John Coyne Babbles

Praise for PCV Writers from Soldier in Iraq

Over the Christmas long weekend, I had dinner in Maryland with a friend of my sister's who served two tours in Iraq. A Lieutenant Colonel, he was one of the guests at  Christmas dinner and my sister paired us up at the same table, knowing I would have a lot to say. What surprised me was how we together trashed the war.

This colonel has served for 18 years on active service, from Korea to Africa, and moved up through the ranks to become a Lieutenant Colonel. He could be a full colonel by the time he leaves the service in two years. He had been assigned to the Green Zone in Iraq, as well as northern and southern provinces of the country. He arrived in Iraq a week before the first rocket hit the Green Zone, hitting the room next to his. Several times he was almost killed because of roadside bombings.

At Christmas dinner he mostly stated the obvious. Why we went to Iraq. How we screwed up. And why we are still there. He blames the usually people, including Tommy Franks, who didn't have the "balls" to stand up to Rumsfeld. He blames Paul Bremer for cutting the Iraq army loose, but said Cheney or Bush had to have made that decision, not Bremer. He thinks Petraeus is a joke, and that his work at training Iraqis actually failed. But Petraeus is extremely ambitious, he said, citing that when Petraeus arrived at West Point he proposed to the Superintendent's daughter within two weeks. He said Petraeus "just wanted to get ahead." [Well, I suggested, it could have been love at first sight.]

We talked about books about Iraq--he has read them all--and said George Packer's Assassins' Gate was "dead on right" about everything. I told him Packer was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Togo from 1982-83. That gave him pause. When he heard I had been in Africa, we talked about Africa. He had been to Ethiopia. He said the best book he had ever read about Africa, one that was "dead right," was called Dark Star Safari. He couldn't remember the author. I told him it was Paul Theroux and he had been a PCV in Malawi, 1963-65. He looked at me again.

Well, he admitted, the only person in Iraq who knew what she was doing was a former Peace Corps Volunteer woman in the State Department.

We shifted from Iraq to Africa to NGOs. He had no use for NGOs. He mentioned a great book about NGOs that he had read. It was called, Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, "or something like that" and did I know it. Now, he was watching me closely. Yes, I said, it was written by Michael Maren, a PCV in Kenya from 1977-80.

He shook his head, sighing, "Maybe someone should have listened to the Peace Corps before they decided to invade Iraq." 

On that happy, or unhappy, note, I wish you all a Happy New Year. As an RPCV friend from Ethiopia just wrote me in her Christmas card: "Conserve, recycle, minimize your carbon footprints and vote Democratic."

That's good advice for the new year, or for that matter, any year.

As we say in Amharic, Tenastelign [may God give you health]

Reediting and Reliving Carver and Lish

For those of you who have not had enough of Raymond Carver and Gordon Lish, and the battling over 'who edited what, when and where, I draw your attention to the December 24 & 31, 2007 winter fiction issue of The New Yorker.

On page 92, under "Life and Letters" there is an exchange of letters from Raymond Carver to Gordon Lish, and the battle of wills between an author and his editor in a piece entitled, "Rough Crossings." With this article, is the 'unedited' version of Carver's story, "Beginners" that Lish retitled, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." If you go to newyorker.com, [if you have nothing better to do] you can read a line-by-line comparison of Raymond Carver's "Beginners" and Gordon Lish's edit.

RPCVs At The Center of new Play in Chicago

There is a new play written by Jon Robin Baitz called "Three Hotels." It is on now at the Actors Workshop Theatre in Chicago, running through January. 12 . Baitz is the writer and producer of ABC's "Brothers and Sisters"..

The play is about corporate malfeasance and marital conflict that focuses on the “pursuit of power and the erosion of individual ethics.” Ken, an RPCV turned marketing wiz turned hatchet man for Iris and Rose, a U.S.-based, corporate giant that manufactures baby formula.

He has become successful on the strength of his specious African ad campaign touting the company's formula as preferable to breast milk and using saleswomen dressed as nurses to promote the product. Barbara, his wife, is also an RPCV. She played the dutiful corporate wife until a personal tragedy transformed her.

