Day completed his studies at the Missionary Institute in 1874. With his wife, Emily, he served at the Muhlenburg mission station in Liberia for over 20 years until his death. Beginning in 1919 (or earlier) and extending at least through 1942, Susquehanna students and faculty participated in memorial services at his gravesite as part of commencement exercises.

Source: Robert Bradford, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Miracle at Muhlenberg (Liberia): The Life and Legacy of David and Emily Day, Lutheran Missionaries (1874-1895/97)

Rebecca Shade '54 Mignot -- LIBERIA

After teaching across the United States, Mignot decided she wanted to teach overseas. She never really considered going to Africa until she was hired by a tire company in 1960 to teach employees' children in Liberia. While there, she met her husband; they went on to live in Libya and Saudi Arabia before retiring to Mignot's hometown, Danville, Pa.

-- E.M.

Lynn Hassinger '57 Askew -- NAMIBIA

When the Lutheran Church in Namibia was looking for a place to send a pastor to learn about running a chaplaincy program, Askew recommended Susquehanna. A volunteer with the ELCA's New Jersey synod, one of several sister synods with the Namibian church, Askew was instrumental in bringing Pastor Tylvas Haitula to Susquehanna for the fall semester of 2004. Askew has been working with the Namibian church since 1997, and has traveled there five times.

-- E.M.

Randi Keller '84 Sagona -- DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Sagona with students from College John Mabuidi in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I am a teacher in Cumming, Georgia, and I have done some volunteer work with the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in Atlanta. Mr. Mutombo is a Congolese basketball player (currently with the Houston Rockets) who works tirelessly to improve the quality of life in his homeland. My school participated in an International Studies Partnership with one of his former schools in Congo, and I got to visit our partner school.

Robert Joppa '98 -- ZIMBABWE

Joppa, right, poses with a group of children chewing on sugarcane in Zombe, Zimbabwe in 1999.

I participated in two-study abroad programs while I was at Susquehanna. One was a six-week summer archaeological dig in Israel through Duke University that I had heard about from [Associate Professor of Religion] Karla Bohmbach. The other, which I found through research in the study abroad department, was a semester in Wien, Austria through the Institute for European Studies.

So I knew I wanted to do something abroad after SU but I didn't know how I was going to do it. Then one day I was flipping through a dusty old book in Career Services and found information about Peace Corps (PC) - for for some reason it struck a cord. The chance for adventure, exploration, and learning about new cultures were my main motivating factors but I thought it was great that I could also help needy people in the process of doing one of the few things I truly love. During my decision and interview process with PC I heavily relied on [Degenstein Professor Emeritus of History] Don Housley, [Professor of History and current Provost and Dean of the Faculty] Linda McMillin, and [Associate Professor of Religion] Karla Bohmbach for advice and support because my parents were firmly against all my travels, especially Peace Corps.

I was an agro-forestry/community development volunteer. I was not attached to a school but rather a village and a host family so I spent a lot of my time learning about my village and what their needs were. We didn't have job descriptions after training because we were the first agro volunteers in Zimbabwe so after learning about my village I put together a program that I thought would be helpful. My projects included: permaculture seminars, a bridge proposal, library renewal, community gardens, and the creation of a model homestead.

I was actually evacuated twice during my PC duty, once for the floods of 2000 and once for the political violence that still hurts Zimbabwe today. After the floods and after I returned to my village, none of my villagers cared about gardening anymore so I had to change my entire program. I thought about it and decided to coordinate the NGO's that were supplying the refugee camp about 100 meters from my hut. This was my most successful and rewarding period of my entire PC duty. After I was evacuated for the political violence I never saw my village or host family again but instead of going home, I backpacked for six months. During these travels I had the time of my life and learned a lot about Africa, myself, and the world in general.

Jason Wolfe '99 -- ZIMBABWE

With his work, Wolfe has traveled to almost 20 countries in Africa. He writes: I've been working in the field of international development (specifically with farmers and small businesses in Africa) since I graduated from SU in 1999.... Most recently, I was in Zimbabwe conducting a study for the Ford Foundation. The level of desperation and corruption caused by a myopic dictator was rather astonishing. Out of all the places I've been, it's the only country where I've encountered any violence: being mugged at night by a small gang of youths.

