The research I did while writing the book on the Peace Corps suggested quite strongly that a significant number of volunteers went on to make substantial additional contributions to the original Peace Corps goals after their years of service. My data came mainly from the hundreds of volunteers who served in the Philippines during the 1970s but I suspect that the results would be replicated using any other similar data base. In a nutshell the data showed that ‘making a difference’ continued to be an important part of their lives.

However, two of my colleagues from those years have accomplished, and continue to accomplish, remarkable feats that go well beyond what most of us could even think about, let alone do. Joe and Pat Richter, volunteers in the Philippines during the seventies, and Phil and Lynn Lilienthal, Ethiopia volunteers during the sixties and staff members in the Philippines and Thailand during the seventies, are engaged in international activities that draw admiration and support from literally thousands of people around the world.

I’ll save the Lilienthals’ Global Camps Africa for my next posting and today concentrate on the Richters’ FARMS International.

For over 45 years FARMS International, a faith-based program out of Knife River, Minnesota, has provided initial leadership, funding, and ongoing support to an ever growing list of countries to help the poor out of poverty while preserving their individual dignity and avoiding dependence. FARMS works through often-struggling Christian churches to provide seed money to members with small business aspirations, but no capital. Some projects and their outcomes in Rwanda are described in a pdf document that can be downloaded using Adobe Acrobat.

Typically, FARMS loans a small amount of money, often less than two hundred dollars, to finance the purchase of a piece of equipment, some inventory, an animal, some seed and fertilizer, and the like to begin a small business. FARMS relies on local church leadership to select the recipients and to provide ongoing program support.  The repaid loans, the rate of which approaches 100%, are then recycled, and the process begins anew.

The amazing thing is that the big, important development agencies in recent years have discovered the magic of ‘micro’ loans. FARMS has been doing it for decades!

Pat and Joe joined FARMS when it was little more than an idea and have played major roles in its development over the years from that initial embryonic stage to having a dynamic presence in twelve countries, the Philippines, appropriately, being one of them. Joe is the Executive Director of FARMS International and Pat handles administrative matters. Having following him and his work for a number of years leads me to think that he has probably logged more miles in the developing world that most of us have taken breaths.

Most of us can’t aspire to be doing the work the Richters do, but we can support them in theirs. Please think about joining me in doing so by googling FARMS International and following the directions.

During the spring of 1974, Mary and I attended a regional meeting of Peace Corps Country Directors, their wives and officials from Peace Corps headquarters in Washington in the hill town of Chiang-Mai in northern Thailand.  The business of the meeting did not overly interfere with our sight-seeing, sampling the local cuisine and buying some of the delightful artifacts made by local Thai craftsmen.  We were, however, eager for even more adventure than could be had in this exotic corner of the world.

So, a day or two after all of the other participants left Chiang-Mai, Mary and I flew from Chiang-Mai to Vientiane, the capital of Laos.  Laos at that time was enjoying one of its rare moments of peace - really a truce in its civil war, as it soon turned out, not a real peace - and we wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to visit.  We were surprised to discover that Vientiane retained a very distinct French colonial atmosphere even some years after the French had been forced out of their former Asian colonies.  The restaurants were great, the wine not too bad, and the city orderly and manageable.  Vientiane turned out to be a fine place to visit except for one thing: we were looking for adventure and there was none to be had in this cosmopolitan city.

Some folks we met told us about a town in the far north of the country called Louangprabang that had become a favorite destination for the hoards of ‘world travelers’ then circling the globe.  The term ‘world traveler’ was the polite name given to the vagabonds produced by the turmoil of the 1960s who were bringing ‘drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll’ to the unsuspecting citizens of many third-world countries where the living was cheap and anti-drug laws non-existent or very forgiving.  We learned that Louangprabang was the traditional home of the Laotian royal family and a place where old ways continued to be honored, meaning no French influence.  The town sat on a quiet stretch of the Mekong River and was the stepping off point for some truly remarkable one-day trips to nearby points of interest.  A week in Luoangprabang was just what we needed.