The play is set up like Brian Friel's "Faith Healer," if you saw that, where it unfolds as a series of monologues spoken by Ken and his wife, Barbara. They speak from nondescript hotel rooms in Morocco, the Virgin Islands and Mexico over several years during the late 1980s. The play is already getting great reviews in Chicago. At one point, Barbara says, speaking to the wives of executives assigned overseas, "Be careful that the company does not turn your husband into something unrecognizable," she warns them. Well, at least they didn’t blame the Peace Corps!

To Build A Fire in Mongolia (Final Christmas Tale)

[From a Tongan sun and the warmth of West Africa, we go with the season to Mongolia and an essay about living where the weather really matters. When thinking about the Peace Corps, most of us think of huts in Africa or remote island paradises, but when the Peace Corps went into Eastern Europe and all those former USSR countries, they found the cold and snow waiting for the Volunteers. Here's how Matt Heller (Mongolia 1995-97) made sense of the climate and of what he was doing as a PCV.]

"Our family always lived where we needed a snow shovel. I remember one snowstorm in particular when I was nine. My best friend, Bobby Frost, and I shoveled our entire driveway ourselves, which is no small feat for nine year-olds.

"When we were done, my father was waiting in the kitchen to reward us with grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and a silver dollar for the work we had done. Dipping my grilled cheese into the steaming tomato soup (in my opinion, truly the best way to eat the two together), I am sure I was oblivious to how lucky I was; how Norman Rockwell-beautiful shoveling a driveway can be.

"Because I grew up in New England, winter was always my favorite season. It meant ice hockey, snow days off from school, and sledding until dinner was ready. Winter meant scratchy wool hats, scarves that always choked me, jackets that made me look like a mini-sumo wrestler, snow pants that made peeing an ordeal, and moon boots. My moon boots were my favorite. I may even have worn them to bed a few times, afraid someone would take them from me while I slept. I loved winter as much as I loved those moon boots.

"I still love winter, but to say I enjoy it as I did when I was nine years old would be a lie. I’ve been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mongolia for eighteen months now and I live in a ger, a tent with a small wood stove in the center. It is strong and practical, the perfect domicile for a nomadic herder living on the Asian steppe. It packs up in about half an hour. I, however, am not a herder, but an English teacher in a small secondary school in rural Mongolia. Ger life is not easy. It makes twenty year-olds look thirty-five. It makes your soul hard.

'Mongolians are very proud of their history and traditions. Once, while sitting on the train going from Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, to my own town, Bor-Undur, a Mongolian pointed to his arm and said, “In here is the blood of Genghis Khan. Beware.' Really, there is no argument to that statement. I responded, 'Yes, older brother (a respectful title addressed to elders), your country is beautiful. Mongolians are lucky people.'

"Unfortunately, many Mongolians are big vodka drinkers, and this very drunk herder was on his way home from selling cashmere wool and meat in the city. He had been successful in his business, and celebrating now he wanted to teach me the custom of taking the traditional three shots of vodka that new acquaintances must drink. His shots were too big for me, and I only wanted to taste the vodka, not help him finish the bottle. That’s when Genghis’ blood came into the conversation. I drank the three shots. Herders are tough people. They don’t wear moon boots.

"Maybe if I had been born here and lived in a ger all my life I would be tough too. But I wasn’t, and I’m not. I can trace no lineage to the man who was once the world’s most powerful ruler, but I am blessed. I am blessed with the gift of a Peace Corps/Mongolia standard issue sleeping bag rated to -30 degrees. When combined with another sleeping bag of my own and some wool blankets, I am completely protected from the cold that invades my ger every night when the fire goes out.

"When it’s time to wake up and start my day, the first thing I do is build a fire. In the quiet darkness of morning, huddling next to my stove and sipping hot coffee, I listen to the Voice of America on my shortwave radio and remind myself who I am, where I’m from, and what I’m doing. I’m a young Volunteer spending eight hours a day with Mongolians, building a greenhouse with the other teachers in my school so there will be more vegetables in our town. Along with many other things, I’m learning how they live. In the steppe there is very little snow, only biting wind and dust. It gets as cold as -50 degrees, not counting the wind chill factor. If I leave leftover tea in a mug, it will freeze solid by morning. I’ve broken three mugs that way. When it is this cold I sometimes ask myself, 'How valuable is the contribution I’m making? And is it really worth being this cold?'

