mattress, and make a clean getaway with apparently no witnesses.
Eventually, my host mom asked me, jokingly, if I had stolen the underwear. Still thinking of my almost empty bank account, and that my financial situation would be much healthier if I hadn’t just bought a mattress, I told her, “No, I didn’t steal it, but I wish I had!”
Over a year later, my host family still laughs about that slip-up.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about challenges in Peru?
Time Constraints and Health System Hurdles
Some of the toughest challenges for me have been fostering collaboration between different institutions. The Peruvian health system is gradually becoming more digitized but still relies heavily on paperwork, and the sheer quantity of, for want of a better word, “grunt work” that health professionals have to do, means that when they are not out of the house visits, or with patients, they are completing a small mountain of forms.
For that reason, being able to coordinate with health professionals, whether they are psychiatrists looking to collaborate with a mental health workshop in the high school, or the OB-GYN participating in a sexual health class, is really difficult. It’s pretty much impossible that they have any time at all in the mornings, and as such, only the students that I teach in the afternoons have benefited from the additional expertise of Peruvian health professionals.
This year, I’m trying to see if it’s possible to get all of my morning classes together in one place for a larger workshop in the afternoons. This comes with its own drawbacks; larger class sizes generally mean more disruption and less attention is paid, but I think it’s the best solution we can manage currently.
Discipline Dilemmas in the Classroom
Another challenge working in the schools is that of discipline and behavior. Corporal punishment was only outlawed in Peru in 2015, which was a surprise to me when I first arrived and probably surprises most readers back in the States.
I think it was outlawed in the U.K., back in the 70s, and I’m now incredibly curious to see how teachers in the 80s coped with this change in the years that followed.
It appears to me that many of my colleagues in the school simply do not know what to do now that corporal punishment is no longer an avenue of discipline available to them.
Changing Attitudes and New Challenges
So many teachers have complained to me that because the children now have rights, they can wield those rights as a threat above the teacher’s head. ‘You’re going to punish me because I’m being disruptive in class? Well, I’ll tell the police that you hit me.’
I have no idea how frequently these stories actually happen, but almost all teachers have a ‘my friend working in this other school told me they heard et cetera et cetera’ type of story. It seems that some teachers feel they no longer have the right to enforce authority in their own classrooms.
Obviously, I’m glad that students are no longer getting beaten in schools in Peru. Children having rights shouldn’t be a controversial thing or something teachers should resent. However this seems to be an issue throughout Peruvian public schools that all the volunteers have noticed, and it can be a serious challenge.
Some students do act badly in class, and don’t pay attention, or goof off. I’m really glad that PCVs co-teach our sessions alongside our school-based counterparts because some of my classes are pretty chaotic!
6. What challenges did you face while working on Health projects?
Nutrition Workshops Without Ingredients
One big issue I faced with health projects at my site was an ongoing lack of resources. One of our principal activities with our target populations of young mothers and pregnant women is the demonstrative sessions that offer hands-on demonstrations of the preparation of nutritious dishes in the correct quantities and consistencies for infants.
However, our health post depends on donations of ingredients from the mothers themselves to function, and as the mothers often cannot donate these ingredients, the sessions are purely educative rather than demonstrative.
Budget Gaps and Limited Outreach
Our local mayor’s office, or municipality, furthermore, doesn’t have a budget allocated for health promotion events, and therefore resources for public awareness and other outreach events are also quite limited.
Although it is not a perfect solution, I’ve written a grant that will provide funding for more sophisticated training for our volunteer health promoters, as well as a series of demonstrative sessions throughout the district.
Laying the Groundwork for the Future
Our hope is that these efforts, together with the data gathered as a result of the nutritional surveys we’ve been performing during house visits, form an expansive base of information from which we hope to persuade our community that these are cheap, preventative health interventions that lead to an overall decrease in cases of anemia and chronic malnutrition in local families.
These data will also provide the next volunteer in the community with a lot of information that was much more difficult for me to consolidate when I first arrived.
7. Could you share some of the secondary projects you have been involved?
Community Workshops on Environment and Climate
As I briefly mentioned, I’ve been collaborating with my local mayor’s office to facilitate environmental awareness workshops within different institutions of my community. We work with primary schools, secondary schools, farmers groups, and other local stakeholders throughout the district. Because the profile of our participants is so diverse, the topics are adjusted.
