Since 1992 Peace Corps Writers has annually recognized the outstanding writing of Peace Corps Volunteers both returned and still in service. One of the awards is the Peace Corps Experience Award given to the writer of a short piece that best captures the experience of being a Peace Corps Volunteer. We will be sharing the past Peace Corps Experience Award winners with our Peace Corps Worldwide readers over the next few weeks and begin with the very first from 1992 by Abigail Calkins Aguirre.

• • •

Development Is Down This Road

by Abigail Calkins Aguirre
(Cameroon 1987–90)

FEW RECOGNIZE ME without my trademark Suzuki. Now I have this red Yamaha DT they gave me to replace it. I’m still white, though, or so they keep insisting as I pass by the shouting voices trying to get me to stop to do a favor, chat, or taste the latest in palm wine. I know I have a bike, but how do you say “I’m not a taxi” in the local language? I’m late, I’m in a hurry, I’ve got to help a women’s group plant rows of plantains and pineapple in their community farm. This road could jostle my insides right out of me. My thighs are sore from being abused as non-stop shock absorbers. Yet, nothing beats a forestial commute: a time to take in the bushmeat hanging for sale along the way. Someone must have made the road longer today; all my landmarks keep reappearing. Didn’t I pass that tree already? No, wait, here we go, time to cross the dreaded swamp. Water’s high this morning, but I’m pretty sure I can make it through, feet up in the air, water splashing to the sides, engine roaring and . . . it dies. Shit! Is it possible to kick-start this thing without putting my feet down? I balance momentarily, contemplating the impossible. Reluctantly, I submerge my wonderful, quickly aging leather boots, feeling them flood, soaking my jeans up to my thighs. I dismount and push the bike grudgingly through the water to the other side. I hate this job, I hate this job, I hate this job. The bathers must wonder about the crazy white woman talking to herself. One little girl is crying because my yellow helmet makes me look like a monster. So I take it off. She starts shrieking. White people are ghosts. White people have funny hair and noses. White people who ride motos with helmets have strange markings of dust on their faces. Unable to pacify the kid, I shove on to the village, which is blissfully close. The president of the women’s group is waiting for me. Sloshing over to her, I rip off my gloves and helmet to embrace her. At last, we can get down to business. Drums sound nearby. Uh oh . . . not drums! Not again! Not after this hour and a half drive! Not after crossing the dreaded swamp! The president leads me to a group of dancing women, who each hug me and invite me to join them in celebration of an old man who lies dead on a cot. We dance, and I try to conceal my discomfort in celebrating death, even of an old man. No community farms today, folks, development will have to wait. When the drums finally stop, the group escorts me somewhat officially to the president’s house. They tell me they want to try making soap. This, after all, is the kind of technical know-how a white woman on a red motorcycle should have. Frankly, I don’t have the first clue about soap-making. They unknowingly introduce me to the process: lye, blanched palm oil and three hours of stirring. The women are singing songs, songs about soap, and my heart lifts as I help them stir. Someone brings me corn on the cob and warm beer. I look around: Such strength! These women with wide, open faces and old but colorful scarves wrapped around their hair, gossiping and laughing and occasionally arguing. I love this job, this job is great, I wouldn’t miss this job for the world. You women are wonderful, every one of you: you make your own soap, so what if you won’t work in your community farm? Soap classifies as development, doesn’t it? Thunder rumbles in the distance. It is getting late. I say: “Would it bother you if I leave now; I need to return home,” and they look bothered and tell me that I must stay until the soap is finished. I oblige helplessly, pushing thunder out of my mind. More singing, stirring and bickering, but at last the women pour the thick green soap into the square wooden mold and I take out my camera to capture the triumph. (I will say back home, “And this was the day we made soap!”) The group presents me with a gift: a splendid, singular egg, beautiful and simple. It is an egg that I will eat with joy. That is, if it makes it home intact. That is, if I make it home intact. Speaking my local language thank yous and goodbyes, I return grimly to my red chariot. So we meet again, beast. The swamp provides no challenge this time since my socks and jeans are still damp. My fears rest more with the deep, black mass of clouds to my left. How fast do I have to drive to arrive home before the storm hits? If I go 264 km/hr, I could be in my house in ten minutes. Chickens and children will fly. Cars will flip over behind me, and I will never even hear the fracas. This motor is loud, this yellow padded cage on my head, heavy. Please don’t rain, please don’t rain, please don’t rain. The first drops splash on my nose, followed quickly by a torrential downpour, drenching me almost immediately, a cold and cruel wet seeping beneath my kidney belt, sparing nothing. Wasn’t it supposed to be warm in Africa? Swearing through my chattering teeth, I am forced to continue since there is no house in sight. Why do I do this? Why? I laugh in my ridiculous misery. Finally, I pull into a village where a group of men grills corn on a small fire, and they invite me to warm myself by it until the rain subsides. It helps. I stare out at the storm and the road: all the carefree days I glided past this village on dry dirt and never even appreciated my good fortune. Ten kilometers remain between me and my house. Streams of muddy water flood the road, redefining it. Soon it will look like chocolate frosting. Back to the bike, the helmet, and the last drizzle of rain. Home is just around the next few bends.

