THE PEACE CORPS ALIENS
Cook, Philip S.
he Peace Corps Aliens by PHILIP S. COOK TTtaE Peace Corps has been called an investment in yeast—a kind of human additive that would bubble through American society, awakening a new sense of...
...Neither attitude is really justified...
...The fact that another 650 would come to Washington on these terms gives some indication of the seriousness with which the returned Volunteer regards himself and his particular role in the life of the nation...
...Hoping to get some specific answers, they discovered their problems were both quite real and apparently endemic with other veterans...
...The purpose, however, is as much to discourage the half-hearted, the uncommitted, as it is to entice the adventurous...
...The "phony image" which the Volunteer complains about so vigorously overseas is largely a creation of American journalists—especially the harassed editor who is looking for something to balance the brutality, ugliness, and misery which make up so much of today's news...
...If some of them seem to insist upon maintaining an almost umbilical attachment to the Peace Corps and to each other, most of them would agree with the veteran who said, "If we are as good as we think we are, we will not need any assistance, and if we are not, we don't deserve any...
...They come from every ethnic, social, and economic segment of the country, but their attitudes and values are essentially those of middle-class America...
...However, few articles have really done justice to significant Peace Corps assistance such as that which Volunteer teachers have given to the development of education in Africa, or to the remarkable way that Volunteers working in community development have made Accion Comun-al a vital and important institution in Colombia...
...When they return to the United States, these Volunteers are quickly disappointed in their search for a way of life which will offer even a modicum of the responsibility and freedom they knew overseas...
...Intimate familiarity with a town or province in Peru does not necessarily produce any real understanding or insights into the complex problems of Latin America, or even of Peru as a whole...
...As a result of Peace Corps service more than half the returned Volunteers have sharply altered their career plans, with a notable shift toward international service or involvement in social problems at home...
...Some are teaching slum children or working for civil rights, but many more are doing very little except showing their slides...
...But many returned Volunteers, it seems to me, fail to realize that their overseas experience, though deep, is narrow and personal...
...They simply cannot explain what it was really like— except to each other...
...Everything considered, I do not think it fair to label the returning Peace Corps Volunteers immature misfits demanding special favors from the world in return for their two years of service...
...What many of the returned Volunteers are beginning to realize is that they are not the same people they were overseas...
...We are anxious to help strengthen America, to initiate change, and to help America attain the true democracy of which she dares to boast...
...Most of all, they must develop some political sophistication...
...What of their value now as a national resource—as U.S...
...Community development workers are urged to negotiate with important host country officials in behalf of an entire village...
...There is no such welcome for him when he returns to the United States —to communities that are infinitely bigger and more complex...
...Some are unemployed...
...They came expecting a lively exchange of ideas and felt instead that they were listening to a litany of complaint from some immature, rather inarticulate and timid young people who were demanding special dispensations and prerogatives...
...What kind of investment is it...
...The Peace Corps paid the travel expenses of 200 Volunteers and invited others to attend at their own expense...
...He served as a staff member of the Peace Corps in Washington for two years and, before that, was a reporter and United Nations correspondent for The New York Herald Tribune for seven years...
...If he tries to be a teacher, as many do, he finds that most school systems will give him no practice teaching credit for his two years of secondary school teaching in Nigeria, or Ghana, or Ethiopia...
...Most of the returned Volunteers had discovered, with a shock, that they knew little about American society, its institutions, and the way things get done in the United States...
...he Peace Corps Aliens by PHILIP S. COOK TTtaE Peace Corps has been called an investment in yeast—a kind of human additive that would bubble through American society, awakening a new sense of purpose and responsibility...
...But of the 865 who applied for the Foreign Service, and the 579 who actually competed, only 110 passed the written examination, fourteen passed the oral examination, and of the survivors only three have been appointed...
...Some of them left Washington confused and disappointed...
...The Volunteers remain an investment in national yeast as well as in international good will...
...Their average age is about twenty-four, and they are not the brightest of their age group...
...Promotional material, recruiting pamphlets, and even the orientation and training of the Volunteers create an image of Peace Corps service as something special, something which demands conviction, determination, and a tolerance for discomfort and frustration...
...But we have yet to find the channels, the avenues of opportunity...
...The Volunteer overseas enjoys a remarkable degree of autonomy...
...In the course of their reorientation to a new environment, and particularly to a new and faster pace, the returned Peace Corps Volunteers seem to be collecting themselves for what will hopefully be a headlong leap into the mainstream of American life...
...If the Volunteers are to be the prophets and the agents of change that many of them hope to become, they must first learn more about these United States...