Early one morning we joined a motley collection of other folks and boarded an old DC-3 flown by Laotian Airlines to make the short trip to the former capital.  One of our fellow travelers was an attractive young woman who had made the trip several times.  She helped us plan our stay and was full of good suggestions, many of which we followed in the days to come.  In the midst of talking with us she made an offhand comment concerning the local outdoor market - a ‘must-see’ place in her opinion - to the effect that the law was so loosely applied in Louangprabang that market vendors openly sold marijuana to one and all.

Now, to people under the age of thirty during the 1970s such a comment would have been immediately recognized as information of the most important kind.  It would have been stored safely away and acted upon as soon as they reached the market.  We were the products of an earlier generation and, in fact, quite against the use of marijuana or any other kind of drug.  (Of course it was a matter of common knowledge among our kind that gin, wine, and beer were not drugs to be confused with those other ‘controlled substances.’)   Little did we know that the devil, himself, had arranged to teach us a couple of lessons.

As we thought about this exotic market we began to see a risk free opportunity to sample this new craze among the young.  Surely, we told ourselves, we would be better able to teach our children about the dangers of marijuana if we had some first hand experience on which to base our certain-to-be-wise counsel.  And, how could we understand the younger generation if we could not ’speak’ its language.  Within a couple of days we had made the decision to ’sacrifice’ ourselves in the interest of the greater good.

All Asian markets are large, nearly chaotic, dusty (or damp in the rainy season), filled with goods for which we outsiders have no names and places of immense fascination for those who can conquer their unease in such a foreign environment.  After a bit of looking we found the marijuana sellers section of the market.  As is the custom sellers of like goods tend to concentrate in the same location and here we found row after row of neatly rolled and stacked individual ‘joints,’ although we could not really say ‘joint’ with anything like the authority someone half our age would have.  Nevertheless, using universally understood non-verbal symbols of communication I managed to buy six of the most expensive of the items on sale.  (This was no time for economizing; nothing but the best for our educational experiment.)

We walked to the nearby banks of the slow moving Mekong River, found a bench with a fine water view, and settled down.  Mary had decided to ’stand watch’ during the first event so I proceeded to light up.  I inhaled carefully and not too deeply at first.  This proved to be a good thing because the smoke was pretty harsh.  But I was no wimp!  I took deeper and deeper drags waiting for the magic moment when the promised ‘high’ would descend.  Minutes passed.  I took more drags.  Nothing happened, except I got a bit dizzy from the unaccustomed smoke in my lungs.  Then I remembered hearing that often first time users get no ‘kick’ because they are too tense.  OK, we’ll try again this evening, I said to Mary.

Damn!  The same thing happened that night in our hotel room.  My conclusion was that this marijuana stuff would never pose a commercial threat to those old standbys one bought at the local package store.

The next morning when we met a young fellow from the plane I described my experiences with marijuana.  “Let me see that stuff,” he said.  I handed my remaining four ‘joints’ to him.  After a quick look he said, having no regard for my being many years his senior, “You idiot.  That’s tobacco!”

During the early years one of the most exciting, challenging, and remote places in the Peace Corps world was the country of Afghanistan. The first contingent of volunteers entered the country in 1962 with many of them admitting they had to look it up on a world map to find out where they were heading. The last contingent left in 1978 as a 30-plus-year period of violent military, political, and religious turmoil began. As everyone who pays the slightest attention to current events knows, that situation remains unchanged – although some of the players have changed – and Afghanistan desperately needs a ‘fix.’

How very different that is from the situation volunteers encountered during the 60s and 70s. Based on the ‘official’ visits I made as Regional Director and Deputy Director and the extended visit my family and I made on our way back from the Philippines ( like most Peace Corps folks we took the long way home) Afghanistan not only tested volunteers’ resolve and but it also rewarded them with an eye-opening and heart-warming experience.