• • •

Abigail Calkins Aguirre was a community development Volunteer in Abong-Mbang, Cameroon from 1987 to 1990 where she worked with women’s groups in ten villages. Aguirre has a Master of Public Administration/ International Development from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and French from Tufts University.

Aguirre currently lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband and two daughters. She is pursuing a Masters of Fine Arts in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities
by Nancy Sellin
iUniverse 2009

Reviewed by Leita Kaldi Davis (Senegal 1993-96)

Nancy Sellin’s Avoid Mosquitoes and Other Impossibilities is a memoir of her Peace Corps service in Liberia in the 1960s and her life in general, with vivid insights into what it meant to be a young woman of that era.  Being of “a certain age” myself I was painfully reminded of the pressures put upon young women by a male-dominated white society, the experimental phase of contraceptives when we all got fat and grouchy, the naïvete of sexual encounters that were either wanton or wanting, and the secret longing for adventure and liberation.

Nancy’s husband, Dale, convinces her to leave Alaska with him to join Peace Corps shortly after their marriage. They both have teaching assignments and while Dale is fulfilled in his structured high school, Nancy struggles with sporadic elementary classes where teaching is done by rote and with switches. She eventually holds lessons in her house for gregarious students as well as teachers who must leave their switches at the door. There is little conflict between the Sellins, their colleagues or neighbors and, in fact, their daily life is congenial and even easy by PCV standards.  They live in what looks like a “modern ranch style house, love their cheerful, efficient houseboy and all the people who pass by their house with affectionate greetings on their way to fetch water.  Cultural shocks such as people having more than one mate or putting a dozen red peppers into a stew resonate, typically, as eye-openers about moving beyond one’s limits and questioning one’s values.  While each chapter is a fascinating, mostly humorous story of life in Liberia, a dark thread of Nancy’s dissatisfaction with her marriage and underlying depression weaves through the narrative.  Finally, increasing migraine headaches and mood swings caused in part by those early contraceptives culminate in the Sellins’ early  repatriation.  Their marriage ends six years later and Nancy goes to New York to fulfill herself as an actress and to view her unforgettable experience in Liberia “through her own eyes.”

Sellin’s writing voice is clear, charmingly personal, sometimes self-deprecating (insisting on the folly of hair spray and padded bras in the African heat) and sometimes poetic (”Giant ceiling fans hovered over us like swooping eagles.”)  She nimbly manoeuvers the reader back and forth between her distant past, her PCV present and her post-Peace Corps future.  Her account of Liberia during the reign of President Tubman is a nostalgic document in view of the country’s long history of brutal conflict.  She describes decent schools, peaceful villages and Monrovia as a relatively thriving capital.  Near the end of their tour, Nancy and Dale agonize over their decision not to adopt a Liberian baby and many years later they “risk sadness and regret” wondering if she survived the decades of violence.

As a member of UNA/USA Sarasota I’m involved in a project to raise funds for education in Liberia. I also direct a book club for UNIFEM/USA and we recently read Helene Cooper’s The House on Sugar Beach: In Search of an African Childhood, a moving account of growing up innocent in Liberia and coming of age with Samuel Doe’s regime. Nancy Sellin’s book holds another mirror up to that tentative piece of history.  It would surely be of interest to Friends of Liberia. Under President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson Liberia is limping back to recovery and one sure sign of its progress is the fact that Peace Corps Response is paving the way for Peace Corps’ return.

