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Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2018-016
Rolly Shaner Thompson served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru from 1964 to 1966 in a rural community action project. During training at the University of Oklahoma, she met trainee Wayne Thompson, whom she married after Peace Corps. During her early months in the Peruvian Andes, Thompson worked in a community in a variety of "Cooperacion Popular" projects. Following that, she spent a year in Yucay, in the Urubamba Valley, where she started 4-H clubs, taught health and sanitation, and encouraged gardening. She moved to Chacan for her final six months and worked with women embroiderers, helping them produce marketable products. After the Peace Corps, Thompson made her career in education and counseling. Along with Wayne, she owns a sheep and alpaca farm in Eugene, Oregon. Four decades after her Peace Corps service, Rolly is once again involved with textiles in Peru, and travels annually to the Puno region to work with drop-spindle spinners of alpaca yarns. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia A. Wand, May 7, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combine into 1 file).
Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2018-015
Charles Wayne Thompson served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Peru from 1964 to 1966 in a rural community action project. He was stationed in the Peruvian Andes, not far from Cusco and above the town of Calca, in Yanahuaylla, a small Quechua community of farmers who raised potatoes, wheat, corn, and cornnuts. They taught him traditional techniques for farming above the tree line at 9,000 feet, which was very different from the pear and peach orchards he knew back home in Medford, Oregon. Thompson worked with leaders in two communities to solicit money to build the first school and later earned money for an Allis Chalmers thrashing machine, which unfortunately never functioned. A medical emergency forced his departure six weeks early; unable to say goodbye in 1966, he returned in 1990 and found friends and a fully functioning school. After the Peace Corps, Thompson taught high school social studies until 2001. He and his wife Rolly, whom he met in Peace Corps training, own a sheep and alpaca ranch near Eugene, Oregon. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia A. Wand, May 7, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).