Peace Corps Humility: Coverdell Fellow Erik Endacott, MPS ‘25

10 months later, Erik found himself in Senegal. He was unsure of what the future held, but soon enough he would find it to be set beyond the American discourse.

“I think a lot of Americans view everything through our bubble and our lens. It seems like we have this view of, like, we're the Enlightened Westerners. But the [Senegalese] women seem pretty happy, the kids really, really respect their parents—so are we really right?”

The pandemic held no regard for Erik’s blossoming intercultural perspective or his agricultural extension work. The COVID-19 pandemic sent him home within six months, interrupting his work in fertilizer efficiency maximization and improved harvest technologies. In 2021, when the borders reopened, Erik returned to Senegal and Gambia on his own.

“I didn't have too much luck reconnecting with the Peace Corps projects, but I did meet this local NGO, and they were doing some good work with the community.” Erik popped back and forth between the states and West Africa, fundraising in the U.S. to support work with the Volunteer Network for a Green and Prosperous Sahel, a small Senegalese organization. The funds Erik garnered through hometown Rotary Clubs bore a fruit tree program and community garden in Fonde Elimane, supporting a multipronged approach to deforestation, malnutrition, and income generation in northern Senegal.

After that, coming home to the American bubble wasn’t easy. He took a job with Tesla back in Nevada and found himself explaining to a colleague that neither Las Vegas nor New York were international destinations. That’s when he decided to go back to school.

Erik applied to Global Development’s Master of Professional Studies (MPS) at Cornell for the program’s emphasis on fieldwork and impact. 

“The problem [in food security work] isn't a lack of researchers. The problem is, how are you going to help people? How do you turn your research into something farmers may actually want to do?”

Thinking about his Senegalese partners, Erik’s focus is phasing out synthetic fertilizers. Cutting input costs would increase the amount of rice available to feed families, and reducing dependency on artificial additives would improve soil fertility. 

Supported by the expertise of Global Development faculty, Erik is expanding upon his previous interest in urine compost as a sustainable fertilizer. Rebecca Nelson and Johannes Lehmann, for example, helped direct Erik toward tactics for increased nutrient concentrations that could reduce waste and improve soil health.

While Erik unlocks new directions through the MPS program, the self-perception he developed during his Peace Corps service keeps him steady. While in Gambia, weak from hunger, Erik watched local men chop down brush with one-handed axe swings. Erik couldn’t copy them. While feeling the same hunger, Erik observed his inability to mirror the strength exerted by the central Gambian communities. This sense of self characterizes his work today.

“It's been a leash on my ego, and it's giving me some peace,” Erik said. “I don't have the urge to be something big or feel good about myself. I'm okay just being an average guy.”

With a humility forged in West African heat and hunger, Erik's evaluations of progress go beyond himself to global development in whole. 

“For most people, global development means increasing the GDP per capita. But the big problem I think about is that it really seems like people are happier when they're just living in a village and growing their own food. 

“We have this loneliness epidemic in the Western world, and I just keep thinking—I just like the way of life that these farmers have, and I don't want to see it completely go away. I want them to no longer have tooth pain. I want them to no longer have hunger. But there’s also something special and beautiful they have that we don't.”

For Erik, global development means self-determination. It means empowerment and agency, and above all it means respect. Through his time in Senegal, and now in his time at Cornell, Erik fosters a definition of development grounded in agency—that communities may decide what it means to flourish.

Lauren Chuhta ’26 is a student writer and co-president of the Student Advisory Board in the Department of Global Development. She is a double major in Global Development and Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell.