Many conversations with new friends center on family. “Do you have brothers and sisters? Are you married? How many children? Where do they live? “ My conversations with young Afghan women are about these also, and the picture of American family life is often not pretty.
My only son lives on the other coast most of the year. We miss each other, but that is just the way it is today in many families. My Afghan friends must think it very sad that my one child, my son, is so far away. My only brother also lives far away, so visits are rare. Fortunately, my siblings visited our parents’ home when our kids were growing up. Now, however, with our parents gone and the kids grown and spread out, it’s hard to keep family traditions and values alive.
Our divorce rate, our school dropout rates, our college graduates’ debt burdens, the warehousing of our elderly - these family topics also come up when speaking with my Afghan friends. In speaking of marriage traditions, a friend in Kabul spoke of the father’s right to give his approval or not to a prospective husband whom the women of the family have chosen. Men can judge men better than women can, as women can other women, my friend explains. Given such a context, I hesitate to pass judgment.
We can share our customs and beliefs with one another, but we need to keep in mind that Afghans do not want our sympathy, in spite of images of vulnerable-looking, veiled women in our mass media.
They seek our willingness to learn about them and from them. We must share our weaknesses as a society as well as our strengths. If, in addition, we can stand with them against tyranny in all its forms and provide some resources for re-building, we’re all winners.
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Once again, Jill, your commentary is so pertinent and thought provoking. We are planning our annual weekend visit to our only child, a son, who also lives far away.
I have just finished rereading, by chance, an article in the Peace Corps Reader. My edition was published in 1969. The article is by B.P.R. Vithal and should be required reading for every Volunteer in training, today. His article is addressed to the Volunteer. Vithal brilliantly describes what is the role of the Volunteer and cautions that “It is not for you to change the system. Your only task is to try and understand it,…”
But for our purposes, this is the statement I find so interesting. Vithal writes:
“You have heard that one of our greatest needs is to break away from feudal loyalties and the joint family. The basis of these arguments is that the single-generation family alone can give the kind of motivation for material advancement and saving that is essential for economic development.” Wow.
I remember hearing the same argument in an Anthropology class in 1967 describing how important an obstacle the compadre system in Latin America was because family obligations keep individuals from advancing.
John Kennedy was right when he said, “Africa for the Africans.” He meant an end to colonialism. Through my Peace Corps service I learned the truth of that statement in another way, “Africa is for the Africans to do with as they wish.” We should always be ready to assist and advise other peoples, but we should never impose our system or guidance on them.
That being said I would stay away from any value judgements about one society versus the others. You may not like many aspects of the American society but it works for we Americans. And after having lived in 17 different countries, I can say it stacks up pretty well to any other.
Thanks so much for your thought-provoking response, Joey. It’s relevant in light of the upcoming election. Which way will we go as a nation: more individualism, more socialism? Do we have more confidence in the family given the current state of American families and the many living outside of such a unit, or more confidence in government given its current stalemates and deficits?
There was hard-nosed capitalism at work in my family as my parents protected their capital/investments yet shared limited amounts of their wealth with members of the extended family. When my husband and I helped a close friend with college expenses, my father shook his head in disbelief. We’ve repeated the “mistake” and agree these were two of our finer moments.
We are working to find a balance, doing what we can, and all the time questioning our ability to apply wisdom, foresight and fairness to our decisions. It can be exhausting, so we have a garden, bikes and movies/TV to distract us.
Leo, thanks for your response and some JFK perspective. A never-forgotten part of my Peace Corps training was a week on White River Apache Reservation as part of a diabetes-testing program. It began at the tribal council headquarters with a lecture from a brown man extolling us to note that the Apache have survived in spite of white man’s efforts to destroy the culture if not all the people.
Staying with a family of such survivors, seeing the poverty, and the dependence on the BIA, made it clear not all Americans are viewing the US through the same lens. I agree there are many fine institutions and a strong tradition of peaceful transfer of power from one elected government official to the next here. Pride in our nation blanketing over our wrong-headed policies as well as our right ones scares me though, particularly as I see it play out in Afghanistan.
