“You. How is Hong Kong?’

In many ways this question, posed to me at Lusaka’s Inner City Bus Terminal, followed by my reaction, illustrates my cultural experiences as an Asian American in Zambia.

For some, such a racial assumption might provoke anger. I look at it as a chance to educate those with limited exposure to Asian faces. I laugh and explain: I am Korean by blood and American everything else.

For the past 30 months, I have served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zambia, a landlocked country in southern Africa, bordered by eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north; Tanzania to the northeast; Malawi to the east; Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to the south; and Angola to the west. As with the majority of sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV and AIDS epidemic is widespread here; its 15 to 34 percent adult prevalence has contributed greatly to child mortality rates and the decimation of the working class. Once the product of a booming copper industry, Zambia today stands as one of the world’s poorest countries.  

But for me, Zambia is not properly captured in its statistics or geography. Zambia is simply home.

My experiences living and working in Kazungula Village in the Southern Province of Zambia have made it so. Lying beneath the country’s Central and Lusaka Provinces, the Southern Province illustrates every nature enthusiast’s quintessential Africa, with its Baobab trees, fields of long brown grass, seemingly endless flatlands and grazing cows. It is against this backdrop that I worked on an education project that aimed to teach rural students — most of whom could not physically get to schools — English, math, science, and life skills through nationally broadcasted lessons. For two years my job was to help make sure those who wanted access to this service knew how to get it and to provide training and support for their teachers.

I knew as far back as high school that community service was rewarding, but never imagined that this mindset would lead me to live and work in Africa. That began to shift in 2002 when my mother took me to Kenya as part of a two-week mission trip with her church. By the end of 2005, one semester away from obtaining a journalism degree, I was confused and uncertain about my life’s intended path. Then I began reading about the Peace Corps. On my mind were its benefits, possible countries of service, access to health care, as well as how this organization would prepare me, physically and professionally, not only in the developing world, but for life post-service.

I only researched these surface-level issues, never delving as deeply into how racial components would factor into the experience. When the time came to interview with a recruiter, I told him that I wanted to be as much of a minority as possible, that I didn’t want to serve in Asia.