oh, how i hate the peace corps.

Not that it's evil, but it's ineffective and the volunteers are OH SO annoying. Just yesterday I met a volunteer here who said his job is to "teach farmers how to farm better". Interesting, I thought, so I ask, " Are you an agronomist or something like that?" No, he says, I have never even stepped foot on a farm until I came here.

Fucking arrogant pricks. (Not him, the institution.) How do they think it's okay to send stupid post grad Americans to communities to "teach" people who have dedicated their lives (and often cases, generations of lives) to learning about the idiosyncrasies of farming when they have absolutely no experience in it? Now, if it were some kind of interchange, where the peace corps volunteers knew about some sustainable techniques that were really helpful based on their own experience (like some organizations that connect farmers around the world with each other), that's one thing. It's another to assume that some 22 year old from Georgia, just because he's American, will be able to help those poor farmers with his, um, americanness?

Also, they just announced they were going to send lots of new volunteers to teach English to "help Nicaragua prepare for CAFTA". Right, so now that those farmers you used to "help" will be displaced and will probably be working in sweatshops or migrating to Costa Rica, you're going to teach them English why?? Fucking US.