"For eighteen months now I’ve been waking up and thinking, yes, it is. I love working with Mongolians, but the time of day I look forward to most is building my morning fire. It is my time of epiphany. As I feel the warmth that my own hands created, a fire that pushes back the cold and the dark, replacing them with warmth and light, I know I will live another day. Such an experience defines what it means to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.

"We all build fires in one way or another, and the warmth we create is as good as eating grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup on a winter day when you’re only nine years old. Being a Volunteer in Mongolia and having the opportunity to live in a ger may mean enduring very cold mornings, but it’s worth more than all the silver dollars in the world."

[The best to you all this Holiday Season and Happy New Year! John]

Under the Tongan Sun

[On the other side of the world, PCVs lived in the sunlight of the Pacific islands, lived in paradise as those early Peace Corps Recruitment Ad said when the agency first went to Micronesia, back in the mid-sixties. This lovely essay was written by Tina Martin (Tonga 1969-71). So, on this cold winter day it's nice to remember when we (as least some of us) lived in the sun and warmth of paradise.]

"I lived in a tiny hut made of bamboo and coconut leaves and lined with dozens of mats, pieces of tapa cloth, and wall-to-wall children. When I sat on the floor with my back against the back door, my feet almost touched the front door. There was no electricity or running water, so I used a kerosene lamp and drew water from the well. There were breadfruit trees and avocado trees around my hut, and if I wanted a coconut, the children climbed a tree for me.

"The kids I taught were always with me, and I loved them even more than I once loved my privacy. I always wanted to have children, but I never thought I’d have so many and so soon. These were the children I would like to see back home — children who had never even seen a television set and didn’t depend upon “things” for their entertainment because they didn’t have any things. For fun, they taught each other dances and songs, and they juggled oranges.

"They woke me up in the morning, calling through my bamboo poles. They took my five sentini and got me freshly baked bread from the shop across the lawn, and they helped me eat it. Some of them watched the ritual of my morning bath-water drawn from the well and heated on my kerosene stove and poured into a tin, then over a pre-soaped me. They sometimes braided my hair and helped me get dressed for school. Then they walked me there, where I used the oral English method we learned in training — acting out the language so there’s no need for translation.

"'I’m running! I’m running!' I said as I ran in front of the class. 'I’m running. I’m running!' I took a child by the hand. 'Run!' I said, and eventually he did. The goal was to have a running paradigm, which usually ended. 'I running, you running, he/she/it running.' We did this for all verbs.

"English was the link between Tonga and other land masses. And English was the exercise that kept me scrawny, the worst physical defect a body could have in the Tongan culture, where fat was beautiful. I tried to compensate for my lack of bulk by being very anga lelei (good-natured), which was their most cherished personality trait.

"After school the children would come home with me and stay, singing Tongan songs and the ones I’d taught them.

"Then I tried to help them prepare for the sixth grade exam that would determine their scholastic future. And they helped me prepare whichever vegetable was to be my dinner.

"The children never left until I was safely tucked into bed under my canopy of mosquito net on top of tapa cloth. Then I blew out my lamp, laid down, and listened to songs from a kava ceremony nearby. Sometimes there was light from what a Tongan teacher told me was now the “American moon,” since we had put a man there. On moonless nights, I fell asleep in complete darkness. But I fell asleep knowing that I would always wake up under the Tongan sun."

Water

[This essay by Rachel Schneller (Mali 1996-98) has always been a favorite of mine as it shows with simple narrative skill how inadaquate we all were when serving in the Peace Corps, where the ability to carry a jug of water is the most important skill a person can have. As Rachel shows us, the ability to carry water is what life is all about in Africa.]

"When a woman carries water on her head, you see her neck bend outward behind her like a crossbow. Ten liters of water weighs twenty-two pounds, a fifth of a woman’s body weight, and I’ve seen women carry at least twenty liters in aluminum pots large enough to hold a television set.

