John Cortright Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Evelyn Ganzglass
Interviewee(s): John Cortright

Evelyn Ganzglass: This is Evelyn Ganzglass. Today is October 13, 2018. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. And today I'm interviewing John Cortright, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji from September 2015 to December 2017, and he was in the youth development project. John, why did you join the Peace Corps?

John Cortright: Thank you Evelyn for having me here today. Peace Corps is a program and a destination that I had long had in my head. I joined Peace Corps actually mid-career. I was 35 when I joined. And for me, it was an opportunity to, in a sense, extend my career and also extend my personal growth by living overseas for an extended period of time in a specific place. So because of that, those opportunities, Peace Corps felt at that time the right fix, fit for me. Um, I hadn't done it earlier for other reasons, but at this time it was the perfect transition for where I wanted to go. And actually, now today I'm kind of where I wanted to be as a result of Peace Corps.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So the obvious next question is where were you and where were you trying to go?

John Cortright: Well, I had multiple overseas experiences growing up, but through study abroad programs, I was very fortunate, and that lured me and hooked me into the travel and cultural, you know, fascination. So I became a public international public health worker and went to get my master's in 2005 with a focus on emergency response. And that took me into the NGO world doing health overseas. And I continued to do that for about 10 years. But much of it was done from a desk and didn't give me quite the insight that I was looking more for, like behavioral health and behavioral change when it comes to health practices. And so I really wanted to have a little more interaction at the local level to understand that sort of thing, and the destination didn't matter too much to me. It was more the opportunity to again be overseas, to learn and grow and be better at my job.

And so after that, I wanted, after I'd gained the Peace Corps experience, I wanted to come back and sort of bring that knowledge into our own public health system. And I'm presently starting a new job, thanks in part to Peace Corps' noncompetitive eligibility, with the government. And so that is sort of a full circle that brought me back to D.C. here. And I remember right before I left the NGO, I was telling some of the colleagues, I worked there for nearly eight years. And one of the vice presidents was really astounded that I was doing Peace Corps because she thought it was something that people do at the beginning of their career, and she thought it was a step backwards. On the other hand, the other VP was astounded in a different way. He's like, oh, I've always wanted to go to Fiji. You're the luckiest guy I know. And so it's just the spectrum of responses.

My family members were unsurprised because of the traveling I had done, and I had been independent for a very long time, so this seemed like a natural extension for me to go and do that.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Great. So where did you grow up?

John Cortright: Well, I grew up in western New York, a place called Jamestown, New York, home of Lucille Ball, and I was fortunate in high school to spend a year overseas in Japan. And that started the wave of other travels from there, and my parents were very much proponents of travel and multiculturalism. And my parents would have been very supportive of the idea of me going overseas.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That's great. Good. So you decided to apply for the Peace Corps? And did they immediately come back with Fiji?

John Cortright: It was an interesting process. I can't say how it is now because I was in the old system, which for me felt like it took an eternity to get everything lined up, well over 15 months I think it was. And I basically was really gung-ho on a particular country and I came into the recruiter's office, you know, with all the justification for that country. And in the end, it was basically, it was such a unique program there that they were saying, well, we have no control over it and it's very low probability you'll get selected.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Where did you want to go?

John Cortright: Mexico. Mexico has a very unique bilateral agreement with Peace Corps. It was much more for mid-career people. And so the government chooses, and they were only looking for engineers really. And so as a consequence, she was like, you really must do Fiji. They've been doing health for ages, and that's a perfect fit for you. And the program, the cycle just started up and so you would guaranteed a spot. And so, you know, I didn't have a strong inclination for a second country and so I just said, sure. And about three months before I was to depart, I got the call that their health program had been turned off and now they were doing youth development.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh.

John Cortright: And that was the start of the mantra of flexibility, flexibility, flexibility. And it's a mantra that I still carry with me, thankfully.

Evelyn Ganzglass: OK. So how many people were in your youth development program?

John Cortright: It was 35 of us. We're all proud that we got through the pre- service training with no one leaving. And we had most of our volunteer group still there at the end, and there were several of us that wanted to do a third year. I applied and was accepted to do a third year as well. And it's a program that was well organized. We had great staff, staff who had been with the country program for many years and were very calm and organized and collected in their transition for us. So that was great.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Let's just go back. So you applied, you met somewhere here in the United States, right?

John Cortright: I applied in what?

Evelyn Ganzglass: No, you applied here. And then you met up with your group somewhere in the United States?

John Cortright: Yeah, it was Los Angeles. And I was working in Los Angeles and I left work Friday at four o'clock and took the bus over to our orientation at five o'clock.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That was pretty simple.

John Cortright: That was simple. It was, um, it was the right transition. And for months leading up to it, I knew the moment that the plane took off I would have the biggest grin on my face, because it was something I really wanted to do.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you just spent a day or two?

John Cortright: Yeah, we just had.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Staging and then you flew straight to Fiji, is that it?

John Cortright: Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: How does one fly to Fiji from Los Angeles?

John Cortright: There's a direct flight from Los Angeles to Fiji. And we were staged with others in the Pacific, so we had an opportunity to get to know others who are going to be in closer islands, which was an interesting process because it immediately gave us, it gave me at least, a sense of the temporary-ness of our connections that we would be with someone for two or three days and then we'd never see them again. And similarly, our pre-service training, it was eight weeks and then we might not see some of those members of the group for months on time. So it was all, it was, um, it was a reaffirmation that, you know, you're there on your own and you need to set up your new routes and organize yourself and be prepared for times when you're on your own.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So the training you went to was in Fiji for the Pacific group, or where was the training?

