The Foreign Service Journal, October 2008

ment of any country where Peace Corps Volunteers are currently posted. It ranks at or very near the bottom of almost all indexes of poverty and human misery, with two-thirds of the people living on less than a dollar a day, one child in four dying before its fifth birthday, and adult literacy at about 20 percent. Located on the edge of the Sahara, the country rou- tinely experiences temperatures of 120 degrees or more, which rarely drop below 90 even at night. Most volun- teers live in one- or two-room huts built of mud bricks and thatch, without electricity or running water. Sanitary conditions are so poor that of the 74 nations with a Peace Corps presence Niger ranks highest in the incidence of acute diarrhea among volunteers. About 10 percent of the approximately 60 Peace Corps recruits assigned to Niger each year during my tenure discovered they could not tolerate the country’s harsh conditions, either physically or psychologically, and resigned and went home before the end of the 11- week training program. Of those who made it through training, only about 5 percent resigned before complet- ing their two years of service (usually because of health issues or family problems back home), and some 15 per- cent actually stayed on for longer than two years. (These percentages are better than worldwide Peace Corps averages.) Of those who did not resign, on average just one vol- unteer had to be sent home each year because of behav- ior or performance issues. Another dozen or so were ineffective, but managed to complete their service. The rest, in my judgment, were at least adequate performers; most were very good; and many were outstanding. I believe these rates of job success and failure would com- pare favorably with those for any large group of young adults, especially those placed in highly stressful initial assignments. It was gratifying to watch these young people rapidly gain self-confidence and maturity as they overcame the challenges of living in Niger. In this process, those who may have arrived without much sense of purpose soon F O C U S O C T O B E R 2 0 0 8 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 29