It was 1969. The Vietnam War was in full swing, along with a military draft that was hard to escape. Some men were drafted; others got exemptions; and some, like Jim Douglas, a fellow Real Change reviewer, joined the Peace Corps. Douglas’ collection of letters and journal entries from that era tells of a time when a young person’s choice was between a misguided war or misguided foreign policy filled with American hubris.
Douglas sincerely wanted to help people. He wanted to see the world. He was intrigued by the assignment he eventually was offered, billed as “the toughest job” in the Peace Corps — to be a volunteer in rural Somalia.
Somalia in 1969 was stable, with a functioning, if corrupt, government; it was the site of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union for which direction the country would take. It had only a few hundred miles of paved road, and the area where Douglas was assigned was a long truck journey during the dry season over roads that were impassible when the rainy season started.
“The Toughest Peace Corps Job” is a narrative constructed of Douglas’ journal entries and letters from his 14 months in the corps. He arrived under less than optimal conditions, due to perhaps more than usual Peace Corps neglect of basic planning. He was given an intensive course in Somali and assigned to train villagers in agriculture in the part of the country where Somali wasn’t spoken. He arrived in the country two weeks after the rainy season started, which made his assignment impossible to get to for almost two months. Although the volunteers were supposed to have the support of the Agricultural Ministry, they almost never saw government staff in the bush. Resources, including seeds for planting, were almost unobtainable.
Added to this was the usual lack of cultural-sensitivity training and sometimes erroneous information about the culture.
Take one 22-year-old white American male fresh out of college and looking for excitement, physical challenge and good time, as well as wanting to do good in the world; plop him down in a village where he can barely communicate, where people won’t take his advice, and where a common feature of the culture seems to be to sling around unpleasant insults; and what do you get? In Douglas’ case, the job per se wasn’t what was tough; it was the fact that, for the most part, there was no job. He had long periods when there was nothing to do but go to the village center to see what was going on.
As Douglas puts it, it was a situation in which he lost his moral compass. He became increasingly angry at the villagers and their lack of interest in implementing the simplest agricultural innovations and their tendency to regard him as a kind of freak available to stare at any time of the day.
He couldn’t understand why people seemed content to be poor and why they showed so little interest in making money. He didn’t know that it’s common in subsistence farming economies for farmers to be resistant to change for a variety of reasons.
Douglas was not only an outsider, but a morally suspect one. It wasn’t just his religion — he did many of the “bad” things that gaals (non-Muslims) are said to do — from drinking alcohol to visiting the capital to party with “loose” women. Increasingly frustrated, he found himself going into rages, throwing rocks, yelling at people, and even occasionally hitting them — a form of psychological breakdown induced by culture shock and isolation. It was the flip side of the American experience in Vietnam — the government sending unprepared young men (and a few women) into a foreign culture, this time to “do good,” on the assumption that just by being Americans, they could provide all the answers.
In his introduction, Douglas writes, “Young men sometimes say and do stupid things … [I]n these letters and journals … I have resisted the temptation to make myself look better by changing the language.” It’s a choice that took some courage, even though he says he’s not trying to excuse himself; the reader has to resist the temptation to judge rather than try to understand.
Fortunately, Douglas was eventually able to get transferred to Mogadishu, where he had a body of knowledge that people wanted to learn: how to play basketball. Starting with kids in detention and continuing with newly formed school leagues, he won some respect and felt like he could play a useful role as an American.
Plus he found a girlfriend, which is always helpful for the peace of mind of someone in his early 20s. He still ran into problems, especially when the Soviet-influenced military took over. Not long after, the Peace Corps was kicked out of the country.
“The Toughest Peace Corps Job” works well as a narrative, with a compelling dramatic arc from Douglas’ arrival in the country to his expulsion. It also represents a cautionary tale about American hubris in the Third World, however well-meant and peaceful, and a reminder that what we think we have to offer people may not be what they want.