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Spring 2003
Andy Philpot, Editor
Vol. 7, No. 3

Into the Home Stretch: The Impending Nigerian Elections
Book Review - Journey from Kilimanjaro
Africa And NEPAD: What About HIV/AIDS?
A Museum Of The Peace Corps Experience
Special Report; Security Evolving For Volunteers
Letter From Nigeria: The New Faces Of The Professors
Teachers For West Africa
Update File - John Pincetich (Staff) 66-68 and Michael Taylor (Staff) 65–67



Hansening In Africa

by Tim Carroll (09) 63–65

Frances & Don McConnell
Frances and Don McConnell from the Group IX training manual-1963

I was minding my own business as a reborn horticulturalist flat up against the 45th parallel, when Peter Hansen, that FON Sherlock Holmes without deerstalker and pipe, picked up the scent of two long missing RPCVs from my own group, the preternaturally gifted Nigeria IXs. And when his sleuthing suggested a trail that led into the remotest regions of the Ethiopian highlands, he thought it would make sense for me, with little else to do of a Michigan winter, to be some earthly use to the above-mentioned organization and “get on it”.

Without the intrepid Hansen’s will to trace down every living (and dead) returned volunteer who ever stepped foot on Nigerian soil, I took an idea from Oscar Wilde’s, “The Importance of Being Earnest”. There, the lads usurp their friend Bunbury’s name, turning it usefully into a verb to cover their escapades. I found great comfort in sharing with my interviewees that I was Hansening after a couple of late-middle-aged Americans (forgive me, all Nigeria IXs), who needed to be informed about this terrific alumni gang without whom much joy would be lost. It actually worked. Folks couldn’t stop talking once they understood what Hansening really stood for. They told me more than I wanted to know.
My original destination, Addis Ababa, was reasonably close to the last sighting of the MIAs. For the missing IXers, His Excellency Donald J. McConnell, known as Don back in the golden autumn of 1963, and his wife, of the same Pre Service Training, don’t cha know, Frances nee Ruegsegger, were indeed in the Ethiopian highlands. Since the recent civil war, one has to cross a prickly border into Eritrea, and there, in its capital, Asmara, one would find the resplendent McConnells reigning over the American Mission and, as I hear it, doing a bang up.

Recent travelers had assured me that while the trail north was dusty, bone-breaking and endless, the land border was more likely to grant access than any other approach. So, off I went, all the while practicing my border speech, convinced that the only way to really grab the Ambassador’s attention would be to saunter into his office and say, “Dr. McConnell, I presume”. When one has a line of that magnitude at ready, it’s almost impossible to back down.

Approaching the border, I hoped breezy conviction would open wide the gates. It was essential, I argued, that I barge unannounced into the U.S. Embassy in Asmara and demand six years of past dues from Ambassador (I did mention preternatural, didn’t I) McConnell and his saintly wife, or else there would be no story for the FON Newsletter. Try as I might, however, I could not persuade the guards this caper was in their national interest. They turned increasingly suspicious of my curious motives and lack of paperwork. Finally, that nervous little twitch around their trigger fingers brought the message home. It was time to regroup.

Back at the Embassy in Addis, illuminati all the way to our Ambassador (a charming diplomat but a non-RPCV, unimbued with Hansening skills) could not fathom a way to communicate with Asmara without jinxing my need for secrecy. Even the shadowy CIA offered to help since they had communication lines working between the two countries. I finally got a grip, and chose the road less traveled: switch to a modus operandi that would actually work, albeit without the tingle of shock and awe.

Clipping their photos out of our vintage UCLA Training manual (be prepared when Hansening) and adding my own, I faxed the US Embassy in Asmara. I followed up with an email, explaining that they had been missing all these years and why, for heaven’s sake, weren’t they signed up FON members and did they look anything like their 1963 photos (although I was confident they had updated their glasses).

Don McConnell, 2003
Don McConnell in 2003

Relentless nagging is also part of Hansening.There is a happy, if not Oscar-winning, dénouement. Don and Frances were delighted to hear from their FON recruiter, to find out how fabulous all the rest of us are, too, and to learn about the vast array of good works and entertainments RPCV folks get up to. If you can believe anything out of an Ambassador’s mouth, they will surely grace us with their presence at some future get together.

Tim Carroll, 2003
Tim Carroll in 2003
And don’t think McConnell hasn’tbeen doing what all RPCV’s ought to be about: meeting that mighty Third Goal. As U.S. Ambassador to Burkina Faso, his previous post, he was responsible for getting the Peace Corps back into the country. And as we speak, he is beavering away to bring the Peace Corps into Eritrea. You don’t have to pay dues to be a good alumni, but don’t let anybody who is out there Hansening hear you say that.