John Cortright: We still did country specific programs and that we did, Fiji was for Fiji and Tonga. It was in Tonga essentially.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, I thought you said you were trained together with other people.

John Cortright: No, that's a temporary-ness of it. The staging people.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, the staging here in the States, you mean?

John Cortright: Right. And then from L.A., we separated our ways in Fiji and they took a different plane from there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, I see. So everybody flew to Fiji and then went to to other places.

John Cortright: Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: OK. So there were 35 of you who stayed in Fiji.

John Cortright: Correct.

Evelyn Ganzglass: All in youth development?

John Cortright: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And then what was the training you had in Fiji itself?

John Cortright: So our roughly eight-week program. We were sworn in on November 3rd, 2015, and our training started September 1st. And we had us, at the time, I mean, each country massages their pre-service training based on feedback from the groups prior. And so it's never the same thing. And probably to the perpetual workload of the staff. No one's ever satisfied one hundred percent, but it was for me, a smooth transition. I think the transition I had more difficult was after pre-service training. And but as for the actual content, it was probably 30 to 50 percent language training.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And what is the language in Fiji?

John Cortright: Well, there are multiple languages and that was one point of consternation as some people wanted to learn a different language there, but we decided, the country program decided that we would all learn Fijian, which is spoken by indigenous islanders. And that made sense. We were hosted in villages with them. So, you know, you could go from class to home and things would make sense. But being a British colony, the language that, the language there was English. So one really had to make an effort. And then a third language, which was very common, was Indo Fijian. So 30 to 40 percent of the population had an Indian heritage because of the history of indentured servitude in Fiji.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Hmm.

John Cortright: And so it was probable that you would interact with Indo Fijians, and that was the predominant experience in my Peace Corps service.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And how did that language? It was a combination of Hindi?

John Cortright: Yep.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Hindi and Fijian.

John Cortright: A little mixed in. But yeah, one could go to India and learn. And Indo Fijians learned Hindi in school. And so it was, yeah, it was a separate cultural. It was two. It was a very two distinct cultural units within the country which had caused the previous political conflict and social conflict. And that made for, uh, a theme throughout my Peace Corps experience actually.

Evelyn Ganzglass: OK, so you had language, we'll get to that. You had language training. Did you have cultural awareness training?

John Cortright: Well, the cultural awareness we, I felt, could have been more. Um, there was some general, um, guidance given, but not like your day-to-day business, cultural etiquette. A lot of it was just watch and learn. But that was in the village setting. There was also the curiosity of the volunteers asking questions. But so much more of our training was the pragmatic, becoming teachers. So we had a new five year project for youth development. As I may have mentioned, we had traditionally been a country dealing in health services based in the Ministry of Health. Now we were based in the Ministry of Education and um, that transition was part of a larger project for youth empowerment. And I think they were calling it, uh, not life. It was a different.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Life skills?

John Cortright: Life skills. Thank you. Yeah, it was, probably part of a larger Peace Corps global push for life skills, which was really left to the volunteers to define what that meant. And our project for many volunteers, including myself, it took a particular interpretation, which I think will still have waves of consequences after I've left. And that interpretation of life skills was the focus on a part of the curriculum that collectively was felt highly neglected, which was reproductive health.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So talk more about that.

John Cortright: So our Peace Corps trainees, who were local staff, and the national and the expat staff recognized this gap. I doubt it was more at the Ministry of Education's request to fill the gap and more of self- identifying the taboo nature to discuss reproductive health in school settings.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And you're wanting to work on health anyway.

John Cortright: Yeah. And so in the spin of things, it worked out so that I was, uh my assignment had me writing the health curriculum for the secondary schools in the nation.

Evelyn Ganzglass: On reproductive health?

John Cortright: On the whole gamut of the curriculum, and of which I provided the most new, relevant, scientifically evidence-based information. But it's not just about providing knowledge, it's the behavior change and recognizing why others aren't just going and finding the information themselves and pulling it up and teaching it. So there was this stigma and the job security fears, as well as the fear of, I guess what might be called in our time the social media reprisals that come in that fashion. There was definitely Facebook in Fiji, but there was also the newspapers. And more than once some education official would get published up in the newspapers for claiming to have said something highly taboo to students that was outrageous to the parents, and it became national news. As a way to sort of tamp down on what the I guess the traditional side of the culture felt was inappropriate.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So help me understand. So there used to be a health program there.

John Cortright: Mm hmm.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Why was that ended and why did it move to youth development?

John Cortright: You know, that's.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And then how did you come back into the health area?

John Cortright: And it was very. I worked, I haven't mentioned, I worked in the capital within the Ministry of Education, and the government communications between ministries was almost non-existent. And so health taught in schools was developed by health, by educational professionals with very little consultation from the health side of things. And by the time I left, we had volunteers in the Ministry of Youth and Sport who were writing their own reproductive health curriculum. So there was various curriculums going around with limited success. But I think the, that was the programmatic focus of my Peace Corps experience. There was much more to it than just that.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But was there a political reason that there was a shift from health to youth development? Or do you know what the history of that was?

John Cortright: I do not. I cannot say. I can say that the shift from my time from Ministry of Education to Ministry of Youth and Sports was because there was a greater partnership with Peace Corps. This, the country staff were having better relationships with the officials in the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So first you were assigned to the Ministry of Education?

John Cortright: Yes.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And then when did, how did you?

