by Aaron Barlow
Solveig Nilsen was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ethiopia from 1967–1969. After some post-Peace Corps years in New York, San Francisco, and New Hampshire, she settled down in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as librarian with Hennepin County Library for thirty years. She has been organizer and chief steward of AFSCME Local 2864 and was given the Berman Award for Social Responsibility in Library Services.
What I Tell My Students
William G. Moseley
Don’t underestimate the Africans…or yourself, either!
I am a geography professor at a small liberal arts college in the Upper Midwest. The college, which prides itself on internationalism, tends to attract a lot of students with an interest in faraway lands. It is also a somewhat left-leaning campus where students have a deep interest in making the world a better place. The courses I teach are international in scope, focusing on environment, development, and Africa. Slides from my Peace Corps days and other international development experiences often feature prominently in my lectures. That’s why, clearly, a number of students walk into my office every semester asking about my experiences as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Most of them also want to know what I think of this as a possible opportunity. While I have all sorts of responses, I try to be honest, sharing both positive and negative aspects of that time in my life.
I don’t think I was ever out to save the world. I was pretty cynical about development in general, having read many of the classic development critiques in my anthropology, history, and economics courses. No, I think I joined Peace Corps to experience the world in some remote part of that global South. I wanted to be as far away from the “West” as I could. If I am to be brutally honest, I believe this desire to be “away from the West” probably had something to do with my mixed feelings about where I grew up, in the suburbs outside of Chicago. Clearly I had benefited from the good schooling this environment had provided me. Yet my college education and experiences abroad made me increasingly uncomfortable with the blatant materialism, homogeneity, and pro-business orientation of the suburbs. Perhaps Peace Corps was the logical antidote for my suburban American upbringing.
So where did I go, how did I live and what did I do? I learned in the spring of 1987 that I would be sent to Mali two weeks after I graduated from college in June. Of course, I had no idea where Mali was when I received my appointment letter—having to look it up in the world atlas just like all of the other non-sophisticates. Some members of my extended family thought I was going to Bali (Indonesia) or Maui (Hawaii), tropical states which were quite different from the semi-arid, land-locked, West Africa nation which is probably best known for a town many people are not sure really exists, that legendary city at the end of the world—Timbuktu.
Why I was sent to Mali I am not sure. I had told the Peace Corps recruiter I would go anywhere, and my French language skills are probably the best explanation for this appointment. Mali was also recovering from a major drought in 1984-85 which had struck much of Sahelian Africa. As a result, Mali and a number of other countries in the region were targets for expanding Peace Corps initiatives, all under an umbrella program known as the African Food Systems Initiative (AFSI).
I underwent four months of training in a small town outside of the capital city, Bamako. I perfected my French, learned a local language known as Bamanan or Bambara, studied community development approaches, and learned country-specific skills related to my chosen technical sector of agriculture and community gardening. To say that I was an agricultural expert would be a huge misnomer. I had studied history as an undergraduate and played around in the garden growing up. About the only other qualification I could claim was a high school career test which indicated, to the horror of the school guidance counselor, that I should be a farmer.
Training was amazing in terms of quality, as well as in the opportunity to bond with fifty other Volunteers who formed my training group; I was ready to begin my service when the training period was over.
Having listened to my request for a remote, rural site, I was sent to small Bamanan village of 200 people about fifty kilometers from the nearest paved road. There were two other French speakers in my village, the grade school teacher and the government agricultural agent who was my counterpart. I distinctly remember the Peace Corps truck driving away that first day, feeling like I was really, really on my own.
Over the next six months, I would live in temporary homes while the village and I built my house. It was a basic adobe structure with three non-standard (for the area) improvements: a cement floor, a tin roof, and a pit latrine. While I had my own home, I took my meals with a family in the village that had been assigned to look after me.
During those initial months, my only real job was to perfect my Bamanan language skills and to get to know the place. I spent a lot of time hanging out. One of the main ways males pass their time is to do tea in the evening. (This is, of course, while women are doing all of the work.) Over several hours, one will prepare and serve three rounds of strong, sweet tea to their friends. During the long dry season, this is typically done under the stars. It is here that I perfected my Bamanan, discussing everything under the sun with my newfound Malian friends.
Hanging out is a difficult task for many workaholic Americans. Getting things done is so engrained in us that this initial phase is challenging for most Volunteers. Even after my initial start-up, there were often slow times, especially during the rainy season when all of the villagers were busy at work in their fields. I did work with people in their fields during this time, and even farmed my own peanuts, but there were real physical limits to how much I could do. This meant lots of time reading during the rainy season. I remember becoming totally engrossed in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and then emerging from my hut to rejoin village life. It could be surreal, very surreal.
While I was trained to be a gardening volunteer, I quickly learned that I had little in the way of agricultural insight to offer to members of this community. In fact, the more I observed, the more I became impressed with the agricultural and natural resource management practices of this and surrounding villages. These farmers’ tillage techniques, their way of mixing different crops in the same field (known as intercropping), their knowledge of different soils, and their fallowing schedules were all fascinating to me. I became increasingly skeptical of the government’s attempts to promote “modern agriculture,” which tended to emphasize cotton production and the use of pesticides and fertilizers.