Safely home, I’ve engaged a lawyer in the unlikely event that Peter decides I have stolen his identity. I have merely enhanced it. At least that’s my side of the story.•

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Into The Home Stretch:
The Impending Nigerian Elections (Episode Three)

by Ron Singer (10), 64-67


This time, the dates appear to be holding: April 12 (National Assembly), April 19 (Presidency and Governorships), and May 3 (State Houses of Assembly). Run-offs, if needed, would be during the last week of April. As for the local councils, an odd silence obtains. I found only one internet posting, in February, which retailed the rumor, “sometime after April 19,” and asked plaintively, “Does anybody know?” Since not all constitutional timetables will have been followed, and since the party nominating caucuses were marred by massive irregularities, court challenges to election results seem a foregone conclusion.

Former military ruler Buhari
Former Military Ruler Retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari

But the election will probably happen, and on the signally important, symbolic date of May 29, duly (or otherwise) elected officials from among the thirty duly-registered parties will most likely take their oaths of office. Facing eight or nine opponents, President Obasanjo seems poised for re-election. In addition to those I mentioned in the two previous FON articles, practical achievements to which Obasanjo’s campaign can point are the provision of adequate telephone service and of in-country petrol distribution.

All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) candidate Buhari is campaigning actively, especially in the North, where he shamelessly plays the ethnic card. And few Nigerians can forget the ruthless autocracy of his military regime (1983-86). Quietly, but with frenetic backstage deal-making, the Alliance for Democracy (AD) has thrown in its lot with Obasanjo, which creates the mass of voters needed for victory. If that sounds like ethnic politics are alive and well in Nigeria, there is an interesting exception which proves the rule.

Among the presidential candidates is the National Democratic Party’s (NDP), (not to be confused with Pa Enahoro’s National Reform Party (NRP)) 62-year old Ike Nwachukwu, a retired general. (They all seem to be.) Nwachukwu’s mother came from Katsina’s royal house, his father was Igbo, and his wife is Yoruba. The candidate, who started as a journalist, like “Pa” Enahoro, Azikiwe, and other notable “freedom fighters,” speaks all three major Nigerian languages. Since 1999, he has been a respected leader in the Senate—no mean feat. He sounds good, doesn’t he? With a belief in zoning (rotating the presidency among regions) and a platform based on economic reform and ending lawlessness, Nwachukwu, who calls himself “The Bridge,” is the third-leading candidate—a distant third.

By now, almost every aspirant from the Diaspora, many of them pro-democrats, has failed. As in 1999, the billionaire expatriate Harry Akande made his play and lost. (Pere Ajuwa, who supplanted Akande, was supplanted by Buhari, and ANPP squabbles continue, but in private.) One possible exception is Prince Ned Nwoko, whose story was told in a regular column (“Eye on Nigeria”) of the 2/24-3/2 issue of West Africa magazine.

A lawyer, Nwoko returned to Nigeria from London in 1999 and won a seat in the Federal House of Representatives,

Chief Enahoro
Chief Anthony Enahoro

where his attempts at reform soon caused his marginalization. Last year, he decided to run for Governor of Rivers State against the powerful People’s Democratic Party (PDP) incumbent. Hoping for nomination, Nwoko gave money and time to the ANPP, but was disqualified on a bogus technicality by local party apparatchiks. Without his knowldge, his supporters beat up some of these people, causing the police to go after Nwoko. The national ANPP supported him, but this fact was ignored locally. He then turned successfully to a smallish party, the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), and he is now in a three-way race with the incumbent and with the AD candidate, a millionaire who established his pro-democracy bona fides by participating in a failed plot to overturn Babangida. Nwoko’s campaign has encountered grave threats of violence, but he remains the Diaspora’s standard-bearer.

And what of Jumoke Ogunkeyede, pro-Democrat, Queens resident, and New York City civil servant, whose gubernatorial run I chronicled in the first two articles? Jumoke has recovered from his unspecified intestinal illness, but he has failed to secure a nomination for any office. “Because of my illness, I had to withdraw from running.” His family so advised him —he had lost 60 pounds.

He has now been invited to "join the campaign," and afterr initial doubts as to whether he would have the time, energy or motivation, he will be in Nigeria for the elections, after all, supporting the AD candidates in Oshun. Jumoke is a forward-looking man. He plans to move back to Nigeria within 18 months, to live there most of the time. To that end, he has made an arrangement to buy land near Ibadan on which to build a “bungalow.”