John Cortright: So I continued in the Ministry of Education. But by the time I was leaving, more of the volunteers were going assigned to Ministry of Youth and Sports. And so there was generally the absence of official formal documents deciding the scope of our work within the ministry as people. The whole idea of volunteers in Fiji was still very problematic in many ways. It was still had many touristy connotations to them, even though Peace Corps had been in the country since I think 1967. There was a lack of, for those who had never experienced Peace Corps, a general lack of understanding of our intent and basically saw many of the volunteers as temporary and to be treated as tourists of sorts. And so as a consequence, I believe there wasn't as many. There wasn't a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education. Nor could Peace Corps get a meeting with the lead people within the Ministry of Education.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So they were never really bought into it. Who had decided to assign Peace Corps to Ministry of Education?

John Cortright: You know, at some point before I arrived, it must have been something informally agreed upon because obviously volunteers were placed in schools. So there was a mechanism, but there wasn't, uh, it was sort of, OK, you'll go. The volunteers will go and you'll, you know, the principal will handle it. But there wasn't really an ongoing like, OK, our next wave is coming. Which schools should they go to? Where is there the greatest need? And that sort of thing.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You said most of it. Did most of the volunteers become teachers and how did you end up in the ministry?

John Cortright: So for my Group 92 the, I would say 90 percent ended up in secondary schools. And I ended up in the Ministry of Education because the Ministry of Education official came to our pre-service training and I ended up speaking with him. And he and I got along great and he made a recommendation for me because he had expected to receive someone as well. As well as the fact that I had my master's in public health, which was more what they were expecting for someone at the ministry level.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you were assigned and you were in the capital of Fiji? What is the capital of Fiji?

John Cortright: Suva.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Suva.

John Cortright: And I liked it in many ways. It reminded me of my hometown. I could walk across it in an afternoon if I wanted to. Or in my case, I biked across it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Mm hmm. OK, so you talk to them to the person from, the minister I guess, and you are assigned there. What was your interaction with your colleagues in the ministry?

John Cortright: So that's where I was really, um, really excited about today's opportunity to capture a little bit of the history of Peace Corps because it's an opportunity I see in my mind at this time a third goal. And for us in Peace Corps, the third goal is teaching Americans about other cultures. And so this recording, I see the audience as Americans and an opportunity to leave an impression of those that I met and carry their names and experiences back to America.

So the true highlights of my experience in Peace Corps were with my work colleagues, and it was a daily ritual that is highly unusual here in America, and that is a lunch. And we sat every day together and had lunch, and we had uninterrupted one hour lunch. That was the ministry standard rules. And it was a time where I formed some very strong friendships with the young professionals who were at a stage in their lives where they felt stagnant and unsure of where to go. Yet they had chased and achieved many of the goals that their family and society had told them to achieve. And so it was a lot. There was an informal mentorship formed at times.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Had they finished college?

John Cortright: They were, had finished college and were also working full time and doing their post-graduate work.

Evelyn Ganzglass: All in Fiji. So they there's a university in Fiji?

John Cortright: Yep. And the Ministry of Education had a relationship with the universities and an agreement where staff could take time to go and continue their education, because it was beneficial for everyone to have the staff there as well educated as possible. But it put a great deal of time pressure on the staff that I worked closely with. And so I mentioned earlier in my interview that there were two groups within Fiji essentially from, you know, from a heritage point of view. And my workplace was predominantly Indo Fijian, those from India originally. And without going into too much depth of all the cultural aspects, the workplace was predominantly a female Indo Fijian at the mid-level and male Indo Fijian and or indigenous in the senior positions.

Evelyn Ganzglass: What a surprise.

John Cortright: And many of the other volunteers, females, there were only about six or seven males in our group, the majority were female, had a higher degree of cultural difficulty transitioning. Because of that gendered delineation in school settings was more pronounced, to very rare were there female principals at the schools. And so I gradually subtlety learned what the difficulties are faced by young females overseas who are striving and following the ambitious goals that are set before them. And they did it with grace and persistence and it really taught me a great deal about the challenges and the persistence that's required by young people today.

And it also revealed to me something that, you know, as I was leaving, touched on a little bit to me as astounding. The comments that I was left with by my colleagues was that no one had really believed in them as much as I had. And I still find that difficult to swallow. Just listening to them and encouraging them on a consistent and persistent basis was more than they had experienced before.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So was there difficulty as a man having lunch with these women every day?

John Cortright: It was a taboo I was more than willing to break. And I had ambitious hopes that others would follow, and two colleagues would occasionally join in. But that's because they worked side by side with them anyways. But there was a men's lunch area downstairs and I never once ate there. And I accepted the consequences of that, and I feel better off for it.

Evelyn Ganzglass: What were the consequences?

John Cortright: Well, it was basically, I would say, unspoken. The men of the organizations had very little communication with me throughout my time there, but it wasn't in any way disrespectful in the sense that it was just, you know, I had made my choice and I accepted that my work relations would be predominantly with the younger female colleagues who were not high in the organization, but that did the majority of the work.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So what all did you talk about?

John Cortright: Well, we learned a lot from each other and it was always fun. And it was a, there was always every day some comment about the food. And it was a sharing culture where everybody always packed more than they needed to eat. And so it became an instant potluck of sorts. And being of Hindu practice, many of the meals were vegetarian, and so it was a constant health discussion about the food we eat and changing behaviors about the bad foods that they would eat as well. And you know, it was, uh, it ended up being quite a good laugh for them because I was the one always talking about healthy foods, and in the end I was the one who got sick from the food. And that was a good laugh for them but they were all sad to see me go as a consequence, because I had to get medically separated at the end because of something I ate. And it's just the way the world spins sometimes.