"To get the water from the cement floor surrounding the outdoor hand pump to the top of your head, you need help from the other women. You and another woman grab the pot’s edges and lift it straight up between you. When you get it to the head height, you duck underneath the pot and place it on the wad of rolled-up cloth you always wear there when fetching water. This is the cushion between your skull and the metal pot full of water. Then your friend lets go. You spend a few seconds finding your balance. Then with one hand steadying the load, turn around and start your way home. It might be a twenty-minute walk through mud huts and donkey manure. All of this is done without words.

"It is an action repeated so many times during the day that even though I have never carried water on my head, I know exactly how it is done.

"Do not worry that no one will be at the pump to help you. The pump is the only source of clean drinking water for the village of three thousand people. Your family, your husband and children rely on the water on your head; maybe ten people will drink the water you carry. Pump water, everyone knows, is clean.

"The pump is also where you hear gossip from the women who live on the other side of the village. Your trip to the pump may be your only excuse for going outside of your family’s Muslim home alone.

"When a woman finds her balance under forty pounds of water, I see her eyes roll to the corners in concentration. Her head makes the small movements of the hands of someone driving a car: constant correction. The biggest challenge is to turn all the way around from the pump to go home again. It is a small portion of the ocean, and it swirls and lurches on her head with long movements.

"It looks painful and complicated and horrible for the posture and unhealthy for the vertebrae, but I wish I could do it. I have lived in this West African village for two years, but cannot even balance something solid, like a mango, on my head, let alone a pot filled with liquid. When I lug my ten liter plastic jug of water to my house by hand, it is only a hundred meters, but the container is heavy and unwieldy.

"Changing the jug from one hand to the other helps, but it is a change necessary every twenty meters. Handles do not balance. On your head, the water is symmetrical like the star on top of a Christmas tree. Because my life has never depended on it, I have never learned to balance."

The Mending Fields

[As a gift to all of you for faithfully putting up with my blogs, I'm going to post over the next few days--as we approach Christmas--some of the best short pieces RPCV writers have written and sent my way. These are essays that Marian Beil and I first published on our website: www.peacecorpswriters.org. This essay was written by the gifted novelist and non-fiction writer--one of the real gurus of Peace Corps writing--Bob Shacochis, who served in the Eastern Caribbean from 1975 to 1976. In my opinion it is one of the best short pieces ever written about the Peace Corps experience. It sums up the spirit and the reason why we all joined in the first place.]

"I was assigned to the Island of Saint Kit in the West Indies. Once on an inter-island plane, I sat across the aisle from one of my new colleagues, an unfriendly, overserious young woman. She was twenty-four, twenty-five . . . we were all twenty-four, twenty five. I didn’t know her much or like her. As the plane banked over the island, she pressed against the window, staring down at the landscape. I couldn’t see much of her face, just enough really to recognize an expression of pain. Below us spread an endless manicured lawn, bright green and lush of sugarcane, the island’s main source of income. Each field planted carefully to control erosion. Until that year, Saint Kit’s precious volcanic soil had been bleeding into the sea; somehow they had resolved the problem. The crop was now being tilled in harmony with the roll and tuck of the land and the island had taken a step to reclaiming its future. The woman peered out her window until the island was lost on the blue horizon. And then she turned forward in her seat and wept until she had soaked the front of her blouse. 'Good Lord,' I thought, 'what’s with her?' I found out later from another Volunteer: Two years ago, having just arrived on the island, she had been assaulted as she walked to her home. Not content to rape her, a pair of men had beaten her so severely she was sent back to the States to be hospitalized. Recovering, she had made the choice to return. She believed she could be of use on Saint Kit so she went back to coordinate the team responsible for improving the way sugarcane was cultivated. The day I flew with her was the first time she had taken a look at her handiwork from the illuminating vantage of the air. The cane fields were beautiful, perfect: they were a triumph, they were courage, and they were love."

Coyne Babbles On TV About Christmas In The Peace Corps

Doug Kiker was from Griffin, Georgia and had early success as a short story writer while still a student at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina, majoring in English. There's a story about how he wanted to get published and he picked up Martha Foley's short stories collection, went to the rear of the book and found the list of short-story publishers, closed his eyes and punched in the dark. He hit the Yale Review, to which he promptly submitted a short story. And they accepted his story.

