Turning 60 in the Peace Corp

“Why are we doing this?” John Kotula asked his wife, Deborah Drew, more than a few times as they prepared to leave life as they knew it – their Peace Dale home, family, friends, careers, and even their language – behind. “We have a good life.”

But Drew says within a month of arriving at their destination, Sonaguera, Honduras, her husband was sure that two years there wasn’t going to be enough; he wanted to find a way to stay longer.

Kotula and Drew, who both turned 60 while working in Honduras, represent a small but growing number of retired people who are putting their life and career skills to work in the Peace Corps.

Drew says that she had considered joining the Peace Corps in the 70s, when she, like the majority of the Peace Corps volunteers she and her husband trained with, was in her early twenties and fresh out of college.

She even filled out the application, but instead of working abroad, she married (her first husband), began a family and a midwifery practice (much to the gratitude of over 2,000 families whose babies she helped welcome into the world).

Kotula, who also flirted with the idea of joining the Peace Corps as a young man, also married, started a family and went on to have a long and satisfying career as a school psychologist and special education administrator.

So what made Drew and Kotula, who together have seven children and nine grandchildren, decide that now was the perfect time for such an adventure?

“I’ve always had a bit of a travel bug and a strong desire to immerse myself in a culture very different from our own, “Drew says. “And I guess I just felt like I really needed a fresh perspective on the world.”

Another thing that the couple was seeking was a second language.

“We really wanted to learn to speak Spanish,” Drew says, just minutes after I heard her speak what to me sounded like fluent Spanish to a customer in the Alternative Food Co-op where she now works part-time as a cashier.

I am surprised to hear that just three years ago the couple spoke no more than “the tiniest bit” of Spanish.

Kotula explains that they had to negotiate a bit to get a placement in Central America without being fluent in Spanish, including enrolling in a Spanish language immersion training in Guatemala for three months before their training began.

The Spanish conversation I overheard (but couldn’t understand) Drew explains was an invitation to a bilingual dinner at their home – a chance for native English-speakers to practice Spanish and native Spanish-speakers to practice English.

Kotula also participates in a weekly language exchange with a young man from Guatemala.

Drew and Kotula are grateful for any opportunities they can find to enjoy the language and culture that is now so dear to their hearts.

The only problem, they say, is that in their experience their Spanish-speaking counterparts are often too polite to correct grammar mistakes without much encouragement from them to do so.

In addition to their attempts to retain as much as they can of the Spanish language, Kotula and Drew very much want to hold on to the valuable life lessons that they learned in the Peace Corps.

The biggest lesson, Kotula says, is that there does not seem to be a real strong relationship between money and happiness.

To this end, he says, the couple is trying to live a cheaper and simpler life. They have cut back to one car and make an effort to walk to their destinations whenever possible.

Drew, who works at the Alternative Food Co-op and Thundermist Health Center says she chose both jobs, in part, because she can walk to them.

The other draw to these jobs, and the work that Kotula, an artist, is doing at the Co-op and at the Hera Gallery in Wakefield, is that it helps them feel the joy and satisfaction of being contributing members of their community.

The other big lesson Drew says they took home with them is a stronger ability to distinguish between wants and needs.

“We’re really trying not to get sucked back into the over-consumerism of our society,” she says.

One way the couple is working to hold on to these lessons is by sharing a presentation they call “Turning 60 in the Peace Corps”. To invite Drew and Kotula to speak to your organization, please call 783-0610.