How will he live? He may “borrow some money locally in Nigeria,” and will try to scrape together an income from business consulting. The goal, of course, is to try to get involved in politics from within, “to be at an advantage for the next time.” He will not have been working for NYC long enough (since 1993) to draw much of a pension, which he would get at age 62, and, at age 54 next month, he will have to wait for this income and for his (small) social security payments. The economic risk seems dire. “But unless a chance like that is taken, one is just doomed to be ... here. I have enjoyed my stay here, I have benefited from being here, but home is still home. I just want to be part of helping Nigeria any which way I can.”

Meanwhile, big trouble continues in the oil-producing delta states, where the elections may yet be derailed. Ijaw-centered oil violence has recently escalated, and once again Obasanjo has sent in the soldiers. Henry Marshall, from Rivers State, a founding member of the PDP, who defected last year to the ANPP, was shot to death by gunmen who broke into his Abuja home. (Shades of Bola Ige, for whose murder Oshun’s ex-Lieutenant Governor, Omisore, is under indictment.) There has also been serious violence in the North.

Former Biafran leader Ojukwu
Former Biafran leader, Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu

Since oil violence and ethnic violence refuse to go away, not only are the elections jeopardized, but the need for constitutional change remains urgent. Biafran leader and APGA Presidential candidate Ojukwu, aged 71, is now aboard, side-by-side with his erstwhile nemesis, elder statesman Gowon. Pa Enahoro is still the leader of the constitutional reform movement, but, as he approaches 80, he is also said to be working on his autobiography.

Peter Lewis, Professor of African Politics at American University, agrees with the need for constitutional change, but cannot foresee a consensus for any such grand gathering as a conference, which would be anathema to the North. Instead, Lewis hopes there will be incremental, piecemeal creation of regulatory and other agencies which might give impetus and clout to a movement for fundamental structural change. But Lewis also fears that Obasanjo has lost the vigorous, focused style of governance which marked his first year as President. This leaves wide open the questions of what a second term would look like, and of whether Obasanjo would be interested in trying to make his historical mark by creating a new, more viable policy.•
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Book Review - Journey from Kilimanjaro

by Hoover Liddell (29) 67–69

Writer’s Showcase Press/iUniverse, 2000 360 pages $17.95
(Available from FON for $12.75 shipping included)

Reviewed by Steve Manning (13) 64–66

This book is an obscure treasure, combining adventure, insight, and autobiography. It deserves reading by the returned volunteer community.
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro-19,335.6 ft.
Hoover Liddell’s story is one of challenge, survival and hope. Despite suffering disabling illness and serious traffic accidents while overseas, Hoover’s focus is on his experience of personal growth during and after overseas service. From Hoover’s perspective as an inner-city Black American, math educator, and school administrator, the reader is enriched by the author’s insights regarding schools and their place in society, in Africa and in the United States. Hoover’s Peace Corps teaching experiences in Western Nigeria, just before and during Nigeria’s civil war, are chronicled both engangingly and informatively.

The five sections of Journey from Kilimanjaro include significant “chapters” of Hoover’s life. He begins with growing up in America, working in the merchant marine, and adapting to teaching in western Nigeria, and later in Kenya among Africans, Asians and expatriates. Volunteers will identify with Hoover’s experiences, while being thankful to have avoided the worst of them.

Hoover and friends in Ijero-Ekiti
Hoover and some of his friends in Ijero-Ekiti in 1967
San Francisco touches upon the author’s life after the Peace Corps. In San Francisco he taught math in public schools and became a high school principal. The violence impinging on his life there stands in contrast to his earlier days of teaching in Nigeria. Conventional Objects covers Hoover’s life as director of high schools and consultant to this large school district. In a series of dramatic snapshots of the often tragic events that punctuated the lives of his students and their families, Hoover poignantly documents the violence, drugs and intimidation that all form part of normal life for their community. City Journey ventures beyond the school environment and describes and analyzes life in a large American city: the common humanity; the contrasts between rich and poor; drug addiction; racial and ethnic tensions; entrapment; public housing; and it celebrates some successes despite the odds.

The Adventure describes experiences of 9- and 10-year olds learning calculus, and details the personal growth stimulated by individual long-distance running, and group wilderness hiking and mountain climbing in the western United States. The book’s climax is Hoover’s return to Kenya, to not only climb, but also successfully descend Mt. Kilimanjaro–and to move on from there.
Hoover's Guides
Some of the guides who escorted Hoover up Mount Kilimanjaro.


