Veterans of the humanitarian service will gather to swap stories this Sunday.

Fresh out of college, Alissa Moen went to Paraguay and made her home – literally building it herself from mud bricks and grass.

“(The experience) was incredibly challenging,” the islander and Peace Corps volunteer said. “I had to be more creative, patient and self reliant than ever before.”

Since 1961 – when then-Sen. John F. Kennedy challenged young people to go overseas to help developing countries – the Peace Corps has sent 178,000 volunteers to 138 nations.

In celebration of their Peace Corps service, islanders who have answered the call will gather at the Bainbridge library at 7 p.m. June 12, to share photos and memories of their experiences.

“For me, it started out with this cup of coffee,” the 26-year-old Moen said, sipping Ometepe coffee from a commuter mug. As a Bainbridge High School junior, she visited Bainbridge Island’s sister island, Ometepe, in Nicaragua. It was, she said, her first time “seeing marginalized groups and a poor population.”

Spending her college junior year in Mexico and an internship in Costa Rica made Moen sure that Latin America was calling her. And so for two years, beginning in December 2002, she was a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay.

There she served as a liaison between a German nonprofit organization and the local farmers, introducing agricultural equipment and better farming techniques, such as crop rotation and diversification.

How did families who had been farming for generations suddenly decide to adopt what a stranger told them to do?

“Gaining trust was the most important part of being a Peace Corps volunteer,” Moen said. “I spent the first few weeks just drinking tereré (a cold mate tea) and being with the women, which gave me access to talk with the husbands (farmers). I learned to talk with all sorts of people.”

Moen also organized farmers to buy their seeds and sell their produce together to get a better market price.

She remembered complaining about the price of mango in the United States, saying, “This is way too expensive.”

After Paraguay, she now says, “It should cost more!”

Moen isn’t sure what she will do next, but hopes to continue working and advocating for underprivileged groups, such as migrant workers or immigrants.

“I want to do something good for the world,” she said.

Truk stop

Puyallup native Alice Shorett’s Peace Corps experience reflects the mediation work she now does for environmental cases and planning.

In Truk, Micronesia – the present-day Chuuk District – Shorett taught English to students from 1968 to 1970, while living in a corrugated tin shack without running water and little privacy.

She was on her own from concocting a shower to figuring out how to make English relevant and interesting to her students and the myriad steps needed to make dinner.

“It really gave me a lot of confidence in day-to-day problem solving,” Shorett said, “and an appreciation for simple things like a bed, electricity, water and being able to read into the night.”

Returning to Washington after her tour, Shorett found she was “more able to deal with difficult conditions and how to interpret things when somebody doesn’t come from the same background.”

Into Africa

Dwight and Judy Sandlin joined the Peace Corps at age 25, and were among 20 couples recruited for a tour of the former British colony Sierra Leone in Africa from 1965-67.

“I felt like I was working too hard and not making a difference,” Dwight said of his job operating computers. His wife, a former medic with the Women’s Army Corps, felt similarly, so they signed up.

Judy distributed food from organizations such as CARE to women and children and talked to them about health and hygiene. Problems there ranged from children getting enough calories but not enough protein, to something as “obvious” as using a clean knife – instead of, say, a rusty can lid – to cut a baby’s umbilical cord.

Dwight, a former mechanic for the U.S. Air Force, helped establish water systems and teach fishermen how to maintain boat motors that would enable them to go farther and catch more fish.

Maintenance was as basic as teaching the concept of what a pint was, in order measure out the right ratio of oil to gas for the motors.

The Sandlins lived in a mud wattle house, one of only three in town with a pit toilet. Those without such facilities “went wherever” – a bad combination with the tradition of drying clothes on the ground.

So Dwight tried to introduce a clothesline, which made the couple even more of a curiosity and a source of amusement for the town.

Of the 20 couples who signed up, only 17 went overseas and just three completed the tour.

“Just daily existence was challenging,” Dwight said. “You need some definite inner resources.”

Judy recalls how every piece of laundry had to be meticulously ironed, since the Tumba fly liked to lay eggs in wet clothes. Once, when the ruffle around the neck of her nightgown was not properly pressed, she woke up to a “ruffle” of larvae infesting her neck.

At the same time, the experience was profound.

“The music, art and animals are beautiful beyond description, like a Cecil B. DeMille movie,” Judy said. “I was sorry to leave.

“We learned about the world and other cultures and that changed us so much that we were taking more than we ever were able to give. It changed our lives.”