Peace Corps in Uganda: A History of Service and Impact

Nov 09, 2025 0

The Peace Corps has a long and impactful history in Uganda, fostering international cooperation and community development. In this article, we delve into the experiences of Peace Corps volunteers in Uganda, highlighting the challenges, rewards, and personal growth that come with serving in this unique environment. We gain insights from John Alam, an Education Sector volunteer, whose story provides a comprehensive understanding of the work volunteers undertake.

John Alam's Unique Experience in Uganda

John Alam shares his unique experience as a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Uganda. He emphasizes that his journey is distinct, having taught in a classroom only about six times as he approaches the Close of Service (COS) in the next four months. His daily routine is far from conventional teaching.

Every morning, he lifts weights, feeds his cat, and sorts books onto the shelves until the pupils are freed up to enter the library during lunch. During this single hour of the day, it is total chaos.

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Choosing Uganda: A Path of Service

John did not specifically choose Uganda for his service. Being a military veteran, he wanted to be placed where the Peace Corps deemed his work experience most applicable. He applied for the Peace Corps after working at a nonprofit in Portland, Oregon.

Life in Rural Uganda

John lives about 60 kilometers south of the South Sudanese border in a quite rural area. He lives in teacher’s housing provided to him right on the school compound, about 100 yards away from the library we built. The sound of kids laughing and playing is literally constant, as there were 2150 students at his school as of last year, with a high percentage of them boarding at the school. He carries his water from about 200 yards in two 25-liter jerry cans maybe two times a day, and he has generally reliable electricity.

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He is very close with his host family and have shared a very chemical bond with them from the beginning of the homestay period. They would do anything to keep him happy and safe. However, he does live alone.

The ethnic group John lives among is the Acholi people who speak a language in the Nilotic language group. They eat a lot of beans and “posho,” which combine into a complete protein to recover from his weightlifting. There is a pretty big body-building and boxing microculture here, and he has fallen in love with it. Within a 100-yard radius, he can get farm-to-table tomatoes, onions, rice, and eggplant. He also picks up freshly butchered beef and chicken every week.

Memorable Experiences and Community Impact

As John approaches COS in a few months, he is not sure he can single out just one memorable experience. He will always remember the look on the first student’s face upon being the first to enter the completed library. He has always been in awe of how much the children and youth love books here. It kind of deters him from raising a child in the United States - the drive to learn may be there, but this deep love for it isn’t.

The library construction and catalog are his life’s greatest accomplishments. He laid bricks and mixed cement and woodworked to build the shelving. The books salvaged were 8409, but we had twice that number when he conducted his needs assessment. Everything unfit to be shelved and cataloged was given away to the students for free, first come first serve. The library has been his entire life, but we have planted about 500 trees on the school’s compound, and we distributed a few hundred mosquito nets to pregnant or lactating mothers in the community. He has also loved facilitating his Grass Roots Soccer and Journey’s Plus classes with the kids. GRS and JP are evidence-based curricula that teach youth about HIV, among other important topics.

Word to the wise NGO - if you want to donate books, make sure they have a place to put them or they will rot away with termites and rain. It was a mess.

Challenges and Cultural Norms

John notes that he had so few challenges, and it is entirely due to the behavioral norms of the people here. This region has endured a great deal of conflict, and the Acholi folks tell him that it is the reasoning behind the care-free, gentle welcome inherent to the experience of newcomers. People here are straight forward but kind. In fact, he thinks if anything surprised him, it was seeing how a developing community treats neighbors who live with severe and persistent mental illness.

Before the Peace Corps, John worked in behavioral health. His past career and ambition are in trauma care for those living on the streets, enduring addiction and SPMI, or fleeing conflict. Where many would avoid eye contact with people in need in the West, the Acholi people embrace them. The community comes together to build shelter and provide food where there is abundance. He will never forget seeing a “houseless” person dancing in a crowd of very young students on the school compound as the teaching staff clapped and laughed with the music. His instincts were of concern, all those months ago, but he get it now. When he asked community members about this first experience, they said “He was my teacher when I was in primary school. He has always been in the community, and he is too far gone to come back to the way he was, so what else would we do? If he is hungry, we feed him. He has a house that we built for him in the village.