While still in college he worked as a reporter, covering the Senate race between Strom Thurmond and Olin Johnston. After college he joined the navy and was commissioned an Ensign, serving in Korean War. Discharged, he returned to Atlanta and worked at the Atlanta Journal and covered the first sit-ins at lunch counters in North Carolina. Out of that experience came his 1957 novel, The Southerner, the story of a Negro educator who goes from North to South to participate in integration. The book was a success not only in the United States but in England and Germany. He published next the novel Strangers on the Shore, about life in the peacetime Navy in 1959.

In June of '61 he became the Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal, and like many others, he got caught up in the excitement of the new Peace Corps. He left the Atlanta Journal less than two months after he arrived in Washington to handle Peace Corps publicity and liaison with newspapers and magazines. Like most of the early staff of the Peace Corps, he was young, only 32, when he took over the job. But he didn't last long.

When I met him--in December of '64--he was already gone from the Peace Corps and was working for the New York Herald Tribune. He also had a television program on the new education channel in D.C. which was then being broadcast from a tiny studio on the campus of American University.

I had just gone to work (that September) for the Peace Corps as the African Liaison Officer in what was then called the Division of Volunteer Support. [A division that no longer exists.] The Press Office was looking for RPCVs to go on Kiker's show and talk about Christmas in the Peace Corps. Three of us, as I recall, were drafted and we took a taxi from 806 Connecticut Avenue up to American University where the PBS studio was located in the basement of a campus building.

I had a college job working on a radio station and was familiar with the seat-of-the-pants production such at this one at AU. Kiker chatted briefly with us, mainly to get a 'hook' on where were we had been last Christmas. I told him about singing carols for Selassie and his eyes brightened.

When we went to the video tape, he screwed up his introduction and from high up in the booth he was told he only had one more tape [remember this was early PBS broadcasting] so he started over and went back to his scripted opening, then to the other RPCVs (if I recall Peggy Anderson of Togo was one of us) and he worked around to me and said with great enthusiasm "Well, John, I bet you're going to tell me that you sang for Haile Selassie!"

That caught me a little flat footed and I mumbled yes and began to talk and talk, filling more air than Doug might ever have wanted. When I saw his eyes flash, I summed up almost in mid-sentence. Both of us were clearly new to this television game. And Kiker to his credit was no Chris Matthews.

Leaving the studio, he was still upset at my babbling, and asked in controlled southern rage, "how in the world did you get into the Peace Corps, Coyne?"

I thought about that for a second, then replied with true innocence, "I applied."

The Peace Corps Slogan Lives On

[I found this on a blog run by Adil Syed who lives in Pakistan. The blog item was written by Sharon Housley who manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.]

"Let's take a look at slogans and how just a few words can say volumes. A slogan is a memorable phrase used in conjunction with a political, commercial, or religious advertisement. Slogans are used to convey a deeper meaning. Slogans can be used to elicit emotions, or the slogan might paint a visual image that implies something more.

"When considering a slogan or a tagline, keep in mind your objectives. What image do you wish to portray? Slogans should be short, but not to the point of being pithy. Slogans should conjure positive images and distinguish the value your company or product provides.

"The best way to analyze slogans is to look at a few.

"Slogan: "The toughest job you will ever love" (Peace Corps)

"Message behind slogan: This is much more than just a job; it takes heart to be in the Peace Corps; join the Peace Corps and you will be a better person. This job is not about money it is about helping people."

Sharon goes to say [about the Peace Corps and other slogans] "Effective slogans leave impressions in the minds of people who see or hear the slogans. Often slogans will have hidden meanings, or be a play on words. The goal of the slogan creator should be to create a memorable tagline that conveys a key benefit or differentiates the brand. Slogans will often help position the product or service in the marketplace. Slogans with just a few words can indicate superior value, excellence, or inspiration.

A business identity and image conveyed through a short statement will affect the way that consumers, competitors and others in the industry perceive your business. Slogans will distinguish your company in a unique way. Words are powerful, and if used properly, they can be an important sales tool."

[Back around 1981 there was an RPCV reunion in Washington, D.C., at Howard University and I remember an RPCV woman standing up at some point and telling everyone that it was her husband who had come up with the slogan "The toughest job you will ever love," and I thought 'wow' that's pretty impressive.

