One Hand Does Not Catch a Buffalo

by Aaron Barlow

  The day after his inauguration, President Kennedy telephoned his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver and asked him to form a presidential task force to report how the Peace Corps should be organized and then to organize it. When he heard from Kennedy, Shriver immediately called Harris Wofford.

  At the time, Shriver was 44; Wofford was 34. Initially, the Task Force consisted solely of the two men, sitting in a suite of two rooms that they had rented at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. They spent most of their time making calls to personal friends they thought might be helpful.

  One name led to another: Gordon Boyce, president of the Experiment in International Living; Albert Sims of the Institute of International Education; Adam Yarmolinsky, a foundation executive; Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of the University of Notre Dame; George Carter, a campaign worker on civil rights issues and former member of the American Society for African Culture; Louis Martin, a newspaper editor; Franklin Williams, an organizer of the campaign for black voter registration, and a student of Africa; and Maury Albertson, out at Colorado State University.

  Unbeknownst to Shriver and Wofford, two officials in the Far Eastern division of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) were working on their own Peace Corps plan. Warren Wiggins, who was the deputy director of Far Eastern operations in ICA, was still in his thirties but had already helped administer the Marshall Plan in Western Europe. He was totally dissatisfied with the manner in which American overseas programs were run; he called them “golden ghettos.” With Wiggins was Bill Josephson, just 26, and a lawyer at ICA.

  They started developing an idea that would be limited to sending young Americans overseas to teach English. But as they worked on it, their vision broadened. The paper detailing their recommendations was titled “A Towering Task.” They sent copies to Wofford, Richard Goodwin at the White House, and to Shriver, who thought it was brilliant and immediately sent a telegram to Wiggins inviting him to attend the Task Force meeting the next morning. It was Wiggins who advocated initiating the Peace Corps with “several thousand Americans participating in the first twelve to eighteen months.” A slow and cautious beginning was not an option.

  Three times in February, Kennedy would telephone Shriver to ask about progress on the Peace Corps. The final draft of the report was created with Charles Nelson sitting in one room writing basic copy, Josephson sitting in another room rewriting it, Wofford sitting in yet another room doing the final rewrite, and Wiggins running back and forth carrying pieces of paper.

  Shriver held the position that Peace—not Development, it might be noted—was the overriding purpose, and the process of promoting it was necessarily complex. So the Peace Corps should learn to live with complexity that could not be summed up in a single proposition. Finally, the Task Force agreed on three.

  Goal One: It can contribute to the development of critical countries and regions.

  Goal Two: It can promote international cooperation and goodwill toward this country.

  Goal Three: It can also contribute to the education of America and to more intelligent American participation in the world.

  On the morning of Friday, February 24, 1961, Shriver delivered the report—the Peace Corps Magna Carta—to Kennedy and told him: “If you decide to go ahead, we can be in business Monday morning.”

  It had taken Shriver, Wofford, Wiggins, Josephson, and the other members of the Mayflower Task Force, less than a month to create what TIME Magazine would call that year “the greatest single success the Kennedy administration had produced.” On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy issued an Executive Order establishing the Peace Corps.

  And today, fifty years later, we are still debating what the Peace Corps is all about. As Sarge Shriver thought all those years ago, “the tension between competing purposes is creative, and it should continue.”

  Well, it has!

  John Coyne, who is considered an authority on the history of the Peace Corps, has written or edited over twenty-five books. In 1987 he started the newsletter RPCV Writers & Readers that is for and about Peace Corps writers. This newsletter, now a website, can be found today at PeaceCorpsWorldwide.org.

  Introduction

  Learning works both ways. You can’t help people unless you allow them to help you. Idealistic? Yes. But this is also the virtue and value of the amateur, the person learning along the way instead of bringing along prior expertise. Rarely vested in personal advancement, the amateur is a discoverer and a doer, concentrating on the thing-at-hand.

  This, of course, is the idea behind the Peace Corps. Though PCVs do take expertise with them, it is hardly ever in development. They learn as they go and even when they return. And their learning helps others.

  At about the time the Peace Corps was founded, a project called Airlift Africa, set up by Tom Mboya soon after Kenyan independence, brought students to the United States. Among these was the father of Barack Obama. Another was Mboya’s younger brother, Alphonse Okuku. While studying at Antioch College in Ohio, Alphonse stayed with the family of my teachers Ernest and Elizabeth Morgan, rooming with their son Lee.

  I met Alphonse in the fall of 1963 and was enchanted by this serious and slender young man. Because of him, my seventh-grade self began reading about Africa, learning of a far, distant place. Though I would drift away from my interest in Africa until drawn back to it over twenty years later, the fascination sparked by Alphonse was always there.

  Over the next few years, I remember reading Jambo, African Balloon Safari by Anthony Smith, Congo Kitabu by Jean-Pierre Hallet, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton—and more. Just by his presence, and in the course of his own education, Alphonse had opened a new world to me. Just as the presence of PCVs does, all over the globe.