I would submit that most Americans are well aware of our strengths and our short comings. I only suggest that on the whole we have done very well, especially when I compare our society to the some 16 others that I have seen close up. And once more, I oppose imposing our values and procedures on other nations. But we should assist when asked and the recipients of our assistance should understand that we work from our frame of references.
Speak for yourself, Leo.
It the right of those people in our country who have suffered from discrimination, disenfranchisement, exploitation, and slavery to say whether they believe “… on the whole we have done very well…” or not. That is their call, not yours nor mine.
I believe that we can learn from other cultures and countries. I think that Peace Corps women may have had a very different experience than men in the Peace Corps. We learned from women in other cultures in ways there were simply not available to Peace Corps men. I worked with midwives, who were non-literate and not clinically trained. I learned a great deal from them. I appreciate their values.
“But we should assist when asked and the recipients of our assistance should understand that we work from our frame of references.” I disagree with pronouncement, totally. Our frame of reference could be wrong or destructive. I believe in mutual cooperation.
Joey.
I do speak for myself, but based on living among the peoples of many other countries. I have had a rich education in many cultures and draw my conclusions from all of these. Based on this experience I will continue to aver that our culture and society stands tall among all those of the world. I believe my conclusion is bolstered by the some 2 million people each year who immigrate to the USA.
I believe your comment that Peace Corps women learned from other cultures in ways not available to Peace Corps men implies that somehow the women learned more or gained a better understanding of other cultures than did the men and as such is just about the most sexist statement I have ever heard. I disagree with your supposition completely.
As for your comment about frame of references, you imply that we should understand others, but they have no obligation to understand us. .
I,too, Leo, have lived among peoples of many other countries. I, too, have had a rich education in many cultures and draw my conclusion from all of these.
Weren’t you in the Foreign Service? Didn’t the Foreign Service lose an affirmative action case filed by women who had been discriminated against as employees of the Foreign Service? Now, if my facts are wrong, please disregard, I could certainly be mistaken on both accounts.
You don’t get to have it both ways. Are you arguing that male volunteers in the 60s in traditional cultures worked with midwives and women on the issues surrounding women’s health? If so, please, PLEASE, cite your sources. That would be very information information.
Correction: important information
Working with midwives is not the sum total of intercultural exchange.
I think that male Peace Corps Volunteers also learned from cultural exchange in ways that females could not. When you describe coaching a soccer team or teaching map reading, I believe you are talking about working with young men. My assumption is that female Peace Corps Volunteers, in that time and place, could not do that.
In Colombia, most bars in the area where I was assigned were men only. These were social centers where a lot of planning and cultural exchange occurred. Male Volunteers had access in ways that we did not.
We are far a field from Jill’s posting. That was not my intent,
Hey! You two are having way too much fun so I want to jump in here and kick some dirt too. Since the majority of PCVs have been and are females, it is fair to say that they have learned the most by absolute numbers. Go girl! Go!
I say Afghanistan for the Afghanis. We should have pulled our troops out long ago. I have no idea why President Obama not only did not pull the troops out earlier, but actually sent some 30,000 more. As it now stands we will probably have to leave before the end of this year and not in 2014. Then the Taliban can come back with their front man dressed in native garb and provide “enlightened” rule for the country.
What I have learned is that the first audience for the Third Goal should be RPCVs. We may have much in common, but our experiences in country are diverse and myriad. I think that there is a tendency to project our own experience on the rest of the RPCV community and that is really not valid. Witness Leo and I, who served at almost exactly the same time, and yet our conclusions are totally different. I am always amazed that other RPCVs don’t agree with me!
So, Lorenzo, your book “Peace Corps Experience: Write and Publish Your Memoir” by Lawrence F. Lihosit, should help further understanding among RPCVs. I will look forward to reading Leo’s.