While I eventually did work with community gardeners, I did many other things in response to village interests. I helped form a beekeepers co-op that sold honey in the capital city; built an improved, cement-lined well; offered basic nutrition training; grafted fruit trees; and experimented with different agro-forestry approaches. Had I been a formally trained agronomist, I am not sure if I would have been as flexible as I was. Being a broadly trained liberal arts college graduate, I never positioned myself as the expert, but rather as someone who could work with the community to address certain problems. I also did not have large sums of project money with which I could purchase local cooperation. If people didn’t like my ideas, they eventually let me know their disapproval by dragging their feet, or just telling me.
It is at about this point in my conversation with a student that I pause, and let them know that I am very biased in my assessment of Peace Corps. It may sound corny, but it was a transformative experience for me. I found my calling—so to speak—which was to study, write, and teach about agriculture and natural resource management approaches in Africa. This was a rare moment in my life where I could just “be” and it taught me lasting lessons about how people think and live in a small rural farming community. Had I been hell-bent on writing a dissertation at the time, or bound and determined to mount some huge development project, I am not sure I would have learned half of what I did.
Mine being well-trained, critical students, it is usually at about this time th
at I get two to three somewhat interrelated questions.
First, isn’t the whole development process a flawed, neo-imperialist project? (I told you I have left-leaning students.) Yes, mainstream approaches to development are highly flawed. Nonetheless, I argue that our job is to reinvent development and to begin to think about this process in very different ways. I further assert that places like Mali are increasingly connected to us, whether we like it or not. Our job is to figure out how to engage positively with the Malis of the world.
Once we acknowledge that Africans are already in contact with the Western world (whether we like it or not), I believe we open a new space for development. With its Frierian inspired, bottom-up approach to development, I believe Peace Corps is closer to a sound development approach than almost any other group active in this arena.
Second, students often ask if they are only serving U.S. interests abroad by joining the Peace Corps, becoming “an agent of the U.S. Government.” In my experience, today’s students are very skeptical of any good that could be delivered by a government organization. Perhaps this is a triumph of Reaganism, or Republicanism more broadly—but I suppose the right should take pride in knowing how skeptical left-leaning students are of government in general. While Peace Corps will not serve where the U.S. has no diplomatic relations, the reality is that most Peace Corps countries are of little strategic importance to the U.S. I never felt like an agent of the U.S. government in Mali. I know some of my village friends thought I might be CIA at first. But, as far as I know, they came to realize that this was not what I was about.
Third, there is the American workaholic question: Do Peace Corps Volunteers really achieve anything meaningful in terms of development? I certainly knew some Volunteers who did not accomplish much in the way of work, but these were the exception. Some of these individuals were suffering from culture shock and/or depression; others eventually went home early. However, by and large, most of the Volunteers were hard working. I also remind my students that Peace Corps is more than just a development organization, but serves as a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange. While what we actually did as Volunteers may be difficult to quantify, the understanding we brought back home is just as important. God knows, the lumbering giant we call America can always use a more informed citizenry.
In other cases, Volunteers often plant seeds that take years to bloom. I remember being frustrated that a large community garden was never established in my village when I was there—despite numerous suggestions that this be considered. I went back several years later to discover that one had been established and they thanked me for initiating the idea.
There are loads of other questions I am often asked. For example, isn’t two years too long of a commitment, or isn’t it better to work on these issues at home rather than abroad? I left Peace Corps ready to leave (two years and four months was just about right for me), but anything less than this would have been unfair to the people I was with. I laud those who work on development issues at home, but I think there is something very important to be gained from living outside of your culture and country. It also allows one to appreciate the immense power that the U.S. exerts on the rest of the world. Peace Corps isn’t for everyone, and that my positive tenure may not be the norm. But I also want my students to make an informed choice, and I hope that they are open to considering what was for me a life-altering experience.
William G. Moseley is an associate professor of geography at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He was an agricultural volunteer in Mali from 1987–89. He is married to another Mali RPCV, Julia Earl, and they have two children, Ben and Sophie.
Slash and Burn
Kelly McCorkendale
Giving thanks thousands of miles from home—making “there” home.
The Malagasy had taken me for crazy when they heard the deep breath of defeat I exhaled in the face of freshly butchered cow. Yet, now, as I glanced out of my hut to see Michelle holding two chickens—their necks weeping red—I breathed with ease. This dinner would be special, and recent death no longer hindered me. We planned an ambitious meal; considering we had no oven, only a broken two-burner hot plate and a scrappy tin cooker that burned charred rainforest, my excitement heightened.
We’d be cooking on ravinala, I thought, or eucalyptus. I hoped not. Even with sanctions, Madagascar was being stripped of its beauty. My village on the east coast of “L’ille de passion,” or, Mad Land, as I lovingly called this African island, heeded little conservation warning. Survival defined a person’s life, and survival was sometimes “slash and burn.” That understood and partially accepted, my friends and I anticipated the feast for which we had gathered, that Saturday after the holiday exalting the gift of survival: Thanksgiving.
