Barbara Ann Sterling Oral History Interview
Interviewer(s): Barbara Kaare-Lopez
Interviewee(s): Barbara Ann Sterling

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Now, we tested the new Zoom recorder and it's working well. So we're going to start the interview, okay? And Barb, I know, Barbara Ann. Should I call you Barbara Ann or should I call you Barbara?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Or just Barb is fine.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, Barb. And by the way, this interview is being done by Barbara Kaare K-A-A-R-E hyphen Lopez, okay, and I'm interviewing Barbara Sterling today, July 15th, 2018. So we're going to be talking about, we have this outline that we may not follow exactly, but we'll start by letting Barb, not me, the other Barb, describe her family, present family, work, what she wants to tell us, her current residence, interests. This is part one, first part of the first question. Okay, Barb?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Okay, I'm ready. I'm Barb Sterling. I work for the U.S. federal government. I'm a federal government employee. I work for the Bureau of Land Management, which is in the Department of Interior. I'm remotely located in Denver, and I work for the Washington office. I'm a natural resource specialist, primarily in the oil and gas realm, but also I work in solid minerals and lands as well. My current family, uh, my extended family lives here close by on the front range of Colorado. I currently live in Golden, Colorado. I moved here six years ago from Craig, Colorado, which is where my children all grew up. I worked for the BLM out in Craig, Colorado, previously before moving here to Golden. I have three children that I'm extremely proud of. And.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Could you tell us the names of your children?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. Margaret Ballard. She's married recently to Johnathan Ballard. She's in the U.S. Air Force out in Las Vegas, Nevada. My middle child, Millie, just changed her name recently. She is Millie Irene Sterling. Sterling is my maiden name, not my married name. I took my maiden name back. And then my son is Greg Blackston. He works in New York City right now, so my children are spread far and wide. The oldest in Las Vegas, Millie, the middle is in Germany, Darmstadt, Germany, working for Boeing. And my son is in New York City and about to transfer out to San Francisco.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Thank you, Barbara, or Barb as I call you. Okay. Do you want to tell us anything about your interests or should we? Yeah, just tell us briefly about your current interests.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I really enjoy walking, hiking. I'm a member of several different walking clubs. I am also interested, or concerned about I guess, I'm not so interested in, the homeless situation in the United States. And of course, I'm also very interested in the state of the environment as well. So.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Now, you were in the Peace Corps in 1978. Can you think back to about the year before you joined Peace Corps, which would be 1977? What can you, what would you like to tell us about your life then? That could be what you were doing, like your education, or other experiences or childhood experiences even that are relevant to you becoming a Peace Corps volunteer?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I'm an Army brat, they call us, a military brat. My dad was in the Army and I traveled pretty extensively as I was growing up through my childhood. President Kennedy was shot when we were living in Turkey, Ankara, Turkey. And I remember that having a very dramatic, um, what do you say?

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Effect?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Effect, yes, on the family at large. The kids, we didn't hear about it. We had no radio, no TV while we were living in Turkey. So we didn't hear about it right away. My dad came home from work and told us that he had been killed a few days ago. So, you know, we didn't hear about it instantly. Then when I returned to the United States, of course, the Vietnam War era was upon us, and there were a lot of Peace Corps commercials on the TV. And I think because of the effect that it had on the family, President Kennedy dying, the Peace Corps commercials had a big impact on me as well. So even in high school, I knew that I really wanted to join the Peace Corps.

When I went to college, I went into natural resources at Colorado State University, and I met my future husband there, and he took off to go into the Peace Corps in 1977, the year before I graduated. He went to El Salvador and went through all of the training. And then at the end of the training, he decided to come back to the United States, and we decided that we would go into the Peace Corps together. So I was working on a dairy, well, we were both working on the dairy, not only working, but living and working on the dairy, plus going to college.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And where was the dairy at?

Barbara Ann Sterling: In Bellevue, Colorado.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Is that, that's by Fort Collins, I think.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It is by Fort Collins.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So when we put our names in the hat, applied for the Peace Corps, they put us into the agricultural program because we were both working on a dairy at the time and we were helping them harvest hay and milking the cows, of course, but also doing just general farm labor too as well. So they put us into a program called the rural pilot schools program in Honduras, Central America.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Rural pilot schools program. And I'm jumping ahead. I think you mentioned before we started, you don't even know if that. Well, Peace Corps is not even in Honduras.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, but you know, the rural pilot school program was not, uh. I don't think it had a great success rate as far as people being able to complete their service in the program or even being very happy with the program once they got to their country. When we first started out, they did three months of training for us in Costa Rica.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And may I ask you, you've told me on other occasions, why Costa Rica for the training? Why not Honduras?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, it was a pretty big training camp, I think, for all of Central America and even for South America. I'm not positive, at least in the agricultural.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: For agriculture.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Venue or whatever.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. So we had 4 hours of Spanish a day and then we would have 4 hours of training in agriculture. They taught us how to raise pigs, even castrate pigs, which was pretty impressive to me. And chickens. They taught us how to raise chickens. We raised vegetable gardens. We didn't milk any cows there, that was kind of a bigger project I think. But they also taught us how to raise bees as well and get honey from the hives. So we got quite an extensive training there in Costa Rica.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You'd say it was a good training?

