Kekaha resident returns from service in Zambia

LIHU‘E — Kekaha resident Gary Hoover returned from his third short-term Peace Corps experience last month. This six-month service was to Zambia, but he has done two others in Jamaica and Ethiopia. Hoover has been active in Peace Corps since 1976 when he did the typical two year commitment in Liberia, Africa.

Peace Corps has been in existence since 1961. Volunteers offer services ranging from education to farming. Hoover’s expertise is in computers.

“You put your name in a pool and if something comes up in your field they call,” he said.

This past trip was to a girl’s boarding school where a dozen computers were broken.

“By the time I left there were 10 up and running,” he said.

The Kekaha resident said that short term service makes it hard to get into the cultural side of the Peace Corps experience because there’s a lot to do and little time to do it.

“I was working for Luapula Foundation,” he said. “They do HIV testing and sponsor children at the boarding school whose parents have died.”

Besides repairing computers, Hoover provided tutorials for the staff.

“I was able to retrieve the critical data using a bootable Linux CD, reinstall XP, reload the critical data and simultaneously teach my counterparts how to replicate the process in case it happened again,” he said in an e-mail.

Hoover described Luapula Foundation as a non-profit that provides HIV/AIDS counseling and testing in Zambia, where over 20,000 people have taken advantage of the service. Luapula also provides education, nutrition and psycho-social support for orphans and vulnerable children.

“In 2008, 3,084 children had been helped and 280 caregivers trained in methods of environmentally friendly conservation farming and child rights,” he said in an e-mail. “The organization was founded in October 2001 by two Zambian citizens and one Peace Corps volunteer who stayed on despite completing his service.”