Journey from Kilimanjaro is action-packed and will hold your interest as an adventure story. It is inspirational—an example of successfully meeting external challenges. It is insightful about the human aspects of the educational process. Above all it has the ring of truth of actual experience.

Steve Manning is a professor of Biology at Arkansas State University in Beebe, Arkansas.•

“Journey from Kilimanjaro” is available from FON for $12.75 with shipping included. Make checks payable to Friends of Nigeria and send to David Strain, 159 Delmar Street, San Francisco, CA 94117.
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Africa And NEPAD: What About HIV/AIDS?
Part Two

By Chinua Akukwe
FON member

This article has been reproduced by kind permission of the editor of The Perspective P.O. Box 450493 Atlanta, GA 31145 Website: www.theperspective.org Email: editor@theperspective.org

HIV/AIDS AND NEPAD PRIORITIES
The HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa put the searchlight on the poor healthcare infrastructure in many countries, including the hardest hit nations. The healthcare system in Africa, in decline for a long time, became inundated with the needs of individuals dying of AIDS. In some countries in Southern Africa, AIDS patients occupy more than 50 percent of all hospital beds. The inadequacies in transportation, energy, telecommunications and information management became glaring in the moral battle to extend lifesaving antiretroviral drugs to Africans living with HIV/AIDS, as opponents repeatedly cited these inadequacies.

Human resource development initiatives in Africa must deal with pervasive effects of HIV/AIDS as experienced workers die, and younger workers remain at risk. As noted by the UNAIDS, the loss of transfer of knowledge between more experienced workers and younger employees, and the higher recruitment cost of replacing sick and dying workers can increase the workers’ compensation budget of a typical manufacturing outfit by 10 percent or more in Africa. Far more important, the millions of young men and women that look healthy today and are potential beneficiaries of human resource initiatives may be living unknowingly with HIV that will manifest clinically in less than a decade.

The effect of HIV/AIDS on the environment is still unfolding. However, human beings, the best stewards of the environment in Africa, are already at risk of HIV/AIDS. The cultural ramifications of loosing generations of citizens to AIDS will likely be significant. However, one cherished cultural tradition in Africa, the extended family system, is already under strain from the unprecedented waves of AIDS orphans. Science and technology will also take a major hit as the likely elite die of AIDS and technical workers fall sick.

HIV/AIDS AND THE CURRENT FOCUS AREAS OF NEPAD
Peace and security in Africa may come under threat in Africa if the estimated high rates of HIV infection in the powerful African armies hold up. The World Bank, the Economic Commission for Africa and UNAIDS estimate that infective rates in the rank-and-file of national armies in Africa range between 10 and 50 percent. It is highly unlikely that Military commanders will tolerate the specter of high death rates and lack of access to lifesaving drugs. The United States Institute of Peace and the International Crisis Group have provided compelling evidence of how conflicts, massive movements of people, displaced communities, and refugee status facilitate the transmission of HIV through rape, sexual coercion, and trading sex for survival.

Economic and corporate governance, infrastructure development, enthroning transparent financial standards, establishing a Central Bank, improving agriculture output, and increasing access to markets, domestic and abroad, depend on skilled and productive workforce in the public and private sectors. HIV/AIDS remains a formidable threat to the current and future workforce in Africa.

WHAT TO DO
HIV/AIDS is a major impediment to the lofty goals and objectives of NEPAD. I believe that African leaders should immediately adopt HIV/AIDS remedial efforts as one of the focus areas of NEPAD, and set in motion a machinery to translate the Abuja 2001 declaration on HIV/AIDS into a working document for the forthcoming meeting with G-8 nations. The HIV/AIDS working document should address critical issues, such as access to antiretroviral drugs, culturally appropriate information, education and communication (IEC) campaigns, and mobilization of Africans everywhere to fight the epidemic. The working document should define the relationship between NEPAD and other players in international AIDS remedial efforts and document the parameters of aid for development programs regarding HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS estimates that at least 80 percent of resources needed to fight AIDS in Africa will come from external sources). Additionally, the working document should set out specific parameters for accelerated debt relief in exchange for verifiable investments in HIV/AIDS remedial efforts and for holding African governments accountable in national and local campaigns against the epidemic.

Finally, NEPAD should be an opportunity to develop a continental response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic as part of the new African Union (AU). Although the NEPAD document alludes to the work of the Global Fund for AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis, UNAIDS, and other active players in the international arena, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has the capacity to neutralize the lofty aims of African leaders enshrined in the envisaged partnership for development. With 28 million Africans living with HIV/AIDS and more than 20 million already dead, t

he number one development emergency in Africa deserve priority attention in NEPAD, the touted vehicle for the continent’s accelerated development.