Leita Kaldi Davis worked for the United Nations in New York and UNESCO in Paris, for international development programs at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and Harvard University.  She worked with Roma (Gypsies) for fifteen years, became  a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal at the age of fifty-five, then went on to work for the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti for five years.  She retired in Florida in 2002.

This is a piece by Dick Lipez  who after his Peace Corps tour (Ethiopia 1962-64) worked in the famed Charlie Peters Evaluation Division of the Peace Corps. He then went on to become a successful novelist and editorial writer at the Berkshire Eagle and author of gay detective novels.

• • •

Attention Peace Corps authors: Here’s a good idea for an anthology.  I don’t have the time to edit it — I have two other books I keep telling people I’m writing—but I’m a prime candidate to contribute to the collection.  It would be called Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps.

We all have lists.  I get chills when I run down mine.  Some of these blunders are amusing, but others are so excruciatingly dumb that no one else should ever be allowed to know about them.  Unless, of course, other volunteers were there at the time, and maybe even participated in the dumbness.  You know who you are.

I got the dumb-anthology idea when guilt and embarrassment led me to take Thai language lessons.  My Peace Corps tour was in Ethiopia, but in recent years my (actual) spouse Joe Wheaton and I have spent about eight weeks of each winter in Thailand.  I’m there now.  It is possible for farangs to get by in Thailand with a few Thai greetings and polite phrases.  Some Thais speak excellent English, and quite a few bumble along in English with a cheerful ineptitude that I have an enjoyable time privately snickering at.

When I got back to Bangkok from visiting Burma recently, a hotel desk clerk who knows me said, “Bama lane?”

“Uh, sorry?”

She said it again.  “Bama lane?  Bama lane?”

Then I got it.  The woman had asked me if it had rained in Burma.

If the Thais are unembarrasses rattling off imperfect English, I finally asked myself, why should I arrogantly refuse to speak Thai just as clumsily?  What exactly is my problem?

I had no good answer to that question except the nagging memory of one of my dumbest Peace Corps moments.  In the fall of 1963, in Addis Ababa, I was asked by the Shimeles Habte School headmaster, Tickaher Hailu, to deliver the United Nations Day speech to the school assembly.

Insanely, I decided to give the speech in Amharic.  My Amharic was poor, limited to not much beyond, Where is the railway station?

(”Babur tabyaw, yet new?”  Funny how those things stick.)

The Ethiopian teacher helping me translate my remarks into Amharic kept suggesting that perhaps I should give the short speech in English.  The students in the upper grades would follow it well enough, he pointed out.  But oh no, we’re the Peace Corps, we ride with the people, thought I.  So I forged ahead and did what I had threatened to do.

Now when I look back, I know what actually took place in that sunny schoolyard, with several hundred middle and secondary school boys and girls squinting up at me.  What they must have been taking in was not my well-considered remarks invoking the virtues of enlightened internationalism and the spirit of JFK.  What they were actually hearing was, “Bama lane?  Bama lane?”

Luckily, both the students and teachers at Shimeles were too polite—this was very Ethiopian of them—to clutch their sides with laughter during the speech or to utter a word to me afterwards.

Here is another dumb Peace Corps-related story for the anthology, thankfully not mine.  A recent Bangkok Post letter to the editor chastises former Thailand PCV T.F. Rhoden.  The letter writer, Jack Wilson, of Nakhon Phanom, complains that Rhoden’s recently published book, Outrageous Thai: Slang, Curses and Epithets, will get readers in trouble. Wilson says brandishing some of Rhoden’s language in a bar or karaoke club could get the user knifed or shot.  Rhoden, Wilson writes, “acknowledges in the book that he ‘wasted’ his 20s in Thailand, even though he was a Peace Corps volunteer, and is putting his entire Thai experience behind him.” Wilson speculates that Rhoden “most likely learned and practiced his slang with young Thai girls who thought it was cute and funny to teach a farang how to curse.”

It sounds like Rhoden might be a major contributor to the anthology-of-dumb, maybe even leaving the rest of us in the dust.

Meanwhile, I am proceeding with my Thai lessons, going around saying things like — as I did yesterday — “Pom gow khao.”  That’s, “I the number nine rice.”
So an anthology of post-Peace Corps dumbness is a possibility too.

Bama lane?

Christopher Conlon (Botswana 1988-90) novel Midnight on Mourn Street published by Earthling Publications in May 2008 has been nominated for The Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association of America. It was nominated in the  category of Superior Achievement in a First Novel. The award will be presented in June, in Burbank, California. Paul Shovlin (Moldova 1996-98) in his PeaceCorpsWriters review compared Conlon to Poe, saying, “[its], an apt comparison, especially in terms of atmosphere, which Conlon is adept at establishing. The feeling of gloom and dark brooding that pervades the novel is one of its strongest points.”

The Harry Ransom Center, a humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin, has acquired Charles Larson’s (Nigeria 1962-64) collection of African, African-American and Native-American literature.  Larson, a professor at American University, is well known as an authority on African and Third World writers.
     This collection includes signed and inscribed books, rare publications and unique manuscripts and letters. There are more than 1,100 books by African writers, 250 books by African-American and Caribbean writers, and 60 books by Native-American writers.
     “I began reading African writers in 1962 when I was a Peace Corps volunteer,” said Larson.  “It was immediately apparent to me that a rich and exciting literature was emerging across the continent.  My interests expanded when I returned to the United States and discovered similarly important (though sadly overlooked) writing by African-American and American Indian writers.  I feel as if I’ve been in a privileged position to observe so many great writers during what is fast approaching a half century.”
     Larson has edited collections of African writers, going back to 1970, and is  the author of several novels, as well as, academic books.
     Among the documents that Larson has given the library are substantial correspondence with the South Africa/Botswana novelist Bessie Head and the Somali novelist Nuruddin Falah, research material and correspondence with African writers for Larson’s books on African literature and publishing. There is also the manuscript of the unpublished autobiography of popular Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi.
     For anyone who can attend, the University of Texas at Austin is hosting the 2009 Africa History Conference this weekend, March 27-29.   In conjunction with the conference, the Director’s Gallery will host a display of materials from the Ransom Center’s African literature collection, including manuscripts and correspondence by Head, Mazisi Kunene, Es’kia Mphahlele and Wole Soyinka, historical materials dating back to the Second Boer War and audio recordings of Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Okot p’Bitek and Joe de Graft. The Director’s Gallery, on the third floor of the Ransom Center.

For anyone who has traveled or hopes to travel to this lesser known corner of Central Asia’s ancient Silk Road, Roaming Kyrgzstan’s cover photo captures some of the magic that lies within this mountain nation’s truly majestic and rugged landscapes. 

Roaming Kyrgyzstan: Beyond the Tourist Track
by Jessica Jacobson (Senegal 1997)
IUniverse,Inc.,
November 2008
216 pages
$17.95

Reviewed by Catherine Varchaver (PC Staff, Kyrgyzstan 1995-97)

For anyone who has traveled or hopes to travel to this lesser known corner of Central Asia’s ancient Silk Road, Roaming Kyrgzstan’s cover photo captures some of the magic that lies within this mountain nation’s truly majestic and rugged landscapes.

Turning past the seductive cover, the reader encounters something not unlike Kyrgyzstan’s cities and towns-a richness of content and culture hidden beneath a distractingly unsophisticated and even off-putting presentation. Kyrgyzstan’s natural topography ranges from exotic to breath-taking, but the Soviet influence on local architecture erased a good bit of the visible, traditional charm in the populated areas.  Soviet style concrete block architecture is a turn off, but if you can get past that, there is a world worth getting to know behind the cinder block facades.

One of the downsides of self-publishing is the lack of professional editing and formatting. For those of us who are visually sensitive, the ’80’s typewriter style headings in this guide, all underlined, with indented informational paragraphs detract from the short but reasonably informative travel guide listings organized by regions. The photos inside are poor quality and the one map too small to be useful.

