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Show i 9, 1972 Sunday. April Last in Series THE HERALD, Provo, W Utah-P- age ' Hj.ttf a Writer, Volunteer 7 ells of Peace Corps Frustrations American latnohc Keliet Services, using powdered milk and co.nmeal they supplied as an inducement to villagers to engage in community development work. By RALPH NOVAK NEW YORK (NEAi As I bearded th plane that would take me from Africa to New York, from where I had spent the last 16 months as a Peace Corps volunteer to where I would spend the rest of my life, I did not Knew whether I should feel like a martyr or a failure. r stint as a VoMy lunteer had been prematurely terminated by the Peace Corps because, it said. I had broken the taboo of taboos and become 'politically involved." I was being sent to Washington fur as I (brainwashing, came to think of it later) and my own crusade, such as it was, was over. It was Christmas day, 1966, and I was going home but I was not sure whether I wanted to laugh or cry. When I had first applied for the Peace Corps in the spring of 1964, I was motivated by a combination of desires: to travel, to avoid having to go straight through to graduate school after I finished my senior year at Northwestern University in 1965, to challenge myself, to learn, to help other people, to do something noble. (Unless I deceive myself, I don't remember any desire to escape the draft, which is not too surprising since the Vietnam war had not flared at that point and the draft was not a pressing issue.) That I had committed myself to going also created a momentum of its own since backing out then would have been tantamount to admitting I wasn't good enough or dedicated enough. But I can still recall thinking, shortly before we left for Africa, that it would be nice to think that perhaps I had taught English to some young Togolese who would grow up to be a doctor and, because he could read English, learn some new medical discovery that would help him save lives. It was a naive thought, and I think even then I realized how it was, but the Peace Corps itself was and in naive and those days I flouted my naivete in the face of cynical friends and relatives who shook thejr heads, wondering why I would want to go off and be eaten by a croco- By the time school started again, 1 was comfortably ensconced, talking to people about starting a Kande library and reading books about raising chickens. At the beginning of December, however, the chain of events began that was to make me an instant radical, no doubt to the eternal of all those Peace Corps psychologists who had raked us over so thoroughly during training to weed out the troublemakers. two-yea- far-fetch- d dile. Still I did not expect or plan to work any miracles. I expected rather to do the job I was being sent to do-t- each English in a secondary school in Togo as well as 1 could, help out in whatever other wavs I could when I got there" and, after my two years were up, come home. That I was relatively unil- - Note-Sellin- lusioned to begin with made it harder for me to become disillusioned later, as did some of my fellow Volunteers who had displayed the most revolutionary zeal during training. But it didn't keep me from becoming as excited as everybody else when we landed in Africa on Sept 1, 1965. Our training group dispersed throughout West Africa, with 23 of us going to Togo, a tiny country of 1.5 million people, a former colony of both Germany and France that was governed by a dictatorship headed by President Nicolas Grunitzky. I was assigned to Kande, a small village of about 1,000 that was 300 miles, mostly via dilapidated railroad and dirt highway, from Lome, Togo's seaport capital. I was part of the faculty of a room secondary school run' by a group of French Fran-- c i s c a n missionaries and staffed by three enchmen, a Togolese and me. Though I had never taught before, the pedagogical training the Peace Corps had supplied, intuition and the fact that I was a native speaker of English enabled me to handle my classes without too much trouble. And since I was teaching only two English classes a day, I had time to take on two gym classes, coach soccer (with more enthusiasm than expertise since I had never played soccer) and help organize a mimeographed school yearbook. Outside school, my own reclusive personality and the e distance to town from the compound I lived in for the first six months (sharing with a Volunteer fisherman a house that was comfortable, though without electricity or running water) kept me to myself and gave me a chance to start reading through the locker of paperback books the Peace Corps supplied to all Volunteers. i- five-mil- well-stocke- d The people of Kande were friendly, exorbitantly so in many cases since they remembered colonial days Business Today By DEAN C. MILLER UPI Business Editors NEW YORK (UPI)-- A system of raising operating capital without going to banks has proved so successful for a diversified holding company in Kansas City that companies which once scoffed now are trying to find out how it worked., ISC On 1, 1971, May Industries, Inc., a company which loans money to the public, decided to borrow from 9 per cent it by selling five-yejunior subordinated notes. And it sold them over the counter at branch offices. In order for ISC personnel to sell the notes they had to pass of a National Association Securities Dealers examination. Bonus Offered "We offered our employes, mostly the branch managers, a $500 bonus if they passed the examination," said Paul Hamilton, Jr., a hapoy, round-face- d dynamo who heads ISC. "We also offered them a commission on each sale." It worked better than even Hamilton had dreamed. From the first day of operation until Dec. 31, ISC sold $2.9 million of the notes. In the first two months of 1972 alone, after the ar n decided to do it ourselves even though a lot of people said it was impossible. Some of them now are asking us to explain how it was done." with $100 it t I 1 asm rttt 1 - ) id PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER Ralph Novak in Togo. The experience taught him more than he anticipated. and ran. The French missionaries turned immediately and went back screamed to their mission. I instinc- tively started to take pictures of what was happening