About the author: Dr. Chinua Akukwe is a former Vice Chairman of the National Council for International Health (NCIH), Washington, DC now known as the Global Health Council, and currently serves on the Board of the Constituency for Africa, Washington, DC.•
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A Museum Of The Peace Corps Experience

The Committee for a Museum of the Peace Corps Experience (CMPCE) was started in 1999 by a committed group of returned Peace Corps Volunteers in the Portland, Oregon area. While our Board Members are drawn from the RPCV’s of the Portland metro region, assistance is welcome from anyone, including returned Peace Corps Volunteers, staff, and supporters from all over the world. We strongly believe in the value of establishing a Museum of the Peace Corps Experience as a way to fulfil the third goal of the Peace Corps,

"Bringing the World Back Home.”

Our Mission To inspire connection with the world by sharing the Peace Corps experience of living among diverse cultures.

As Peace Corps enter its fifth decade, there are a wealth of stories that should be shared with a wider audience. This proposed museum will take a significant step to fulfil Peace Corps’ third goal—bringing many cultures home to Americans and broadening geographic education. We are planning for sections of art, artifacts, and photographs reflecting lifestyles from various countries around the world; these exhibits will rotate periodically. In addition, the museum will mount travelling exhibits, working with returned volunteer groups to bring Peace Corps stories into many communities around the country. Peace Corps Volunteers’ rich understanding of world cultures will be harnessed to prepare engaging exhibits on a number of subjects. Examples from around the world will be brought into discussions of:

The museum will also take on a major documentary role: telling the unadulterated stories of what it has been like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer in various times and places. The museum will address the following issues... There will be lots to see for people of all ages, including video and audio clips, diary and book excerpts by returned volunteers, photographs, art, and artifacts. There will also be a meeting rooms and a library serving as resources for researchers, returned Peace Corps volunteers, and prospective recruits.


In order to publicize and promote our goals among RPCV’s and the museum-going public we have undertaken a number of temporary showings in the Portland, Oregon area. One such exhibition is coming up this Summer at the Collins Gallery of the Central Library and will be open during the NPCA and FON meetings.

All the organizational work done to put together our shows and other programs is accomplished by volunteers. At this point, no money goes to salaries or support of any staff. All funds go direc
tly to program planning and development. In the end, it will be the response of RPCVs, like you, that will make the dream of a permanent museum possible.

For more information about the museum and how you can help, contact

:

CMPCE
P.O. Box 14861
Portland, OR 97293

Please visit our website: www.peacecorpsmuseum.org•
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Special Report
Security Evolving For Volunteers

By Mike Goodkind (16) 65–67

When the U.S. launched its long-promised invasion of Iraq on March 18, most volunteers remained at work at their designated assignments, according to the Peace Corps.

However, volunteers in Morocco were “consolidated” to a central location, and volunteers in nearby Niger were briefly placed on “standfast” — told to stay at their posts and keep a low profile. But no volunteers were “evacuated” from their host country. In the lexicon of Peace Corps security, “consolidate,” “standfast” and “evacuate” are key elements of Emergency Action Plans (EAPs), which are drilled into all volunteers. This formal safety and security training template is intended to put all volunteers on the same page, while allowing blanks to be filled in for each country, assignment and location, explained Jody Olsen, deputy director of the Peace Corps. A key goal of EAPs is to empower volunteers by developing knowledge and life skills.

Changes in security have evolved, said Olsen, and were well in place long before the current war in Iraq. Other recent changes include the appointment of a former US Agency for International Development security expert, Patrick Hogan, as associate director of safety and security.

Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez called his March 25 appointment of a safety and security czar “a key element of the framework designed to enhance safety and security initiatives for the Peace Corps.” Hogan, who served as the coordinator for counter-terrorism at the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Security, will oversee safety and security communication, compliance and support throughout the agency and will report to the Director of the Peace Corps,” Vasquez said in a memo to staff.

Hogan is an Army veteran and graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy in Quantico, VA and the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville,Va.

(Vasquez at the start of his career was a police officer in California and no stranger to the discipline of security.)
Hogan’s appointment came less than a week after the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, “but we have a long history of how we think about volunteer safety,” said Olsen in a March 28 interview. Evacuations have occurred throughout Peace Corps history. Olsen, who recalled her firsthand experience as a volunteer in Tunisia, where she met a group of volunteers recently evacuated from Nigeria following the outbreak of the Biafran War in 1967.
“Each year we evolve our procedures, so volunteers can continue to serve at a certain comfort level,” she said. “And it’s important that 95 percent of the issue is safety and not security.