With the small kids, our target is to introduce them to the concept of recycling, and recognizing which materials are single-use, recyclable and compostable, and include a lot more games and running around. With the older students, we reinforce their knowledge of climate change, explain how local impacts of glacial retreat in our ecosystem will manifest (flooding, water shortages, contamination, and increased incidence of waterborne illnesses are some of the biggest issues), and how mitigation efforts (dam infrastructure, relocating out of high-risk flooding zones) can reduce the gravest threats of climate change.
With the farming groups and rural stakeholders, we facilitate waste management and compost workshops to increase sustainable practices in local agriculture. Climate change can feel like an overwhelming issue, and although it will take a multi-sectorial and highly expensive collaborative effort to overcome it across the world, spreading awareness and individual action is still an important part of the process.
Linking Environment and Health
Moreover, these workshops have direct impacts on some of my objectives in the health post. Many kids who fall ill with anemia take longer to recover, even when their diets improve and are receiving iron supplements, because they are suffering from an undiagnosed parasitic infection. These infections become increasingly common as the reproductive territory of water-borne parasites and microbes expands, as the glaciers melt and livestock and other animals graze higher up the flanks of the mountains.
Childhood anemia cannot be solved without also focusing on safe water practices and good hygiene practices as well – and this overlap between Peru’s health and WASH projects means that I get to dip my toe into environmental health as well as nutrition. It’s been one of my favorite secondary projects.
Running, Teaching, and Community Connection
One of my favorite pastimes and stress relief strategies at my site is running. I have a small but dedicated group of teenagers who run with me every Monday. It took a lot of wrangling with the school and the mayor’s office to proportion a time and place to do it, because there’s quite a lot of reckless drivers in our area, but eventually I was granted access to the municipal sports ground, and we’re hoping to enter 4 of our members in a nearby 10k race in July!
I also teach English on Friday evenings at the school, and we have film nights in English, video exchanges with native speakers in the U.S.A., and I invite my fellow PCVs to come visit so that my students can interview them about their lives. I was super lucky to have my parents and little brother visit last year, and one of my favorite memories of service was the Q & A session we had, followed by an impromptu game of volleyball!
Advice and Support
8. What advice would you give to someone considering serving as an Health volunteer in Peru?
Starting with Uncertainty
My advice is very broad and is probably applicable to many prospective Peace Corps applicants. I joined as a health volunteer after a rocky placement process and four reassignments. I was so frustrated that I saw my health placement as my final roll of the dice with the Peace Corps. I was also so nervous that the placement would fall through that I had accepted a place at graduate school just in case. I dropped out of grad school two weeks into PST, though thankfully I had only paid a deposit!
Facing Insecurities
I feared that my lack of a health background would show me up during training. I worried I would be overwhelmed by my own ignorance and have to go home. I quickly learned an important lesson: Everybody has something they feel insecure about during Peace Corps service. For me, it was my lack of technical knowledge. For other volunteers, it might be their language skills. For others, it might be the food their host family gives them, or falling ill more than others, or feeling like other volunteers post more of their highlights on social media.
Embracing Your Unique Strengths
The point is, we all feel insecure about something. That doesn’t matter in the end. Your community will value and remember you for the things that make you you. Your personal interests, hobbies, and quirks are what make the greatest impact. Lean into those things. Come into your service with an open mind, a say-yes mentality, and a willingness to share your interests with your counterparts, students, and host family. The rest will follow, even those nagging doubts and insecurities. Just keep showing up. Even on bad days—because there will be some—you’ll be able to pull yourself through.
9. How has the Peace Corps training helped you during your service?
PST Is Intense but Valuable
I touched on this before, but I think PST is an amazing time. It’s exhausting and overwhelming. Some Peace Corps staff say it feels like “drinking from a fire hose.” It can leave you wiped out when you finally get some time to yourself. Despite this, PST is a great primer for service.
Learning to Balance Saying Yes and Resting
I am more extroverted, but I need time alone to recharge. During PST, I said yes to almost everything in the first few weeks. Later, I learned when I needed to rest and when I could keep going, even if I was tired. PST is designed to put you in the headspace to say yes most of the time. This is a valuable lesson for service.
Making the Most of PST
In my first months at site, the school was closed for summer holidays. Without routine, I was eager to say yes to any invitation. Saying yes to everything is not sustainable for me and can leave me wiped out, but it works as a short-term strategy. For example, I did a teacher training, then went to lunch with colleagues. One offered to tutor me in Spanish. I went to his home, met his family, learned about the region’s history, went to the market with his wife, and cooked dinner for everyone. If I had gone home to eat with my host family, I would have missed this great experience. That colleague is now one of my biggest supports at site.
To make the most of PST, get into the say-yes mindset. But also know when to rest and recover so you can fully benefit.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
10. Anything that you packed or didn’t pack that you’d like to tell future Peru volunteers?
I really like to run when I’m at site, and I knew that I would need multiple pairs to get through service. I don’t want to tell prospective volunteers to go crazy and bring loads of shoes to site, but I would definitely pack two pairs. If you can time it right, Black Friday can still be really good. I managed to get some for as little as $50-75 USD a pair and was able to pick them up when I went back to the States about a year into service. In Peru, proper running shoes come at a premium, so if you love to run, be aware of that when packing. They take up space in your luggage, but I’m really glad I brought them.
There are a lot of great hiking and outdoor opportunities here in Peru, and many agencies have the requisite gear for rental. However, I do think bringing a good backpacking pack is worth it if you know you’ll want to do some camping. The rest is negligible, but a backpack that fits well and is comfortable makes such a world of difference if the alternative is an old, beat-up frame that constantly pokes you in the back.
11. How has learning the language been?
Learning Spanish Before Arrival
Peru is mostly a Spanish-speaking country, so it is easier to prepare in Spanish than for some other countries. Spanish dubs and subtitles of English films and TV shows are easy to find on most streaming services. Apps like Duolingo and Conjugato help with grammar and basic vocabulary. Duolingo also has over 170 Spanish podcast episodes, which I found helpful before leaving.
My Spanish Journey
I already had intermediate Spanish from high school and some travel in Central America. I challenged myself to read all the Harry Potter books in Spanish during my time here. Reading was hard at first, but knowing the stories helped a lot. Reading on a Kindle with a Spanish-English dictionary made learning new words much easier.
I started pre-service training with an intermediate-high Spanish level and finished with advanced-medium. Now, I rarely have trouble communicating in Spanish.
Learning Quechua
My bigger challenge has been improving my Quechua. It is an interesting language. It has the grammar complexity of Romance languages, with many conjugations and tenses. It also has a vocabulary that feels as different as Mandarin.
Quechua has been a fun skill to impress colleagues and neighbors. Only a few times have I spoken to older patients who did not speak Spanish. Even then, my Quechua was enough to introduce myself and make small talk. I usually got help from a colleague who spoke Quechua better.
Final Thoughts
12. Any last comments or observations you’d like to pass on to future Peru volunteers?
Apply but Have a Plan B
Many future Peace Corps Peru volunteers are worried right now about the Peace Corps’ future in the wake of the vast changes currently sweeping the federal bureaucracy under the Trump administration. Many are probably reconsidering committing to a 27-month term of service amid so much uncertainty. Nobody can predict exactly what is going to happen, and I won’t attempt to read any tea leaves.
In the face of all of that, I strongly recommend to prospective Peru volunteers that you apply, keep going with those dreaded clearances, and don’t be put off by uncertainty, but have a good backup plan, as I did with my grad school strategy. Having a plan B, C, and D is more important than ever. Don’t put all your eggs in the Peace Corps basket, but if it’s something you really want to do, then make it happen!
Recruitment is one of the biggest post-pandemic challenges facing the agency, and the more Americans that are inspired to serve a rural community, gain invaluable new skills, and create lifelong memories, the better!
Why Serving in Peru Is a Life-Changing Experience
My service in Peru has been nothing short of incredible. I hope my answers have illustrated the beauty of its landscape, the warmth and kindness of its people, and the endless possibilities that are open to a volunteer here.
It’s a fantastic country to serve in, and I hope that I will return to my site many times over the coming years, maybe with my own kids one day. While these opportunities are open to you, don’t hesitate, and please apply!
What are you waiting for? Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like Finn’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer. You never know how serving as a Peace Corps volunteer could change your life.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Peru Government.