For virtually all of the volunteers and staff this was their first encounter with a Muslim culture, let alone a very traditional one. And it was an encounter, unlike today, where few had ever given any serious thought to what being a Muslim might mean. Couple that with the rather dramatic changes that were occurring in American culture as the sixties progressed – think sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll – and the term ‘culture clash’ takes on a much more profound meaning.

Almost all of us were fooled by the ‘modernity’ of Kabul. Many men wore coats and ties, women were in the workforce and dressed as an American would expect, cars and trucks plied the roadways, alcoholic drinks could be found, hundreds of young WT’s – which stood for ‘world travelers’ – roamed the streets looking for readily available marijuana and stronger stuff if one wished, and electricity was in abundance. One could even keep up with fashion trends at the local markets where used American-made clothing was sold.

A provincial gathering spot; not a woman in sight

Of course all of that changed when we ventured beyond the city limits. Western dress disappeared; women were uniformly covered from head to foot, if they were seen at all; motorized transport was replaced by animal power; and those of us ‘from away’ learned to pay special attention to the ‘don’t drink the water, don’t eat the food’ advice we had been given by the old hands. One of the most memorable ‘tricks’ we learned was to start out each day with a large supply of the ubiquitous cucumbers, which could be peeled and eaten without worry as a source of water.  

In time what was so exotic in the beginning became ordinary. Volunteers soon learned to cherish the famed Afghani hospitality. Local friends could be counted on to help out when things got tough, communication became easier as language skills improved, and the recognition of similarities replaced the emphasis on differences. One day several of us were hiking along a path that paralleled a steep cliff in which there were several caves. We were startled to see that families made their homes in the caves. I couldn’t resist the thought, ‘How primitive.’ Then, while we exchanged smiles with a young mother holding her infant, the child began to cry. Without a moment’s hesitation the mother reached into her bodice, pulled out a plastic pacifier, and popped it into the baby’s mouth. Obviously ‘primitive’ was the wrong word.

Much of the Afghani landscape is austere, arid, even frightening. These days we often hear news people and commentators refer to it as being like a ‘moonscape,’ and that is fitting. On one of my trips to Afghanistan the American Embassy kindly provided an aging DC3 to ferry me about while visiting volunteer sites. On the way back to Kabul we ‘lost’ one of the plane’s two engines. Looking out the window I could see two things: a propeller holding shockingly still, and a pock-marked, mountainous terrain below. All I could think was “We’re going down into that wasteland never to be found again!” Not to worry. The pilot, knowing that DC3s can fly on one engine, had purposely cut off the silent engine when it overheated, and we landed safely. (I have always wondered if the Embassy provided the plane, as an embassy earlier had done in Africa, because it wanted a cover for an aerial mapping operation of an increasingly important part of the world.  Who knows?)

For a wonderful collection of memories of the Peace Corps in Afghanistan go to http://peacecorpsonline.org/messages/messages/2629/2016140.html and read Walter Blass’s account of his time there as Country Director. The stories are uniquely Afghani while simultaneously being typical Peace Corps narratives.

The Peace Corps program in Afghanistan was a good one. Like all programs it had its successes and its failures but on balance it did what the Peace Corps does best: it provided meaningful assistance to a country and people in need; it created goodwill among peoples of different cultures; and, it gave some Americans a life-changing experience from which they and the country that sent them abroad still benefit. I was genuinely troubled when I learned in 1978 that the program had been cancelled because of volunteer safety concerns. Surely, I thought, we – Peace Corps folks never stop using the word ‘we’ – could have stuck it out. Thirty-plus years of experience show how wrong I was, but still . . . ?

Today Afghanistan starts and ends every newscast. I wish I believed that some of the reporters had the deeper understanding of the country and its people that RPCVs have. I fear that they don’t. Maybe as a start we could help the radio and TV reporters learn how to pronounce ‘Kabul.’ We were taught to think of the word ‘cobble’ (as in ‘cobblestone’). Is that right? Let’s hear from some of the people who made PC/A a reality!