Film Review: Posh Corps: The Feature Film

Posh Corps, a documentary on Peace Corps volunteers in South Africa, begins with the main characters explaining the goals of Peace Corps, a volunteer program operated by the U.S. government. We learn that Peace Corps “sends U.S. citizens to developing nations to provide needed skills and build relationships,” what volunteers do during their two-year service, and why they contest the notion that South Africa is a “Posh Corps” country: a volunteer term for a more developed or an “easy” Peace Corps country. The argument is that serving in South Africa is difficult not because of the lack of basic amenities—like running hot water, flush toilets, or electricity—Internet, and smartphones in the country but because of the stark discrepancy between the capital, Pretoria, with its modern medical facilities and shopping malls, and the rural areas where volunteers live. Volunteers note that knowing that there are resources in the country but that they are not equally distributed is what makes South Africa a “mind fuck” (a mentally difficult country). With international volunteering on the rise, especially among young people, many students will be genuinely interested in the film as they may be considering a postcollege volunteer opportunity for themselves. Accordingly, the film is well suited for courses with a service component and those that interrogate U.S. foreign aid policies.

The film focuses on the daily life of six volunteers as captured through both interviews and shadowing them at their homes and work and also while interacting with neighbors and local people. Veronica, who lives in a village in Limporo Province (40 km from Pretoria), works for a local nonprofit organization and is profiled for her work on an antibullying campaign. Kevin, who teaches sixth and seventh graders computer skills in a village on the Elephant Coast (600 km from Pretoria), reflects on the challenge of preparing volunteers for the unexpected, such as the need to start a community garden project in his village. George, who teaches English in KwaNdebele (100 km from Pretoria), shares his frustrations of having to meet “First World” curriculum demands with “Third World” conditions on the ground: he teaches in an overcrowded classroom with only a chalkboard and chalk. Sean, who teaches English in Venda (500 km from Pretoria), focuses on the importance of cultural integration, and the viewers see him interacting with a local artist with whom he is partnering on an arts-and-crafts program to preserve the local Venda culture. Fran, who teaches English in a village in the Northwest Province (80 km from Pretoria), leads an extracurricular girls’ club at her school as a means to empower girls. Last, the viewers meet Ryan, a volunteer working in KwaZulu Natal (50 km from Pretoria), who has extended her service for a third year and who works on HIV prevention among students and adults. All volunteers appear to be in their mid-20s/early 30s, except Kevin, who self-identifies as middle-aged. Interwoven throughout the film are images of all of the villages and the voices of local people—host family members, colleagues, students, the girls’ club president, a Nduda head man, and a development educator couple—as they express their opinion about the legacy of the volunteer that they worked with. The film underscores the unique Peace Corps experience of every volunteer. As one of them explains, “my opinion shifted from Americans abroad to Sean, the American, abroad.”

The documentary concludes with volunteers assessing their service and emphasizing the benefit of their service to themselves (how they have changed in the course of their service) and the United States (the positive image that they have left) rather than their impact on their communities. They acknowledge that their work contributes to “small things” and a process of gradual change with visible results years after they have left. Fran says, “I hope that one day, one of my girls will be a president and will say that she had a Peace Corps volunteer who made her believe in her capacity.” They posit that the friends, memories, and relationships they have built are what make their efforts worthwhile. This mirrors the language that local people use to describe them as they say their goodbyes: “She is like a sister,” “a daughter,” “a second mother,” “family” that we will miss.

The main strength of Posh Corps is that it is a lens into the everyday life of development volunteers abroad through their own eyes. On the website for the film, the filmmaker Alan Toth (also a former Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa) explains that the intended audiences are indeed prospective Peace Corps volunteers and other international volunteers. However, a person will have a difficult time making an informed decision about whether or not to join the Peace Corps or another volunteer organization on the basis of this film alone. With almost no information about the history, evolution, and current programming of Peace Corps and the opinions of the Peace Corps staff and the host government missing completely, viewers have no way of understanding the domestic and international context that is involved in the selection, training, and placement process of volunteers. More importantly, the thesis that “in the coming decades, the experiences of Peace Corps South Africa volunteers will look more like the norm, than the exception” (Toth n.d.) is unsupported. With very limited information on the other 140 countries where Peace Corps volunteers have served or what their service is like, there is no basis for comparison that can establish the normalcy or exceptionalism of the South African case. It is also unclear if the six featured volunteers are representative of the demographic profile of all of the volunteers who serve in South Africa, as the only shared information about the country in the film is that “over 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers have served in South Africa, in rural locations, since 1997.” Still, the argument itself and the rich on-the-ground footage is sufficient to make students think about international volunteering, what development is, how it is measured, and where South Africa fits on various development ranking lists.