We gathered Saturday because all of us had worked Thursday: teaching, weighing babies or farming, but this Thanksgiving would resemble most. I imagined those first few that the Pilgrims had shared with Native Americans despite not feasting on November’s third Thursday. Though no Malagasy joined us, we bowed, in our way, to those who, in our years there, had ever lit a fire for us, stripped a litchi of its shell, or had taken us to market and taught us to barter.
The Malagasy, like the Indians to our Pilgrim ancestors, noticed our distinct whiteness. “Monaohona vazaha.” Vazaha implied paleness. Meant foreignness. And insinuated ignorance—an ignorance we unwittingly accepted.
At first, we were lost without comfort—electricity, toilet, faucet. I asked questions from dawn until dusk: What’s this? Are you sure I can eat that? You want me to sit where? Prior experience certainly did not apply to cooking in my brave, new world. I now had to assemble an oven, pluck chickens and soften plantains, but I was still a vazaha—rejecting cooking lessons because I had gone to Madagascar to save the world, not to eat.
A man named Gaby had tried to teach us basic skills during training—a ten-week period after we first arrived in Mad Land. I had imagined there would be wild fruits at copious markets, but I never contemplated the art of baking in the developing world or the edibility of meat colored ruby. Gaby, our official cook, invited us into his kitchen and tried to teach us how to make our favorites with limited tools. His delicious and warm brownies softened in my mouth while I reasoned that I would be too busy teaching, studying Malagasy and developing life-skills projects to dream of baking sweets. Besides, I was sure that cooking would be instinctual. I could, after all, boil noodles, slice an onion, and sauté tomatoes. God knew, I had little desire to stray from these safe staples after the famadihina.
A famadihina is a celebration held every few years whereupon Malagasy families remove their relatives’ bones from tombs and rewrap them in new lambahoany, or cloth. There is moonshine and dancing and a traditional fatty pork meal of whole pig. My group had attended one such event.
We sat at a long wooden table—hands folded in our laps, underneath a wet weather tarp—and practiced our language. Bowls of vary mena—red rice—and plates of pork steamed with oil. The Malagasy, always gracious to guests—especially the “exotic”—sought to please us. We received a second plate of fresh pig to share. I asked a friend to dish out more. He plunged in and pulled up an entire jaw—complete with teeth—and grimaced, a stout laugh escaping from mid-throat. I declined.
As soon as I got to go to the capital, I gorged myself at Hotel De France on the familiar—hamburgers.
Nearly eighteen months later, it seemed another girl had consumed both meals.
In Vatomandry, I awaited my five closest American friends, just as eager to see them as they were to make the trek to my beach. The ocean roared me awake each morning, and a sea breeze often shook me to sleep—that and the sound of pigs making sweet love beyond my yard.
Litchis, papaya, ampalibe, zaty, mangoes, oranges, passion fruit, corresol, and even watermelon abounded; I lived a dream friends envied. My markets’ generous offerings in mind, we had planned our meal via letter
s: coconut chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, sautéed carrots and green beans, stuffing, banana bread and as much beer as we could afford. We would pool our resources to purchase these extravagances—spare no expense—butter, flour, coconut, and rum.
Stephanie had arrived a day early. When the pigs’ play awoke me, a familiar hollow feeling had invaded my belly: the hungry/full symptom of giardia. In America, we see doctors for this. In Madagascar, I co-existed with it for two years. It lay latent, waiting to strike once every month. Still, I followed Stephanie to market where we bartered for six kilos of vegetables and fruit. On our walk home, we stopped at a hotely—a crude restaurant similar in appearance to a Depression-era shanty—and ordered fish for lunch. As we dug in, my stomach imploded. I rushed to the kabone, or hole-in-the-ground. Once. Twice. Three times in fifteen minutes. Stephanie looked up at me from her food. I was flushed, sweaty and doubled over.
She couldn’t help me; by then I had accepted giardia as my companion—a forbidden lover to whom I abandoned reason with every rendezvous. Minute bacteria slunk in and rooted deeper into my intestines every month, for I no longer feared what I ate, how I cleaned it or where I bought it.
During training, after the pig jaw incident, I had refused to eat in a hotely. By Thanksgiving, I had fallen in love with these reminders of bar-food-gone-bad at a hole-in-the-wall.
When I had first arrived in my village, I had tiptoed around most foods like one circles an elephant—peculiar, obvious and maybe even deadly—at the front door. My first meal in Vatomandry had been Quaker Oats—a gift I pulled from a care package after I waved my Jeep/escort goodbye.
My shoulders had curled as my chest sunk and spine condensed around my abdomen: instant apprehension. I went inside my house for the first time alone. In my concrete hut, I eyed the skeletal kitchen and approached the stove. It was hooked to a gas bottle, so I turned the knob and heard a faint click. Fire flared. I reveled in joy.