But the real communications came with understanding across the cultural barriers and figuring out the universal aspects that, you know, young people are trying to figure out themselves. You know, should I leave my family to pursue education overseas? Should I keep silent and not disagree with my manager? Should I accept being disrespected as a woman, you know? Or for one of my colleagues, she had a family and she was still trying to complete her masters. And I felt that no one else was encouraging her to keep on it. And so I persistently throughout the two years kept asking, and she would blush and smile and yell my name every time I brought up the topic.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Yeah.

John Cortright: But you know, I, many of them graduated while I was there, and it was very proud moments for them and their family. But it's the frustration that comes with graduating and still not being eligible for the positions higher up that required those graduate certificates in the first place. So the disincentive was there, but they were also respected. Nobody questioned their work.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And what work did they do?

John Cortright: So we in the secondary curriculum spanned most of the subjects that students would have here, from math and physics to biology and chemistry.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you all wrote curriculum basically?

John Cortright: Pretty much.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Curriculum standards.

John Cortright: Yeah. And setting the benchmarks to other countries. There was an onerous annual exam which had to be rewritten every single year and checked and scrutinized. And then, you know, the results were highly politicized. And I think one year a hundred percent of the country passed. So the standards of education were still evolving there between those diligent folks in the ministry trying to really set quality standards based on international benchmarks, and those in political appointed positions needing to ensure that they're not seen as failing the education system and more and more people passing. So it was guaranteed to move forward even if you didn't pass, essentially. So it really starkly revealed the quality of education we take for granted here. While many criticize it for good reasons, there's still many administrative components that work here that we take for granted.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And didn't work there, you think?

John Cortright: Yeah, yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And how long had Fiji been independent?

John Cortright: Well, one could argue different dates. I think the British separation was in the early 70s, '72 I believe. And then the actual most stable government formed in 2013. And Peace Corps had evacuated a couple of times in that span for a year or two.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So civil war or what was?

John Cortright: Coups.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Coups.

John Cortright: Three, two to three coups.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And how did you communicate with the teachers or with the other people you were working with, in English or?

John Cortright: Everything was in English. And I, one of my side projects you could call and achievements that I look back on is I believed that you could write a curriculum. But if you didn't go to the schools and emphasized with the administrative side and the teachers themselves to train them, that little would come of the curriculum. There were so many blatant, um, just disconnects that one curriculum would succeed and completely be followed to the letter, and the other one completely ignored. And the only way I was going to figure out and advocate for sort of a merging of holistic education, which was written into the mission of the education system. But in the end, everybody cared about the exam results and health was not examined.

And so I went into schools. I traveled for several months with funds that I had secured from the Ministry of Education through, you know, a proposal that I had written to go out and survey teachers, trained teachers, and speak with the admin teams at the schools to understand the obstacles. The results of that were to be reviewed and decided upon at the Ministry of Education. And I handed that knowledge over because I had to leave suddenly. And maybe it got taken up? There are always shifting political interests based on the latest news cycle. Climate change was becoming, and was already before I arrived, a key theme in education. And so there were opportunities to merge the climate and the health aspect, which is a pattern we're seeing here in the United States as well, most recently with the effects of mental health on climate and climate change.

But in the end, there were cultural barriers. And what they would say were administrative barriers, you know, there's not enough time in the day. And I think what it, what I brought to some of the curriculum process was a magnifying glass. I would ask the questions why? And I would find the incongruencies, and I would document them and say, listen, this is bureaucratically breaking here and it needs resolution. And I think that level of inspection wasn't common and had to be carefully navigated as well. So that was.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And they probably didn't appreciate that.

John Cortright: Well, um.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Or did they?

John Cortright: I would say that health in general was not a top concern, and it had become normalized in the country to be overweight. Young people were not steered in a different direction when they were becoming overweight. And the problem actually had a huge impact on women because it extended over to the curriculum for physical education, where men were traditionally seen as more athletic and allowed to play sports and women were not. And it was only gradually changing where there was a mixed gender approach to physical education. Another thing we take for granted for here in the United States.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So when you met with the minister and you ended up being assigned, was it he that really wanted a new health curriculum or how did that?

John Cortright: Well, that's, you know, I met with my supervisor. He was the one who came, and he knew the minister well and could navigate the politics of the organization. The drive actually had come from parliament. So we were a parliamentary mandated curriculum.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh.

John Cortright: Without proper integration or, um, basically the parliament created or probably without much guidance from the Ministry of Education. It was more like, this is a problem, address it. And it came in so many different angles. Ministry of Health was keen because there was a high number of suicides among young people and they didn't know why. And so mental health was something that I focused in on while I was there in addition to reproductive health. But I would go deeper and say that for the volunteers going overseas. Imagine someone coming to America and saying, this is wrong, you know, this is the way it should be done. It created the sense that these were foreign concepts, and nothing became more clear to me than Fiji's general take of the word, the notion of human rights, which was very much considered a foreign concept.

And the mandate of such, you know, these are human rights, again, coming from external forces. Generally, I think revealed a disconnect between the grassroots beliefs and ideas of universal values and that sort of thing. But what it taught me from an educational standpoint that kind of carried home and is a lesson that I think is very profound, is that we're a blank slate when we're born and we cannot assume that people just have an innate understanding of certain rights and human rights. And that instead it is up to education and curriculum to pass on those traditional knowledges of right and wrong, and to assume that the young person will believe the same thing you believe is dangerous. It has to be taught, and traditions have to be passed on verbally and through curriculum.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And at home as well.

