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Janis Hyatt joined the Peace Corp for many
reasons. The one big reason was as a rite of passage. She needed to prove to
herself that she had value as an individual and that she was not a failure.
Anyone who knew her had no doubts, but she did. Halfway through her stint, she
gained that final piece of self-confidence that she was searching for. She
realized midway that she had accomplished her personal
goal. Of course she stayed to finish and was very content in performing the
teaching role she had been assigned.
Jan was hitchhiking through Botswana during one of the month-long teaching
breaks. She was in the back of a pickup truck with another couple whom she
didn't really know that well. The truck was traveling fast in the middle of
nowhere when a tire blew-out. The truck rolled, she was crushed, and died pretty
quickly from internal bleeding. Maggie, the Peace Corp nurse for Swaziland at
the time, escorted her body back to Dickinson Texas. She was cremated. Her
friends took her ashes to a nearby beach on the Gulf Coast, lit candles, said
words, and then waded out into the surf to distribute her ashes.
Jan was a well balanced individual. She had a great deal of empathy for others
and was frequently the shoulder that people would lean on. She
was a T-shirt, overalls and barefoot kind of gal. The university paper had a
picture of her standing barefoot in snow. She wore shoes only when required by
law or decorum. She was adventurous. She enjoyed the unexpectedness of travel.
She was joyful. She collected miniature versions of everyday items to use in
geology class photographs where you needed an everyday item to provide relative
size. She had temp work in a drug store before leaving for Swaziland and got to
play along with some kids calling about "Prince Albert in a can". She was smart
and curious. She spent an afternoon in her assigned village calculating the
speed of sound based upon a bouncing basketball and the gravitational effects of
a falling object. The one thing she was missing was proof to herself that she
was worthy. Her time in the Peace Corp allowed her to gain that self-knowledge
and she became a whole person.
~Kee Nethery
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