We easily forget the immensity of the challenges volunteers face when they find themselves in a new climate, especially when the tropics are concerned. When we talk about ‘culture shock’ we usually stress the difficulties involved in learning a new language, adapting to a new set of cultural norms, eating strange and exotic food, and having to do without all those familiar support structures. The weather hardly ever comes into the conversation.
As I recently learned, that is a mistake.
It has been more than thirty years since I was last in the Philippines; hell, it’s been twenty years since I was south of Kentucky. The memory of actually living in the tropics had long ago drifted off to some deep recess in my brain, or perhaps been transformed by those rose-colored glasses I seem to put on when I recall my Peace Corps years. All of that changed when my wife and I spent 2+ weeks in Costa Rica in December.
Costa Rica, which still has a Peace Corps presence, lies about 9.5 degrees north of the equator so it is well within the tropics. In fact it has about the same latitude as does the Philippines. I was astonished to realize just how much I had forgotten about the challenges of living in a tropical setting, although I will admit that there are some blessings. That last bit is probably due to the fact that Kentucky is now experiencing single-digit temperature readings.
The first and worst thing (at least for me) about living in the tropics is that one is never dry. The slightest exertion starts the sweat flowing; and hiking up a mountain, as we did, turns it into a river. We swear that hanging clothes in a closet is like putting them in a steam room. I know it will sound a bit dotty but we were surprised to discover that it rains in the rainforest. (Duh!) This meant wearing rain gear which doubled and tripled the amount of sweating going on. All of this made me remember the volunteer couple in the Philippines who wrote home complaining about the combination of a serious moisture-caused heat rash on their bottoms and a job that required frequent long motorcycle rides. One could almost envy the folks who chose the desert for a winter break.
I don’t know why but it seems impossible to have good roads in the tropics. Often they are not paved and the constant humidity and rain cause uncountable potholes and frequent landslides that slow or stop all traffic. That is probably why the people waiting at rural bus stops along the road looked as if they had been there for hours and were prepared for still more waiting. To make matters worse - or perhaps more interesting - we had to share what road there was with people walking in the middle of it, riding
One must share the road.
bicycles, or even the occasional herd of cows. In the Philippines volunteers would often set aside an entire day to shop in a nearby town because there was no such thing as a reliable bus schedule and Costa Rica probably demands the same.
Driving along roads in rural Costa Rica quickly reminds one of the immense fertility of the tropics. Again, I had totally forgotten that fence building can be done very simply: place a row of newly-cut branches from any kind of tree into the ground where you want the fence and sit back and wait. Before long those bare branches will sprout new growth and in time you will have a fine hedgerow, compliments of the heat, humidity, and fertile soil. We were told that one can virtually watch the bamboo grow from one hour to the next and the same applies to papayas. No wonder Big Pharma continues to send their scientists to the tropics to search for what seems to be a never ending batch of promising discoveries.
The jungle - am I supposed to avoid that word and use ‘rainforest’ instead? - is scary to say the least. It is never sunny. It’s always noisy but one can never see what’s making the noise. Hear a hidden howler monkey sound off (as we did) and I guarantee you will leap a foot in the air. And, the variety of flora is beyond belief. We were told that there are hundreds of orchid species, fern varieties beyond count, and trees that reach far up into the sky. Wander off the path into the unknown and it’s ‘Adiōs!’
When midday comes things go very quiet. What do you mean he won’t be back until 2:30? The urgency that drives northerners to pack too much into the day is sensibly toned down and people head for home for a brief respite. Mañana is quite soon enough in a tropical setting. The only folks who ignore the midday sun (other than mad dogs, Englishmen and tourists like us) are the hoards of children who delight in using the roads as their playground, despite the occasional vehicle coming their way. More that just the flora seems to be fertile in the tropics.
Wounds heal slower in the tropics, I’m sure. Mary suffered a bad cut to her leg when she stumbled on some slippery rocks at the bottom of a deep ravine. The doctor in a nearby town did a fine job putting things right but for the next ten days the wound looked ugly, continued to seep fluids, and refused to get better. All of this changed when we returned to a temperate climate, and we have stopped thinking about things like gangrene, infections, and another ER visit. I think just about all volunteers can tell a tale of the infection, rash, ailment, whatever that just wouldn’t go away. And that probably explains why the Peace Corps medical folks always stress ‘prevention,’ not ‘cure.’
