A Greenwood woman will spend the next 25 months in South Africa working to help people in a community where AIDS is significantly more widespread than the United States.
Haley Gravely, a 2013 Greenwood Community High School graduate who has been accepted into the Peace Corps, soon will begin training as a community services volunteer serving in a city outside of Johannesburg.
On Friday, the 22-year-old flies from Indianapolis to either Philadelphia or Washington D.C. The following morning, Gravely, along with other Peace Corps members, takes a shuttle to New York City, boards an airplane and starts a 14-hour flight to Johannesburg.
Gravely is committed to serve in South Africa until April 4, 2020.
Her work will include one of three areas — either working with women and children, orphans or people living with HIV/AIDS. Exactly what she will be doing will be assigned to her when she arrives.
Gravely could be working to help educate the community about AIDS/HIV or helping those infected learn how to live with the disease.
“Our job is to be flexible with my community and use my education to be able to implement helpful tools to help that community,” Gravely said.
Gravely, a 2017 graduate of Indiana State University who majored in biology, hopes the experience will help her in her future professional career.
“I think going back to medical school sounds right and getting a PhD with it,” Gravely said. “I really love immunology. I could see myself working someplace like the Centers for Disease Control one day.”
“As much as people think that it’s about where I’m going, it’s more about what am I going to learn. I think you can both learn from the people who are there at that point in time. HIV/AIDS there is at 12.7 percent, and here it’s much lower. It’s also considered a heterosexual disease there versus a homosexual disease.”
If Gravely decides at any point to fly home to visit family, she would have to cover the costs herself. She intends to occasionally come back to the United States, but will mostly be part of an entirely different world.
It’s what she wants. It’s who she is.
“Indiana State has a pretty ingrained tradition in service, and they teach it from Day 1. You do Donaghy Day, where you give service back to the community,” Gravely said. “Even when I was in high school I was president of Key Club, which gave back.”
“I was told about (Peace Corps) in college. I made the choice the summer of 2016. I chose it because I did a month trip to India with Foundation for International Medical Relief of Children. It was mainly in the public health sector, and I felt a month wasn’t enough.”
Gravely will live with a host family in South Africa the first three months to become immersed South Africa’s language and culture. She will be assigned to a community where she will live for two years with local residents.
She joins the 104 Indiana residents presently serving in the Peace Corps, a volunteer program run by the U.S. government since being founded in 1961.
Gravely received the immunizations for yellow fever before her month in India in the summer of 2016. Other immunizations are intended to prevent hepatitis A and B.
“India made it so I had a lot of the shots I would need for South Africa,” she said.
It is summertime in South Africa, which means Gravely is about to experience a drastic change in climate. She is allowed to bring a maximum of two 50-pound travel bags with her for the 25 months she is in South Africa.
“Surprisingly enough, it is enough,” Gravely said. “You learn to pack light. It should be enough. I would be pretty surprised if it wasn’t.”
Gravely also is prepared for the change in cultures – one example being skirts going below the knees being preferred over pants or shorts.
Gravely’s boyfriend of three years, Josh Grady, leaves for his Peace Corps experience in the West African country of Senegal — a seven-hour flight northwest of Johannesburg — in February.