Barbara Ann Sterling: It was an excellent training. However, probably half of the people in our group, and it wasn't even really a very big group, maybe 24, 25 people, about half of them left and decided not to go on to Honduras.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Did they go elsewhere?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, they went back home.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh. Huh. Okay. We might get back to the training to. Okay, thank you. Before something about, still on question one. Did your husband then, former husband, influence you, encourage you to go to the Peace Corps also?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, he.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Because you said he went in 1977 to El Salvador.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. And so that was one of the reasons, you know, he wasn't, um. He was having a real struggle deciding whether or not he was going to stay in El Salvador or not after he completed his training. And he didn't really want to return back to the United States unless he felt pretty sure that, you know, I wanted to go into the Peace Corps too. So we definitely talked about that, but mostly in letters because we didn't have phones or cell phones then. So this was all by letter.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: 1977 when he was there, correct?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Correct. Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. We'll go on to the second question. The most common question, of course, is why did you join the Peace Corps? I mean, and also I will say some of these questions we may have touched on already, we kind of follow the outline, but you may have already said some things.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Mm hmm.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: So anything else you might want to add about why you joined the Peace Corps?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I knew that I wanted to work for either the Forest Service or the BLM in natural resources. So besides all of the other reasons that people normally go into the Peace Corps, wanting to see the world, helping others. I also did want to complete service so I would get that one year of non-competitive eligibility to work with the federal government. My degree was in range management and for individuals in that degree there's really no option for employment unless you live on a ranch or something. There is, the federal government is really your only employer, the only employer I knew of at the time anyway. So it was, it worked out very well for me before I even left Honduras. Before I completed service, I got a job offer from the U.S. Forest Service before I even left country. So it worked very well for me.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, good. Once again, I'm repeating what I said. We may touch on things that you've already talked about. The third question is, how did you hear about the Peace Corps and what made you decide to apply? I don't know if there's anything else you want to add.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah, I don't know that there's anything more. I think I already mentioned that it was mostly through commercials on TV, I think, when I came back to the United States after being in Turkey.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. When you did apply, did you have a specific country in mind?

Barbara Ann Sterling: That I did not, no. Since my husband at the time had been to El Salvador, he was hoping to go back to Central America or a Spanish speaking country since he spoke a little bit of Spanish. I had a little bit of French. So I thought, you know, I could go to a French speaking country would be good. But I didn't mind going to Central America either. In those days, you didn't, you didn't put down a preference for any kind of country, and I did not have a preference at that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: The fourth question is, what were your friends' and or families' reactions when you were accepted? For instance, well, like I said, what were their reactions? And was there any hesitation or reservation on their part, your part?

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I was raised in a military family. I think I already said that before. My parents were extremely upset. My brother went, uh, so there's a long history of military in my family. My father had gone to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as well as my grandfather had. My brother went to West Point and my sister went to the Air Force Academy. My parents were very upset that I would even consider going into the Peace Corps. In fact, my father told me that, you know, at the time you got a $7,000 not, it was an adjustment allowance to help you get back.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: When you finished, yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: When you finished. And my dad told me that he would pay me that amount if I did not go to the Peace Corps.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, I never heard that story, Barb, okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And I'm going to guess, and then you can tell me if this is correct or not, because it wasn't military? I mean, Peace Corps is so opposite.

Barbara Ann Sterling: That's right. And they felt like I was going against their, you know, long tradition and history of the family and being pretty rebellious, I guess, in this sense. So they were pretty upset and they never came to visit me. They rarely wrote to me the whole time that I was in the Peace Corps. They weren't too interested about hearing what I did in the Peace Corps. So I guess you could say I didn't get much support from my family at all. Now, my children love to hear the stories about the Peace Corps.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: All three of them do?

Barbara Ann Sterling: All three of them do, yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. And of course, it was their mother and their father because you went as a married woman.

Barbara Ann Sterling: As a married couple, yes. And we were both in the same program too. We weren't even, you know, we weren't working in different programs. We were on the same project.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay. Did you have any hesitation when you were accepted?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, I really did not. I didn't really know what I was getting into. I think I had. And I didn't even really have the fear of the unknown. It looked like a grand adventure to me.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay. We'll go on to the fifth question. What project were you invited to join? And well, first of all, then I'll continue with the second part. So what were you in? What was the project, which you've already touched on?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Touched on. It was rural pilot schools. And what they wanted you to do was go into the elementary level schools and teach the teachers how to grow vegetables better. How to grow corn and beans better, which is the staple crops of the country at the time. And the schools were set up where they had one central school in the bigger town and then they would have little satellite schools around that central school. So my husband at the time then worked in the central school and I went out to all the surrounding little aldeas or villages around the central school. So they really didn't, uh, the Peace Corps at the time didn't really give you great instructions about what they expected you to do at all. There was one principal there in Taulabé, Honduras.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, will you, will you?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Oh, sorry.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. No, that's fine. Will you spell that town you just said? Because.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Taulabé?

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's T-A-U-L-A-B-E and it has an accent over the E.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. And so that's a small town, Taulabé.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Taulabé.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Thank you.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So anyway, each of us went kind of a little bit separate path on what we did with the project. When I went out to the smaller schools, the female teachers there asked me to talk about health items more, about boiling water, about washing your hands. So I would give little talks. They called them charlas.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And for the reader I'll spell. C-H-A-R-L-A, charla, little talks.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. To the teachers and sometimes to the students as well of course. I tried to put in a vegetable garden at each of the little schools that I went to, and then I put in these stoves called the estufa lorena.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, so we'll, this is for the listener, okay?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: We'll spell estufa.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Which is stove in Spanish.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: E-S-T-U-F-A. And then lorena.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Lorena.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: L-O-R-E-N-A. Could you, could you explain that stove?

