{"id":5627,"date":"2020-07-24T11:40:20","date_gmt":"2020-07-24T15:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bender-lib.american.edu\/pcca\/?p=5627"},"modified":"2023-04-07T14:15:57","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T18:15:57","slug":"dont-forget-your-helmet-motorcycles-and-the-peace-corps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/dont-forget-your-helmet-motorcycles-and-the-peace-corps\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Forget Your Helmet! Motorcycles and the Peace Corps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since March 16, 2020, American University and Peace Corps Community Archives staff moved their tasks online to wait out the impact of COVID-19. While this bars access to our physical collections, the PCCA\u2019s digital archives<\/a> has a number of interesting journals, memoirs, and photographs available to explore.<\/p>\n

As I flipped through the pages of a guestbook from the Volunteer Rest House in Kambia, Sierra Leone–donated by Jim Hiiter–one photo stuck out to me more than the rest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A young woman perched on the seat of a motorbike, with the caption, \u201cPosing with my \u2018death machine\u2019 and my controversial \u2018to be a woman is not easy\u2019 helmet. (Before the accident.)<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Bernadette Chaloupka only injured her ankle after an accident on her motorbike; however, the Peace Corps still flew her back to Washington, D.C. to recover\u2014cutting short her time in Sierra Leone. She writes about travelling back to the U.S. afer a local doctor called for surgery:<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>I\u2019m a living example of why the Peace Corps has decided to ban motorcycles…Even though an operation was unnecessary, I tell Peace Corps plenti plenti tenki for that wonderful holiday!\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Chaloupka\u2019s experience with motorcycles is just one of many. As I dug through Peace Corps policies, volunteer memoirs and letters home, I found that Chaloupka\u2019s brief recovery period was a minor consequence compared with the many stories of motorcycle accidents.<\/p>\n

Between 1961 and 2003, the Peace Corps reported that 89 volunteers died in motor vehicle accidents\u201421 of them involved a motorcycle. An article in the 1985 Peace Corps Times advised volunteers on motorcycle safety, reporting that in 1983, fourteen volunteers were evacuated to the United States due to motorcycle injuries.<\/p>\n

That said, reliable transportation is an important piece of volunteer service, when distances between villages and cities could be several hundred miles away. For some, motorbikes were a beneficial way to get around during their assignments, connecting volunteers to important resources in other regions.<\/p>\n

Alan Crew,<\/a> a PCV in Nigeria 1965- 1966, mentions that as the only form of transportation available to him, his motorbike was important for travelling the long distances from his village to meet other volunteers or go into bigger cities. He wrote to his family in 1965,<\/p>\n

My motorcycle is running beautifully, although it still isn\u2019t completely broken in. I can understand the almost reverent feeling the old volunteers have for their machines, as they afford one the only means of mobility available\u2026There are 104 of us within 125 miles of each other so that we can all get together on weekends if we like. Therefore, the mobility of the motorcycle takes on a new dimension of importance.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the case of Jane Wertz, her motorcycle may have been the only thing that helped her safely leave Zaire during military-led riots in 1991. Wertz was featured in a Peace Corps News article <\/a>following the event, relaying her journey from her host village to Kikwit, the closest city with a Peace Corps office. \u201cUsually it\u2019s about a 3 \u00bd hour trip, but it took me about six hours because I had too much stuff on my bike…It was dark. I had fallen about six times. The bike was really, really heavy. There were times when I thought I wouldn\u2019t be able to pick it up.\u201d <\/em>Wertz\u2019s motorcycle, as heavy as it was, was the only thing that could have gotten her to the office for evacuation.<\/p>\n

Today, the Peace Corps allows volunteers to use motorbikes only on a project-by-project basis. Many of these exceptions are for volunteers in rural areas, only after comprehensive safety training. And, at the heart of the manual? Wear your helmet!<\/p>\n

Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Office of the Chief of Staff, \u201cMS 523 Motorcycles and Bicycles\u201d January 7, 2013. https:\/\/files.peacecorps.gov\/documents\/MS-523-Policy.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

Adventure in a Great Big World,\u201d by Alan Crew, Peace Corps Community Archives, https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/adventure-in-a-great-big-world\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Angene Wilson and Jack Wilson, Voices from the Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Kentucky Volunteers<\/em> (University Press of Kentucky, 2011).<\/p>\n

Susan Trebbe and James C. Flanigan, \u201cExit from Zaire,\u201d Peace Corps Times, Fall 1991. https:\/\/dra.american.edu\/islandora\/object\/peacecorps%3A2500?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=680d78e377b816da1f3b&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=0&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=8<\/p>\n

Pat Seaman, \u201cPeace Corps and the Art of Motorcycle Safety,\u201d Peace Corps Times, January-February 1985, 8-9. https:\/\/dra.american.edu\/islandora\/object\/peacecorps%3A2463\/datastream\/PDF\/view<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since March 16, 2020, American University and Peace Corps Community Archives staff moved their tasks online to wait out the impact of COVID-19. While this bars access to our physical collections, the PCCA\u2019s digital archives has a number of interesting journals, memoirs, and photographs available to explore. As I flipped through the pages of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5,9,524,30,31,60,69,73,84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1980s","category-1990s","category-africa","category-blog-post","category-correspondence","category-diaries","category-memoirs","category-nigeria","category-peace-corps-history","category-sierra-leone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6844,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions\/6844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/pcca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}