Mike Rau, Joe Andrews making a difference across the world

By Megan Ma, Town Crier Staff Writer

Joe Andrews works on the remote island of Falalop in Micronesia in the South Pacific. Teaching high school there, he has started a pen-pal program with his students and Blach eighth-graders.

When Blach Intermediate School English teachers Cindy Andrews and Carol Raymond talk about their sons - who serve in the Peace Corps - their passion is infectious.

Mike Rau, Raymond’s 23-year-old son, currently works in the health field in Guyana, educating locals about AIDS and tuberculosis prevention. Joe Andrews, Andrews’ son, works as a high school teacher on Falalop, a remote island in Micronesia.

For both parents, their sons’ missions border on the heroic. “We should be incredibly proud of their service to the country. You couldn’t put a monetary value on what they reap; they are touching lives,” said Raymond’s.

When Rau arrived in Guyana last year, his main challenge was adjusting to the pace of life there, which crawls along rife with stifling heat and hordes of mosquitoes.

After three months of training in Georgetown, the country’s capital, Rau set out for a village near Guyana’s second largest town, New Amsterdam. His host family, comprising mother Venus, brother Troy and sister Sherry, quickly treated him as a family member.

Adapting to work in the hospital, however, proved to be a test of patience and resilience. Finally accustomed to the unique hybrid dialect of English spoken in Guyana, Rau found a new barrier - poor government organization and management of the hospital and health protocol. Even as the second-most AIDS-plagued country in the world, bureaucratic obstacles hinder Guyana’s health-care system.

Although frustrated by what he witnessed, it wasn’t enough to complain, he decided. Rau immediately contacted secondary schools in town to create a public health forum. He arranged to volunteer at orphanages, where no reading program was in place.

“He’s reminded how important it is to be proactive, motivated and independent. He knows that he can’t wait for government aid to get things done,” Raymond said.

Joe Andrews set out for the Peace Corps armed with a sense of adventure and youthful idealism. When notified that he would be stationed on an island 1-mile long surrounded by miles of vast ocean and coral reef, he was ecstatic.

After training daily with a tutor to learn Ulithian, the local language, he embarked on the biggest challenge of his life - teaching science and English in one of the area’s only high schools.

But one of the biggest impediments to teaching and promoting a love of reading became glaringly obvious early on - there simply weren’t enough books. Andrews then did what any self-respecting son would do: he called his mother.

Cindy Andrews scrambled to collect more than 1,500 books, donated by Friends of the Library and Blach, and shipped them to her son.

After a year, because of the Andrewses joint efforts, Falolop converted a small building to house its new public library. Since then, Andrews has found another way to connect Falalop youth to Los Altos - a pen-pal program with Blach eighth-graders. The letters serve as a portal to a remote world.

“It’s like giving the eighth-graders a gift,” Raymond said. “It allows them to connect to young people across the world. The kids of Los Altos are so enriched by the efforts and experiences

of these two young men.”

Both sons are now completing their remaining year, reporting home occasionally through e-mail and blogs - when electricity is reliable.

For more information, visit www.peacecorps.org. To donate new or slightly used books to the Outer Islands High School in Micronesia, drop them off at the Blach Intermediate School Library, located at 1120 Covington Road in Los Altos.