How the Rest of the World Lives

As Americans, we often love putting in that request for a little time off work, to jet away on a vacation. Be it Europe, Hawaii, Asia or elsewhere, it allows us the opportunity to see new sights, taste new foods and experience a little bit of foreign culture.

At a certain point, however, all vacations must come to an end. Everyone has to go home, sometime.

Seth Fearey, who constantly moved from place to place as a child since his father worked for the Foreign Service, said he often felt like he was spending his whole life as a tourist. Although he enjoyed his overseas travels, he always felt like he was outside, looking in—never a part of the communities he visited; never able to call any of them “home.” No matter the destination, Fearey always left wanting more.

After graduating from an American college—the first time he had stayed in one place in a great while—Fearey felt the itch to travel again.

“I was really eager to go back overseas. I wanted to learn another language, and to see what it was like to be inside the community, instead of being a tourist outside of the community,” he said. “I wanted to get to know people in the villages and see what their life was like, and get some sense of how they viewed the rest of the world.”

That kind of extensive travel comes with a hefty price tag, unfortunately. The solution? The Peace Corps.

Fearey signed up to be a volunteer for the Peace Corps in 1971, and was sent to Nepal for two years, where he worked on projects to bring clean drinking water to the people.

Working so closely with people from small Nepalese villages gave Fearey a whole new kind of clarity, he said.

“There was no electricity, no running water, no drinking water and no bathrooms or even outhouses in Nepal, and they ate a very simple diet. But I did fine, and had a fantastic experience,” he recalled. “It definitely helped me develop an appreciation for the bare minimum of what I need to be happy.”

Seeing firsthand the results of his work was also an incredible reward.

“We would go out into villages and do a survey and design a gravity-flow public water system. It would capture water in the hills above the village, before animals could get to it, and then put into pipes to run it downhill,” he explained.

“It turned out to be a hugely successful program. The impact on infant mortality was instantaneous because they stopped getting all the intestinal diseases, so it was a fantastic project.”

After his time in Nepal was over, Fearey returned to the U.S., where he worked a number of jobs over the next few decades, and earned his MBA from Stanford. Among the companies he worked for are Boise Cascade, the World Health Organization, the School of Public Health at Harvard University and 20 years at Hewlett-Packard, where he worked in a variety of capacities.

Fearey’s time at Boise Cascade, which engineers and vends wood products, helped temporarily scratch his itch for world travel—the company sent him to do business in such remote countries as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Brazil.

“Later, when I was at HP, I'd always expected that they would send me overseas, and I kept looking for positions within the company that would send me overseas, but it didn’t happen,” he said.

One day, Fearey said, he just had to make a decision.

“I’d always had this lifelong dream of working overseas, and I saw my 60th birthday approaching a few years ago. So, I said to myself, ‘if I am going to do it, I'd better do it soon, before I turn 60,’” he said.

Fearey took a leap of faith, and applied for a staff position with his old friend, the Peace Corps.

The job offer of his dreams arrived like a present, on his 60th birthday.

“My 60th birthday was my first official day on the payroll,” Fearey recalled fondly.

His first position was as an administrative officer. After four weeks of training in Washington, D.C., he got his first assignment—Kyrgyzstan.

As an administrative officer, Fearey supervised a staff of roughly 25 volunteers, all Kyrgyz nationals. His job was mostly logistical—running operations; securing buildings, transportation and drivers for the staff and volunteers; handling passport and Visa issues; managing human resources and payroll; and much more.

Fearey has now been living and working in Kyrgyzstan for a year and a half. Out of all the places he had ever visited during his life’s travels, Fearey said, Kyrgyzstan has taken the most getting used to.

“This is a part of the world I had never been to; my first real exposure to a former Soviet country. I really didn't know what to expect,” he said of his arrival in 2009. “It was kind of strange, because the people walking around on the streets are all Asian—which I am used to, to some extent, having lived in Bay Area—but they speak Russian, and all the architecture is Russian, and they have a Russian framework for thinking about the world. So it's jarring and very fascinating to me; there's just so much to learn about how it all works over here. They don't think the way I'd expect them to think.”

Despite taking some getting used to, Fearey started to enjoy his new life in the Kyrgyz Republic, and his new job, helping to coordinate the Corps’ volunteer efforts there.

However, last April, Fearey said things turned a little hairy in his new home when there was an attempted overthrow of the government.

“We received a call from a volunteer in Osh, in the southern part of the Kyrgyz Republic,” Fearey recalled.

The volunteer proceeded to tell Fearey and his staff that riots had broken out in Osh, and people were shooting in the streets, and setting fires. The volunteer and a few others hid in an apartment for safety, but rioters started to throw rocks through the windows, and tried to break in to see if there was anything worth stealing inside.

They soon discovered there were 16 volunteers spread out over different parts of Osh. They were all stuck and desperately needed to get out of the city and to safety. So, Fearey and his staff called upon all the resources they could think of to help rescue the volunteers.

“We all pulled together,” Fearey said, recounting paramilitary force, helicopter rescues and more that were required to get everyone out of the city and to a safe collection zone. “But we managed to rescue all 16 volunteers from an amazingly dangerous situation. And nobody got hurt, which was pretty amazing.”

Fearey said, thankfully, the revolution did not interfere with the Peace Corps’ mission in Kyrgyzstan.

“A lot of people were hurt, and a lot of people died, but luckily, Americans were not being targeted, so that left us with some hope,” he said.

The efforts of Fearey and the others who facilitated the rescue earned Fearey a big promotion. He now holds the top Peace Corps staff position in the region—Country Director of the Kyrgyz Republic.

“We’re excited to welcome talented and experienced leaders like Fearey who are deeply committed to supporting volunteers during their Peace Corps service,” said Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams.

Fearey’s announcement as the new Country Director of the region comes at the
same time as another big milestone for the Peace Corps—this week marks the 50th anniversary of its creation by the late President John F. Kennedy, in 1961.

Fearey said his time with the Peace Corps has truly changed his life.

“The Peace Corps is what helped me decide what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. “Before I joined the Peace Corps, I really had no clue as to what I wanted to do. The Peace Corps is what helped me discover what I was good at—being an administrative officer is what led me to business school at Stanford, and so forth.”

“It’s also a great way to have a well-structured, safe, amazing adventure,” he said. “It’s a great way to get to see the world, and have somebody else pay for it.”

A colleague of Fearey’s, Kelly McCormack, said the same values are what led her to sign up as a Peace Corps volunteer back in 2007. She served two years in Vietnam, and now works in Washington, D.C.

“I was really motivated by the mission of world peace and friendship and the idea of really getting to see how people outside of the U.S. live,” she said. “And, getting that grassroots experience while also learning another language.”

Fearey said he is starting to fit in very nicely in his new home of Kyrgyzstan—and he loves his new position as Country Director, especially since it involves more time out in the field, interacting with the locals, rather than in an office.

“It's nice seeing the locals in their homes, in their villages, in the schools where they teach, in their apartments in the cities, seeing all the work they do and the talents they have,” he said. “I also get to see the country more; it's very beautiful, and very mountainous. There's year round snow and glaciers, but it’s very arid. But, it’s also a lot like California because it's very dry—in the summer there is no rain.”

“All in all, it's been very, very rewarding.”