Advice for Future Volunteers

John advises future volunteers to dedicate a lot of time to the needs assessment when you arrive at site. Come up with 15 questions that are designed to reveal needs. My first go-to question in needs assessments is “In your wildest dreams, what would you add to the school?” These are teachers, and they are so very busy. They likely have a big family waiting for them at home, on top of everything else. Be the extra pair of hands, the extra wristwatch, and the extra mind that they wish they had. He loves teaching, but these people are experts in their work. If teaching was all he did, he would probably just scramble up their end-of-year test scores (we are second from the best in the district!). Many schools you may find yourself in here are understaffed and, if so, maybe teaching is where you are needed most, but don’t settle in where you are not needed. Focus on impact. Maybe they need a new latrine. Maybe they need a nutrition program.

Training and Cultural Integration

John doesn’t think you can train someone perfectly for this experience, and he think that this is something that should be expressed early on. He also thinks that there should be an HCN (host-country national) who is a graduated cultural anthropologist involved in training or at least designing the training for volunteers. There are a lot of nuances in integration that are otherwise stumbled upon by the volunteer in service without a more academic understanding of the community and language. He also thinks VRG is a waking nightmare, and there is nothing anyone can do about that, but it would help if we knew how understanding it helps us in the long run of a career in international development.

Essential Resources and Personal Identity

As a must, buy A History of Modern Uganda by Richard J Reid. If you want to respect and understand the many communities of Uganda, have a deep understanding of their history. My project could not have been done without my MacBook Air. If you can take care of your things, bring the good stuff. If not, buy insurance and do it anyway. I cannot stress this enough: Bulk Mac & Cheese Powder.

The language spoken here is called Acholi, and it is of the Nilotic language group. It is a minority language with only about 1.5 million speakers. If you are coming to Uganda, you will likely have to learn one of the languages south of the Nile, most of which are in the Bantu language group. Languages in the Bantu group are much more complicated so learning resources are available, but there are so many languages in Uganda that, if you are placed here, getting ahead in learning one probably won’t help you much. As for those of you who will be placed north of the Nile, good luck finding any resources at all outside of what the Peace Corps provides.

John presents as white, but he is of mixed heritage. He thinks being mixed throws people off in a good way. He has a simultaneous understanding of Islam and Christianity and cook food that is not Western, for instance. It should be known by those wishing to serve in Uganda that this is a very socially conservative country. Being young or being a woman in this country appears to be, from the stories I have heard as a PSN, a very arduous experience. This is where he thinks the Peace Corps could use the help of an HCN who has graduated from studied in cultural anthropology.

Sharing the Experience

John's Instagram has tracked every moment of his experience. We need to make sure that what we share is uplifting these communities above the preconceived notions we often find in the West. We need to focus our documentation of these lifeways and worldviews on the beauty our cultures mutually define. The smiles. The newborn babies. The goals scored. Trees planted. The delicious holiday meals.

A Call to Action

Northern Uganda is the world’s best kept secret. What are you waiting for? Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like John’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer.

Opportunities like this don’t come often. If you have a passion for service and an adventurous spirit like John’s, apply to the Peace Corps today. Expand your horizons, push your limits, and create positive impact as a volunteer.

Key Milestones in Peace Corps History

The Peace Corps has a rich history marked by numerous significant events and milestones. Here's a timeline of some key moments:

Year	Event
1961	Establishment of the Peace Corps with volunteers serving in countries like Chile, Colombia, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
1966	Expansion to countries including Botswana, Chad, Grenada, Guyana, Republic of Korea, Libya, Paraguay, and Federated States of Micronesia and Republic of Palau.
1967	Further growth to Antigua and Barbuda, Burkina Faso, Dominica, The Gambia, Lesotho, Mauritania, Samoa, and St.
1972	15,000+ Peace Corps Volunteers are serving - the highest number yet.
1980	Peace Corps closes its post in Afghanistan.
2001	Terrorists attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Peace Corps recruiting office in Building 6 of WTC is destroyed when the Twin Towers collapse.
2015	President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama announce Let Girls Learn, an initiative to expand access to education for girls around the world.
2021	Peace Corps deploys Response Volunteers with FEMA at community vaccination centers to fight COVID-19 - only the second time they have served domestically.