That said, Jessica Jacobson’s experience living in Kyrgyzstan gives life to this guide as she reveals a true familiarity with the facets of life and a people as only a former Peace Corps Volunteer can.  As the back cover bio tells us, Jacobson is fluent in Russian and spent two and a half years doing some undisclosed work in Kyrgyzstan. She clearly soaked up the cross-cultural plenty in this former Soviet nation where you see Russian men at bus stops squatting alongside ethnic Kyrgyz (or Kazak, Uzbek, Uigur, Tatar); and Kyrgyz shepherd families pouring small bowls of hot tea from Russian samovars outside traditional wool yurts. While city-dwellers may be modernizing in many ways, Kyrgyz country folk still drink fermented mare’s milk and live beneath snow-capped mountains in the north; while in the south, you find camels instead of horses and desert heat at the edges of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan instead of lush greenery or snow.

To her credit, Jacobson raises her travel guide to a higher level with 12 journal-like vignettes strewn throughout that detail a variety of encounters and cultural observations.  She paints a colorful picture of life in this complex, multi-ethnic country and manages to infuse her narratives with historical and personal detail.  The final result is interesting but only up to a point. The writing is ultimately uneven and conjures little in the way of emotion or socio-political ah-hah’s.

Coming from an author who was a Peace Corps Volunteer (Senegal ‘97), I expected more of a chatty, this-is-what-you-can-expect-if-you-visit narrative style.  The fact that Jacobson is fluent in Russian means that she’s never had the experience of traveling in Kyrgyzstan without being able to communicate with most locals. Maybe that’s why this guide doesn’t focus much on how to deal with communication issues you might encounter, especially once you leave the capital, Bishkek.

And for anyone who truly wants to experience the beauty and mystical mountain energies of this faraway Silk Road squiggle on the map, there is one mystifying omission. While it appears that Roaming Kyrgyzstan’s basic information and listing of places to stay, restaurants, and travel services are reasonably comprehensive, Shepherd’s Way Trekking (www.kyrgyztrek.com) is not included.  This superb horseback trekking service creates a unique tourist experience.  Run by a former English teacher, Ishen, also the son of a traditional Kyrgyz falcon hunter (like the one on the book’s cover), and his wife, Gulmira,  Shepherd’s Way offers over a dozen one- to 12-day full-service horseback trips that attract travelers from around the globe to explore the wonders of the Tien Shan or Mountains of Heaven.

So… Roaming Kyrgyzstan might be a guide worth tucking into a large suitcase for some side reading, but don’t forget to make sure you’ve put that Lonely Planet Guide in your carry-on bag.

Catherine Varchaver  spent several years on Peace Corps staff working as a desk officer, trainer and Associate Peace Corps Director for Education at Headquarters and overseas.  For the last ten years, she has worked in private practice, Body and Soul Nutrition, blending Eastern meets Western approaches to health.  Catherine’s blog on this website is Health: Holistically Speaking.

An RPCV writer who has published many, many successful books is writing one now on people who never seem to get sick. He is looking to interview them and he asked me if there is anyone in the community who while overseas discovered ways or herbs or methods that have kept them healthy. If you know of anyone let me know. Thanks.

In the early years of the Peace Corps, the agency provided each household of Volunteers with a book locker. The books were meant to provide leisure reading for the PCVs, and then to be left behind in schools, villages, and towns where the Volunteers served. There is some mystery as to who had the idea for the book lockers; one rumor has it that it came from first Peace Corps Director Sargent Shriver’s wife, Eunice.
Surely those books were a wonderful resource to any of the PCVs who thought of writing about the incomparable life they were living.
Since 1961 PCVs and Peace Corps Staff have been writing the story of their lives in the developing world, as well as writing about the world beyond the Peace Corps. Among the more than 1000 writers  who have served in the Peace Corps have written and published their books. Many of the books have been about the experience, others are travel books, works of fiction, and academic studies.
So, with a nod to the famous Peace Corps Book Locker, our site is offering Peace Corps writers the opportunity to have their books featured on the Book Locker.
In the days ahead we will list books of all types: novels, non-fiction, poetry, photography, essays, self-help, Peace Corps experience, books that have nothing to do with the Peace Corps - both commercial and self-published and available for sale.
If you are interested in joining the Book Locker and featuring your books for sale, let me know. Meanwhile check out the first books that are now up on the site.

