2024 Peace Corps Week: Interview with former Peace Corps volunteer, UH Hilo biologist Pat Hart
In 1989, Pat Hart and his wife were motivated to work in other parts of the world, learn from other cultures, help if they could in communities. Peace Corps was the perfect combination for them.
By Susan Enright.
This story is the third in a five-part series on Peace Corps volunteers who, after their service, settled down on Hawaiʻi Island. One former volunteer, with video and story, will be featured each day here at UH Hilo Stories, during 2024 Peace Corps Week, Feb. 26 through March 1.
Timed for publication this week during 2024 Peace Corps Week, the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo has produced a series of five talk-story interviews, recorded on video, with members of the Hawaiʻi Island community who served in the Peace Corps and then settled down on the island.
Three in the series are UH Hilo faculty and two are members of the local community; some grew up on the island, and others found their way to the island following their Peace Corps service.
Patrick Hart
Following his graduation from the University of California Santa Barbara in 1985 with a degree in aquatic biology, Patrick “Pat” Hart, now a professor of biology at UH Hilo, found himself working in intern positions for a couple of years. That’s when he started thinking about applying to the Peace Corps.
“I actually applied with my girlfriend at the time, and then we got married before we went to Peace Corps,” he says. “We wanted to have adventure.”
Hart says they were motivated to work in other parts of the world, learn from other cultures, help if they could in communities. “It was just a perfect combination for us.”
They served in the Peace Corps from 1989 to 1991 in the Barangay (village) of Silangan on the island of Ticao in the Visayas region of the Philippines. They were fisheries volunteers on the small island, where coconut farming was the predominant source of income. The Harts focus was on working with the community on new income techniques to help the people improve their lives.
“That community and a lot of other communities in the Philippines had used, were using dynamite fishing, sort of as a product of World War II,” Hart explains. “And so a lot of the reefs were destroyed and a lot of the fish stocks had been depleted.”
As fisheries volunteers, they investigated possibilities in subsistence fishing, techniques in growing seaweed, and starting a sea salt making facility, but they also worked on introducing Anglo-Nubian goats for milk production. Another project was to bring composting toilets to the community.
In an area with no electricity and no running water, Hart and his wife immersed themselves in the local culture.
“We learned the language, a language called Visayan,” says Hart. “We built a house right on the ocean from native material: coconut planks, coconut floors, and coconut thatching was the roof of our house. We lived in a community that people from the United States never go to. It’s not on the tourist route.”
The Harts were enchanted by the children.
“Kids would follow us everywhere we go. They would stand outside of our house and just watch us cook dinner, everything,” he says. “So you felt very popular in the community that we were in. It was just an amazing experience for us, honestly.”
They made progress on the solar sea salt project and the introduction of the goats, but their planned two-plus years of service was cut short by political unrest.
“We actually got evacuated because of political reasons,” explains Hart. “We weren’t there quite two years almost. That was a little bit of the reason why we ended up in Hawaiʻi.”
Hart then shifted his academic pursuits from aquatics to birds when he earned his master and doctoral degrees at UH Mānoa. His investigations while working on his doctoral degree focused on native forest birds at Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge on Hawaiʻi Island; he received his doctoral degree in 2000. Hart began as an assistant professor in biology at UH Hilo in 2005 where he has established the Listening Observatory for Hawaiian Ecosystems, commonly called LOHE Lab.
Professor Hart says the Peace Corps was a life changing experience for him. One big change was he overcame his fear of public speaking.
“Before I went to the Peace Corps, I think I was very nervous about public speaking,” he explains. “And that was something that you did a lot in the Peace Corps. You’d interact with communities from neighboring villages and talk about what they wanted. How can we work with you on things? And slowly it made me more comfortable and then here I am now teaching for a living.”
Professor Hart often recommends the Peace Corps to his students.
“There’s no rush,” he tells his students. “There’s always going to be jobs out there. And if you go into the Peace Corps, you’re getting all these soft skills that you don’t even realize you’re getting until afterwards. I think it makes you stronger as a person.”
“Every day was an adventure,” Hart adds. “It’s a great way to just really experience a whole new set of things that you would never experience otherwise. And almost all of it is positive.”
The Return Peace Corps Volunteer project
This week’s series of video interviews is part of a larger project headed by Su-Mi Lee, an associate professor of political science and chair of the department at UH Hilo, who along with her poli-sci students and members of the local community are collecting biographical stories of former Peace Corps volunteers who have ties to Hawaiʻi Island. Last spring, Lee received funding from the College of Arts and Sciences, where the poli-sci department is located, to advance the project.
- Learn more about the Return Peace Corps Volunteer Project: UH Hilo political scientist Su-Mi Lee compiles biographies from Peace Corps volunteers with ties to Hawaiʻi Island.
This inquiry is significant to UH Hilo because Hawaiʻi Island was chosen as a primary training location for thousands of Peace Corps volunteers in the 1960s and the university’s precursor—University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo Branch—contributed greatly to that training. And many of those Peace Corps volunteers, who spent years forming connections abroad during their Peace Corps work, returned to Hawaiʻi Island, enriching local communities with their professional lives and service.
The Peace Corps stories Lee and others on the project are collecting are from 1) people who did their corps training on Hawaiʻi Island and came back to live, 2) staffers who trained Peace Corps volunteers on Hawaiʻi Island, 3) returning Peace Corps volunteers who are from Hawaiʻi Island where they did their Peace Corps training and may or may not currently live on the island, and 3) returning Peace Corps volunteers who chose to live on Hawaiʻi Island after their Peace Corps experience.
Lee’s goal is to document these stories for future generations to read and learn about the personal and professional value of direct engagement with people in other countries.
Related stories
2024 Peace Corps Week: Interview with former Peace Corps volunteer, UH Hilo anthropologist Joe Genz
2024 Peace Corps Week: Interview with former Peace Corps volunteer, UH Hilo biologist Pat Hart
2024 Peace Corps Week: Interview with former Peace Corps volunteer, UH Hilo Professor Misty Pacheco
Story by Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.