John Cortright: And at home, yes. And I think there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: I guess that's where some of the conflict is, if what you're learning in school is not the same as what your parents are saying.

John Cortright: Well, I think there's this hope, this silent hope, that this, the modeled behavior, will take on. The sense that you don't have to explain verbally, but the student will watch or the child will watch and follow the same thing. And so a lot of behavior is learned by watching it very subconsciously. But we can't assume that the results are going to be what we want unless we make it conscious.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you went out in the field as well and talked to people. Do you think the curriculum was ever actually implemented?

John Cortright: I would say it was at the school level to decide that, and some schools were very supportive and ambitious, because no one would disagree that there was a problem of health. The problem they had was how to solve that issue. And the way that I often, and this is again a pedagogy that I brought to the program, to the Peace Corps, that I later had to change through my own learning. Because the best curriculum development is where you learn as you go, learn from others, and how other curriculums have succeeded and failed in an evidence-based way. I brought at times a fear-based approach to reproductive health, which is something we do here in the United States as well. But I learned from European standards where it was much more optimistic and positive with a love-based approach to reproductive health, and how reproductive health is a sign of positive, healthy behavior. And so I transitioned to that.

But what I had to often do because of Fiji's cultures, more as they were their antennae, were more attuned to fear. And I feel other volunteers would agree that a lot of decisions were based on fear. And the decision, the method I would bring is that, listen, we want our young people to be experts in science and math and engineering and finance and all these things. And you put so much energy into that and you want the scores to succeed. How does it feel when they have to drop out of school because they're starting a family? How does all that energy that gets spent translate when they're no longer able to attend school? And the dropout rate for teenage pregnancy was growing and every school admin could point to at least a case a year, if not more.

And so teen pregnancy was side by side with drug related issues in schools. But acting on a solution was more difficult because it was much more of a, in terms of our traditional ABC approach, it was abstinence only because of the very traditional missionary ingrained education system, because missionaries brought the curriculum originally and so many schools are still religious in focus. And the culture itself is heavily Christian. That the economy, that social tension between Hinduism and Christianity was prevalent.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And did the Indian population address this differently than the native population, the indigenous population?

John Cortright: I would love if this were a lunch table, boy, my female colleagues would have some strong opinions on that. But if you follow the behavior based on the actions I saw, it was basically similar to what Americans see, perhaps incorrectly, of Muslim culture where women are held at home, not allowed many social interactions unless supervised. So there was a very guarded, fear based approach to raising young girls in Fiji and that had.

Evelyn Ganzglass: On both sides, both the Indian and indigenous?

John Cortright: No, indigenous females were far more free to roam and do as they please. The consequence came perhaps in a way not grounded entirely on reality. But many Indian families felt fear from the previous coups and the prevalence use of rape by the indigenous during the coups. And that was still in the minds of many. Yet the reality of it, the statistics of it, were probably not enough to substantiate the level of fear that was there. And so again, health, mental health, was finding the positive aspects and trying to live in a more well- balanced way and finding wellbeing in your day-to-day life rather than living in fear.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So are you still in touch with your lunch buddies?

John Cortright: Yes. Yeah, in fact, I can't wait to share this recording with them because to me it's one last lunch conversation. Of course, they would never have let me speak this long uninterrupted. But you know, they taught me so much as well, and I'm very grateful. I'll always carry with me the lessons I've learned. And part of that is recognizing how little control we have over our own lives, even though we use our minds to bring control over things. There's definitely a balance that I'm still trying to seek with maintaining a direction, controlled direction in my life, yet not feeling that everything has to be controlled. And that that is one cultural aspect I brought home from Fiji that I'm grateful for. And it's not a cultural aspect that's owned by one indigenous versus Indian. It's just a part of the culture where it's OK when things are not in your control.

And that's such a distant concept here in America, where young people are put under such tremendous pressure to know what they're going to study, what they're going to become, you know, from such a young age. And it was a hard culture transition coming back because I, it was an unexpected return, and I ended and stayed with my sister here in D.C., who's raising my six year old niece. And the severity of control down to the minute is just hard for me to swallow in such an instant transition from one culture to the next. So, you know, that's something I'm still struggling with as well. And so I, you know, for those who listen later on, it's just a balancing of child rearing and health, you know.

Health is not just the absence of sickness, according to World Health Organization. It's so much more, mental health and wellbeing. And I'm thankful for Peace Corps for sending people out to try and build life skills in a way that is not, as we would say in Fiji, building roads and buildings, you know. It's foreign service in a different way that I think for my friends that I left behind will have a more lasting impact as they themselves recognize that much of their future is transitory. Where they go is unknown, because many career aspects for their well-educated minds is not available to them unless they take leadership roles and affect change that way.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you are a role model in that respect. Or were you?

John Cortright: In which respect would you say?

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, I shouldn't. Maybe it's not role model, but you came in with a different mindset which challenged them and so opened up new opportunities for them. Is that what I'm hearing or?

John Cortright: I never told them flat out that they needed to leave Fiji. Because that would, that went against my goal, which was to build local capacity. And so many countries already have that brain drain consequence. My international health education, my master's, was studying the ravages of health systems because everybody left the country. So it is about coming in and teaching the next generation the things you assume they should know, but you're making sure that they know. And then that is, you know, being role models in their own health so that others can follow their behavior. If they can't, they can't. If they can't practice what they preach, it's very hard. And I still try to take that with me.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So what I hear is your impact, how you think of your impact on the country, is really in this much more intangible way as opposed to the usual idea of development assistance, for example.