Mackenzie Pfeifer '00 Dabo -- GUINEA

Mackenzie Pfeifer '00 Dabo is pictured with her husband, Amara Dabo, whom she met in Guinea.

Dabo, who volunteered with the Peace Corps in Guinea for three years, writes:

When asked if someone or something at Susquehanna started me along the road to international travel, including my four years spent living in West Africa, I initially thought “no.” But Susquehanna, or at least my experiences while at SU, did indeed send me off into that big unknown that has changed my life so drastically. I decided my sophomore year to spend the first half of junior year with the Institute for Study Abroad at Queen Mary and Westfield College in London. I started the journey with an eight-week long trip though Europe with a fellow SU student. We began with three weeks with my parents and extended family in Denmark, and then said a teary goodbye at the train station before a five-week whirlwind tour of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and France. We stayed with families through an organization that pairs travelers with interested hosts and other contacts I knew (not one night in a hotel) and ate bread, cheese, and yogurt. The Chunnel took us to London, and after only a few weeks of school in the East End, I knew I wanted to stay the whole year. So I changed my program, stayed the year, and loved every minute of it. I believe that these experiences during my SU days set the stage for my decision to join the Peace Corps directly after graduation.

On July 4, 2000, I boarded an old Air Afrique plane from JFK to Dakar with 42 other future Peace Corps volunteers for three months of language, culture, and history training in Senegal, West Africa. In early September of that year, my fellow trainees and I traveled to Guinea, a former French colony that would become my second home indefinitely, to be inducted as Peace Corps volunteers. I was sent to a rural village called Saramoussaya, where there is no running water or electricity, to teach math at a middle school. Over the next two years, I taught seventh-, eighth- and ninth- grade math and completed numerous other projects, many dealing with health education. I also met my future husband, Amara. As my two years were coming to an end, I decided that I wasn’t ready to return to the States. I applied for and was granted a third-year volunteer position at the Peace Corps office in the capital, Conakry, as the coordinator of gender, AIDS and development programs. On February 28, 2003, during mmy tenure at the office, Amara and I were married. As I completed my Peace Corps service at the end of my third-year contract, I was eager to remain in Guinea but also continue my education. I was certain that I wanted to be a teacher after my experience in the village. I found a fantastic program in Johannesburg, South Africa, run by the College of New Jersey that would give me the opportunity to complete my master’s in education in one-month-a-year increments while studying with a diverse group of educators from all over the world. I completed my first session that summer, and began my new job as an English as a foreign language teacher at a private French school back in Guinea’s capital. I also worked with the American school during that year. After completing my second summer in South Africa, my husband and I moved to the U.S. in 2004. Obviously, our ties with Guinea are strong. We built a house for my husband’s mother and currently send four students to school (my husband’s two younger brothers, our niece, and the boy I’ve called my “brother” since my time in the village). I also still work with a fantastic bilingual girls’ school in Conakry that deserves lots of support. This year, I returned to Johannesburg and completed my masters in the program I started three years ago.

The most valuable things I’ve taken away from my experiences in Guinea are priceless. I have an infinite patience that did not exist before. I have respect for people who live with so little but continue to smile everyday. It never ceases to amaze me that people with almost nothing, in one of the world’s poorest nations where many live on less than one U.S. dollar a day and life expectancy is a mere 47 years, continually show me their generosity with gifts of chickens, peanuts, oranges, and laughter. I have a changed perspective on life and live much more simply than I did before.

I currently work as a math teacher at a fantastic middle school in Dutchess County, N.Y. My experiences abroad inform every aspect of my life, including my teaching. I try to use my experiences to teach my students about life, not just math, and about other countries. Math is also very multicultural, and this provides opportunities to talk about other parts of the world. I was able last year to bring a Guinean drum and dance company to my school, and hope this year to make Peace Corps week in March a school-wide event. Amara and I will return to Guinea for a visit in December 2005. As a result of my time abroad, I have friends all over the world, from Madagascar to Bahrain to Egypt, and I plan on taking every advantage to visit them all!

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