Barbara Ann Sterling: So that stove was designed to send the smoke out of the house or kitchen area where the meals were being prepared. Most Hondurans at the time anyway had open stoves where the smoke would come right back into the kitchen. They burnt wood for their main fuel so they, uh, when they were cooking all of their meals, they would also have quite the smoky kitchen that would get into their house or their hut wherever they lived. So the estufa lorena sends all the smoke outdoors and it's much more efficient too. You don't have to burn near the quantity of wood to get your meals prepared.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: But it operated with wood.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It did.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: But less wood.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Less, much less wood. Yes. And they were easy to build with the. So lodo is mud, arena is sand. So with clay and sand you could build these stoves "lorena" from just the native materials that you could find right there. Sand, clay and water.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, good. Um. This I think we might've touched on, but maybe you have some more information to share. How did you, how did you prepare yourself for the dislocation of entering two years of Peace Corps service?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Prepare myself? I don't think I really prepared myself at all. You know, when we flew down to Florida, they just told us to pack a minimal items, which I had no problem with. I had to store what few things I had because I really didn't have much from being in college at my parent's house and I know we had to get all the shots of course. I didn't try to study Spanish before I got there at all.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You had, you knew French?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I knew French.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Another romance language. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. So we'll go on to your training. This is the sixth question. And like I said, you've already talked about it. But if there's anything else you want to share about where the training was in Costa Rica. Oh, what town in Costa Rica?

Barbara Ann Sterling: La Guacima. Alajuela, La Guacima.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, you'll have to spell that for us.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. La Guacima is L-A and then capital G-U-A-C-I-M-A.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: C-I-M-A. And that's Costa Rica. Okay. Is it by any other larger town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No. You know, it's really, I think it's not too far from San Jose, but I haven't been back and I don't really remember exactly. But it's not that close to San Jose. You couldn't get there easily. Of course we didn't, um, have a vehicle. All you could do is get to somewhere by bus or whatever. And it seemed like Costa Rica, I mean, San Jose was about an hour away or something like that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So we were out in the country. The only thing I would like to say about the training is that they made it pretty severe there at that training and I wish they hadn't. I was criticized heavily for my Spanish and the instructors often would say, well, do you really want to be a Peace Corps volunteer? Do you really want to do this? Well, then you better try harder in your Spanish.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Really?

Barbara Ann Sterling: You better study harder. You're not going to make it. Yes.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I'm surprised. But that's a personal opinion.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. And I was not the only one, of course, that they did that to. And that's why I believe so many of the students, you know, that were in my group left, about half of them.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You said that, about half. Speaking of Spanish, what was, what kind of language training did you get there in Costa Rica?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, it's very interesting, and I think that actual training was very successful, really, for Spanish. They, we didn't have any books. There were flashcards. And you would just, it was immersion, learning Spanish by immersion.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Constantly surrounded by Spanish speaking people. We were not to speak English even to the host family that we were living with, because some of the people, of course, would have known a little bit of English. But we were supposed to speak Spanish constantly, that we didn't learn the written word at all. It was just conversational Spanish all the time. And there'd be flash cards and.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: No books?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No books at all. Just books with pictures.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Wow. I won't go into my training, but that was different than mine, that's for sure. Okay. Anything you want to share with us about the faculty?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I think.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You've said that, yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: The most important point was that one that I wanted to say.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Anything you want to add about the technical studies? I mean, some of this you've talked about already.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. So the other part of it, you know, I think we had, must have had a set of two different instructors because I certainly don't remember the critical approach at all for everything else that we learned as far as our gardening and our taking care of the animals and bees. That seemed relatively stress free. All the stress was right, it was around the Spanish portion of it, learning Spanish, and getting up to that level of one plus, you know, Foreign Service.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah, the Foreign Service Institute test, FSI test, they would call it. Yeah. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I almost felt like writing to the Peace Corps and saying, look, you know, I just don't think this is quite justified to have this kind of stress and pressure on people that have volunteered to go into the Peace Corps.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I agree. But the interview is about you, but I would agree with that. Where did you live during training? What I mean is, did you live like with a host family, you and your husband, or in a dormitory situation? Where did you live?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes, all of us, each of us lived with a host family. And so my husband and I lived in the same house with the host family. It was a two bedroom house with about ten people in the house. It was a wooden structure. There was no running water of course. There was electricity during parts of the day. So we took up one of the bedrooms, which I felt pretty badly about. And the whole rest of the family was in the other bedroom.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Right. Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Now we're going to ask a question. This is still question six about the selection process. You know, when because you said half the people went home. Anything you might want to share with us about how you and your, how David, I'll say, your former husband, got selected. Any surprises or disappointments from the selection process?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, I think that all went fairly smoothly for us. I don't recall any, you know, there was nothing. They didn't say, oh, you're going to go to Panama and then change it and say, now you're going to go to Honduras or anything like that. It was, it followed pretty smoothly, step by step.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. In hindsight, did your training, do you think the training prepared you with your Peace Corps service?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I didn't quite do as many animal projects probably. We did have rabbits and we did have bees. So I'm glad for the bee training that I got. I wasn't, um, I almost wished I had had more. It's not so much the training, but it would have been better for me to have another connection there. In the school system there was the principal who worked with my husband, but there really wasn't anybody who could work with me to kind of help me design my program. But what I eventually did was there was another Peace Corps volunteer in the next town over, Siguatepeque, which was actually pretty far away.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And can we stop and you spell Siguatepeque?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Sure. So it's capital S-I-G-U-A-T-E-P-E-Q-U-E. It's a long.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Long city name there.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah, Siguatepeque.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. So anyway, she was a Peace Corps volunteer. She was the one that knew how to build those stoves. And so I went out with her on numerous trips to go build the stove in various comedor infantils.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, what is the comedor infantil?

