Hitchhiking through Indo-China one night, during a five-week vacation from the Peace Corps more than 30 years ago, Vice President of International Affairs Robert Pastor arrived in Laos, where he met a CIA agent. He learned that if he had stayed longer, he would have been killed, he said. Pastor tried to persuade the agent, who at first refused to take him on his plane because the agent was on a secret mission. Luckily, Pastor eventually got a seat on the plane.
Making their mark in the most remote villages in the Third World, many faculty members recall their valuable experiences and their heightened knowledge of the world that extends beyond America's borders from their volunteer work and adventures overseas.
While working with students in agriculture in Borneo - a remote island in Southeast Asia - in the early '70s, Pastor had the opportunity to travel and learn about culture from several Asian nations.
"It was a very rewarding experience helping them improve their agriculture and improve general quality of their lives," said Pastor, who thought this would be the best way to serve his country at the time. Pastor traveled with young farmers around the island, gaining knowledge on farming techniques and ideas that would ensure better crops.
"I learned a great deal about the native people, the country and about myself," Pastor said.
He even traveled to Malaysia and learned techniques to grow coffee, and returned to Borneo with his newfound knowledge. In doing so, he wrote a book in the dialect of the native people, Lun Dawang, named "Luk Nibu Kupi" or "How to Grow Coffee." It was the second book ever to be written in their language, behind a translation of the Bible. Both were free.
"Both were best sellers," Pastor jokingly said.
Hitchhiking through Indo-China in countries from Cambodia to Vietnam allowed him to encounter many views about America and regions at war. Pastor sailed along the Mekong River at night when four different armies were shooting at each other. In Cambodia, he saw the wake of Khmer Rouge. His experience in Vietnam contributed to his thoughts about the United States, how the war was moving and how it would fail. He was even jumped by four Vietnamese, who stole his money.
"There were moments on my trip that were quite dangerous, but always exhilarating," he said.
For Pastor, the Peace Corps was an extended job-related experience, and for students today it still is.
"[Being] abroad is the best way to help students think about what to do in life," Pastor said.
All-American life no longer
While in Nigeria, Charles Larson and two other corps volunteers from America were taking a stroll on the hot, dry grounds they had become accustomed to. They had not anticipated the dark clouds and lightning that crept up on them in a matter of minutes. Fearing being drenched in rain, the three hid underneath the foliage of a tree, Larson said, recollecting fondly his experience during a storm in the African tropics. "[Here we were], three stupid Peace Corps volunteers," said Larson, professor and chair of the literature department, who was accepted a year after the organization started in 1961 and was one of the first 1,000 volunteers to join. "We [were] more worried about staying dry than being killed."
All of a sudden they noticed something about three feet tall coming toward them. They had no idea what it could have been, and as it got nearer they saw that it was a tiny woman crawling toward them with an umbrella. The native woman led them to a hut, saving them from possible electrocution.
Forty years ago, Larson put in his application for the corps on a Friday and was accepted the Monday after. He had just graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in American literature and was sent to a remote village in Nigeria to teach English at a boys' secondary school.
"The experience of the Peace Corps can [be] and still [is] today a life-changing experience," said Larson, whose experience ultimately led him to study Third World literature. Larson is the author of several works of literary criticism and fiction and is currently a co-editor of the corps magazine WorldView, a position he has held for the last 10 years.
As a "little young lad" from Iowa, Larson recalls that his community was homogenous, with a very white population. He went to a "lily-white school" and knew nothing about the world.
However, in Africa, being the only white man, he stood out among the African community. It was a good experience that allowed him to understand what it feels like to be a minority, Larson said. When President Kennedy was shot, Larson was in Africa, but many decided to volunteer because of him, Larson said.
"Recent volunteers, many of my students, still say this is the most life-changing experience [in their] focus, interest and what they plan to do in their career," Larson said.
However, Larson says that in the last 45 years the corps has become a bureaucracy like most government organizations, and questions how volunteers overseas feel about representing the United States today. "What the country is doing in international affairs ... I couldn't defend," Larson said. "I couldn't defend the policies of this country [and its drive as a superpower.]"
Vietnam was different due to global opportunities, and the United States is superior today, or that's what the [Bush] administration seems to project, Larson said.
"We all don't approve of this administration and we aren't in favor of the War in Iraq, Larson said. "The war is royally messed up."
Where is Burkina Faso?
When Kathryn Schroeder Coulibaly, an AU alumna, was 11 years old, she decided that she wanted to be in the corps. She was from a small town in southern New Jersey and no one in her family had ever been abroad except for military service.
"Two people who definitely influenced my Peace Corps decision were both born in Africa to American parents," said Coulibaly, who now works in AU's media relations. "Hearing their stories made me decide to go to Africa, if I made it into the Peace Corps."
Seven months later, going through the application process where she had to take a casino bus one December afternoon to the World Trade Center in New York City, she discovered she would be going to Burkina Faso in West Africa to teach English.
"I'd never heard of Burkina, nor had anyone in my family," Coulibaly said. "They were incredibly worried about me."