  After the close of my Peace Corps service, I visited Alphonse, whom I had written from Togo. He did not remember me, but kindly showed me around a bit of the Luo areas of Kenya and even arranged for a balloon ride over the Masai Mara, something I’d wanted to do ever since reading Anthony Smith’s book as a kid. It was a fitting end to my service. Now, I had seen the world Alphonse had opened for me, making a vast intellectual broadening possible.

  These stories, today, are continuing the same process. The process of editing this volume has taught me more than I had ever thought to learn, now, about Americans in Africa.

  For the better part of a year, I’ve lived with the essays, going through them, sorting them, cutting them down so they could all fit in this volume. They’ve provided me with recognition, with joy, sadness, hope, disillusionment, and memory. They’ve taught me. They’ve re-opened a world I long ago left behind, and have helped me understand the nature of the Peace Corps beyond my own small experience. Ultimately, they have convinced me that, whatever its legacy in development, the Peace Corps will always be known world-wide as one of the United States’ most significant contributions to human kind.

  Each perspective presented here is distinct. Though we who served in Africa will often nod in recognition as we read these essays, our experiences were never lock step, but were diverse and often extraordinary. This volume reflects that, as much as I could make it do so. Some of the stories deal with the small, daily events that came to be commonplace. Others present astonishing once-in-a-lifetime events. Together, they present a picture as true to the Peace Corps experience in Africa as I could make it.

  The Peace Corps may not change the world in grand ways, but it does change individuals—and not just the volunteers. Like that seventh-grader awed by an African, there are thousands and thousands of people world-wide whose views of the world were expanded by naïve and idealistic PCVs who came to rest in their villages and towns, even if just for a short time.

  That is one great success.

  —Aaron Barlow

  Part One

  On Our Way...and Back Again

&nbs
p; Why I Joined the Peace Corps

  Robert Klein

  Going, at first, was much more mysterious, much more romantic, than now it may seem!

  It all had to do with the 1930s movie Beau Geste: brave young men, faced with incredibly complicated personal lives, joined the French Foreign Legion, making their way to remotest North Africa, there to become involved in legendary exploits. This image sustained me as I settled into being a junior high school teacher in New York City in the late 1950s. When I had to deal with an impossible class or wanted to untangle from a romantic involvement, I would think to myself, “They can’t do this to me; I’ll go and join the French Foreign Legion!” By 1961, I had carried the fantasy out only so far as to grow a beard. In dim light, at a distance of thirty to forty feet, I did look mysterious.

  That it was a different era is illustrated by what happened after I first attempted that goatee, over the summer vacation in 1960. It was the first day of class and my students, amidst a lot of giggling, good-naturedly commented about the change in my appearance:

  “Hey, Mr. Klein, are you a beatnik?”

  “I think that’s cool. Tell the principal to grow one too.”

  “Are they going to let you keep that thing?”

  I was pleased; I liked the beard and intended to keep it. Before reporting to school that September, being the Union representative in my building, I had checked Board regulations. They stated that teachers must be neatly attired (men wore jackets and ties, women skirts or dresses) and well groomed. But it did not say anything about beards.

  Then I heard a rapid knocking at the classroom door. The principal waved me out of the classroom. I stepped into the hall.

  “You can’t teach wearing a beard!” he said.

  He wore horn-rimmed glasses, had a scholarly and distant look, and was, at all times—except this one—calm and cerebral. His receding hairline emphasized his shiny forehead and his quizzical eyes; it made him look like a cross between Adlai Stevenson and Woody Allen. In ordinary conversations, he seemed to be reading from prepared remarks. But now he was apoplectic. I tried to respond quietly.

  “Sir, I feel that I’m properly dressed and my students seem to like the change.”

  “But it isn’t right; it will upset the class. How can you teach like that?”

  “Certainly if my appearance causes a noisy classroom, I would immediately shave off the beard. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, does it? May I return to my class?”

  He turned and slowly walked down the hall.

  So began my fifth year of teaching. Along with it were pressures toward responsible domesticity. My mom and pop kept saying, “You’re old enough to get married now; you’re thirty-two. Come home next weekend and meet Maxine. Her folks think you are wonderful. She’s such a nice girl.”

  In my head, I was hearing the drums of the Legion.

  My first attempt to answer those drums did not turn out well. I applied for a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship at a secondary school in Northern Rhodesia. With an M.A. in History from the University of Chicago and five years teaching experience, on paper I was a highly qualified candidate. Within weeks of applying, I was called for an interview at Columbia University.

  I had done nothing to prepare for the interview.

  The first question was: “Why do you want to teach in Rhodesia?”

  Although it was mid-February, I immediately began to feel cold sweat uncomfortably tickling my armpits and, in a panic, realized that these interviewers might not be impressed with my Beau Geste story.

  “Well, I really enjoy teaching…um…um.”

  “Do you have any special interest in or knowledge of Rhodesia?”

  I could find it on a map, but I felt that this was not the kind of answer that they were looking for.

  “No, I am interested in a new challenge and would like to teach overseas.”