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's a kitchen for women and children where they serve usually, I think, one or two, maybe two meals a day, to women with young children or women that were pregnant, um, to help ensure that they got a good meal at least once a day.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And they were just kitchens and little feeding centers. And so in these kitchens they were burning wood as well, and wood smoke was going into those feeding places. So the estufa lorena was a big improvement to those comedor infantils.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Question seven. What was your initial entry reaction to the country where you, which to which you were assigned? And we know that was Honduras. Once again, I'm interjecting this, that this is somewhat redundant, but do you remember how you felt or thought when you entered Honduras?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, we, um. In some sense, I'd say we were kind of lucky in the town that we went to because the principal of the school where we were going to had arranged for us to live in the house. And it really wasn't a house. What it was, was an old gas station, a very tiny little gas station building. But the gas station pumps were no longer there. But it was right next to his house and it was quite a suitable, acceptable housing for us. And he helped us around town, you know, right away, showed us the little house, told us that, you know, this was available for us to stay in. Very friendly fellow. And, um, I mean, there were some surprises to me, that there was no running water. You had to collect your water in pila from the roof.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And what is the pila?

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's a big concrete basin, I guess, that everybody had to collect their water in.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay. And your town, that was Taulabé?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Taulabé.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Taulabé. Okay. Um.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I also was a little distressed by the open sewer that was there. It was a little cement canal went through the town that people could throw stuff into and water flowed through it almost constantly. But it was where you would put your waste products into this.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Open sewer.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Kind of open sewer.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And where did that go to?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I have no idea. Probably to the river, I guess. Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Do you remember what river you were by?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I do not.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It was a coffee growing region. It is mountainous in Honduras. So it's beautiful that way. It wasn't hot like other areas of. So I was very pleasantly surprised about that. Poinsettias grew wild and naturally I loved that. As well as wild tomatoes were everywhere.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Wild tomatoes? I never thought of that.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So it was, um, so parts of it I loved. I was also surprised, I guess, by the smell of rotting vegetation everywhere. There were banana trees like crazy and people would just throw the peels and whatever, you know, the vegetable matter out. And then pigs and donkeys and all these other animals, creatures, would come along and eat those scraps that they found. So anyway, as you can imagine, the smell of the organic material decomposing or whatever sometimes could be kind of overwhelming.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yes, I can imagine. Okay. Yes. Question number eight, regarding your assignment, um, which you've reviewed quite a bit. Is there anything else you might want to add about the specifics of your job? Or if not, I'll go to another part. You've talked about it.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I, I just don't want to be too negative really, um.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Go ahead.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I, uh. My job was good, but Peace Corps didn't really give me very much direction. But I can't really, I don't really complain about that too much really. I'm a pretty self-motivated person. And I found my way eventually and worked on the projects that I was interested in. But there were some things that dismayed me that I learned about the United States while I was in Honduras. One of them is that they had shipped a lot of, um, agricultural pesticides to the country, and there they were sitting in warehouses and. Well, not warehouses really, but just like some of the school buildings, you know, where they stored things. There were these sacks of pretty heavy-duty pesticide chemicals that the, um, people of Honduras really, the community, didn't really know what to do with. So they were just sitting there.

And I'm not, plus I was not a big fan of using heavy duty pesticides on agricultural crops that people are going to eat either. So I wasn't about to go ahead and try to explain to them how to use pesticides. So as far as I know, those sacks of pesticide remain there to this day. There was also a warehouse or storage room filled with sewing machines. Well, these sewing machines had been provided I think by UNICEF. But there was no electricity in the town, so how could they use these sewing machines?

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay. So we didn't get, so no electricity in the town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Then there was another thing, and this is something that a lot of the, or the other Peace Corps volunteers experienced, as I did, in those rural pilot schools program exclusively, was there was a, um, there was a product known as wheat soy blend, WSB. And this product was supposed to be used or promoted by Peace Corps volunteers to, for people to eat, even at these feeding stations that women and children that I already told you about. That you would be able to make pancakes or other things out of this wheat soy blend, and they would have better nutrition and better protein in their diet. Well, this product was not accepted by the people that I knew in my community.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Did you taste it yourself?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I did.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And how was the taste?

Barbara Ann Sterling: A little bitter.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. The soy I think in it makes it pretty bitter. And so they were not fond of it at all. And I think others, you know, in the same program as me found that as well. In fact, there was one fellow named Gary Coyle and I can't remember what town he was in, but he was in my group. He made a t-shirt that said, "I survived the rural pilot school project" and there was a skinny person on it feeding a sack of WSB to the pigs.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And he made that t-shirt?

Barbara Ann Sterling: He made that t-shirt, and I wish I still had it, but I don't have it today. I lost it somewhere. But we all, the remaining people that were in country in our project, bought one. And, um, but that's what they did with the wheat soy blend, is they would feed it to the animals because the people would not eat it. And they had, you know, good food there really, tortillas made of corn and beans and eggs from the chickens so.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Milk products, right?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah, they had a little bit, they didn't really use milk too much but, you know, you could go to, uh, buy a little pot of milk if you wanted to have milk.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Could you describe, oh, anything else you might want to add about your living conditions, which you've touched on?

