by Aaron Barlow
One of the lessons I learned in the Peace Corps is that hard work is hard work, no matter who you are. You’d think I would have known that before going to Africa, and in a way I did, but there is knowing and then knowing. First-hand knowing is best and before the Peace Corps, I knew very little at first hand.
Like rice. I had eaten plenty of rice before going to Africa and was pleased to find it was my village staple. Maize or millet was a more common staple in East Africa, but my village was on a flood plain at the base of a highland massif, perfect for growing rice during the floods of the long rains. Mpunga was the Swahili word for rice, and it was a big word in Kidodi village. Naturally, as the new agriculture teacher, the first the school had had in years, I was determined to have a good rice crop. The parents complained that they sent their kids to school so they would not have to farm. Yet there I was.
The school did have plenty of land available for planting out behind the school building, and it probably once had a fine garden, but nature had reclaimed it. In Africa, nature does not fool around: I couldn’t see very deep into the field, which was overgrown with elephant grass. At least, I guess that’s what it was. Anyway, an elephant could have hidden in it, so tall were the blades.
Using hoes and machetes we cleared a place for a nursery where we could start growing our rice. My Peace Corps sheet on rice said to plant it in a nursery and then transplant it. The local method was to plant it straight in the field, so our project would demonstrate a superior yield from a superior method the villagers could adopt.
When it was time to transplant the rice from the nursery, I led my kids out to the field. The nursery had come along fine, although it seemed to have a lot of fresh grass growing alongside the rice. I told the students the plan. Carefully remove the individual rice plants from the soil and carry them over to the larger field for replanting. Sure, said the kids, and began carefully removing the grass.
Nope, nope, I said. They stopped and looked at me.
Take the rice shoots, I said, and plant them over there.
At once they began again to take the grass. We went through the routine one more time before the penny dropped in my slow-moving brain. The grass was the rice. What I thought was rice were weeds. So, O.K., they know what rice looks like and I don’t.
After a certain amount of bending and getting dizzy, we moved the rice from the nursery to the field, just in time to take advantage of the great rains. More water came down from the highland slopes, bringing fertile soil with it and sitting on the ground. All the villagers were looking forward to harvesting a year’s worth of eating, and seeds for the next year’s planting besides.
When the rains stopped and the water began to recede, the people of my village began an action not mentioned on the mimeo sheets. They built makeshift platforms that rose above the rice and sent their children out to sit on them. When birds came into the fields, the kids on the platforms would sling stones at them to chase the winged grazers away. I did not discuss it with the head teacher, but probably he would have been agreeable to setting up a similar system at the school. I wasn’t agreeable. The students had come to learn, not to miss class while they acted as living scarecrows. We would lose some of the rice that way, but that was the price.
It turns out, however, that birds are not partial grazers. By the time the water was down and others were in their fields harvesting rice, our rice was gone. Did the transplanting system lead to better yield per acre? Only the birds knew for sure, and they kept mum.
One day a year later I noticed that I could see clear across the whole school grounds. The school’s field of tall grass had been cleared, worked, and planted. And not with rice nor with radishes. We now grew things schoolchildren could grow and people would eat, foods like okra and eggplant; tomatoes, too, despite the agony of the stooped harvest. I wasn’t any less prone to dizziness, but I couldn’t let the kids work while I voiced enthusiasm.
They called me teacher, but I did an awful lot of learning.
Edmund Blair Bolles served in Tanzania from 1966-68. He is the author of over a dozen books, including A Second Way of Knowing and Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution.
Gentle Winds of Change
Donald Holm
Tilting at windmills…or trying to build them where they have no business being: perhaps that’s the joy of Peace Corps.
As if out of a fairy tale, on one side of Makele, Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, on a rise, stood the castle of Ras (or prince) Mengesha, descendant of centuries of Tigray’s monarchy. His lovely wife, Princess Aida, was a granddaughter of Emperor Haile Selassie.