...The Volunteers were repeatedly assured that their skills, experience, and dedication were needed in the Federal government...
...It was a gradual process, and it continues to this day...
...If he tries to talk about his experiences, the Volunteer often finds an unbridgeable gulf of ignorance, as did the one who told his friend that he served in Ethiopia and heard the reply, "Well, thank goodness you weren't in Africa...
...One Volunteer has suggested that the two years of foreign experience might be "highly overrated" in terms of its value to other government agencies working overseas...
...For others, however, the two years represent both a period of achievement and of self-discovery, when non-essentials fall away like the skin of an onion...
...They have changed, not once, but several times...
...Perhaps the most surprising information to come out of the questionnaire is the fact that, despite their earnest insistence that they want to continue to be of service, most of the Volunteers are doing almost nothing about it in free time after classes or jobs...
...Too many people in the United States cling doggedly to a romanticized vision of the Peace Corps Volunteer as an heroic figure...
...Perhaps part of the returned Volunteer's problem is the implication that he has more of a proven concern about the world's problems than anyone else does...
...As a twenty-seven-year-old returned Volunteer said: "We have confidence in our ability and our potential...
...Ten others are awaiting appointment...
...They were required to defend American policy around the globe and to justify much of the ugliness of American life, especially that disclosed to the world by the struggle for civil rights...
...The hostility that many of them felt while abroad toward the impersonal Peace Corps bureaucracy which they accused of fostering the "phony image" of the Peace Corps and interfering with their lives by issuing regulations remains persistently bitter...
...Recently, a questionnaire was sent out to 3,300 Peace Corps veterans...
...What are they like...
...Why should not America seem strange and alien to him...
...Teachers suddenly find themselves required to serve as school headmasters...
...I think we got more done," he said, "If that's arrogance—so be it...
...This was opposed by others on the ground that Peace Corps staffers who would direct such seminars are, themselves, disoriented from American life...
...Some observers have commented on the arrogance, even boorishness, of some returned Volunteers...
...Many of them went to college, probably as liberal arts majors...
...Another veteran responded by emphasizing the contrast between the Peace Corps worker and the Agency for International Development (AID) technician in their respective knowledge of the host country and its people...
...The Volunteer abroad is usually welcomed into the power structure as an expert, an honored guest, a novelty, a harbinger, perhaps, of further and more substantial American aid...
...He is welcomed, sometimes with bewilderment or suspicion, as the embodiment of America's professed eagerness to help the underdeveloped world in a spirit of selfless service...
...The more than 3,000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have come home after serving two years cost the American taxpayers some $50 million...
...Their real value in terms of technical assistance to peoples overseas, and in international good will, can probably never be accurately measured...
...The personnel director of a major corporation complained that the Peace Corps veterans approach a job interview not with the idea of selling themselves but as though it were up to the company to prove itself worthy of hiring a Volunteer...
...The official title of the conference in Washington was "The Returned Peace Corps Volunteer: Citizen in a Time of Change...
...Returning to the universities, the Peace Corps Volunteers are impatient with endless talk about things that seem to have little relevance to the world as they have come to know it...
...He urged them to continue to think of themselves as special and different—and to make politics serve their ideals...
...The activities, problems, and outlooks of the Volunteer veterans were explored at considerable length during a three-day conference in Washington recently...
...Only six Volunteers have indicated that they would like to enter politics some day...
...It seemed to some that the examiners were seeking a pretext to fail them...
...These young people came because they were deeply concerned about something, however undefined...
...There is a hint of cultural imperialism in any undertaking like the Peace Corps, and editors should be forgiven if they reach hungrily for the "Home-Town-Boy-Makes-Good-In-Somalia" story...
...He is free from close supervision, free to work out his own solutions to whatever problems he faces...
...About a hundred outside participants from government, business, education, and labor sat down in workshop sessions with some 850 returned corpsmen for frank discussions about the role of the Peace Corps veteran in American society...
...Perhaps they, and American society as well, had changed in the two years that elapsed while they were working in Ghana or Thailand or any one of the forty-six countries where a Peace Corps presence now exists...
...There was some consensus finally that the Peace Corps might furnish, on request, lists of the names and addresses of returned Volunteers to be used in an informal exchange of ideas and information...
...Many find it impossible to communicate, even to their families and closest friends, what Peace Corps service has meant to them, how it shook them up inside...
...At work, the Volunteer finds little opportunity to be inventive...
...The Volunteers generally agreed that the less the Peace Corps tried to do to re-orient returned veterans the better...
