Today we arrived in Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania and fourth largest city with a population of just over 400,000, after a 10 hour bus ride through the beautiful countryside.  We’ll spend the next 4 weeks here, primarily studying Swahili but also learning a bit more about the work.  Toward the end of our month here we will be met by our “counterparts”, whom we’ve been assigned from our various sites.  These are local doctors, midwives, and nurses who will essentially be our buddies for the year.  They’ll come for a few days to help us plan our first days of work and answer questions.  I can say, the program has thought of just about everything and I continue to be so impressed by the coordination of it all.

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But this post is a really supposed to be a quick primer on the Peace Corps, for those who are less familiar (like I was).  The program Olivia and I are in is called Global Health Service Partnership (GHSP) which is a public-private partnership between the Peace Corps (public) and an NGO called SEED Global Health (private).  It started in 2013 so is quite young.  The funding for the program primarily comes from PEPFAR (Presidents Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) with SEED covering some loan repayment, which falls outside PEPFAR’s mandate.

In our experience so far, Peace Corps and SEED work really well together, which is remarkable because 4 years ago when this program was being imagined, Peace Corps had never engaged in such a partnership in its previous 50 years.  A lot of new ground was broken along the way.

Ok, about the Peace Corps…

Peace Corps was started by JFK in 1961, via an executive order. It was soon thereafter authorized by Congress and a bill was passed.  Interestingly, while Peace Corps is a branch of the State Department (not the DoD), it has remained separate from the rest of the US diplomatic mission (i.e. embassies, US aid programs, etc) from the beginning.  This was the vision of Dean Rusk, Secretary of State at the time JFK began the program, who stated “The best contribution Peace Corps can make to foreign policy is to be removed from foreign policy.”  This has allowed Peace Corps to maintain their mission in each country, even as national priorities shift. The stated mission is as follows:

To promote world peace and friendship by fulfilling three goals:

1. To help the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Sign me up, right?  It’s pretty clear how GHSP fits right into these goals – and so we are here developing capacity (not dependence) and people (not things), building relationships, and strengthening networks.  That’s the Peace Corps approach.

Doesn’t help learn Swahili any faster though.  🙂

Kwa heri.