Asian-Americans serving (the US) in the Middle East

Daily Mail: Asian-American soldier was forced by comrades to crawl 100m on gravel while being pelted with rocks hours before he killed himself

As an Asian-American serving in the Middle East, I was saddened to learn about how Private Danny Chen was mistreated by his fellow Americans. Awful beyond awful beyond awful.

Reading about what happened to Danny Chen led me to reflect on my Peace Corps service. As my previous posts have shared, being an ethnic American in Morocco, I’ve been confronted with my own set of challenges – on the Morocco front, on the American front, on the Peace Corps front. Even with a few months left of service, I still encounter ignorance and bigotry.

Even though Peace Corps and the army are both US government agencies, serving in the Peace Corps is not comparable to serving in the military. With that said, and even with all the inefficiencies that I’ve encountered throughout service, here’s what I realized:

For almost two years, Peace Corps Volunteers have been my family. Through thick and thin, there have always been good people standing next to me. It goes without saying that there are different personalities among PCVs. Even so, there is a true sense of camaraderie among PCVs. It’s terrible to think that this isn’t the case among other groups of Americans serving together overseas.

Post dedicated to Danny Chen.

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