P a g e
3
P A U 3 A !
THE WAY WE WAS: A Failing Memory Memoir
By Jim Carl – PC MAK AO
It is often said that “the more things change, the more
they remain the same.” Well, I say, what the heck does
that mean? Even my grandmother knew that when
things changed they were actually different and she definitely wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. This has led
me to think about the changes in Peace Corps, thanks to
a logical thought process that is so convoluted that it
defies description. So, I won’t try.
It pains me, or at least my vanity, to think that my Peace
Corps service was actually closer in time to the service
of the very first Peace Corps Volunteers who stepped off
the plane in Ghana than it is to your service here in Macedonia. I completed my two-years of service in Swaziland 25 years ago, COSing in June 1981. And has
Peace Corps changed? Quite possibly you have no idea.
“Allow me to illuminate youse.”
But first, a disclaimer:
the following account
is based strictly on my
own experience and
feeble memory. If
you were to generalize
my Peace Corps experience (Swaziland
and Macedonia) to the
rest of the world you
would say that all
PCV service consists
of living and working
in a small, landlocked
country that has recently gained independence and has very
attractive money.
Rumors have it that
this would not be entirely true for say…
Mexico or China.
Pre-Service Training: PST was not run by Peace
Corps, but was sub-contracted in its entirety to a local
training institute. They divided our Training Group of
32 into two smaller groups and sent us to two different
locations where we never saw or heard from each other
again until “swearing-in”, leading to all fashion of grotesque rumors. My group went to the town of Siteki
(pronounced Stegi), which was nationally famous for its
school for witch doctors.
My group was sequestered at The Bamboo Inn, which
sounds a lot more exotic than it was. It was a small row
of motel-type rooms, plus four or five circular concrete
huts constructed in the style of a traditional African hu t.
Two of the ten men lived in one small hut along
with a male cross-cultural trainer while the rest of
us lived in two other huts that were connected by a
hallway (my bed was in the hall). All eleven of us
shared the same bathroom and shower. The seven
women were in two small motel rooms (think:
wall-to-wall beds) but each room had a bathroom
- so much for gender equity. A third room housed
the three female language trainers. And one very
lucky married couple had a room of their own.
We ate in a small dining room where the food was
at best inedible and at worst potentially lethal and
always unidentifiable. I remember some of it being the most vivid shades of pink and blue and
tasting like it had been cooked in aftershave lotion.
However, nothing went to
waste in so far
as one of the
language instructors was
constructed like
the Taj Mahal
and ate anything
and everything
we left behind.
We later found
out that this was
not Swazi food
at all but their
dismal attempt
to make
“American
food.”
Our walkaround allowance didn’t go
very far. To be precise, it went about 100 meters
to the bar which was easily the most redeeming
feature of The Bamboo Inn. An old British colonial bar with the feel of the 1930’s, it was pretty
much the only place to go in Siteki. And the person who went there the most was our crosscultural trainer who spent most of PST in a stupor… not a bad introduction to at least one small
part of Swazi culture. We were all just glad he
didn’t have to drive to work. He did, however,
have the endearing habit of waking up in the middle of the night and forgetting (or possibly ignoring) the fact that his room had no bathroom, with
predictably disgusting consequences.