The Care and Maintenance of Your Returned Peace Corps Volunteer

When choosing a returned Peace Corps volunteer for your household remember the following rule of thumb: returned Peace Corps volunteers from Africa are smiling, warm and friendly. Those from Asia are zenlike in their calm and introspective nature. And those from Latin America are revolutionary and reactionary (and often somewhat socialist). Please be supportive of your newly returned volunteer as she readjusts to this new and traumatic situation. Below you will find some useful guidelines and behaviors to expect.

Nutrition: In the beginning, you may notice that your returned Peace Corps volunteer has a compulsion to drink water from all available water fountains. She may also adamantly refuse to drink bottled water, to the point of crying in the grocery store over all the varieties available. Your returned Peace Corps volunteer will most likely want to gorge herself on dairy products (especially ice cream and cheeese!) and Mexican food. You may want to limit her intake. Too much dairy is bad for any newly returned volunteer. Your returned Peace Corps volunteer may have a strong aversion to potatoes or rice. She may insist on putting salt on everything, cutting her salad into small pieces and wiping her utensils clean. Please be patient with her bad table manners until she is re-trained.
After she re-adjusts to her new home your returned Peace Corps volunteer may crave potatoes again or a salad made entirely of tomatoes and onions. She may also bring home exotic foods like api, humintas, and haba tostada. This is normal; you should make a gesture of acceptance.

Behavior: Your returned Peace Corps volunteer may no longer recognize socially acceptable limits to conversation. She may speak inappropriately about bowel movements, digestive problems or sex. Encourage your newly volunteer to talk about these issues with other newly returned volunteers...rather than with her co-workers, neighbors, or parish priest. In addition, it is likely that the large majority of her conversations will contain "when I was in Peace Corps..." or "In Bolivia they..."
When beginning a new relationship with your volunteer, you may notice that she expects to be friends immediately and may be surprisingly gregarious when talking with strangers.
You may notice that your returned Peace Corps volunteer kisses on the cheek as a greeting. Even kisses same sex. For heaven's sake...get over it.
Your returned volunteer may be addicted to telenovelas. This appears to be incurable.She may also be super cheap, be very careful about sun exposure, not go out in the rain, be exasperatingly patient, and take mid-day naps. She may not care about superfluous details.
Your newly returned volunteer might be homesick.

Communication: Your newly returned Peace Corps volunteer will not be proficient in English. She will speak a strange mixture of languages, use an overwhelming amount of acronyms like PCMO, RPCV and STI, profess to "not know it in English," and may insist on referring to you as che.

Be loyal and patient with your faithful companion, the returned Peace Corps volunteer.