...A few were angry because they thought the conference had been called to publicize the Peace Corps, to advance the political ambitions of some of its officials, or to peddle a particular Administration foreign policy line...
...They must put aside their distaste for certain institutions and procedures if they are to capture the institutions and alter the procedures...
...Personnel managers regard his work abroad as something to be forgiven—a youthful adventure—rather than a valuable and enriching experience...
...It is still too early for more than a preliminary assessment, but the evidence suggests that these citizens are uncomfortable, that they feel a disquieting alienation from American society strong enough to send some of them back overseas...
...They cannot refuse...
...As a report on the questionnaire declares, "The great majority are doing little or no volunteer work in their community...
...He comes to the host country because it asked for him—or at least someone in the government asked for a certain number of Peace Corps teachers, public health workers, or other skilled personnel...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk spoke briefly to the conferees about some of the "simple and decent" purposes of the American people which are "in the heart of our policy with respect to the rest of the world...
...Some suggested holding special seminars, both overseas and at home, to help prepare the Volunteers for their re-entry into American life by acquainting them with some of the potential adjustment problems and the opportunities available to them...
...You must have the virtues of Joan of Arc and the political prowess of Adam Clayton Powell," he said, in a bit of advice combining an unusual mixture of races, sexes, and centuries...
...An extraordinary number of the forms, about 2,300, were completed and returned...
...About half have asked to know how they might contribute to the war on poverty, but the three who joined the staff of the Job Corps have quit...
...Whatever Peace Corps service lacks in excitement is more than offset by freedom and responsibility...
...The truth is that life with the Peace Corps overseas is not exciting or heroic —at least not for most Volunteers...
...asked almost nothing about the country in which they had served in the Peace Corps...
...He did not speak to them directly of Vietnam (five of the returned Volunteer participants picketed the White House that same afternoon to urge that the United States seek a negotiated settlement) but seemed to hope these young people would agree with him when he said, "We don't believe men ought to be pushed around too much...
...The returned Peace Corps Volunteer feels he is returning to a society that has no real place for him—a society that has lost sight of its proper goals, that is obsessed with beer, chrome, and television...
...Several of the outside participants were equally disappointed in the Volunteers...
...The Peace Corps is responsible for some of this...
...If they do not take responsibility, no one will...
...Forty-one per cent are working—fourteen per cent in government service, fourteen per cent in teaching, and the others in a broad range of jobs here and overseas...
...The responsibility he enjoys is often far greater than anything he might be offered in the United States...
...Bill D. Moyers, former deputy director of the Peace Corps and now a special assistant to President Johnson, told the Volunteers' conference that they should regard politics as the bow that can make arrow-like ideas go somewhere...
...The demand for responsibility and a hearing acquires some of its urgency from the fact that for two years the Volunteers abroad have been held personally accountable for all that happens in the United States...
...But few seemed to have gone overseas with much knowledge of their own country...
...It is too early to predict what kind of splash they will make, but I suspect that, in contrast to many of their contemporaries, most of them will seem militant, impatient, and a bit difficult...
...But the survey produced some significant information about the veterans...
...A question which came up for extensive discussion in nearly every Washington conference workshop was: "What, if anything, should the Peace Corps do in behalf of the returned Volunteer...
...At various moments during their two years abroad they discarded certain ideas and acquired new ones...
...There was comment too that American training institutions had already demonstrated an inability to prepare the Volunteers for at least one new cultural experience—their life overseas...
...there is no such thing as a Peace Corps prototype...
...The experience is frequently marked by intense frustration, interminable boredom, and a lack of recognizable evidence of accomplishment...
...If these are times of change, then there should be a place for inventiveness and innovation, a willingness, as one conferee put it, "to do new things strangely...
...Is there any market for their experience and talents...
...He may never have understood it before he went abroad...
...Who are these returned Volunteers who seem to be having such a difficult time...
...Volunteers object strenuously to being categorized...
...More than half now are studying in universities at the graduate and undergraduate level...
...This same Volunteer saw the March conference as an opportunity to persuade the outside participants from government, business, labor, and other fields to gamble on the Volunteers' potential, to make some allowance, as one put it, for the "talented amateur...
...Some of the applicants complained that they were quizzed excessively about American institutions and the Foreign Service, and were PHILIP S. COOK is a free lance writer and a part-time consultant to the Peace Corps' evaluation division...
...They were never as well informed about their home towns as they managed to become about their temporary home towns in foreign lands...
...citizens made more worldly, more mature, hopefully more dedicated than ever to the ideal of service which was at least a part of their reason for volunteering...
Vol. 29 • May 1965 • No. 5