  “Are you at all familiar with Northern Rhodesia’s current status?”

  “Uh…no…uh.”

  “Can you name the major colonial powers in Africa and discuss their influence?”

  “Uh…England! No, the British; uh…Great Britain.”

  “Yes?”

  Silence and then, trying to be helpful, the African professor: “Of course, you’ve heard of Timbuktu.”

  Of course, I had. Mom always used to tell me that if I didn’t do my share of the household chores, she’d run away to Timbuktu. I didn’t think that was the reference the Professor had in mind. The interview ended shortly thereafter, and the Fulbright Fellows lost a good, though ill-informed, prospect to the Peace Corps.

  Much of my motivation to join the Peace Corps actually came from my experiences when I served in the U.S. Army in Korea from 1952 to 1954. Having completed my master’s degree in History, I was drafted. Within six months, I was assigned as Company Clerk in a Forward Ordnance Depot about ten miles behind the front lines in Korea. I worked with First Sergeant Burl Grant, a black man who had worked his way up through the ranks during this period when the armed forces were being integrated, a process that was far from complete in 1953. Sergeant Grant dealt with the world through brown, deep-set eyes full of life, but sometimes cold and unblinking. They seemed flecked with fire when he dealt with diehard racists in our company. He would never raise his voice, but his eyes signaled the anger and contempt he felt. That, and his rank, forced men to accept and follow his orders.

  We shared a tent and, in the evenings, listening to jazz and be-bop (Errol Garner, Shorty Rogers, Dizzy Gillespie). I’d look at Grant, and his eyes would now be soft and mellow.

  Our own houseboy was Yoo Yung Shik, whom we called Pak. He was fifteen with black hair and eyes, broad-faced, and with a very expressive mouth. In anger or in joy, his lips always parted broadly into a smile, giving him a pleasant appearance. When he was upset, the smile would freeze into a grimace, but when he was happy it would be accompanied by a slight giggle. Pak came from a small farming community in central Korea that had been fought through several times. He had attached himself to a U.S. Army unit as a means of survival. When we paid him, he would take off to his village, buying whatever he could with the MPC [military payment certificates] that we all, Koreans and Americans, used as currency.

  Grant and I treated Pak decently, and he became a friend, taking us to his village to meet some of his family. This kind of relationship was discouraged officially and scorned by many of the Americans in the company who could only deal with the Koreans by thinking of them as “gooks” and treating them as inferiors.

  About six months after I had arrived in Korea, Pak came to me one day in the orderly room tent where I worked. For the first time since I had known him, his face was dark and somber. I even noticed tears in his eyes. He told me about what had been happening in the company mess hall.

  Our mess hall was typically American with a superabundance of whatever ill-prepared food we were being served. There were no shortages, and much food was wasted. Sergeant Grant had started the practice of allowing the local-hire Koreans to either eat or take home the surplus of prepared food from each meal. The Mess Sergeant, Pak told us one day, had become verbally and physically abusive to the Koreans as he reluctantly gave them the table surplus. He had even gone so far, now, as to throw the food into the trash cans before allowing the Koreans to take any. Grant stormed out of the orderly room to find the Mess Sergeant. I was not witness to their encounter, but Pak happily reported to me within a few days that all was “Dai jobi” [O.K.] in the mess hall.

  Pak said that he and some of the other houseboys wanted to learn to speak and read English; knowing that I was approachable, they wanted me to be their teacher. As Company Clerk I did have a lot of free time, which I could devote to teaching rather than drinking at the enlisted men’s club. With no training or preparation other than the fact that I had used the language for twenty-five years
of my life, I became a teacher of English. It felt good to be doing something creative, rather than pushing mounds of meaningless forms and reports through my typewriter or spending vapid hours at the club, sharing alcohol-fueled inanities with my fellow drinkers. I also found that I enjoyed being a teacher. When I finished my military service in 1954 and could find no want ads in The New York Times for “Historians,” I changed careers and became a teacher of Social Studies.

  Korea and Pak and that Mess Sergeant (and Beau Geste) were on my mind as I went to the post office on Broadway and 68th Street in Manhattan to pick up a Peace Corps Questionnaire in April 1961. I remember filling it out. It included a lengthy list of personal and professional skills to be checked on a scale from “highly skilled” to “unskilled.” With five years’ experience, I hoped to become a Peace Corps teacher, but I wasn’t sure of what Peace Corps was looking for (they weren’t either). I pondered how best to mark:

  “Milk a cow.”

  “Drive a tractor.”

  “Service an automobile transmission.”

  “Use a welding torch to repair equipment.”

  Where, I thought to myself, were the items I was totally confident about? Such as:

  “Interpret a New York City Subway map.”

  “Control a class of 8th grade students on Friday afternoon.”

  “Read the Sunday edition of The New York Times.”

  Even though I wasn’t ready to announce to the world that I was “joining the Legion,” I went ahead with it and mailed the form to Washington. In responding to the item in the questionnaire that asked, “Why do you want to serve with the Peace Corps?” I had written the following: