BARRINGTON — Barrington resident Derek Johnson learned to take bucket showers, gather cow manure for bio fuel, and even dined on fried spiders during his time in the Peace Corps. Mr. Johnson, 25, spent two years in Cambodia in the corps, an experience he said was life changing.
Mr. Johnson joined the Peace Corps after finishing college and returned in mid-April. Some of his motivation for joining the corps came after hearing stories about the organization from relatives.
Peace Corps volunteers commit to a two-year stint working in often challenging conditions, far from home. The first step of Mr. Johnson’s long assignment involved a stop in San Francisco for a three-day orientation.
“We learned how to eat, how to use the bathroom, how to take a shower, some phrases. It was a crash course in some cultural things because everything’s different,” he said.
The food was often quite different from the meals he ate in the states. The first day in Cambodia, while traveling to his assignment, he tried fried spiders sold by the side of the road.
“It was just really crunchy and greasy. It wasn’t too bad but it definitely wasn’t good,” he said.
It was one of his first unusual food experiences in Cambodia. Over the two years, he said he probably ate every part of a cow, from eyeball to tongue to intestine, and got used to rice with every meal. Mangos fresh from the tree were a welcome treat, grown on the farm where he lived with a native family.
On the job
Mr. Johnson’s primary assignment was teaching English to high school students. It wasn’t always easy.
Every day he biked to work in 100 degree heat wearing pants and a long sleeved shirt — a dress requirement for teachers at the school. The school was five miles away from the farm where he lived. He and a native Cambodian taught a class of 60 students. The job was complicated by the fact that Mr. Johnson did not go in knowing Cambodia’s native tongue, Khmer, but gained a solid working knowledge of the language within months. Living with a family who knew only Khmer accelerated the learning process.
During his time there, he was far from the comforts of home.
“I thought I would miss TV and running water. But what you miss most is family and friends,” he said.
Besides teaching school, he organized and coached a girls basketball team. Both years the new team went to the quarterfinals. Mr. Johnson was a soccer player at Barrington High School and in college, but chose to teach basketball for one simple reason.
“I chose basketball because the soccer field flooded, there was actually rice growing on the field in the season at the time,” he said.
Mr. Johnson said he knew he wanted to get involved with an extra curricular activity, and there were no women’s teams at the time where he taught.
“Women in Cambodia don’t get the same rights and opportunities as women in America. I thought it would promote new roles,” he said.
Head-on collision
An accident on the road necessitated leaving his endeavors in Cambodia unfinished for a time. A head-on collision sent Mr. Johnson back home to Barrington for four months with a neck injury. He was with a small group of corps volunteers. The native driver couldn’t see an oncoming car.
“The roads are pretty dangerous. We were on a dirt road in a kind of jungle area of Mondulkiri Province,” he said.
After the crash, Mr. Johnson did not at first realize there was a problem. He even walked about 10 miles with the rest of the group to get to alternate transportation.
“I felt okay initially. Then my hands went numb when I was sleeping. The Peace Corps offered to airlift me by helicopter ... at that point I was really sore, but I didn’t think I had a broken neck,” he said.
Mr. Johnson spent some time in a hospital in Phnom Penh before his neck was stable enough to fly back to the states. During his two-year stint in Cambodia, Mr. Johnson was also a victim of Denguy fever, which also required a stay in a local hospital.
“I was probably the most accident-prone volunteer,” he said.
After spending months in the states recovering from his neck injury, he had to weigh the decision of returning to Cambodia and the Peace Corps.
“It was not the easiest decision to go back. I liked it over there, but you come back here and you get comfortable in America again.”
In the end, he felt returning was the right decision.
“I got to get that closure, and finish up on some projects I was doing,” he said.
Those projects included writing a proposal and following it through to install a couple of bio gas generators. The generators turn animal or even human waste into an energy source. It provides the power for a methane-fueled stove, gas lamps, and depending how it is set up, can provide a clean way to dispose of human waste.
He also helped another corps volunteer hold soccer clinics, and started an Ecology Club at the school where he taught.
Mr. Johnson said he found the people in Cambodia to be gentle and open, willing to work with him and accept him into their country.
He helped establish a continuing connection with his host family. Srey Noch, a daughter of the family, now attends St. Andrew’s School in Barrington.
Mr. Johnson contacted the headmaster of St. Andrew’s, John Martin, and asked him about the possibility of a scholarship for the young woman. She is currently a senior, and staying with Mr. Johnson’s family.
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