“Safety and security are built into training. Volunteers talk about how they can take their own responsibility,” said Olsen. In-country staff, often full-time safety officers, now assess home safety, for example, checking for adequate door locks in living quarters. Volunteer empowerment includes training in such “street smarts” as making sure to check the fuel gauge when entering a taxi for a long trip in a remote area, she said.

Cell phones and email are becoming expected work tools for some volunteers and email services are often available at Peace Corps in-country offices— presumably facilitating a call for help or at least a request for information. But safety and technology aren’t always linked, and some time-tested philosophies still prevail. Prospective volunteers are told in the application guide that “safety and security are predicated on the development of close interpersonal relationships between Volunteers and host-country community members…. Volunteers are expected to adopt a culturally appropriate lifestyle to promote their safety.”

While all EAPs require volunteers to provide a telephone contact number, “this can quite appropriately be a headmaster or a local café,” Olsen said. Peace Corps Press Secretary Barbara Daly said she hopes the public understands that most volunteers justifiably feel safe. They know and understand the country where they work.

Dane Smith, retiring president of the National Peace Corps Association, cautions that security is vital but isn’t a standalone value. “We do emphasize the importance of security for volunteers as being a key issue for the Peace Corps. We’ve also emphasized that this isn’t the only issue. There is always a balance between risk and carrying out a program,” Smith said.

Olsen recalls that in the 1960s, volunteers were often long out of a difficult situation before anyone back home became aware of a tense situation. Now, however, the Peace Corps makes a special effort to reassure families and others on the home front—using the web and other technology. When the war broke out, the Peace Corps on March 21 posted a news release:
“The Peace Corps understands the concerns that volunteers and their families may have regarding the effects of the current military action in Iraq. We continue to monitor the events in Iraq, as well as the political and public climate in all Peace Corps countries. The Peace Corps is prepared to take any necessary actions needed to ensure the safety and security of its volunteers.”•

Peace Corps For Nigeria Still On Hold
No decision to resume Peace Corps service in Nigeria is expected in the near future because of internal and external safety considerations, as well as more general questions about whether the internal situation would allow volunteers to do their jobs effectively.
“For the time being it is very difficult for us to think of returning volunteers to Nigeria,” said Deputy Director Jody Olsen.

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Letter From Nigeria
The New Faces Of The Professors

By Sam Omenyi

Up to the early 1970s, to be a professor was the best thing that happened to anybody. The professor looked decent and affluent. He drove an expensive car, e.g., Citroen. He was on a consolidated salary of N 3,000, which placed him in the highest salary range in the country.

By 1997, a professor’s annual salary was N15,000, about $682 by the official 1997 exchange rate. It was very difficult to survive on that pay. It was more or less a curse to appear in a gathering and be introduced as a professor because you might not like some of the comments from some of the young businessmen among them. Life for him was miserable. He had no car. If he had one, it was very old and would require pushing to start. In one of my final year classes, I asked the students to indicate who would like to be a professor. Not a single person raised his hand. The paucity of salary informed the much publicized brain drain issue in the late 80s to the 90s. Many lecturers left to other parts of the world for better opportunities, notably to Saudi Arabia, USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, South Africa, etc.
Why were things like that? The military was the problem. It is on record that the teachers then were on strike the greater part of the academic session. Their grievances included poor pay, poor teaching facilities and poor conditions of service.

When I returned to Nigeria in May 2002, four years after I left it, I could not believe what I saw. As I entered the campus of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, I thought I was in the wrong place. Assorted modern kinds of cars from Japan, America, Germany and Britain lined the streets. The faces behind the wheels were radiant with smiles of accomplishment. Their suits and jackets appeared to be custom-made. The traditional dresses were made from the costly lace materials. You could see one step out of his car with a cellular phone in hand, something unheard of a few years earlier. I raised the question again about who would like to be a professor upon graduation; more than a third of the class raised their hands. That was the difference. A friend had earlier joked: “Sam, you returned from the US because of the enhanced salary, isn’t it?”

