At 60, Peace Corps Plots Return to World After Virus Hiatus
Voice of America
DEDZA, MALAWI - More than a year after COVID-19 began sweeping the world, abruptly cutting short her Peace Corps stint, Cameron Beach is once again living in rural Malawi — this time on her own dime.
The Peace Corps, a U.S. government program marking its 60th anniversary this year, boasted 7,000 volunteers in 62 countries in March 2020. They were given little time to pack before being put on a plane and sent back to the United States that month. “It was especially painful for me because I was given 24 hours to leave a place that I’d called home for almost two years,” Beach said during a recent video call from her home in Malawi, a landlocked country in southern Africa. Beach was trained to speak Chichewa and had been teaching English at the Mkomera Community Day Secondary School in Dedza, located in a compound about 40 kilometers southeast of the capital, Lilongwe. The 25-year-old Greenville, South Carolina, native paid her own way back to her post nine months after evacuation and is living on savings, but says she would “absolutely” rejoin the Peace Corps if it became possible.FILE - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during Xi's visit in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this picture released by by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), June 21, 2019. A news program broadcasts file images of a rocket launch by North Korea, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, May 28, 2024. A rocket launched by North Korea to deploy the country's second spy satellite exploded shortly after liftoff on May 27, state media reported.
A man walks past election posters of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), as South Africa prepares for the May 29 general elections, in Soweto, May 24, 2024. African National Congress (ANC) supporters sing songs during the political party's final rally ahead of the upcoming election at FNB stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa. May 25, 2024.