Now in the aggregate, more women than men may have served in the Peace Corps. However, back in the day when I joined, there were far more men than women, not that that had anything to do with my decision to apply. The handwritten letter I wrote to Sargeant Shriver requesting to go with a group of young, male lawyers to Africa to codify tribal law, reflected my interest, solely in Constitutional law. I explained in the letter that while I wasn’t a lawyer, I could type. That letter has evidently not been preserved in any archive. And, I am sure that it had nothing to do with the invitation I got by almost return mail inviting me to join an all female group going to Colombia. But that is a different story, one I have been] working on for almost fifty years!
Well, my wife and I have been married for 32 years and she doesn’t agree with me much. The older we get, the less she agrees. Different viewpoints are healthy though. Time plays tricks on us. Recently, this blog had a lot of discussion about how the PC should return to recruiting couples. I just read a memoir by Robert V. Thurston (Life’s Treks and Trails: My Journey from Vale to Kathmandu).
Thurston’s book reminds me that sages walk amongst us, unnoticed for their own humility cloaks them. As a youngster with free-spirited parents, Thurston lived and studied in Mexico. After university studies in the motherland, he volunteered for the Peace Corps, post-service became a Peace Corps associate country director then, moved to the U.S. Agency for International Development (A.I.D.). This organization provides loans and technical expertise to foreign countries concerning development. Although the United States government provided such assistance for most of the twentieth century, such aid was consolidated by President Kennedy in 1961, including 8,600 federal employees. A controversial part of foreign policy, it included 2,900 employees in 2009. Thurston’s journey lasted two decades, about the same time that Odysseus needed to return home. In the author’s case, his work and travels took him to Venezuela, Belize, Honduras, Bolivia, India, Nepal and Indonesia.
Like most sages, Thurston is honest. He describes his 1968 Peace Corps training as “awful” and also notes that during his two-year assignment in Venezuela, the Peace Corps was experimenting with the recruitment of married couples. In fact, the author was recruited with his own wife. Of the total 57 in his training group sent to Venezuela, only 11 completed their service, representing an attrition rate of 81% (and he does not count those recruits who were sent home during “staging”). Very sobering.
The author is equally honest about A.I.D. When explaining American tax dollars at work in Bolivia, he concludes that it had become “a grab bag for local politicians and pork barrel projects.” Projects in India represented “a flow of kick-backs and pay-offs.”
Sprinkled throughout this memoir are adventures. Thurston met Evo Morales 20 years before his rise to the Bolivian presidency. In the 1980’s, Evo was the jefe máximo of coca growers, guarded by men carrying Uzis. Thurston describes how he and a volunteer were briefly lost along a maze of unpaved North Coast Honduran roads. He outlines how he dealt with a nude Peace Corps volunteer who kicked and punched in the air.
Anyone interested in American unarmed foreign policy should read this book. The author is thankful for his experiences and has no complaints. He and his book are products of the new Print-On-Demand revolution: publishing without censors. It is unusual and refreshing.
It is so important to also mention Jill Vickers’ documentary on the work of her group of PCV women who traveled throughout rural Afghanistan, vaccinating against smallpox. The documentary is “Once in Afghanistan”.
“I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world,” Obama said here Saturday when asked whether he believed in the concept of “American exceptionalism.” “. . . So I see no contradiction between believing that America has a continued extraordinary role in leading the world towards peace and prosperity and recognizing that that leadership is incumbent, depends on, our ability to create partnerships because we can’t solve these problems alone.” President Obama; Washington Post (4/5/09)
I think this reflects a practical position that we see playing out in the “Arab Spring.” “Extraordinary role” for sure with the material and intellectual resources we have. What I can’t stomach is any assumption that we hold the moral high ground. From the comments here, I imagine we can agree on that.
How Obama’s take on exceptionalism led to his surge in troops in Afghanistan is baffling to me, but I suspect it bought the Administration time, time to modify our intentions there and leave under better circumstances, better for both Afghans and Americans. Was it worth the lives lost and brutally damaged by such a decision? Is it too soon to say?