Tom

A couple of weeks ago a Peace Corps volunteer was shot and killed in Lesotho. He and another volunteer were walking back to the Peace Corps training center from a close-of-service party at a hotel a few blocks away. They were mugged at gun point and Tom got shot. He died before he reached the hospital. While incidents like this happen in large cities around the world, it is made more tragic by the fact that Tom was a volunteer here to help the country. And Tom was one of the best of us. Few have become so loved and integrated into their communities here. The memorial service held for him here in Lesotho made it evident how loved and important he was to the Peace Corps volunteers and staff. The memorial service was very moving and healing. His friends and those close to him gave speeches and told many stories of Tom's remarkable achievements and some of his more mischievous adventures. It gave those of us that had arrived to Lesotho recently and did not know him well a vivid impression of the man he was and the man, the doctor, husband and father he should have been able to become. The intense emotion shown by those who had been close to him was proof to how fiercely loved he had been and how deeply and painfully he is being missed. His closest friends are home receiving counseling and being with family.

In Peace Corps you're thrown into a new world, where the language, customs and daily way of life are so different from what you've known. You cling to other volunteers. They become your support, your bit of home and sometimes your sanity. We really do become a family. The cruelly pointless and sudden manner of Tom's death blew a hole in our Peace Corps family that I doubt will ever fully heal. We are slowly and painfully returning to our sites and jobs, deemed safe by Peace Corps Washington. Hopefully carrying on helping Lesotho as tom would have. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and loved ones back home.