In early 2000s a young Ailton “Santo” Coleman enthusiastically joined the U.S. Peace Corps, agreeing to serve as an education volunteer in the Republic of Kiribati, an island nation of 32 atolls in the Central Paci fic Ocean so remote that some people lacked running water and electricity. Prior to his assignment, Coleman had told his interviewer that he wanted “the remote experience and not the apartment experience,” and the interviewer said, “We’ve got the perfect place for you.”
“ They sent me to Kiribati,” says Coleman. In fact, his speci fic island, Butaritari, was so inaccessible that Coleman didn’t leave during his two years of service. “When I was in-country, there were only two airplanes in the entire country and they only could have 4 to 6 people on board including the pilot, so you had to weigh yourself so they could know how much weight was on the plane before it took o ,” recalls Coleman.
Out of the 32 volunteers who began service with him, only 16 remained — including Coleman — at the end. In 2008, the Peace Corps determined that Kiribati was too remote to ensure the safety of the volunteers and closed the program in that nation.
Now an assistant professor of health sciences at James Madison University, Coleman hopes at some point to return to Kiribati, where he made numerous lifelong friends. “ They are the friendliest and most hospitable people I have ever met,” he says.
His experiences there changed his career trajectory.
“Kiribati was where I became passionate about public health,” Coleman says, explaining that with bachelor’s degrees in political science and Spanish at age 21, he had planned to obtain a law degree and become an international copyright lawyer.
“I thought that I was going to end up working for [a company] like Bad Boy Entertainment doing copyright law in South America.” But a friend suggested that he “take time to mature a little bit before going to law school.”