Now, to be sure, there are some mighty nice things that come with the tropics. Each morning began with some of the world’s finest coffee (Costa Rica produces the best there is) and a big fruit plate. One morning Mary counted ten different kinds of fresh fruits on the plate. You can’t do that in Kentucky during December, or at any other time of the year, come to think of it. Sunrises and sunsets can be magnificent! Flora and fauna are varied, abundant, and eye-catching. Even the rough roads have a positive side: we were forced to slow down (10 MPH was often about right) and could fully enjoy the remarkable scenery all around us.
Would we recommend that others go to Costa Rica - or other tropical destinations? Absolutely! But we would remind them that the tropics can be tough! The medical handbook we gave each volunteer in the Philippines during the 1970s began with the phrase “forewarned is forearmed” and then went on to warn against more health hazards than most of us had ever imagined. We would take the same approach with prospective tropical travelers today as we enthusiastically sent them on their way south.
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The “Tropics” are technically anywhere between the Tropic of
Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. One should remember that those two lines of latitude cross the worse deserts in the world. So not all of the “tropics” are humid. Living in Southern Florida is akin to living in the tropics with all the attributes of living in Costa Rica. You forgot to mention the bugs. As I always say, there is no home in Florida that does not have cockroaches and ants except those fumigated in the last week.
Funny, I never think of the deserts being tropical, although as you point they are. You are right about the bugs and ‘crawlies’ that abound in the ‘moist’ part (maybe in the deserts as well?). In the old days volunteers often put the legs of their bunk beds in empty tuna fish cans filled with water to keep the ants and other insects away.
One of my favorite bits of Peace Corps humor goes like this:
The first time a Peace Corps trainee finds that his dish of fish and rice has ants in it he tosses the whole thing in the garbage can. After a year of service the volunteer carefully separates the ants from the food and eats the food. In his third year an extended PCV justs eats the whole thing: fish, rice and ants with gusto!
Well, the ants are protein.
David, I hate the tropics. The oppressive vegetation made me claustrophopic. There are also mountain ranges close to the equator, in those latitudes between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. I am so grateful that I was assigned to Andean highlands.. I hope you are fully recovered from that experience because I have a new question for you, unrelated to the Tropical Forests.
I had hoped that Robert L. Strauss would return to respond to the comments we all had to his essays. Evidently, he will not. My question for you is this: Has reading Strauss, both his experiences as a Volunteer under the PC/Carter-Brown administration and as a Country Director under the PC/Bush-Vasquez, changed your mind about the “Up and Out” policy? Your “New Directions” were old when the Carter administration took over and were tossed out in favor of a “Back to Basics”approach. And again, Vasquez took over and his policy mandates was “Safety and Security First.” Your comment was that Strauss must have been in a parallel universe. But he really wasn’t, he was in the pc universe created by the “Up and Out” policy.
Joey, I think that your assumption that Strauss’s description accurately portrays the Peace Corps of his time is open to debate. As I recall other folks from those times wrote in to say it was Strauss who was out of line, not the whole Peace Corps. But, since I was not there I can’t be sure.
While I don’t keep close tabs on the current Peace Corps I do have the impression that the ‘five-year rule’ has in practice been largely ignored for years if not decades. So, whatever the pluses and minuses of doing away with it are now present.
I still see the good in having a constant inflow of new thinking that the ‘five year rule’ helps to create. ‘Tenured’ positions may be good for academe but I don’t think they belong in most other institutions, especially small ones like the Peace Corps. When I was at the National Endowment for the Arts we instituted a similar ‘rule’ in order to ensure that the people managing the grant programs for the various art disciplines didn’t become locked into a specific way of thinking while their discipline was going through major change, as often (usually?) happens in the arts world.
Although I am sure some will disagree with me I see nothing inherently ’sacred’ in the past. In fact, I would say putting the past on a pedestal, as a tenured staff of Peace Corps ‘old hands’ might be tempted to do, would not be a step forward. (By the way, that’s what happened when Blatchford tried to introduce New Directions into a Peace Corps world of Country Directors dominated by ‘old hands.’)