Since the dawn of civilization, Makele had been a caravan-trading center, especially for salt. Perched at 8,000 feet in the Abyssinian Highlands, to the east an escarpment plunged below sea level to the Danakil Desert in the Great Rift Valley. There, nomads cut salt into blocks from evaporated lakes. Camel caravans toted their precious cargo on ancient paths that snaked up the escarpment.
Not everyone lived happily ever after, however. In the era of Solomon and Sheba, whose legendary kingdom was located there, Tigray was a granary, producing an abundance of the millet-like grain called teff, the main ingredient of Ethiopian flatbread, injera. After millennia of cultivation in a gradually drying climate, yields steadily declined. Precious little topsoil remained. Farmers steered their oxen-pulled plows around rocks littering the fields. The specter of famine loomed.
My task was to teach English as a second language to seventh and eighth graders in the town’s lone school. I was honored that one of my students was the son of Ras Mengesha and Princess Aida, who may normally have sent him away to a boarding school for his education, but had elected to keep him at home now that the Peace Corps had arrived.
My students taught me practical things about their world, as I taught them about mine. They showed me local points of interest, like the market. Trading in salt was the centerpiece. At the teeming camel section, my students gave me tips on how to select a good one. Strangely enough, one of the most important ways to recognize a camel’s mettle, I learned, involved the animal’s ability to stick its long tongue way out, halfway to its knees, with saliva drooling to the ground as the camel went into a stupor. “Oh, sir, gobez, gobez (the Amharic word for strong, awesome),” they would shout.
We were always looking for ways to enrich our contribution. One PCV developed expertise in building latrines, which he succeeded in erecting at various points around town.
Another Volunteer, Dick, and I stumbled across an abandoned windmill kit in a field behind the school, in wooden crates with weeds canopied around them, displaying fading logos of the clasped hands of the U.S. Agency for International Development. To cynical PCVs, this was typical of USAID. Our school had two General Electric stoves collecting dust in our faculty room, with ovens used as filing cabinets. Just the thing if you were looking to track down a “hot item.” The problem: our school had no electricity. At a Peace Corps conference in Addis Ababa, I asked a USAID rep attending how it was possible they would send us electric stoves. His nonchalant response: “We had new stuff coming in, so we had to move it out.”
But was the windmill kit, like the electric stoves, really a white elephant? Strangely enough, it seemed to Dick and me that a windmill might actually make sense. With the persistently encroaching desertification, ladies had to fetch water for their households from muddy pools in a river trickling miles from town. They lugged the essential liquid on swayed backs in earthen jugs that weighed as much as the water they carried, an agonizing task. As I slept at night, I dreamt of these ladies smiling as water gushed from an imaginary windmill in the center of town.
We picked a central spot that the local government said we could use. It was like an erector set on Christmas morning, trying to figure out which part went where. Our efforts drew amusement from people on their way to the market. What were these zan
y Americans trying to do? Construct a launch pad for a moon rocket?
Over many Saturdays, we put together the first tier, then the second. Complexities sprang up. How on earth were we going to drill the well under the windmill? Just as intimidating, how in the world were we going to be able to lift its heavy motor to the apex? We blindly worked on, with the spirit and enthusiasm typical of early Volunteers, that we could change the world by force of will alone.
We needed a miracle. Then, one quiet afternoon, a small plane dropped down at the airstrip, a pasture on the edge of town where goats grazed. The American Ambassador had breezed in from Addis Ababa on a field trip. He was staying at the castle hotel at the other end of town, a bookend to the castle of Ras Mengesha and Princess Aida, constructed for the occasional VIPs and to encourage fledgling tourism.
The Ambassador invited all eight Volunteers in Makele for drinks at the castle that evening, following his call on Ras Mengesha and Princess Aida.
