On Beihg an Older Volunteer

Since I’m leaving Nicaragua for the States in 3 weeks and, since, before that, on November 3, I’m having still another birthday (3 in total) in Nicaragua, and since age loomed large as an issue for me before I come here, and since older people in the States wonder if Peace Corps is really for them, and finally, since I’ve settled a few things about age in my 2 years here, it seems a good idea to share some thoughts on the subject.

To begin, before I left the States I was worried about being what Peace Corps calls an “older volunteer”, defined as anyone over 50.  Even that threshold age was a challenge since I came to Nicaragua at age 66 and will leave at 69.  Are they kidding?  Fifty isn’t “older” at all.  But 66 arguably is. What was I worried about?  Not my health which had always been good.  My ability to learn a new language was a concern in the face of all those urban legends that say older people can’t learn languages very easily (I did some research on this and all I could find by way of studies were comparisons of the language learning abilities of, say, 3 year olds and college students in which the 3 year olds trump the students.  I’d be interested to know if there are studies about 65 year olds.) But I worried most about social isolation.  I figured the younger volunteers would like me well enough, but not care to hang out with me much. Before I left, I saw a YouTube video of volunteers in training in some country doing one of the silly getting-to-know-you exercises for which Peace Corps is famous, in this case a dance.  There, right in front of my eyes, was an older volunteer gamely putting on her best face to join in the fun, and missing by a mile.  I winced in sympathy and shame.

So how was it?  From the point of view of working in Nicaragua my age was nothing but a plus.  I wouldn’t say that Nicaragua is a traditional culture to the extent that the aged are revered for their wisdom, but, in contrast to the marginalized position of older people in the States, seniors here are equal members of the community. Teenagers don’t avoid them.  Everyone talks to them. They work like everyone else.  When they get really old, they stay in the family with no apparent annoyance from the younger family care-takers.  They are referred to with kindness—“mi abuelita”—my little grandmother.  I don’t have family here of course, but people call me “madre”, a term I feared, with my US defensiveness, might be an insult to my wrinkles, but, no, it’s a term of respect.

Professionally those wrinkles conferred an automatic deference the younger volunteers needed to earn.  At my school I was an assumed expert even though the truth was that I had no experience teaching English as a foreign language, a fact I kept to myself. It’s hard to document, but I always felt respected here in part because I am foreign and in part because I am old.  Although, difficult as it is, people can get their minds around foreign young people traveling around without their families, they are blown away by my ability to navigate another country when all their experience of their own seniors is of people ever more sedentary. They are amazed by my energy (thanks to my great fortune in having grown up with excellent health care.) Nevertheless, as I have said before, they offer me seats on the bus, a not unsubstantial benefit which the wrinkles also earn.

Peace Corps takes terrific care of all volunteers but us older ones in particular.  I can’t walk into the medical office without someone wanting to check my blood pressure. I get all the meds I took in the States.  The people in charge listen to me.  And I hear that Peace Corps wants more older volunteers because we have skill sets. In Peace Corps Nicaragua, at least, there is no liability to being an “older volunteer”.

As far as my social life with other volunteers is concerned, I made a point during training to get to know the younger ones.  I really wasn’t looking to become a surrogate mom.  I needn’t have worried.  Younger volunteers have their own moms and, unlike in years past, they stay in close contact with home.  They belong to that generation that likes their parents, has remained tight with them all through college and, thanks to the miracles of the internet, Skype, and relatively cheap telephone service, they talk with parents at least weekly, sometimes daily.

 By the end of training I knew everyone fairly well, but, as we headed off to our very separate sites, I could tell I was on my own. Generally no one called, wanted to visit, wanted to travel together, but, to be fair, I didn’t try to be in contact either. That is because I carried an ageist assumption from the States that they wouldn’t want to do those things with an older volunteer. The exception was one young volunteer who vowed to call me every Sunday night  to exchange experiences.  And she did.  When vacation time came, she and I visited each other and traveled some together.  That first year was pretty lonely and she saved my life.  In the second year something changed with the other volunteers as well.

What changed, I think, was the shared accumulation of responses to difficult situations.  We ended up having so much more in common in terms of what service brought so that differences such as age became less noticeable. (Take as an example the number of volunteers here who have had dengue.  Now, that makes for a fraternity.) Also as I got to know volunteers better I discovered that I have more in common with some of them than I thought.  There are some very interesting people in Peace Corps, readers and theorizers, people who have been thinking about things.  I would be fortunate to have many of them as friends in the States.

Sometimes I am bothered by an unhappy thought that maybe I am not “acting my age”, that because the only Americans I am in contact with here are young, I am aping them in some unseemly way.  I am sometimes mildly shocked when I look in the mirror and remember, yes, I am almost 70. How I feel conflicts with the received social weight of those words.  But then I think that this is one of the gifts of the dramatic reorientation that my Peace Corps service has given me. All kinds of things are not as they once seemed, so why not age, too?  

What all this has taught me is that the ageism of the States doesn’t have to apply.  (And I need to repeat that I was ageist, too, to the extent that I assumed that my age would overshadow any other qualifications I might have as a friend.) What one needs, though, are some amazing young people and maybe something in common like work or study or a volunteer effort.  Will I find those in the States when I go home?  I’ll have to see, but I think that at least my attitude about these things has improved a lot.   I am more open to the possibility of friendships with young people so, I have to believe, they will come my way.