BOOK REVIEW
Larry Lihosit discovered the Peace Corps Writers site a couple years back and has been sending his book our way for reviews and comments. Larry is ‘outside’ the main current of literature and commercial publishing and has successful published his own books of poetry and travel. He is proof that you do not need an agent, a big name, or connections to find your way into print. It is for that reason that we have him writing a column on this site. Here is a review of one of his books of poetry to prove that like all good writers, he can take criticism as well as give it.

Attack of the Claw and Other Poems about Teaching
by Lawrence F. Lihosit ( Honduras 1975–77)
A Book Company 2008
(Purchase book from publisher)

Reviewed by Ann Neelon (Senegal 1978-79)

For several years running, my sons have participated in the National Guild Auditions, in which out-of-state pianists-from, say, Colorado or California-fly in to evaluate local Kentucky piano students.  Until students begin playing intermediate repertoire, they are inevitably placed in the “Circle of Family and Friends”-a judgment that is not at all synonymous with failure, but rather with nascent piano skills and the forbearance of lots of parents and grandparents in the audience.  How adorable that his or her feet don’t reach the floor when he or she sits down to play the melody line of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” switching off between right and left hands!

I would place Lawrence F. Lihosit in the Peace-Corps-writer equivalent of the “Circle of Family and Friends.”  His poetry skills are nascent.  Ignorance is bliss.  He doesn’t knowwhat he doesn’t know–if it’s in lines, it must be a poem.  Still, Lihosit will hear some people, albeit not poets, clapping in the audience, mostly fellow teachers (or ex-teachers, like Lihosit himself) who have had it up to here with No Child Left Behind.

It so happens that on behalf of poetry, I am sympathetic to their cause. When my younger son entered fourth grade, my family hit a wall with NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND.   Maybe it was all the worksheets on changing similes to metaphors.  Maybe it was the fact that all the similes were really clichés anyway-cool as a cucumber, proud as a peacock, etc.-so they were being changed into deadmetaphors.  Maybe it was the new requirement that students do “graphic organizers” of poems instead of reading them aloud.  I don’t know, but it still pains my heart when I remember how my son-who never met a volume of poems by Shel Silverstein or Douglas Florian or Nancy Willard he didn’t want to read indefatigably at bedtime-came home spitting bullets about how much he hated poetry.

Lihosit admits in a preface, “Teaching is hard work.  It just didn’t pay enough.  So when a grade school principal offered me a contract to teach fifth grade, I ambled off in another direction.  Any cowboy who says he ain’t been throwed is a liar.” Attack of the Claw is at once Lihosit’s paean to the classroom he left behind and his dire warning about what schools are becoming thanks to federal law, which he characterizes variously as “a giant ripsaw” and “a paddle to beat our kids for a higher score.” Officials charged with improving scores page through dossiers “like giant raptors/hunched over bleeding prey.”

On the one hand, we’ve heard it all before (i.e., the jeremiads about sixth-graders who read on a second-grade level, about the broken promises of charter schools, about the educational deficits of foisting a competitive business model onto the public schools). On the other hand, on any battleground, there’s always room for a poet of witness. Lihoset is not that poet of witness, and the most he manages is the occasional interesting report from the front, as in “Feet Tapping,” where the speaker/teacher tests out “dead white guy orchestration” (read classical music) as a pedagogical tool, or as in “Change,” where he describes books and studies on the public schools “like rows of night creams next to the sleeping, sagging czar.” There are also moments of good fun, as in the title poem:

I winced my face
Like a giant pickle
Shook my claw
To hand

We all laughed
Practiced holding pencils
With hands
Not claws.

In terms of poetics, it’s like Lihoset took a video camera into the public schools and shot anything and everything.  “Thank you for reading to us/There’s a boy/in the girls’ bathroom,” reads “Thank You Note 2 For Student Teacher.”  In the reels and reels of unsophisticated footage, Lihoset got a few lucky takes.

ANN NEELON is the author of Easter Vigil, which won the Anhinga Prize for poetry.  Her poems have appeared most recently in Poetry Southeast.  She edits New Madrid journal and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Murray State University. In a prior life, she taught high school for five years. She also taught the equivalent of seventh and eighth grades while in Senegal in the Peace Corps.