John Cortright: Mm hmm. And I.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Or many of the other things that Peace Corps is involved with.

John Cortright: Yeah. And I believe that works because people would tap me on the shoulder on busses, elderly folks, and say, you know, are you Peace Corps? When I was in a rural area because who else but Peace Corps would be in a rural area traveling around. And I lived in very simple ways and wouldn't stay. So they recognize the pattern of behaviors that make up Peace Corps volunteers because they had lived with them and seen them before. And so our pattern of behavior has been consistent enough that they see us and they recognize us. And that's a lasting impact. You know, that not everybody who comes from overseas is there to extract and be a step above everyone else, but rather to integrate with and learn from.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So talk a little bit about your health problems and your evacuation. How did that go?

John Cortright: Yeah, it's one of those lessons that just when you thought you had the right balance between control and, that you realize you don't.

Evelyn Ganzglass: You don't.

John Cortright: It was very sudden right before Christmas of 2017, and it was one of those, you know, one of those things that Peace Corps does well is they take care of the volunteers. And I can say that for my country experience, and I cannot elaborate if that's the case for other country experiences. But we had good quality staff. And I basically got sick and they didn't know why. And so D.C. made a decision that it was too risky to leave me there. And rather than evacuate me, which would be, I believe, standard procedure, they decided to medically separate me. And I then had to go to the hospital here, and they did a simple test and determined it was salmonella and E. coli, a test that had not been done prior. And I appealed to go back and the decision was declined.

But I would say that the difficult part. You know, yes, there's the coming to terms with you don't have control over your physical presence and your mobility is owned by someone else's decision. And the facts may not all be before them, but they still make the decision you have to abide by. That's always hard, and most Americans would have difficulty with being told what to do in that regard when it comes to their health. But the hard part was uprooting my relationships so suddenly. I had four days. And it was, um, you know, something that I didn't have quite the closure I had hoped. But again, you know, again, control. When you see yourself having another third year remaining, you know, you have plenty of time to bring control into the situation. But I am calmer. And my colleagues now here in the U.S. were remark how I seemed to be so calm when others are flipping out, which seems to be a business requirement nowadays.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Just go back to your. So you were medically separated, you were not evacuated. What's the difference from your point of view?

John Cortright: Well, a hand is broken. That can be casted in Thailand. One is sent over there for a week and returns. The cause is known, the solution is known. One gets an illness that's possibly vector food borne. The test results can't give any conclusivity, and you're in the hospital for multiple days and unable to eat, posing theoretical life threatening risks which previous volunteers have died from. So there is in general an escalation immediately from the local knowledge and decision making to outside D.C. or regional decisions. And it's not based on information that is up to the moment. It's based on information that's been passed on through third parties, et cetera. And it becomes a little, you know, it's not the kind of standard care one would hope for when there's risks involved, you know, and um.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Well, I guess the question is, who pays for your treatment too, right?

John Cortright: Well, that's a bigger bureaucracy, and I feel, I really do feel for the volunteers who return home with medical issues. They have nothing but hurdles to overcome from a bureaucratic and financial perspective. They have access to Department of Labor's workman's comp through legislation that has been worked out. But the handoff between Peace Corps to Department of Labor is a work in progress. And then there comes the acceptance that your bills will take years to resolve, and one could say that there is a great deal of anxiety and emotional turmoil that comes with having these bills hanging over under your name. According to the hospitals, you're accountable for them, yet being told by someone else, don't worry, it will be resolved. So there's a faith in the system without anyone, you know, who's gone through it before really saying, yeah, it will work out. Don't worry.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you had that. Did you pay, so your bills were? Who ultimately paid?

John Cortright: Well, at this stage.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Oh, it's not ultimate yet.

John Cortright: Oh no, I've only been home for eight or nine months, so I have another Peace Corps experience ahead of me trying to resolve my bills which, I'm confident only because I'm a very stubborn bureaucratic fighter, that the Department of Labor will see that the codes are correct. I will have triangulated Peace Corps' admission that in writing that they are correct and that the hospital will have been paid. There is a gray area for volunteers where if the Department of Labor chooses to pay less than the hospital requests in the legal writing that I've seen is that the hospital must accept the payment and cannot bill the leftover amount. But I doubt hospitals are hoping that people read that, and so there may be further fights ahead.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you're still in the middle of all that.

John Cortright: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you came back, you were in the hospital for a short time, and then it was resolved?

John Cortright: Yeah, it was incredibly simple and I had within a month a letter from the doctor saying that I was fit to go back, which is exactly what Peace Corps needed. But for whatever reason, was not accepted and one doesn't have the opportunity to appeal that decision. I know the appeal process does work sometimes. One volunteer in our group did, but essentially you have to be relentless and there's a lot of inertia.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you didn't fight it.

John Cortright: Um, I was very tired physically at the time, and I was going through a lot of culture shock as well, and I just had to choose my battles. If I had fought it, I would have had maybe by that time six months remaining there. And you know, it just, I had to focus on finding work. That's your other concurrent issue, that volunteers without a safety net going into Peace Corps have to spend their Peace Corps time really thinking about their safety net when they return. If you don't have family that you can crash with, you could be sent home at any moment with no job and no source of sustainable income. And that's a reality that um.

Evelyn Ganzglass: But you have your salary that's in the bank, right?

