Doug Henry

Never Know a Stranger:

Doug Henry’s Time in Sierra Leone (1991-1992)

 

There were many days when young Doug Henry turned on the television and saw the same ad. It swelled with inspirational music and hazy footage of volunteers planting trees in Africa and treating malaria in South America.

The inspirational voice-over asserts all the wonderful things that a Peace Corps volunteer could do during their service and all the reasons it could change their life for the better.

“Peace Corps,” it says. “The toughest job you’ll ever love.”

Henry graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Writing and Literature and minors in Anthropology and Biology from the University of Virginia. After he graduated, and before he did anything else, he volunteered with the Peace Corps.

“I needed adventure; I needed to travel,” Henry said. “I needed to challenge myself.”

On the other side of the world, a middle-school and high school in Sierra Leone requested a volunteer from the Peace Corps. Henry filled that role as a Science and Biology teacher.

Before he could begin, he spent the first two and a half months in-country, in intensive language training and cultural classes. He got to meet and get to know the other Peace Corps volunteers in his cohort and learn about the country he landed in.

“Peace Corps does a really good job with teaching language and culture things,” Henry said.  They’re very, very good at preparing volunteers to be volunteers.”

The first three months of Henry’s service were then unexpectedly spent filling time during a teacher strike because the Sierra Leone government was not paying its teachers.

Instead, he invested his extra energy into secondary projects, some of which revolved around the HIV epidemic. He presented condom demonstrations and had the kids, bored from the lack of schooling, put on safe sex plays or skits in the community marketplace.

Henry also built mud stoves that helped the women in the village cook using less wood and create less smoke.  And- he got to explore the area on his bicycle. 

Henry was fortunate to live in a house on the school grounds, so, when teachers went back to work, he walked to his job every day to teach.

He made friends with the other teachers at his school and connected with them over dinner at their homes and friendly afternoon conversations.

“West Africans use language differently; Americans put a real premium on speaking to the point,” Henry said. “[In West Africa] you typically don’t do that.  You have to learn to talk around an issue, and it’s very different.”

He recalled the paths throughout the village that often crossed into people’s backyards. He made a friend on his daily route, a young woman named Binti and was surprised to find that they had the same sense of humor despite their very different backgrounds.

“It was just one of those moments when things sort of get crystallized,” Henry said. “You realize that despite all the crazy problems that exist in the world, the world is still a pretty cool place.’”

Although there were times he felt alone in service, Henry made numerous connections with both warm, friendly Sierra Leoneans and other volunteers. He learned from people around him to “never know a stranger,” and create a network around the country of people he met during his service.

“Peace Corps is also this time in life when you get close to people and you develop friendships with other volunteers because you’re all going through this sort of major change at the same time,” Henry said.

One of his best friends to this day is “Tom,” a man he met during service who volunteered just seven miles north of him. Now that friend works as a physician in Oregon.

“I probably ended up getting so much more out of Peace Corps than what I gave,” Henry said.

He brought back much of the culture he learned to Texas by cooking Sierra Leonean food, connecting with local Sierra Leoneans and attending their cultural events.

“If you’re a person that wants adventure and isn’t afraid of failing a little bit and learning from that to get better, Peace Corps can be a fantastic experience,” Henry said.

His time as a volunteer helped Henry find his love of culture, travel and healthcare. In later pursuing his doctoral degree in medical anthropology, he returned to Sierra Leone for his research.

Later, he began working at UNT as a professor of Anthropology.  He’s led Peace Corps integrated study abroad trips to Sierra Leone, Morocco and Fiji that introduce UNT students to the toughest job he ever loved.  Students have gotten to visit with Peace Corps volunteers at their sites, learn from them about their jobs, and talk to the country directors.

“Oreos have been important,” Henry says.  “We have learned that volunteers crave American snack food, so now we take Oreos with us.” 

If you would like to learn more about Dr. Henry's story, you can e-mail him at Doug.Henry@unt.edu. 

_{Written and Edited by Eliana Fulton, B.A. Journalism Student at UNT
Interviewed by Zach Yeager, Peace Corps Prep Coordinator}