It wasn't true, of course. I went search for who had come up with the slogan and it turned out that when Carolyn Payton took over the agency [being appointed, and then fired, by Sam Brown, but that's another story...] she enlisted the help of a New York Ad Agency and they came up with several slogans and the senior staff picked 'toughest job'. At the moment the name of the agency slips my mind, but I'm sure someone out there might recalls it and add a comment to this blog.

Now, every new Peace Corps director wants a new slogan [the latest, I think, is "Life is calling. How far will you go?'] back in the mid-nineties when Carol Bellamy took over the Peace Corps, focus groups of outsiders recalled at once, "the toughest job you'll ever love." The slogan from the early '80s has summed up the experience.

But then again, there a quite a few RPCVs who remember when they were still in middle school those public service announcements on their television sets that showed the glass half full and asked the famous question how 'you' saw the world.

I've always believed that Peace Corps recruiting should start in the middle school [and often it does when an RPCV teacher comes into class and shows slides from their Peace Corps years. That's when kids decide to join.]

I see that www.peacecorps.gov has added a 'teen' page to their webside. This follows Director Mark Gearan's children's link from the 1990s. I will say that the new Peace Corps webpage is very impressive, and well done. All that is missing is the history of the agency. With the five year rule of "In, Up, and Out" every new director believes he or she has re-invented the agency. Say it ain't so, Ron.

   

PCVs Sing Christmas Carols To Emperor Haile Selassie

In the first year the Peace Corps was in Ethiopia, way back in 1962, PCVs were invited to sing Christmas carols at Jubilee Palace, the residence of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, King of Kings, and Conquering Lion of Judah. (I might have forgotten a few of his other titles.)

Jubilee Palace was the real thing, built in Addis Ababa in 1955 in commemoration of the first twenty-five years of the Emperor's reign. We had been to the Palace once before, in September of ‘62 shortly after arriving in country, when we had been welcomed to the Empire by His Majesty. We toured the palace's park-like grounds of trees, gardens and pools, and viewed his private collection of animals. Besides the Imperial lions, antelopes and monkeys, his cheetahs were a special interest to all of us because we could step inside the cage and pet them.

PCVs who lived in Addis often saw the Emperor in the city. I remember several occasions when walking back to the Commercial School on Smuts Street after lunch to teach my afternoon classes I would stop in my tracks as the Emperor’s Rolls-Royce passed me on Churchill Road. We PCVs knew to bow respectfully and the Emperor would recognize us with a nod while Ethiopians beside us fell to their knees in respect of HIM (His Imperial Majesty). And the Emperor, spotting us, a faranji on the sidewalk, would nod to us in recognization. It was a big deal, I must admit, to be recognized by the little man.

So, going to the Palace for Christmas Eve was also a "big deal." About fifty of us assembled in the darkness outside the walls and then led onto the grounds by the U.S. Ambassador and positioned like neighborhood carolers in front of the second floor balcony where the Emperior appeared with several of his young grandchildren to hear our motley crew sing very off-key a half dozen familiar Western Christmas carols.

When we finished singing he thanked us and wished us "Merry Christmas" in English which was special as the Emperor rarely spoke in English. [Now there was also a rumor that our language instructors had taught us a carol in Amharic that actually said, "throw Jesus out with the bath water," but we were never able to prove it.]

Nevertheless, we were welcomed into the Palace for champagne and tej, the national drink, to be greeted by His Majesty, and to march up to the throne and bow again to HIM and say hello in our bumbling Amharic. A girlfriend of mine at the time, knowing that the Emperor spoke fluent French, greeted His Majesty in her college classroom French. The Emperor smiled, and told her in French that she might want to work on her accent.

After all of these years, I wonder what he must have thought of the lot us gangling and gawking Americans. I'm sure he was grateful we were teaching in his schools — even if we mangled Amharic and couldn't carry a tune. As for myself, I remember that for me it was a special moment — singing carols for the Emperor of Ethiopia on Christmas Eve. Not a bad way for a farm boy from Illinois to celebrate his first Chrstmas in Africa.