Sad developments
Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell was found dead in Battad yesterday. She has been missing since last Wednesday It looks like she was murdered as she was found buried a few meters below a mountain trail.
We operate a volunteer placement organization. While I am aware of the Peace Corps’ real objectives, I am sad for her family and I am afraid of how her apparent murder might affect us.
CERV is dissimilar with the Peace Corps in the sense that it does not allow political, economic and religious objectives to taint the volunteers’ work. If anything, we inform our American volunteers what the US government has done and is doing against the Filipino people in cahoots with the Philippine government. If we even hold back our punches for the sake of diplomacy, we can always count on our volunteers from other countries to tell their American counterparts about their views on the US government. More often than not, Americans acknowledge that their government is not the nice kid on the block. We’ve had one or two volunteers who passed themselves off as Canadians when travelling abroad lest they receive dagger looks and unkind words from all sorts of people of different nationalities. All because of Bush and his Iraq and Afghanistan mess.
One thing I am sure of is that volunteers spend lots of money and time to volunteer abroad because of their sincere desire to help, sans misled beliefs to show off. Sure, some just want a cheap way to travel and stay but they are the small minority.
We’ve had one young American volunteer last year who was a Republican back home. It was his misfortune to have come with several outspoken British girls so he was needled a lot about Bush. He stuck to his belief that the American government is democracy’s pillar everywhere in the world. Until I informed him of how the US military killed a fifth of all living Filipinos at the turn of the last century during the Filipino-American war. He was jolted to the reality that his country’s government had and has blood on its hands. It simply means that not all Americans are aware of their government’s history.
One somewhat related story is of our first American volunteer who was from the midwest. He just earned his MBA from Purdue in Indiana (think Larry Bird and Reggie Miller). He was here when Katrina battered New Orleans. When we informed him that Fidel Castro offered to send doctors stateside to help the victims, he asked where would Fidel find doctors in Cuba to send to the US. We told him that Cuba has the most number of doctors and nurses per capita than anywhere else in the world and he did not want to believe it. Yes indeed. Even American MBAs may not know beyond what their government and Fox tell them of countries that have different political systems.
Ms Campbell was not our volunteer so I don’t know if she toed the original Peace Corps line of showing that the American way is the best way. My presumption is that they do not know or have been misled anyway. I don’t deny the folks she came into direct contact with feels she did a lot of good in her two years here. And that is what is more important, moreso in the country that could not rely on its government for the much-needed help the volunteers provide.
Aside from the Peace Corps and CERV, I know of two other volunteer placement organizations operating in the Philippines. With Ms Campbell’s death, I am afraid many interested future volunteers may think twice about going to the Philippines. This is a sad development for us; this is a sad development for the communities we are helping.
But the saddest thing of all is that we are nation who has to rely so much on the kindness of others to look our way.
