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Cover - Diane in Mores, Guinea Bissau, West Africa during her

Peace Corps training. July 1990

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Diane S. Gallagher

Invites you in to learn about her book....

A small introduction into her book:

Diane, or Deana PACIM, as she became known to her Cape Verdean friends and co-workers, took a path to service much less traveled. Inspired by John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1961 launching the Peace Corps, Diane and her new husband Bill, applied to the Peace Corps, but were not accepted because Diane became pregnant six months after marriage. Dream deferred. It has been said; life happens when you plan for something else. While raising her children, she pursued careers in acting, running an art gallery, writing, and archiving. Along the way, she divorced her husband after 20 years of marriage, moved in Massachusetts from the south shore town of Scituate to the city town of Brookline and successfully “launched” her four kids in meaningful careers and lives. After all of that, she started to explore how she could give back for all of the wonderful blessings of her life. “The Peace Corps is not designed as an instrument of diplomacy or propaganda or ideological conflict. It is designed to permit people to exercise more fully their responsibilities in the great common cause of world development”.

She never abandoned her dream, 29 years later, at 53, she applied for the Peace Corps and got her assignment to serve in West Africa. Opening the fateful package from the Peace Corps in 1990, she admitted to a full range of emotions ranging from her usual sunny optimistic view to sheer panic at learning new languages and cultures. Upon her first arrival in Africa, her hands had to be “pried” from the airplane seat in sheer terror. In 1990, she would serve in Cape Verde, West Africa without running water, electricity, cell phones, internet or other modern conveniences and would use the ocean for her bath. She left behind her children, friends and family and even the cat. What was she thinking?