Barbara Ann Sterling: We had very nice living conditions, really, in our place.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: In your gas station.

Barbara Ann Sterling: In our gas station. It had tile floor, which I was so happy about really, because almost everybody in my town lived on a dirt floor.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So we lived in kind of a nice, nicer place, really, you could say. We had shutters, we had windows too, which was nice. And we had shutters on the windows. No screens, of course.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Was there a mosquito problem?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Not too badly, but we did sleep under a mosquito net at night.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. And you already mentioned no electricity in the town and you didn't have running water.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, so.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Or did you?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Actually, there was. You would have 2 hours of electricity at night if the generator was up and running. And then when you had the electricity in our gas station house, there was actually a little sink there that had, so you could have running water for 2 hours a day if the generator was running.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So that was kind of neat.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Would you like to, can you think back to a typical day? Could you describe a typical day? With your work, I'll say.

Barbara Ann Sterling: With work, yeah. So I would usually get up and travel to one of those smaller villages, towns. Most of the time, I either had to walk. There were, I think there was one or two that I could get to by bus, but mostly I had to walk. Occasionally I got to ride a little donkey, not very often.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Where did you get the donkey from?

Barbara Ann Sterling: From the other teachers.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, they had their own donkeys?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. Little horses and donkeys.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, so you would borrow a donkey?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. So that was kind of fun. But I didn't do that too often. Most of the time I walked.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You know, on a personal level, I'm just curious. Are they hard to ride?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So it's a little uncomfortable because they have a pretty short gait. You know, it's not like riding a nice big horse. Even the small horses that they rode on had a pretty choppy gait. So you bump around a little bit.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, I never rode a donkey. Okay. What would you like to, oh, anything else you want to add about your typical day?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No. And then I would usually try to meet with the teacher there at this smaller school. Sometimes there would only be one teacher there at the school. Other places there'd be a couple of teachers.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: How were your relations with the people of, you know, your town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Of the town? I would say generally friendly. I mean, they definitely looked up to Americans, so they respected us. Of course, they felt like, I think probably, that we were a lot wealthier than they were, but they were very friendly. That's part of the amazing thing, that I think that people that live in poverty, they always want to share whatever they have with you. Whereas it seems like wealthier people are the ones that are a little more stingy and not willing to share what they have with you. So they always wanted you to come in and have a meal with them. Um, I was a little concerned as far as I would never go out at night by myself, ever. There was a little bit of roughness in the town as well. There was a little bar and the machetes would come out sometimes and.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Did your husband ever go to those?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, he never did.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah, because I know male volunteers would talk about.

Barbara Ann Sterling: About that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: In general, like they could be hassled in the bars.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So one of the women that lived near, it was actually a Dutch woman that grew orchids down the road from us. So I would go visit her sometime and she said that the only reason that I was never accosted or attacked by the men of the village as I traveled out, and she told me this much later, is because I was white and that I wasn't Honduran. And she said most Honduran women in the village like that wouldn't travel alone, you know, out to the villages like I did, just walking. She said that because I was an American and white skinned, that I had that privilege or whatever, which, you know, when I first started there, I didn't really think about it too much. I always, I always thought I blended in and looked like a Honduran, but I realized that was just my naivete. And later realized that, yes, the women there do have a much harder time wandering around independently.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I wonder if you being married too.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Might have helped, yeah, as far as being accosted as you said or.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. But I always felt safe and I felt like people were very friendly. We hitchhiked everywhere, we rode busses everywhere. And, you know, everybody was just so friendly and we never had any problem at all as far.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: That's good to hear, yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: As we know, things have changed in Honduras.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: For the listener, Peace Corps is not even in Honduras.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's too dangerous, too violent.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Right.

Barbara Ann Sterling: It wasn't when I was there.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Nor myself, yeah. Were there other Peace Corps volunteers in your town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Not in my town, no. But there was a Peace Corps volunteer that came after we left and she contacted us. I don't know that she completed service, but she lived in our same little gas station.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: That's cute. Um, now here they're talking about the assignment, but then they talk about Peace Corps staff. Did the Peace Corps staff come to visit you or give you guidance? Because you were under, I know you were rural pilot school. So who were you under as, which sector were you under in Peace Corps? Like there is education sector. I was under the health.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Agriculture I guess.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You were. Who was your, um, what do you call it? I'll say supervisor. That's not the word I want to use.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. So I felt like we had pretty much zero contact with anybody from Peace Corps.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I did. They never came out to visit us. No contact, never. Not by written word or anything as to how you're doing, what are you doing. Come in to Tegucigalpa or to the capital city and come see us. We're going to have a meeting or.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Never?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Never. Nothing. Zero.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: It was different in the health sector, so.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Okay, yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Huh. How would you describe your leisure time in Taulabé? I'm not sure if I'm saying it right.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. Um, so leisure time was great although, you know, I think we saved it all up. We worked Monday through Saturday, we had Sundays off. That's when I would go to the market because that's when market day was usually.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Sunday?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Sunday. People would go to church and then after church they would go to the market, in our town anyway.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I don't know how it was elsewhere. We lived next to a pretty large lake where.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: What was the name of the lake?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Lago Yojoa.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay. And that is, um, Y-O-H-O-A? I can't remember.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Y-A-J-O-A [sic].

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: A-J-O-A. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And actually, apparently, I had no idea while I was there really and I never saw evidence of it. But supposedly it's an internationally known lake for fishing bass.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I didn't know that.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So Americans go there and people all over the world go there I guess to fish bass. It's quite a large lake and all along the lake shore they had little stands where people would sell fish and lunch. So it was fun to go up to Lago Yojoa. There was a cave in our town too, and every once in a while, a Peace Corps volunteer would come and visit the cave, and we would go in the cave with them as they were spelunking.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, so did you spelunk?

Barbara Ann Sterling: A little bit. Not very, not very deeply, but we did a little bit.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah, I guess I should ask you how to spell spelunk.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. S-P-L-E-U, I don't even know, N-K-I-N-G [sic]? Spelunking.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Something like that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Huh.

Barbara Ann Sterling: But we did manage to make it to the, let's see, um, I guess it was the Atlantic coastline to the beach there. So we would travel around the country. Went out to the islands off of the coast of Honduras in the Atlantic side. We did a wonderful river trip up the Mosquito River, they call it.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, and we should probably. Or is Mosquitia?

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's La Mosquitia.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Let's spell that.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. M-O-S-Q-U-I-T-I-A.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. So you went on a river trip there?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. Fascinating river trip.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Really?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes. It was in the park, the national park of Honduras. That was a Peace Corps project too. So we went up and this fellow Peace Corps volunteer arranged our entire trip for us. The men from the jungle there, so they were native to the area, were our guides, and they fed us and showed us all around that. I can't remember, but I think it was a good ten days or whatever that we were out there and it was just fascinating. All of the tropical birds and we ate iguana eggs and it was just a fascinating trip.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I bet. Wow.

Barbara Ann Sterling: But even back in the jungle there, there was evidence of the United States. There were gold miners back along in the jungle.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And they, they were not there when we traveled there. But you could see evidence of their camps.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Was there gold there? I guess there must have been.

Barbara Ann Sterling: There must have been, yes. I don't really know. But the other thing that was there that was fascinating was there was evidence of prehistoric people had made carvings into the rock that you could see along the river as you, uh, as we poled up the river. And it just seems like it doesn't matter where you go in the world, there's always evidence of people leaving their mark on the land.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Well. Okay, I never, I went to the La Mosquitia just barely into it for a health trip. So anyways, now we are on question nine. If you can remember back to the end of your first year, um, can you, what were some of the notable events or how did you feel about your first year there in country? Work wise, Honduran folks wise.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I can't picture.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Uh, joys and woes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I just can't remember one year from the next, I can't. It's all kind of a jumble to me. The travel, like I said, was, or was the highlight of my visit there really I think, and meeting up with other Peace Corps volunteers through the country. Going out to the island was fascinating as well. It was an island where, um, pirates, the descendants of the pirates had been.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: You mean at the Bay Islands?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Do you know which one you went to? There's Roatan.

Barbara Ann Sterling: We didn't go to Roatan. We went to Utila.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. And that's U-T-I-L-A.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. Did you go there too?

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah. So that was just fascinating for me. We also went to the ruins of Copan, which there are Mayan ruins in Honduras. Again, fascinating. And supposedly the Mayan ruins up there were connected by paths and, I don't know, all tunnels even some, to that cave in Taulabé. That's the story anyway. I don't know if it's true or not. I have no idea, of course. But I do know, I think I've said this already, that I had met that Peace Corps woman in Siguatepeque. She was a married person as well. I often think that if I hadn't met her, I would have been a lot unhappier in my work there. She took me under her wing. Her name was Andrea George.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, I know who she is. Yes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: What town was she in?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Siguatepeque.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, yes, you said that. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. So she kind of took me under her wing and showed me what she was doing and how she was going out to villages and putting this stove in. And she and I did that, like I said, a few times together, and then I was able to do it on my own. But I often think that if I hadn't met her, I probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as successful in my work.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I think she'd love to hear that. I've seen her at Peace Corps.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Honduras reunions.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Reunions, right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Huh. And she was married also.

Barbara Ann Sterling: She was married as well.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. To another Peace Corps volunteer, I believe?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Correct.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Huh.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I owe her a debt of gratitude I think.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Well, write that down, because, well, maybe she's on my email list. As an aside to the listener, there's going to be a Peace Corps Honduras reunion in September in South Lake Tahoe, California.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And I'm going to miss that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And you're going to miss it, and I'll be going, okay. How about any health problems?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I did have one episode. I don't, I was, like we were pretty far away from any help. And I had an extremely high fever. I couldn't really get out of bed. My husband at the time didn't really think that he could travel with me to get me to a doctor. So it took me probably a week to get over that. We never had, I never went to the doctor. I don't know what I had.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Was there a clinic in your town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Uh, kinda sorta.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Not really. You know, no doctor there, no Honduran doctor there at all. Um. I kind of felt like maybe I had either dengue or malaria, but I have no idea really what I had. I just knew that I was pretty sick.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. You know, as an aside, do you know what altitude you were at? Because I think, I know some of the volunteers that were like in the mountains, mosquitoes weren't a problem, is my understanding.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. They weren't. But as I've told you.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: When you travel.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I traveled quite a bit, so I don't know what I, I don't know where I picked it up, what I picked up. I don't know. And of course, I got the, you know, intestinal tract thing a number of times.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Like amoebas or giardia or some such thing. Worms, maybe.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Before we get to the 10th question, which is the end of your tour, anything else you would like to add about your work life in Honduras? Leisure, the people, the government, anything that you can think of that we might not have touched on? We've got four more questions.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I think the only, you know, I think it's an overall good idea to try to help improve the nutrition of people no matter where they are. I think it wasn't really the lack of food there because there really was food. There were fruits and vegetables growing naturally. Corn and beans were, although not abundant I would say, they were sufficient usually. I think it was more of a thing where, um, probably would have been more helpful is the whole water issue. Getting clean water to people and then having people wash their hands, teaching them that. That was probably another thing that was critically important.

