Archive - December 26, 2022

  In 1969, a naive young Berkeley graduate, determined to make the world a better place, joins the Peace Corps. He finds himself living in the tropical paradise of Fiji, formerly known as the “Cannibal Isles,” as a full-time forester with a hundred employees to supervise. Inexperienced, yet self-confident to the max, he embarks on a 4-year- long adventure during which he dives deeply into the culture, becoming fluent in the Fijian language, eating everything from fruit bats to raw fish, earning the nickname Vuku Levu, or spiritually inspired one, and finding that dancing with Rotumans is better than “Saturday Night Fever.”   Like most Peace Corps Volunteers, he learns that the Peace Corps is far more than sending educated and enthusiastic young Americans to use Western science and technology to help solve problems in third world countries. It is a two-way educational process where the volunteers learn about life . . .