Over in Iraq, so we hear, soldiers, contractors, administrators in the Green Zone and assorted idealists have been building schools, installing sewage systems, promoting local democracy, teaching initiative and conflict resolution skills and basically trying to lay the groundwork for civil, peaceable, society.
It seems kind of arrogant and naive--even if it is, possibly, a noble endeavor. Of course all the rifles, tanks, attack helicopters, RPGs, roadside bombs, truck bombs, car bombs, cluster bombs, prisons, and so forth, make "fixing" Iraq a complicated proposition. If it weren't for the war, the oil, the billions of dollars, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans, it would almost sound like some kind of Peace Corps mission.
A few days ago I got an email from an old buddy I haven't seen in decades. Seems there's a movement afoot to put together some kind of party next summer, on the 30th anniversary of our Peace Corps service in Senegal. That's got me thinking.
I was in a program called Animation Rurale. For two years I lived in a mud hut in a small village on the edge of the Sahara. I helped organize the people to build a schoolhouse -- this was their idea -- and helped them apply for a grant from the American embassy. It was during a big drought and I also helped on: a joint Senegal/US/UN project to dig wells; a Catholic Relief Services project to promote vegetable gardening (there was water in the river which flowed from the moutains in the south); and I even spent some vacation time riding "shotgun" on a UN truck delivering emergency food rations.
It was a moslem village, so I learned a little bit about Islam first hand.
I had a lot of fun, learned a lot of stuff, saw many heartbreaking things, got awfully sick, made many friends, and I like to think that I helped out some people. The people in my village (Fanaye Dieri) certainly were very gracious to me and called me a hero, and gave me a testamonial when I left, which was very touching.
I also like to think that I spread a little goodwill for the US of A and did a teeny-tiny bit to help Senegal figure out how to get from "post-colonial fledgling state" to "bonafide democratic republic."
But maybe that's just American arrogance. I was just some college kid stumbling and bumbling and trying to be useful. What qualifications did I have to teach anybody anything?
I wonder if Senegal, which used to be very pro-Western, has been radicalized? I wonder if Bin Ladinism has taken root there?
I have a brother-in-law who was in the Peace Corps in Zaire shortly after I was in Senegal. He came back and got a Ph.D. in chemistry and has spent his life going around the world helping cities provide adequate clean water to their citizens.
I came back and got a master's degree in agricultural economics, studying the economics of moving from subsistence to cash-based farming. Then I spent the next twenty years doing high tech nonsense in and about Silicon Valley.
Who knows what any of this means.
In our globaly-connected all-internet Mary-Kate/Ashley universe I wonder if the idea of sending Americans abroad to just, like the Untouchables, "do good", isn't somehow criminally inane. I mean, imagine if you were a Peace Corps Volunteer in Iraq in 2004. You're living in a mud hut, dressing like Lawrence of Arabia, eating couscous, while two miles away some Halliburton guy is living in an air conditioned house with satelite TV and and SUV -- what's the point?
And if there's no point now, was there ever? It kinda makes me feel like a dupe, like one of the telephone sanitizers in "Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy" who gets conned into boarding a space ship to nowhere in order to allieviate the overpopulation problem on earth.
Hey kid! You don't like Nixon? Hate Kissinger? Why dontcha go spend a coupla years sitting on your ass in East-Bumfuck, OK? Sound good? Keep yz out of our hair. You can send a post card if you want.
I'm and old cynic and I bet that I wouldn't like too many of our people who are over in Iraq right now. I wouldn't like the Young Republicans in the Green Zone and I wouldn't like the grunts on patrol and I sure as hell wouldn't like the mercenaries. But I'm willing to believe that that are also plenty of decent soldiers who, given the choice, would much rather build a school or give a civics lession than kill somebody.
I went in the Peace Corps in April 1974, full of moral superiority that I hadn't gone to Viet Nam and killed anybody. So imagine my surprise when I got to Senegal and found out that Peace Corps, Catholic Relief Services, OXFAM and the like was filled with 'Nam vets who were there in Senegal to get as far away as they could from killing and destruction they had seen in Viet Nam. I knew one guy who had nightmares ever single night.
It will be great to catch up with these guys next year.
Meanwhile back in my universe, my 23 year-old Vassar-graduate niece made an announcement at the family renuion over the 4th of July. She's joined the Peace Corps, and sometime next year she'll be shipping out to Fiji to work in a women's health coop.