“What really happened?” I asked. “The dividend of democracy” was the reply. The Teacher Unions had parleyed with the civilian Government under Obasanjo on the terrible state of education in the country and received upward revision of their salaries. A professor’s annual salary is on the average of N1,510,000, about $11,615 per year by today’s exchange rate. Considering the present standard of living, this is a comfortable salary. (Though ironically on strike now, the professor is financially comfortable).•


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Teachers For West Africa

by Ard & Lorna Crum (TWAP) 64-67

In January 1964, I was finishing my MA in English. In a student newspaper, I saw a small advertisement, “Teach in Africa. You can if…” I responded and quickly got a 4-page application. The mailed application almost immediately yielded a phone interview and a plane ticket to a personal interview in Pennsylvania. The program director was about to depart on his annual placement tour of Nigeria and Ghana and wanted to carry my resume with him. Two months later, I had an invitation to teach for 2 years at Ibadan Grammar School (IGS), pending a successful physical and required shots.
Ard and Lorna Ibadan
Ard (standing) and Lorna (r) in Ibadan 1965
For the physical, I walked down the street next to the University of Washington and into the first business marked “Medical…” and for the shots into the King County Health Services. I was now a Teachers For West Africa (TWAP) volunteer, and the Peace Corps was just beginning an investigation of my background!

TWAP was a tiny program by Peace Corps standards. It began in 1962 and ended in 1972, funded by Hershey Foods Corporation and administered at Elizabethtown College, in Pennsylvania. During its 10 years, the program sponsored 96 teachers in 51 schools in Nigeria and 162 teachers in 71 schools in Ghana. Of the teachers in Nigeria, only 3 are listed as terminating early and 15 served 4 or even 6 years. The program list also indicates that the 96 teachers in Nigeria had 28 children at the time of service, “about half of whom were born in Nigeria.” In addition, the African-American Institute ceased teacher recruitment for West Africa in 1962, and TWAP co-supervised its 20 teachers in the field at that time. The director of the Program for all but the beginning of 1962 was Dr. James Berkebile, who in effect personally directed all aspects of the program with amazing efficiency, effectiveness and grace. He supervised all volunteer screenings, placements, orientations and finances, and visited each volunteer on site every year. Frankly, I do not know of anything to criticize in his administration.

At school, we did pretty much the same work as other voluneers, regardless of background or sponsorship. So what was different about the TWAP program?

Smallness, informality and independence characterized TWAP in my mind. The program found our assignments, got us to Nigeria, and provided insurance and financial support. Otherwise, TWAP volunteers dealt with work, civil and social problems locally, just as we do here in the U.S., although I am sure TWAP would have responded quickly in a crisis or if asked. We tended to be slightly older than the Peace Corps volunteers and often had graduate degrees (I actually believed at the time that it was a program requirement). Orientation consisted of 2 intense weeks at Elizabethtown College, followed by immediate departure for Nigeria and Ghana. Couples, even with children, were recruited, and having children during an assignment was never discouraged. Our two TWAP families at IGS had 3 children born in Nigeria (all now raising families of their own).

My own independence may have been extreme, even by TWAP standards. I showed up at orientation in August 1964, with Lorna, an exchange student from the Philippines, and asked if she could “sit in on” orientation. Without any indication that my request was unusual, the staff immediately arranged housing for her in the dormitory with female volunteers. The second day, Dr. Berkebile explained to me what the sponsorship and financial terms would be if she were to join me later in Nigeria. He never questioned either of us, and his terms were generous. Lorna attended the full orientation and even rode the charter bus to New York City to see us off before returning to Cornell University.
Ard and Lorna 2001
Ard and Lorna in 2001


My first 5 months at IGS were as a bachelor, but then I asked the Headmaster, Cannon Alayande, for 10 days off to go back to the U.S. to marry Lorna. His only concern was what subject she, as a dietitian, would teach, and I refused to make a commitment for her. He moved me to another house “more suitable for a married teacher,” and in February 1965, she was employed directly by the school and taught Biology. Smaller than most of her students and the first Asian most of them had ever seen, she immediately and thoroughly tamed 2 notoriously unruly 4th form classes. Of course, I neglected to tell Dr. Berkebile, and when he rediscovered Lorna during his next annual visit, his only negative responses were some well-deserved jokes about my letter-writing priorities.

Lorna and I had our first child, Vincent, in May 1966, and returned to the United States in February 1967, expecting our second. My tour was supposed to end in September 1966, but we had to extend a few months because Lorna’s exchange visitor’s visa to the United States required that once she left, she could not be readmitted for 2 years. But this change in plans did allow me to work with my 5th and 6th formers through their Cambridge exams.

TWAP did not have the resources the Peace Corps would have to protect us should the situation have turned dangerous for foreigners. Yet I never felt at risk. The U. S. Consulate in Ibadan interviewed me (because, they said, I had been relatively invisible to officials and might know of other similar Americans) and revealed plans to protect and evacuate citizens if necessary.