John Cortright: There is the relocation allowance, which comes some time after, but depending on where you relocate to, might barely cover a security deposit and the first month's rent. And you know, it took me a grueling four months to find work. And to me, that was far too long. For others, that's the average, if not lucky. And so that's just one of the realities going from work life to volunteer life back to work life. That is, um, one would be pragmatic to think about well before their end of service, well before their, what's the final workshop that they have before they return? There's a final COS, closing of service, yeah, which happens about two to three months beforehand.

And you know, there's so much more that volunteers. It's one of those challenges that volunteers face, especially in the rural areas where internet connectivity is not good. You are meant to disengage from your old life and reengage in a new life, and you're then expected to suddenly change back again. And that requires a great deal of mental preparation and mentorship.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So you don't think the COS orientation or sessions do enough in that regard?

John Cortright: It's a two-day affair typically, and you get some of the bureaucratic things out of it. One positive thing that just passed legislation was an extension of health coverage from one month to three months. That I think is good. I've faced gaps in health coverage because of the bureaucracy of moving from Peace Corps service to the affordable health care system here. That's something, there are so many things that are, that get dropped into the bureaucratic gaps and that makes Peace Corps transitioning home a continuation of challenge. You know, you don't think of ending your Peace Corps service and thinking the days of challenges are behind you. Oftentimes, people might have a harder time transitioning home than to the culture that they went to.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Sounds like for you that was, was it?

John Cortright: Yeah, I would say, though I would say that there are also unique things that every volunteer goes through and I went through that capture the hard parts of cultural transition. While I went thriving on that, there were unexpected experiences, one of which is a sense of safety. And how we in our minds tell ourselves that we're safe is a very fluid thing that when the boat is rocked, it's hard to reestablish that quickly, the calm where you feel safe.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So did you feel safer there or back here?

John Cortright: No. There were many things that were presented in a way that made us guarded and feel less safe in many ways there.

Evelyn Ganzglass: In Fiji?

John Cortright: Yeah. And I think the much of it looking back was not fully rational, not evidence based. It's just this cautiousness, this pervasive cloud of cautiousness that fulfills bureaucratic expectations, particularly for Fiji, which is the highest ranking for crime in the Peace Corps countries.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Ah.

John Cortright: And so there's this demand to bring down the statistics, which creates a climate of fear, which is reinforced in a culture that supports fear-based methods of decision making. So from a mental health standpoint, I went through a period where I was untrusting. And I look back very gratefully to my coworkers at the lunch table for overcoming their fear and trepidation and inviting me to the table. I didn't sit down the first time they invited me and they had great trepidation about me to the point where one of them, who was always outspoken more than what locally would be considered acceptable, but here would be completely normal. She said, what's your motive? You know, everyone has an ulterior motive. And it made me realize the level of distrust that I had to overcome.

But my presence, my continued interest in listening, overcame their concerns. And it was always a smile to me when a new female staff was hired and they were told to come down to our table and are like, who's this guy? It would take them like two to three weeks before they would open up and start speaking. But then, once the trust was established, then it was.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So how did the crime in Fiji affect? I mean, I hear what you're saying about fear, but did you live with other volunteers or?

John Cortright: That's a good. Yeah.

Evelyn Ganzglass: What did you do and what kind of crime are we talking about?

John Cortright: Well, there was, yeah, the capital was the highest point of crime and it was burglary, robbery, and physical assaults were the high three markers for statistics, followed probably by sexual assault, which happened to multiple of my volunteer friends. And yeah, I mean, it was a constant dialog in the Peace Corps volunteer community in our group about, you know, risks and threats and fears and such. And so my house that I was moved into, I had been, my transition from training to work was very bumpy, the most bumpy of the others. I stayed in the hotel for a month and a half afterwards because they had to find a home for me because the one I was meant to move to had just been burgled. And so I stayed on my own once I got in, but it took eight months for them to set up the security requirements for it. And during that time, I didn't sleep so well because of the sounds, you know, you think of sounds. I just, I just didn't transition well into knowing who to trust and whatnot.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Were you with other volunteers as well or were you the only one?

John Cortright: My location, I was the only one, and that was temporary because unique to my Peace Corps experience, I shouldn't say unique to all Peace Corps experiences. But we had a major typhoon cyclone hit our island and that caused many homes for volunteers to be destroyed. So then they were relocated to the capital where they would stay with me for the rest of their term. And then that had an impact for all of us, that cyclone, which was the largest in South Pacific history and reaffirmed the theme of climate change throughout our experience. But I can't offer a solution on how to have the positive mental health steps taken for volunteers, you know. They have to work through rebalancing their boat when they feel unsafe to when they do, and I did, I did, but it took far longer than I expected.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So let me ask you, you went in the Peace Corps hoping it would help you with your career.

John Cortright: Mm hmm.

Evelyn Ganzglass: And you started out by saying it has. How has it helped your career? Is it the recognizing that you don't have control, is that what the main impact has been? Or what do you think has been the impact on furthering your career as you had planned it?

John Cortright: As I was 35 when I went in, I'm now 37, and I advocated this through my mentoring with my friends and colleagues. I wanted so badly, and there were so many strong, capable women that I worked with. I told them, you really must mentor younger girls. And they said, yes, yes, yes. But they never did. There has to be a point in one's life where you realize you're no longer the student, you're the teacher. Or to put it in a different way, you're no longer learning, you're teaching and you're handing off knowledge to someone else. And that point came for me in Peace Corps pronounced. And so it brought back to me a confidence now that I carry with me that, you know, I'm always learning, but I also have to guide and advocate and promote solutions.