I put on my ratty, rust-colored sports coat and my green polka-dot tie that didn’t match. As we arrived, we overheard the Ambassador speaking to one of the staff working at the hotel, who was presenting a bottle of tej honey mead, Ethiopia’s national drink, as a gift to the Ambassador from the Ras and Princess. The servant asked the Ambassador what he would like him to do with the tej, and the Ambassador growled, “Dump it down the toilet, I’ve given enough of my intestines to this country.” We looked at each other and shuddered, knowing this insult would be reported back to the Ras and the Princess. It was not an auspicious start to the evening.
The Ambassador went around and asked each of us what we were doing in Makele as Volunteers. When most of us responded that we were secondary school teachers, he impatiently raised his voice and tiredly blurted out, “But what are you really doing to help these people?” This sparked pangs of guilt. We harbored such high expectations when we had idealistically answered President Kennedy’s call to do our part in bringing the developing world out of poverty.
Dick and I volunteered that, well, we were working on weekends to build a windmill. The Ambassador’s mood changed. “Why that’s ideal,” he beamed. Given the increasingly arid climate, and the steady strong winds coming up from the escarpment, we sensed that he was thinking big, chasing windmills in his mind spreading across the horizon like oil derricks.
In the weeks that followed, Dick and I felt even more inspired to complete the windmill, constructing a third tier.
One Saturday afternoon as we were lunching at the town’s only restaurant, a great commotion occurred. A helicopter swooped down into the market, scattering camels and donkeys and people in every direction. Most of the people in the market had undoubtedly never even heard of a helicopter, much less seen one. For them, it was as if a spaceship had docked. Dick and I took swigs from our warm beers, and wondered what this could possibly be about.
Two well-built men in U.S. Army fatigues stormed into the restaurant asking where they could find Perry and Holm (Dick and me). The lead man, with blond crew-cut hair and sporting colonel eagles on his lapels, snapped to us long-haired, unkempt PCVs, with obvious irritation, that they were Army engineers sent by the Ambassador from the small Army base in Asmara to team with us to finish the windmill. Their helicopter was capable of lifting the windmill’s gearbox into place. But first, they wanted to check out the overall feasibility of the project.
We took them to the site. The Army engineers went back to their helicopter and returned with sounding gear and augers. They launched into tests. Whenever we tried to assist, they barked that we were getting in their way, so Dick and I returned to the restaurant and sipped some more on our warm beers.
A couple of hours passed. The two Army engineers, by now sunburnt with sweat dripping down their faces, paraded into the restaurant again. The colonel snarled that that there was no aquifer below. The site we had chosen would produce not more than “a cup a day.” The two stomped out of the restaurant; their helicopter thrashed up a repeat whirlwind of dust and commotion as they departed in their “spaceship.”
And the windmill? Dick and I thought about tearing it down, but our final days crept up on us so quickly, we never got around to doing it. For all I know, it stands today as a metaphorical monument to the spirit of the Peace Corps in its early days, a testament to tireless effort and goodwill, tempered by the sobering acknowledgement that development remains a worthwhile goal, but one which cannot be achieved nearly as easily or as quickly as early Volunteers may have imagined.
With it comes the resignation, call it wisdom if you like, that the impact of the Peace Corps has not been in spectacular, strong gusts of wind, in showy projects like windmills, but rather in day-to-day tasks like teaching school in remote locales, acts of kindness that are good in themselves, fostering gentle, yet steady, zephyrs of change that enhance the image of America, and through us, increase America’s understanding of perspectives of the developing world. That is what we have really been doing.
Donald Holm, PCV in Ethiopia from 1965-67, is a semi-retired Foreign Service officer whose career has taken him to South America, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, the Eastern Caribbean, and back to Africa. He currently lives on a ridge, often buffeted by Chinook winds, looking out on snow-capped mountains above Boulder, Colorado. Come to think of it, with the emerging energy crisis, what an ideal spot for a…?
La Supermarché
Jennifer L. Giacomini
Can seeing what something can be make people want it to be?