One month to the day after graduation, Coulibaly was on a plane to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. There she spent three months at a training camp outside of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second-largest city in the country, where she learned to speak French and some local languages and learned about the local culture.
"I loved my village from the moment I saw it," Coulibaly said.
Coulibaly describes her abode as a red brick house tucked away in a semi-hilly region in the middle of a cornfield. Across the street, there was a massive compound that the minister of state had built because it was his hometown, Coulibaly said. However, the minister rarely ever visited and when he did, he ran a generator and had TV, a refrigerator and ceiling fans.
Unfortunately for Coulibaly, she had no electricity or running water. And being without a latrine, one was built after about a month.
"I quickly discovered that I did not like teaching; I didn't really understand the system and my French was pretty appalling," Coulibaly said.
However, while some volunteers leave early for different reasons, including those who could not handle their new surroundings, Coulibaly survived. She made good friends, became fluent in French and figured out what she needed to do for her job.
"After six months in Burkina and three months in the village, I finally started to feel at home," said Coulibaly, who also was able to travel to Mali, Cote D'Ivoire, Togo, Benin and Ghana.
Teaching in Togo, West Africa
The three goals of the corps are to help countries in development, teach other countries about the United States and teach America about the Third World. If you can accomplish two of three objectives, then you're doing a good job, a director once told Anne Kaiser.
Kaiser, an academic counselor in the College of Arts and Sciences, went to Togo, Africa during the late '70s, where she taught English to students of all ages and trained teachers in a place where there were as many as 30 different ethnic groups.
Growing up outside of Chicago and living in Denver, Colo., where she went to school and worked at a ski resort, Kaiser decided to become a volunteer and go to Africa because she wanted adventure and excitement. The corps offered her that in a controlled environment, she said, because they would take her out of the country if any instability occurred or she had to leave for any reason.
Her smallest classes ranged from 40 to 80 students at a time, and as her students became older the ratio of girls decreased.
"When I was there, girls ... [started] dipping out because they became pregnant, got married or left to go and work," Kaiser said. "Most only received seven years of education."
One problem that Kaiser saw was the high unemployment in cities that many educated Africans faced, because many thought their education was now irrelevant for farming and agriculture.
Despite the injustices she saw, Kaiser grew close to the native people. She remembers one time when she revisited a village where she had been for two years. Upon visiting the marketplace, she was surprised by the local women sitting on the ground who started cheering in excitement to see her come back.
They were saying, "welcome, welcome" in their native tongue, Kaiser recalls.
Kaiser said that many volunteers have a common bond because of their experience.
"When PCVs [Peace Corps Volunteers], as we're called, get together at different functions, we have this common understanding between us," Kaiser said.
For Brock Brady, the corps was the most meaningful experience in his life. Brady, coordinator of the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) program which has a joint program with the corps, also visited a village in Togo in the early '80s.
"It really changed the way I do things and changed my career," Brady said.
There he worked in agriculture, helping people learn to plow their crops with oxen instead of cultivating by hand and using tractors that were hard on the soil.
Brady had already studied French and saw the trip as a good experience to speak French and learn about the culture of the people. And getting unexpected exotic diseases wasn't unusual, he said.
After his two years, Brady decided to extend his volunteer work and went to Benin in West Africa, where he taught English.
Adapting to the Benin way
When Kristina Thompson returned to the United States from Benin, she saw the nation through different eyes, and saw that it was filled with crazy consumers who were obsessed with acquiring things. She no longer just sits and watches television when her friends come over. Instead, she sits back and talks with them, "appreciating just being close to them."
Although back in the United States, Thompson still connects with the international world, acting as an adviser to international students and jumping on every opportunity to go anywhere in the world.
"At first it was exotic like something from 'Out of Africa,'" said Thompson, who went to Benin in the late '90s, where she was involved with rural community development and maternal/child health. "But it got to be home ... fast."
Her work included helping women with basic healthcare issues, including nutrition, hygiene and disease. She was also involved in a program that helped young girls pair up with professional women in the city, who took them to work.
"Doing my work there, I was seen as a guest and they treated me like their family," Thompson said.
Thompson recalls that many of the native people were interested in her everyday antics.
Whether sitting outside, reading or writing, the natives thought it was strange, she said. In fact, once when her cat had given birth to kittens, the natives thought it was bizarre for Thompson to play and watch the kittens as they played together even, though they enjoyed looking at them as well.
"I felt like I was on TV ... oh look, it's the Kristina show ... let's see what she's doing now," Thompson said.
She had to get used to living without electricity and had to carry water in a basin on her head. She recalls that even little children who carried big basins would not spill a single drop, while she would not fill the basin in its entirety and water would "splish splosh" out of it.
Thompson recalls the lack of transportation among bumpy roads and 100-degree weather. Trying to go to her village from the city, she had to wait anywhere from an hour to 10 hours until 12 people packed into the back of a taxi before it would leave. When trying to get into the capital, she would have to stay by the side of the road waiting for a ride.
"I could sit out there for an hour or until the next day until a ride came along," Thompson said.
Like Thompson, many other volunteers experience an acceptance of a new daily life and of people they spend time with. In doing so, they have learned that the Third World has ultimately shifted their paths in and the meaning of life.