The other part of it is that oftentimes they would give the men of the, if food was lacking in the household, they would give the men the best food, the father the best food in the house. And I think there would have been a great advantage to helping them learn that children really need to have good nutrition to be able to grow properly and survive. So I think that education probably would have been good.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Did most of the families, did they use latrines? Did some places have indoor toilets?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No, no indoor toilets that I knew of. It was all latrine. And then, like I said, there was that open sewer where they would dump stuff into as well.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And I don't know that very many towns really had that, but Taulabé, the little villages outside of Taulabé did not have that.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Now we're on question ten out of the, out of the 13 questions. At your end, the end of your tour, did you have a sense of achievement? Failure? Were there pluses, minuses in your relations with the people that you worked with, the people you lived by? How would you describe the end of your tour?

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I felt like we had started a lot of successful projects, not only in the core school, but in all of the other little schools that were the satellite schools as well. I didn't have a good sense that it would be able to be continued after we left.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Hmm.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Both of us put in a lot of effort and time, and I'm just not sure that there was anybody, of course, to carry on that work into the future. We built a chicken house for broiler chickens, a very big chicken project, really, when you think about it for that small town. And I have a feeling that it was probably converted to schoolrooms at the end. I suspect after we left that that might have been what happened to that concrete building that we built out there.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I don't know how, you know, successful we were as far as in helping improve the nutrition of the people in the village that we lived. But our projects that we did were pretty successful while we were there.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Mm hmm. Do you know if any Peace Corps volunteers followed you and David?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, there was one woman that was there, but I don't even know that she was in the same.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Program?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Program that we were.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I think they kind of terminated that program, the rural pilot school program.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: It sounds like a wonderful program. I mean, my opinion.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Do you have any regrets about working with this project or, and or satisfaction?

Barbara Ann Sterling: So, regrets. I wished I had made better friends with some Hondurans. I really don't think that I made very good friends, really, with any Honduran people. Um.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I mean, if I may ask you, I think sometimes if you're married at the time, you might depend more on your spouse.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Than some of those of us who were single at the time.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yes, that's a possibility.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. I mean, it's easier. Yeah. What were your plans for the future when you finished, when you terminated?

Barbara Ann Sterling: So I think already mentioned this too. I was delightfully surprised with a letter. Of course, the Forest Service at the time was undergoing a class action suit where, uh, they had been found to be negligent in hiring women. And so the Forest Service sent me a letter probably about two months before I left our COS Honduras.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: And what does COS mean, Barb?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Completion of service.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yes, okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Um, that they were offering me a job on the Boise National Forest in Mountain Home, Idaho, which coincidentally was the town where my college roommate was living. Mountain Home, Idaho. So I was so excited to be able to start working for the Forest Service right away as soon as I got back to the country of my birth, the United States. Ronald Reagan had just been voted in as president, so I was a little discouraged about that. And he put a freeze on government hiring as soon as I got back. So there was, once I got back to the States, I was really worried about whether or not I was going to be able to really get my job and keep my job with the Forest Service.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: So did you go to Idaho?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I did.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Mountain Home, Idaho. Yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: And started with the Forest, started my federal government career there. Permanent.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. And David went with you I'm guessing?

Barbara Ann Sterling: He did. Now so he was not offered a job. And so this is a sign of the times, right? The Forest Service had this class action suit, and so they were trying to follow affirmative action and hiring more women into nontraditional jobs. They didn't need any more white males, which was my husband's gender and race.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: A white man, yes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So he did not get a job offer. And then when President Reagan became president in January of 1981, he put a freeze on all government hiring. And so my husband did not get a job through that program, his noncompetitive eligibility. So that was, that was not so great.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um. We'll go on to question 11. How would you evaluate your service in the Peace Corps in light of the three goals? The first one being to provide technical assistance where required, well, where requested, excuse me. How would you evaluate that?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I think that as far as the two of us together, I think we were pretty successful with that. But part of the reason we were successful is we were able to tap into different funding sources that the native Hondurans were not able to tap into. Like we got money from the Christian organizations and all sorts of organizations that try to help out low income areas and countries that are struggling with poverty. So we were able to start our chicken project, our rabbit project, our fish project, our bee project, you know, with funds from outside of the United States.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Flowing in. They were grants, basically, I guess you would call them.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: That Peace Corps volunteers could access?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Correct.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So and we were pretty successful in getting that kind of funding for projects in our area. Which, you know, if you're Honduran, you probably don't have that same ability.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Right, right. Okay. How would you evaluate your service in the second goal, promote better understanding of the United States?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I think they, you know, just by seeing us and living near us in the town, I think they became to realize that, you know, even though we were probably better off than most of them there, that we weren't anything different from any other person, really. They did, like I say, show us a lot of respect. Any time any American or European came into town, they would show them to our house, like immediately, so that we got to meet just about everybody that traveled through.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Through the town.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: I can't remember if I asked you, were there other Peace Corps volunteers in the town?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Not in our town.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay, not when you were there.