After living in village for just over a year, I took my mama, Elise, to dinner at a German-owned restaurant. Elise had wanted to travel to Kara for a while, but had to put it off. Each time she prepared for her departure, something came up in the village prompting her to stay. Last time, her husband simply refused to let her go. I think he didn’t want to endure his thirteen-year-old daughter’s cooking during Elise’s absence.
Finally, I had an idea: I would take Elise to her brother’s house and out to dinner. I would pay for everything. Just as I knew he would, Papa agreed.
So, one Friday morning, we biked to Guèrin-Kouka and eased into comfortable seats in the second row of the taxi. Elise had her eye on me, a form of sisterly protection. She watched me navigate the system with the familiar taxi drivers who tried to make sure I was comfortable.
We arrived in Kara a few hours later and much dustier. The driver took the back way, allowing us to enter Kara near Elise’s brother’s house. Only Elise’s youngest brother Jean, a student, greeted us. He spent his off-seasons in Katchamba and was just a few years younger than I. I invited him to go with us.
We sauntered to the restaurant, dodging cars, bikes, children, and livestock on the road. La Supermarché, a German-owned restaurant and grocery store, provided desired treats from America and Europe. I often browsed the grocery, longing for the luscious cheeses, meats, candies, and cookies. They were way too pricy for my meager Volunteer salary; I bought a cheap candy and went on my way. The adjacent restaurant, however, was my favorite. I could purchase a hamburger and fries, along with a beer or two. It provided a welcome change from my regular village meals of pâte, or polenta, with pepper sauce.
I had spent many hours in this open-air restaurant, dining and watching CNN or BBC on the large-screen TVs mounted to posts supporting the straw roof. The restaurant opened into a garden filled with colorful flowers, a beautifully manicured lawn, and a children’s play set. It was a welcome piece of home and momentary escape from Togolese life.
Elise shyly informed me that she had never before been in a real restaurant. She had traveled but, like most, had eaten street food at outdoor food courts. This didn’t really surprise me; the cost of one meal at a restaurant could feed her family for a week. I was, however, surprised when Jean told me that he too had never eaten at a restaurant. He had been a student in Kara for four years, and I often saw students at restaurants, mostly drinking beers
but occasionally dining. I couldn’t believe he was never one. Il n’y a pas d’argent—there’s no money.
We opened the menus; their faces fell, shocked by the steep prices. Elise wanted to ask questions, but the only one she mustered was if the restaurant had everything on the menu. I explained that you get to order anything you want and someone else cooks it and serves it.
However, oftentimes I would order an item at a Togolese restaurant and only then would the server inform me that they didn’t have it that day. I would order another with the same result. This often occurred several times before finding something they did have available.
I persuaded Elise and Jean to order cheeseburgers and fries. I mentioned other places one might encounter them, like a barbecue or a picnic. I then launched into a tirade on the fast food nation America is quickly becoming. They didn’t quite understand, so I gave up.
We ordered, and I got up to use the restroom and wash my hands and face from the dusty taxi ride. I warned Elise and Jean that, despite the African custom, the servers do not bring a bowl of water for washing. If they wanted clean hands, they should go to the restroom. Neither of them seemed to care.
When I returned, Elise leaned over and whispered, “Ma sœur, je dois pisser.” My sister, I have to piss. She asked if she could go on the lawn. I was so glad she asked; I promptly told her no, she had to use the restroom. While this may seem crass to some, I knew the mannerisms and customs of the Togolese and knew it was common to find an outside corner and urinate.
So we proceeded to the bathroom. It was hysterical! Elise had never even seen a toilet, much less used one. I had to pantomime the entire process of entering a stall, shutting the door, using the toilet and flushing it. I only made it about halfway through this act before she burst out laughing. You mean I have to pee in there? Sure, said I, this is the only place we go chez-nous. Every residence has at least one.