In addition to courses on service learning and foreign aid policy, Posh Corps is appropriate for introductory undergraduate, upper-level undergraduate, and graduate courses focusing on issues of social change, development, and globalization. Introduction to Sociology instructors can use segments of the film to illustrate relevant concepts and theories (i.e., the difference between traditional, modern, industrialized, developing, and underdeveloped societies; newly industrialized economies (NIEs) and emerging national economies (BRICS); urbanization and uneven development; and globalization). Also, by highlighting how Peace Corps volunteers struggle to live like the locals and to understand the local culture, instructors can introduce the concepts of ethnocentrism and cultural relativism.

In upper-level undergraduate courses, the entire documentary may be viewed in one class period, followed by more in-depth discussions on: the professionalization of international volunteering (Baillie Smith and Laurie 2011; Vrasti 2013), the role of development workers in international assistance/foreign aid policy, which remains a neglected issue in the development literature (Hindman and Fechter 2010), or the appropriateness of terms like First World and Third World. In combination with an assigned reading on theories of development, students can debate the kind of development in which Peace Corps engages: ethno-development, human development, social development, or something else. A current trend in development theory that is highlighted in the film and deserves special consideration is the importance of gender awareness in development work. Here, a viewing of Fran’s story can be linked to gender inequalities as a focus of development work (the girls’ club) and gender inequalities as a factor in the delivery of development work (Fran notes that female volunteers face more threats of rape and other forms of sexual harassment while abroad than male volunteers do).

In graduate seminars, the film is sure to generate lively debates on whether international volunteer service opportunities, such as the Peace Corps, can replace ideas about cultural sensitivity with cultural critique of the modern world system (Handler 2015). Since volunteers are expected to not only learn the local language and customs but also share their American culture, advanced students can debate whether or not Peace Corps volunteers contribute to the Westernization/Americanization of the communities and countries where they serve. Connected to this is their belief that volunteers form positive attitudes toward America as a world power among the locals or that they, at a minimum, neutralize negative views of America. Kevin explains that “even a bad volunteer is still good for America because it is hard to demonize them . . . to think of those failing volunteers as evil.” The latter relates to theories of U.S. hegemony or the cultural turn in development. As an out-of-seminar experience, graduate students might be asked to conduct a development discourse analysis and argue whether the move toward critical globalism in development theory (Pieterse 2010) is present in the development practice and rhetoric of the Posh Corp volunteers.

Aside from courses that focus on service learning, development, and global inequalities, certain segments of the film would be appropriate for race-and-ethnicity classes. For example, Veronica and Ryan both speak to the legacies of the Apartheid in South Africa from different angles. As an African American, Veronica tries to challenge racial prejudices, such as when a local black person would say, “We need a white person to come and do that right.” As a white American who works and lives with both black and white Africans, Ryan challenges prejudices among white Africans while helping to bring the two peoples together. Then, as an Asian American, George shares a concern that a visit by his family, who speaks Chinese, may challenge his perception in the village as a “real” American.

The Posh Corps website serves as a media platform for other volunteers to share their stories with information about other Peace Corps feature films; there is a series of nine free short films on different Peace Corps countries (Jamaica, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Morocco, Ukraine, China, and South Africa), a monthly podcast, and blogs, all of which can be used to complement the film to bring some comparative perspective. I recommend that instructors without prior knowledge about Peace Corps visit the official Peace Corps website (www.peacecorps.gov) and explore the “Fast Facts,” “Volunteer Programs,” and “Where Volunteers Go” pages as well as the official Peace Corps South Africa website (http://southafrica.peacecorps.acsitefactory.com/).

In sum, the fact that Posh Corps is a film by Peace Corps volunteers about their volunteer experience is both its main strength and limitation. Students at the introductory level may need some assistance in recognizing the methodological limitations of the main thesis of the movie. Still, the style and content of the film allow many opportunities for instructors to introduce relevant concepts and theories and to challenge students to think critically about the intersections between international volunteering, development, and global inequalities.