Barbara Ann Sterling: No.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Other Americans that might have been working for other agencies?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No. There was, it was a small rural village. So really there were no other non-native people there. There was that Dutch woman that lived a couple of villages down from us, probably to the east. I think she lived in a town called La Lajas.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: How do you spell that?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Um, L. Las, L-A-S, and then Lajas, L-A-J-A-S. She and her husband, who was deceased at the time, were missionaries to Honduras, and when he died, she stayed in Honduras and started growing orchids.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh.

Barbara Ann Sterling: So she had a beautiful orchid farm there. She had four Dalmatian dogs. So when she would travel back to Europe or whatever, I would go down there and stay in her house and take care of her dogs and the orchids while she was gone.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, interesting. Okay. The last part of this evaluating your service question is, how did you do with the part, the third part, to promote better understanding of other people by Americans? Which to me is like when you come home.

Barbara Ann Sterling: When you come home? I found that most people really weren't all that interested.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yes.

Barbara Ann Sterling: In my Peace Corps service. And it wasn't until I moved to Denver that I actually found a group of returned Peace Corps volunteers to connect with and, you know, start talking about things a little bit, about the things that I did in Honduras or experienced in Honduras. I try now to bring it up at work or when I'm doing any sort of. I teach at the national training center for the BLM sometimes.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Where is that at?

Barbara Ann Sterling: It's in Phoenix, Arizona.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. So you go there to teach?

Barbara Ann Sterling: I go there to teach. And it's usually people that are just starting with the BLM or in the Lands Academy. And I always try to mention the Peace Corps at some time throughout that training, to encourage people to look into the Peace Corps, the Peace Corps Response program, because I'm there talking about the BLM and their careers to some degree. And so I always try to work that into the discussion.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Anything else before you go to question 12? Okay. The 12th question. Through the years, have you continued any kind of involvement with your country of service and or contact with people from that country? Or have you, and if not, another part of that is any continuing Peace Corps involvement.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, I wish I had. That's probably my biggest regret, that I didn't make a little bit better connection with some Hondurans. We did keep in touch with the principal there for a little while, um, through just letters, Christmas cards. Again, you know, there was no telephone service or anything like that. You couldn't send even really packages because the packages would get stolen or robbed or whatever. So all you could really do was send a letter and, you know, we responded maybe for one or two years and then that was it.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I'd love to go back and see how things are in Taulabé, but I haven't ever been able to go back to Honduras either.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. And for the listener, things have changed. I think it was either 2011 or 2012 when Peace Corps pulled out of Honduras because of the violence. So, um, you have to be on your toes if you go back.

Barbara Ann Sterling: If you go back, yeah.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Have you been involved with any third goal activities since you've come back? Or maybe because you said now in Denver?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Right. No, I wasn't at first, I think I was just worried about working for the federal government and keeping my job and doing a good job at work. But now that I'm a little more senior, like I said, I do mention Peace Corps at the training center. I am now involved with the returned Peace Corps volunteer group here. I haven't, I can't say that I've been very aggressive about any of that, you know, as far as talking or speaking to the rest of the world about Peace Corps. But any time there's Peace Corps volunteers that have come back recently to the country and they're looking for jobs, I usually like to try to talk to them about the working for the federal government too and taking advantage of that one year of non-competitive eligibility, because that is still a feature of the Peace Corps program.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah. How long, just as an aside, how long have you been working with the BLM, Bureau of Land Management?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Well, my federal career is almost 30 years now. I took.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Almost 30?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Yeah, I took 15 years off to stay home with my children while they were young.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Yeah.

Barbara Ann Sterling: But so I would have had about 45 years in if I had continued working through.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. We're finally up to the last question. Question number 13, which is, what was the effect on you of your Peace Corps service? Um, we've mentioned your career, but how about you? Did it change you, at that time when you came back? Long term? What was the effect of your Peace Corps service on you? And then you might want to add something with your career?

Barbara Ann Sterling: Uh huh. Well, I feel like it increased my level of tolerance for different viewpoints, different ways people have of expressing themselves. That I think has increased. I have a greater empathy for those that are struggling to work their way out of poverty. That's one of the things I still try to work with is the homeless people in the United States, and I have always helped in that area of service, I guess, even since I returned from Honduras.

Poverty. I came to realize when I was in Honduras that, you know, these people that are living in poverty, they don't see any light at the end of the tunnel. There's no way out. Where I always knew that I was going to return to the United States in two years and I would be removed and kind of relieved of all the struggle of poverty. So I have appreciation of people that live in poverty and are trying to make a better world for their children and their community.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: So anything else that I may not have asked you?

Barbara Ann Sterling: No.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I think that's probably good.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Well, thank you, Barbara Ann Sterling. And once again, Barbara served in Honduras. Um, I was, I was going to say 1978. But it says here, actually January 1979 until December of 1980 with the rural pilot schools program in Honduras. But her Peace Corps training.

Barbara Ann Sterling: Was in 1978.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: That was 1978 in Costa Rica.

Barbara Ann Sterling: In Costa Rica.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Okay. Now, this is my first interview, I'm going to put a mark on and this is the end of our interview. Listener, I hope you've enjoyed this. Thank you very much. Goodbye. I don't really know what the marks mean. So now.

Barbara Ann Sterling: I hope it's all recorded. Don't want to go through that again.

Barbara Kaare-Lopez: Oh, I know. And then.