My name's Jim Milby.
Hi my name is Lisa.
My name is Patrick Driscoll.
My name is Manuel Cologne and I identify as a gay man.
I identify as a queer woman.
I identify as a homosexual male.
I am a gay male.
I decided to go abroad because it's
always been one of my passions is to travel and to learn about other people's cultures.
For Peace Corps I went to the Republic of Paraguay in South America.
I had the opportunity to go to Senegal.
So I went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
And I ended up serving in Ghana West Africa and I got
invited not really knowing much about Ghana.
I was nervous in that I didn't know what to expect.
I was initially kind of ready mentally prepared to - I guess in
terms of being a gay male jumped back into the closet
since homosexuality is illegal in Senegal.
And they said you do have to think about, you know, where
you're going as a member of certain communities
and they said, you know, the LGBTQ community.
It's a Latin American country so there's thoughts of machismo
or kind of traditional gender roles that
I was really concerned about.
I have been out of the closet for like half of my
life already at the time and I just
didn't feel comfortable going back into it
and I was like well how am I gonna be my authentic self?
It ended up being not
really that big of an issue since nobody
talked about sexuality straight, gay, nothing.
I had a pretty good experience in that respect
cause I mean as soon as I
landed in Rio it was Carnival, which is
kind of paradoxical because a lot of
people will cross dress and wear these
you know really crazy costumes and it's a big party time,
but you know they have they're like the gay parties
quote-unquote throughout this city so I got kind of a warm welcome in that way.
Part of what you do as a Peace Corps
volunteer is you want to connect with
the people you work with your community
but outing yourself for kind of owning a
proud gay identity could put you at risk
of not being able to work in schools for example
or it could mean that certain
elect officials are not gonna want to
associate with you, so I kind of
straddled like one foot in the closet
one foot out depending on who I was interacting with.
I probably was in the closet for like a day and a half.
You know, you're free to be who you are and
you meet a lot of host country nationals
who are also very open
and they're like, you know, that's cool like I don't think it's bad and it's just always nice
but you do have to be a little bit weary about it.
One of kind of that connotation consultation calls I had
with checking out to see if Paraguay was
gonna be a good fit for me,
I remember telling the person, "Hey like I can maybe
not vocalize that I'm gay but there's
lots of my identity in terms of the way
I dress or the way I act that might give
that away," which to me that was a
logical statement to make and the person
said, "well a lot of that is cultural,"
like what you're saying
you have to understand what that means culturally
and for me that was really interesting like oh right it might be very
different culturally to be gay in South America.
There are places that really are
hostile towards us and we have to keep
that in mind but otherwise go for it,
try to experience the, you know, the community
there as well because you can learn so much.
For me one of the things, in terms
of why I think more LGBTQ folks, youth or
otherwise, need to be engaged in global
experiences because queer people are a
part of the American fabric, they're a part
of the global community
so we also should be at those tables.
It could seem scary but the world that's out there
it's so big, it's so beautiful, everybody
should have a chance to see it if you're
lucky enough and sometimes you just
gotta take that first step.
I am Patrick.
My name is Jim.
I am Manuel.
Hi my name is Lisa and it gets better.