And I think that's one characteristic that maybe volunteers will agree on, that we come back into a workforce and we're not ambivalent, we're not indecisive, we're not abdicating ownership. We take ownership. We're self-motivated to work out and find, you know, sustainable ideally solutions, so that is something that helped me from how I work. I also learned firsthand what it's like for a country to respond to a disaster through this cyclone that hit. It damaged over 400 schools, just like we had during Hurricane Katrina. Students dislocated to schools all over the country. The same thing happened in Fiji, and now I'm working in federal government for disaster response. And my big question is our resiliency and how resilient are we? And we rely on bureaucracy a lot more than we realize. And bureaucracy is fragile.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Talk.

John Cortright: Well.

Evelyn Ganzglass: We need another sentence on that.

John Cortright: It is such that it doesn't accelerate quickly, and so disasters typically need accelerated bureaucracy so that help can be given. And political and social struggles emerge far after the disasters continuously on an international system when the monies don't get to those in need in the time that's needed.

Evelyn Ganzglass: That makes sense.

John Cortright: And so it's just, um. One of the lessons I have learned too from many disaster responses is you can't introduce new bureaucracy during a disaster, it has to be systematized and scalable. And as a consequence, the day-to-day work life has to not be at the cliff of sustainability. It has to be malleable to accelerate when needed from the day to day. And here and overseas this ambitious pursuit of progress keeps people at a knife's edge with their ability to sustain themselves, and you can't go from having like one day of vacation the last nine months to working straight for three weeks with not a day off. It's just the system isn't built with the flexibility needed.

But, you know, most of the disaster response is dependent on the disaster responders and the quality deteriorates as burnout accelerates. And you know, a lot of that happened when I saw that, it's just that people just get fatigued. And as a result, and this is one of the reasons I'm moving into domestic response here is, the resilience of a country and of a society. Is it true that people are going to be left on their own? You know, are we on our own or can we rely on the government and systems to buffer us from disaster? And you know, I see, uh, I don't have a clear answer on that, given the severity of disasters that approach.

But it's an obligation, a duty, that there is bureaucracy to help people in times of their greatest need. What greater need is there for government when there is conflict and disaster?

Evelyn Ganzglass: Mm hmm.

John Cortright: So it's really an obligation that I don't think is given enough attention. And Peace Corps could do well to help build disaster response resilience overseas and has done that in some countries. And maybe one could argue it is being done everywhere because we are help building the day-to-day sustainability of systems. We're not building systems that are going to be used only during disaster. We're working on empowering people and building capacity locally so that they have that capacity and resiliency, whether financially or psychologically, when things do go bad.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Which is a really important part. I know you're involved in Peace Corps activities here as well. We met at a Peace Corps conference. Do you want to talk a few minutes about what you're doing here?

John Cortright: Yeah. The third goal of Peace Corps, which is to help inform Americans of other cultures, to me is my primary focus now. It's a focus though I want to give even more attention to. I don't feel I do enough about it. It's hard. There isn't much structure given within the Peace Corps community to third goals. It's really left on your own. There is a department of third goal, but it's really seems to be driven towards, you know, individuals going to schools and talking to children about their experience. But at our Peace Corps conference, there was an award given to a Nepalese man, Dr. Kul I believe his name was. And he spoke to us and said, listen, you're a group of 250,000 returned Peace Corps volunteers. Raise your voice here and talk about the change that needs to happen here. And I believe in that.

I believe that through the National Peace Corps Association, through our affiliate groups, we ought to do more to remain networked and form themes that we continuously bring to people's attention, rather than being only really collectively organized when our current budget is at risk. There's far more to advocate than just sustaining Peace Corps. It's also bringing back Peace Corps' knowledge to America. So that to me is important. I do activities through an affiliate group. I'm on a board of Friends of Fiji. We continue to approve grants that are written by local volunteers to fund activities in the country. We raise monies for that grant program. And affiliate groups are through the assistance of National Peace Corps Association becoming better organized through forming strategic plans, you know.

Just as we advocated with youth development groups to, you know, what's your plan? What's your business model? How are you going to collect dues? Or, you know, what are your goals? What are your objectives? We have to self-reflect and do that for our own affiliate groups and think about, you know, what is it that we're here to do as a group of people who have experienced a certain culture. And that to me is what I'm doing to a degree now, but I feel obliged to do more.

Evelyn Ganzglass: So this has been a really good interview. Is there something else you want to say that I didn't prompt you for?

John Cortright: Yeah, I just, you know, for the fact that I will share this with my friends back in Fiji and for those who listen, the people who strongly influenced me and that really made Peace Corps a highlight in my life, they deserve recognition, and I would like to close with just acknowledging them if that's all right.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Sure.

John Cortright: So those who sat around the table with me day in and day out, they, you know, many names will be left off the list, but those who are there throughout the two years. I'll start with recognizing Poonam Chand, Atshuria Kumar, Tajal Maharaj, Jyoti Chandri, Sumeetri, I'm sorry, Sumita Kumar, Shaileshme Prasad, and Phosmene Khan. Those young ladies can shape so much of Fiji's future that they don't realize entirely yet, just by accepting the power that they have in them because of the education that they hold. And I hope that they mentor and inspire a new generation to pursue their goals. And I really thank them for their patience and time to help me learn about Fiji. So that to me is something that this recording is important. Very important.

Evelyn Ganzglass: Good. Excellent. Thank you.

John Cortright: Thank you.

Evelyn Ganzglass: OK.