Finally, I didn’t mean to leave the impression that Costa Rica was an experience I needed to recover from. We had a most exciting, energetic, and rewarding time flying through the tree tops on high wires, taking a challenging 2-day white water rafting trip , treking through the rain forrest, and enjoying more fresh fruit in two weeks than we had eaten in a year. As they say there: ‘Pura Vida Costa Rica!’
Dave, Thank you so much for your reply. Strauss served in two different Peace Corps. As a Volunteer he served during the PC/Carter Brown administration. That administration threw out the whole concept of “New Directions,” and instituted a new policy of essentially “back to basics.” That policy came from Sam Brown’s philosophy as “New Directions” had come from Blanchard’s. My point being that the “up and out” policy merely means that new politicans take over, not that new and better ideas are introduced.
What is important is that most recommendations for improving Peace Corps (including those from Strauss)strongly suggest that trained Volunteers be assigned in situations in which those skills can be used. That recommendations is not incompatible with “New Directions” or indeed, many of the earlier programs. But, if there is no organizational system to provide continuity and to learn from previous programs, then “up and out” tosses away the good and the bad.
The criticism directed toward Strauss had to do with his tenture during Peace Corps/Bush/Vasquez. Ironically, he fought the policy guidelines established by Vasquez. I think Strauss should have been fired for that failure.
I don’t know your source for saying that the five-year rule has been disregarded for decades. There are two separate set of appointments The twenty or thirty political appointments change with each new administration. All of these people resigned January 21, 2009 and are gradually being replaced. Independent of that appointment system is the civil service system where the five year rule reigns. Up until the 80s, Country Directors were all also politically appointed. Congress changed that under Regan/Ruppert. My contacts with Peace Corps/Bush and Peace Corps/Obama in the last few years have been that there are alot of retired military working there, few RPCVs, and a lot of turnover. But this just my limited experience.
I think that we are arguing an artificial choice. I don’t believe that the choice is the “five-year rule” or an entrenched bureacracy. I believe that the organizational structure should flow from the mission statement. The only goal which PeaceCorps/Washington can control is the first which is to fill requests for trained personnel from host countries. Such a mission demands that there be continunity, constant evaluation of programs through “time and space,” by both inhouse staff, independent professionals, and incountry people. The mission should be independent of partisan political considerations. The focus should be on learning. The mission is basically one of applied anthropology. The current agency structure not only does not advance the First Goal, it thwarts it.
My thinking is that if Peace Corps is to continue, it should be an independent public corporation, staffed by returned Volunteers, utilizing the five-year rule in a staggered, programic manner, and utilizing independent professionals in an advisory capacity. Congress should provide special oversight. I also think that there should be an ongoing research component using material from the field.
I would add 2 more functions to PC/W in addition to the recruiting job: (1) raising money from Congress and building popular support among Americans for the program; and (2) initiating major programmatic shifts like New Directions, entering former Soviet countries, leaving countries, etc.
Beyond that I think PC/W gets more credit than it deserves for what goes well, and what goes badly. It’s what happens in the field that matters most.
One of the reasons I feel the CD positions are so important is that PC is really a collection of individual units (i.e., the host countries) and far more is determined in-country than in PC/W regarding volunteer effectiveness, satisfaction, and the overall health of the program.
I’m not sure what an ‘independent public program’ is. Do you have some examples? And, like it or not, there is no such think as a ‘non-political’ instituiton if Congress is involved (or the White House, for that matter).
I agree on the research point. We have probably missed learning as much as we could have during the first 50 years.
By non-political, I mean that the management function is not outsourced to the political party in power, as it is basically today. I was recommending that Peace Corps become a “public corporation.” The Postal Service is probably the most well known. There is a Board of Governors appointed by the President (and approved, I believe, by Congress). Their terms are staggered so that they overlap administrations. The Board of Governors select the Postmaster General who has wide executive authority. The enabling legislature also gives Congress the power to approve/disapprove various functions; such as days or service. The model is not a prototype, but an example of how the Peace Corps could be structured to be more in line with its mission statement.
I certainly agree that the incountry offices are very important. The role of incountry national employees is an issue which Strauss addressed. However, the regional offices/staff must be accountable to a central office or there is no control at all. If they act independently of Washington that there is not accountability and no way to protect the mission or the volunteers. Strauss’ s tenture as Country Director illustrates this, IMHO.
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