Friday, March 4. I966

SCARLET AND BLACK

Page Five

 

Grime/lion Describes Peace [0 5 Experiences

ED. NOTE: This year ls the
Peace Corps’ iiith anniversary and
tomorrow the Peace Corps place-

‘ment exam will be administered
on Campus. Henly Wilhelm, a
sophomore and co-editor of the
Cyclone, was a volunteer. He
joined the Peace Corps arter grad-
uating from high school and served
a year in Bolivia belore he was
injured in a jeep accident. Below
‘is an interview between Wilhelm
and John Wolf about Wilhelm’s
year in the Peace Corps.

By JOHN WOLF

Q: Where did you work and
what was your job there?

A: I worked on a colonization

project (ﬁnanced by the us. Agen<
cy for international Development)
that resettled tin miners and others
from the highlands of Bolivia to
previously uninhabited areas which
are potentially very productive ag-
riculturaily. This new area was lo-
cated in the jungles in the eastern
foothills ot the Andes, My job was
that of a “Community developer,"
which is the Peace Corps’ term
for a person who goes into a com-
munity, learns to understand it,
. and then tries to work with the
people in any way that he thinks
may beneiit them. This may be
helping build roads — as We did
— teaching in schools, helping the
people organize politically, and in
some Cases, even working in coach-
ing or recreation programs. al~
though there is some doubt about
how much real good this type of
activity does.

Q: Exactly what did this en-
tail for you?

n: i was sent there to help in-
.stall electrical systems in the vil-
lages, since i had had several sum-
merS’ experience in that line, But
upon arriving, it was quickly ap-
parent that there was not going
to be electricity in this area
for years to come, This just
as well because they would prob-
. ably have had very little use ior it
anyway. So alter a frustrating
month of trying to figure out what
to do, I turned my attention to
helping people earn more money
from their Crops. This included
various activities such as intro-
ducing tomatoes as a cash crop,
setting up a tomato-box coopera-
tive, and experimenting with var-

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ious tomato varieties to find which
kinds were best for that region,
and helping build roads.

Q: What did the Bolivians
think of you and your fellow
workers?

A: Most of them had previously
had little if any Contact with Amer-
icans. Generally, though, they did
have some ideas about them. such
as “All Americans are rich”
(which they are, relatively speak.
ing), “President Kennedy and
Jackie are good people." and
"America has racial problems."

Initially the villagers were some
what aloof from us. However, they

soon got used to us and we to them. _
For the most part they were sim- 2

ply a very nice people, perhaps a
bit more honest and straightforr

Iagers' help we built about eight
miles of much-needed road. The
first road was named John F. Ken-
nedy Avenue by the villagers. The
villagers threw uS a huge, drunken
brawl when the first road was fin-
ished, and the chief of one of the
villages offered his Wife to one of
the volunteers ior the night. He
didn't accept — it Wouldn’t have
been the strategic thing to do.

Q: Some people say the Peace
Corps is just a tool for bettering
the U.S. image abroad. How do
you react to this?

A: I’d say in many cases that's

ward than most Americans. Most ‘ ,

of the minor Bolivian government
officials that we worked with were,
however, often not so nice, We Vole
unteers had numerous disagree-
ments with them, and one volun-
teer, who, by the way, is now
Peace Corps administrator in Ed
Iivia, got in such a heated argu-
ment with his village government
chief that the government man
said he would quit if the volunteer
didn't leave. He didn’t leave, and
the man quit. The volunteer was
then appointed village chief.

Q: What were some other in-
teresting incidents?

A: wheu the iarmers began
growing more tomatoes than they
could carry out on their backs, it
became apparent that they needed
some roads built. Therefore, an-
other volunteer and I set out try-
ing to get a bulldozer. We asked

U.S.-A.T.D. in LaPaz for the loan ”

of a bulldozer, but they weren‘t
very hot on the idea or on us. one
of the AID. men later Said that
his group was angry that the Peace
Corps was getting all the publicity
from the press while his group
was having a hard time getting
money irom Congress for what he
considered more important work.
About a month later, still with-
out a bulldozer, I got mad and sent
a letter to Sargent Shriver asking
for help. However. the letter never
got out of Bolivia because our proj-
ect administrator intercepted it.
He said it didn’t reflect well on the
group. We had a lot of trouble with
him; however, he was eventually
"cal d to Washington for consul-
tation" and never seen again.
Meanwhile. the American am-
oassador heard about our plight
and instructed U.S.-A.I.D. to lend
us a bulldozer. We didn't know how
to operate it other than how to
make it go in a straight line, out
we soon learned. With the vil-

 

ONE oF THE PROJECTS that Henry Wilhelm worked on
as a Peace Car 3 volunteer was growing and marketing

iis't shown discussing the construction of
the shipping boxes for those tomatoes.

Tomatoes. Here

a valid statement. However, to
like to emphasize that a volunteer
is almost always free to assert
himself in any way that he feels is
tnlly most beneficial to the people
he iS working with. A lot of the
Peace Corps administrative per—
sonnel that I knew were in'fact
quite concerned about furthering
the 11.8. image. For example, one
volunteer who worked in Bolivia
spent most of his time going from
village to village with a portable
movie projection outfit showing

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films for entertainment. These
films, more often than not, were
dubbed-in American illms showing
the better aspects of Us. life, or
at least the wealthier aspects.

Q: What did you think of the
training program for the Peace
Corps?

A: For my Bolivian group, the
training program was probably
less a training program than it
was a selection process. Eventual-
ly, we lost 40 per cent of our
group, mainly ior psychological
reasons, They didn't try to teach
us any specific skill; instead most

«out

of the time was spent learning
Spanish and some general things
about Bolivia, the 11.5., and health
problems we would encounter in
Bolivia. These health hazards in-
clude dysentery, snakebites, ven-
ereal disease, and insect-home
diseases — including Chagas dis-
ease, which is contracted from
beatles biting the victim on the lip
while asleep causing sudden death
from heart paralysis some years
later.

We also had several anthro ins
structors, who ”told us about Bo-
livian people." They were so con—
cerned with the oddities of the cul-
ture, social sou-systems, history oi.
the people that even the people
didn’t know about, and the like,
that we ended up with a very dis-

 

l

 

torted picture that the Bolivian
people were really different from
us; they weren‘t. These days. the
Peace Corps is putting less stress

on anthropological training. This
is not to say that a detailed know-
ledge of the culture is not helpful,
only that things must be kept in
proper perspective.

Q: What did you like about the
Peace Corps?

Al For a young person, the
Peace Corps is probably an unpar—
alleled opportunity to be out on
your own in an oft-times difficult
situation. it is a chance to really
apply yourseli in a practical way,
dealing with practical problems
and working with real people in a
real world. For someone who has
been in a college such as Grinnell,
it may at first be somewhat of a

_ shock to be totally responsible for
* yourselt and what you do, and ior

the people with whom you work:
much may he at stake.

Several years from now, when
a Bolivian is carrying tomatoes to
market on the road from his Vil-
loge, he may not remember much
about you or the US, but his fam-
ily will be better fed because you
were there, and you will probably
be better off, too.

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