So how do I regard the Peace Corps option? Having raised our four children and now facing retirement, Lorna and I have applied to the Peace Corps. Having worked alongside Peace Corps volunteers, I am both glad I was in the TWAP and highly supportive of the Peace Corps.•



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Update File - John Pincetich & Mike Taylor

Mike (l) and John (r) in Benin, 1965

John Pincetich (Staff) 66–68
Dave Sugarman, whom I could never pry away from the rogue Honda he tooled about the countryside, pet monkey on his back, asked me to write some updating words.

All of you remain, as I knew you then, as if encased in a clear plastic time capsule: tie-dyed and sandaled, each in your own way trying to keep alive JFK’s vision of peace in the strange and beguiling African country of Nigeria. Yet we (I was the same) could not articulate why without sounding mawkish. We were joined in a common purpose, you all teaching mostly, I, with wife Jerry and Dr. Mike in Benin, barking around the edges of our volunteer flock, like sheep dogs, trying to keep you alive and well.

John at the Nigeria 10 reunion in 2000

In late ’65 after a few months in the Midwest I was sent North to Kaduna. In mid- ’66 I was dispatched to, and after that, I ran things in Malaysia for two years followed by one year in Boston heading up recruiting in the Northeast. Finally, I ended up in Washington DC where I was a big wheel: Regional Director for NANESA, countries from Morocco to India. After a year, I was fired by R.M. Nixon. The seven hitch: among the best years of my life, pursuing peace, in contrast to five in WWII as a navy carrier pilot, pursuing war.
I tried returning to the corporate world. It didn’t work. I joined the citizen’s lobby, Common Cause, in ’74 in Washington, and helped bring about RMN’s deserved ignominy of resigning. Several years in Hawaii, heading its Bicentennial Commission, followed.

Then we returned to Oregon. I spent some years in local pro-bono and occasionally paid work for volunteer outfits (a year in Nigeria—82-83—running a UNICEF water/sanitation project) wrote a manuscript on our Nigeria days that never found a publisher and a novel set in Micronesia that suffered the same fate.

Jerry, who was known as Mother Peace Corps, died in mid-1992, just short of 50 years being married to me—a chore at times for sure.

Since then I’ve led a half-life, at best. In the next half dozen years I bounced about the world: a Peace Corps staff stint in Bulgaria, a training program in Uzbekistan, directed refugee relief project in Northern Iraq, and one in Tajikistan.

At home again in Gearhart OR, I was elected to the City Council once, lost once. Right now I’m helping fight off a developer wanting to destroy the first fairway of our 109 year golf course to put in a row of condos; and the Catholic church bureaucracy, an archbishop who wants to tear down our historic 90 year old church in the interest of “modernism”. If you think fighting City Hall is tough, well.

I’m in reasonable health for my age, a member of an endangered species— a bleeding heart liberal.•


Michael Taylor (Staff) 65–67

Mike and Wendy, 2003


For those of us genetically predisposed and molded by our environment to use some of ourselves for service to others, weren’t we lucky to have the Peace Corps as an avenue for expression of those impulses? The friendships we made have become lifelong. When possible we have got together with John Pincetich at least yearly on one coast or another.

I’m going to skip over a rich interval period of my life. From 1967, when I left Benin City where I was the Peace Corps Physician, to the present–raising three wonderful children (the oldest of whom, Jennifer Edowaye, was born at the Eku Baptist Hospital in 1966), residencies in internal medicine and dermatology at UCSF, an MPH from Harvard, teaching at Dartmouth Medical School, running a Department of Community Medicine at Maine Medical Center and initiating a residency program in Family Medicine, and involvement in the United Way and the Portland Free Clinic. All of it fun, and fulfilling.

In partnership with my wife, Wendy, we have come full circle with the establishment of a Portland ME based organization, Konbit Sante Cap-Haitien Health Partnership, whose mission is to work with professionals and leaders in Cap-Haitien, Haiti to improve health and medical services and to strengthen the community. Our approach is a Peace Corps one – to try to listen to the professionals there and to assist them with the development of useful programs that will be sustainable after we leave. We are building infrastructure and supporting programs in infectious diseases (AIDS/HIV, tuberculosis, malaria) and maternal child health. We are not there “to do it” for Haiti, but to help them do it, as much as possible, for themselves.

Three others on our board are RPCV’s from Malawi, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria, Judy Carl-Hendrick, Katsina (31) 68–71. In Haiti we are lucky enough to work with several Peace Corps Volunteers for cultural orientation and language. Their youth and enthusiasm are contageous and renew our own spirit. We are immersed, frustrated, joyful, learning, and buoyed up with the thrill of a community effort with fellow-travellers. As with our experience in Nigeria, we have received more than we have given.•

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