(article written by Taylor McLean)

I can hardly believe it’s been one year since I began the Master’s International program, left everything I knew and loved, and shipped off to Ghana, West Africa to serve in the Peace Corps. In this country time takes on a whole new meaning…and sometimes means nothing at all. I’m amazed at how the days seem to lazily flow into one another, often seeming excruciatingly slow for my frenzied American sensibilities, yet the months disappear in the blink of an eye. It’s only when I stop and take the time to look back on my time here that I realize just how far I’ve come.

After three months of training I was placed in Tano-Odumase, a small farming village in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. For the first few months of my assignment with the Fisheries Department in Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture, I was completely lost. I felt like a tropical fish, taken out of my aquarium and dropped unceremoniously into a large lake full of big intimidating catfish. Ghanaian hospitality is world renowned, and rightly so. Since the moment I set foot on Ghanaian soil I have felt warmly welcomed, respected, and even pampered. Still, to the fish farmers associations I work with, which another fisheries volunteer and I dubbed “Men’s Clubs,” I was what is referred to here as a “small girl.” I didn’t want to be indulged. I wanted to be respected as a colleague, as a resource, and as a graduate student. Yet the question that loomed over me was: How does a young girl who cannot speak the local language or wash her own clothes, and who doesn’t even eat fish, possibly contribute to the development of Ghana’s freshwater fisheries?

The answers came to me slowly, with a lot of lessons about life and culture mixed in. I have found amazing people to work with; Farmers, Ministry staff, University professors and students, all driven by a true belief in their work and love for their country. I have learned that although we often tend to look to outside sources, Ghana holds all the answers within its borders. We have organized aquaculture trainings with agriculture extension agents in numerous districts, and participated in farmer field days, watching happily as farmers proudly show the work they have done, and seeing the excitement grow in the eyes of new farmers as they realize what they too can accomplish. Fish is an important and cheap source of protein in this country, yet the domestic demand has been largely unmet. Helping farmers and organizations realize the role they can play, and directing them towards the resources they need; this is my contribution.

Now I wash my own clothes and can almost get all the stains out. I go on extension visits to farms so far out in the bush, I would have never been able to find them six months ago. The farmers greet me as an equal, and we walk around the ponds discussing problems and ideas in Twi. On the way back, I am overwhelmed with bunches of banana, fresh papaya, mango, and guava…gifts of thanks. And when the light of the day starts to wane, and the red African sun is sinking in the sky, we return to the farm house and sit, as friends, sharing a bowl of delicious fufuo and fish stew.

(article written by Christian Sanders)

It’s been an interesting ride since being accepted into Cornell’s Master’s International Program back in 2001. After completing a year of course work, I had one week to get myself together before departing for Guatemala where I would serve the next two years of my life as a Peace Corps volunteer.

Living abroad was one of those things you knew would have a profound affect on the rest of your life, but it would take me coming home and leaving behind all those I lived and worked with for the real understanding to set in. I served in the southeastern part of the country in a pueblo of about 5,000 people near the Honduran border. Like most towns in Central America , it was a rather concentrated urban area surrounded by smaller villages in the surrounding mountains. In my pueblo, there was more than 35,000 indigenous Maya living in these mountain villages. It was with these people that I would learn to speak Spanish, talk about the coming harvest, struggle to implement projects, discover the true meaning of patience, and understand just how deep the impact runs when you wake everyday with the intent to serve others.

Returning home in July of 2004, I was faced with the seemingly daunting task of completing a project paper that would, in essence, bridge the work I pursued in Guatemala with the concepts I had studied while a student more than two years earlier. It might not seem such a monumental task, but having been “scholarly inactive” for such a long period of time, I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to wrap my head around such a long and intense period of time, complete a master’s worthy paper, and define a topic from amongst the many that had been floating around in my head. In the end, I decided to focus on methods for improving the efficacy of international aid delivery in developing countries, using my pueblo as a case study. With the luxury provided me by hindsight, it was probably one of the best things I could have done for myself, being forced to critically analyze that portion of my life was exactly what anyone should do after such a thought provoking and perspective changing experience. In May of 2005, almost a year after having returned home, I became a graduate of Cornell and once again set my sights on an unknown and rather undefined challenge.

Since September of this year, I’ve been living in Sydney , Australia . I came on a 4 month work visa with the vague intention of getting work, saving money, then travelling for an additional 3 months on a tourist visa. After about 3 weeks of searching, calling up untold engineering firms, and checking job search engines on a daily basis I managed to find about as perfect a beginning job as I could have hoped for. A small engineering consultancy was looking to fill a permanent position and as this had always kind of been my desire, despite the fact that it was probably a lofty goal, I interviewed and was surprised to hear a day later that they wanted to hire me. For the last two weeks, I’ve been working in a diverse array of projects that all pertain in some way to potable water treatment. I feel about as far away from Guatemala as I possibly could; skyscrapers, urban train rides to work, endless varieties of ethnic foods.

Despite this change in scenery and hemispheres, I’m still involved in Guatemala , albeit a bit vicariously. Still have friends working there, I continue to help out a few kids with school money who are doing some amazing things, and I’ve been able to maintain contact with a woman making beautiful hand-woven bags that I help her to sell in the States (and maybe Australia ). Just the other day, I got word that she had been approached by a couple different groups interested in selling her work. I was ecstatic, I can’t describe how good it was to hear such good news. You’d had to have sat in her palm thatched huts, passed time with her parents and children, practiced indigenous expressions, and known the amount of insecurity she had in her life after having been left by her husband because of their girl-only brood to really know why it left such a big smile on my face.

All in all, it’s been an amazing four years. To think I could just have easily ended up in some job after graduating with my bachelor’s degree, eschewing experience for stability and security. What a waste that would have been, both of and for myself. I can’t imagine what lies in wait around the next corner…