and continued until one of the soldiers saw me and took my camera away. Then, as the crowd dispersed and the prisoners were herded off to jail, I. too, left. For the next week I brooded. The prisoners two of whom I knew well and who had helped me on projectswere still in the local jail. And when I went to the jail to see them during that week after the beatings, one man said to me, "Monsieur Ralph. I don't know what is going to happen to me but I would like to ask you for one thing: Please make sure my son i who was one of my students) is taken care of." Through conversations with people I knew and trusted I found that the prisoners had had no part in the coup attempt, but had in the past created enemies among local government of ficials, who were using the occasion to settle grudges, without making any pretense of justice. Meanwhile, the villagers under a minor league kind of reign of terror as the local government began sending out police squads that pulled people from their houses and beat them. I began to feel guilty that I had not done something to stop the beatings in the first fell place (I still had an image of myself) and decided that sitting by quietly was not consistent with my ideas of what the Peace Corps was all about. So I did the only thing I could hink of, which was to write a letter to the head of the local government, protesting what had happened to me and demonstrating to the people of Kande, I hoped, that it was at least conceivable that what was happening was not just, was not fair and that somebody recognized it. A half hour after I had dispatched the letter I received my reply, which was, in so many words, "mind your own damned business." That was what I had expected but I felt better, however pathetic the gesture had been, since I knew that word of what I had done would get around the village. As far as I was concerned, the issue was closed. I could get along for the last six n.mths of my tour .without v viug anything to do with the local government officials and the violence seemed to have ended. But then a Peace Corps man, Togo administration Chuck Hamlin, stopped by to visit and I told him in passing, I thought about what had happened. He personally did not seem too upset about it but when he returned to Lome the next day he reported what I had said to deputy director Tom Fox, in charge at the time because American-on-w- hite-horse 'S6 FASTEST DELIVERY take-hom- Phone 373-267- can't lessons today A " Free Delivery OPEN A Setting NW SAVINGS $50.00 FREE! ACCOUNT Here's How $50.00 WITH TO AN EXISTING SAVINGS ACCOUNT () ADD (q OPEN A NEW CHECKING ACCOUNT rar 19 LUXURIOUS GOLDENWARE PROVO A TRADITIONAL WITH $100.00 yms A fngc3 GLEAMING STAINLESS ... 1158 North University Ave. POSSESSION 10 ENRICH ANY TABLE magnificent tabiewarc to alc plendor to vous SPECIAL OCCASION DiNlif - TODAY'S FINEST, SOPHISTICATED. 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YOU'LL LIKE SERVICE IN TOWN PARTY PINK PLASTIC TUMBLERS At present the company has ff yRYITjS. IT!" PBBHS A) incre- J (End Series.) two-wee- k Your First Place ments. BOISE, Idaho (UPI)-Id- aho still leads the nation in the production of silver, some 78 years after a discovery at Coeur d'Alene in northern Idaho brought a stampede of miners to the state. The Gem State also ranks high in antimony, lead, cobait, garnet, phosphate rock, vanadium, zinc and mercury. HSFlifl I He told nie 1 was threatening the Peace Corps" landing in Togo and that I was going home. I talked Fox into letting nie return to Kande to pick up in;' things and while I was there I went to my school and talked to the students to tell them what had happened. They greeted the announcement with a mixture of hostility (some were relatives of government officials ), perplexity and curiosity about what I was going to do with what belongings 1 couldn't take with me. Hut I also saw some affection, and that evening about 30 of the students came to my house as I was parking to say goodhy. One of them gave me a note, then quickly left. I have carried it with me ever since. It said: "I knew the great sadness you must be feeling now.' This unexpired depaiture that will send you home tomorrow has made me very sad. I can fs?H you that my friend Clement and I are unhappv about this sudden loss. My dear teacher, just let me thank you one more time for the big task you have performed in our school during your months here. My family and I wish you a bon voyage. (Signed) Your student. Razaki." July-Augus- ISC's system ot has brought out a Series B junior subordinated generating cash currently note in an offering up to $20 operates in Arizona, New million. It carries an interest Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kanrate of 7 per cent per annum on sas, Missouri, Indiana. NebrasArkansas, Florida and 36 month notes, 8 per cent on 60 ka. months and 9 per cent on 90 Alabama. It anticipates moving the system into Ohio, months. Kentucky, Colorado, Georgia, Hamilton Explains "We got into this market so South Carolina and Louisiana. sells ISC loans money, we could control our own tax income Hamilton insurance, prepares explained destiny," during a recent visit to New statements, makes custom built York. "We felt the money trucks and railway and highway when the conversion units, deals in crunch of 1969-7- 0 commercial market dried up residential and commercial for us and the prime rate security and monitoring syssoared to 8.5 per cent. So we tems, has a retail furniture totaled $3.7 million. Securities were sold in minimum $500 employes good-nature- hard-workin- ISC also sales force had jelled, sales 199 It began with a radio announcement one morning that said Grunitzky 's government had been overthrown by an army faction that had control of the radio station and of Lome. To the isolated people of Kande this was of little consequence, so everybody went about his business and kept on doing so after another announcement later in the day that said Grunitzky had reasserted himself and put down the attempted coup. A week or so later, we received a notice that all local schoolchildren were to gather the next morning in front school. of the local government ofTheir parents were mostly fice, which was not unusual subsistence farmers. Some since they often went there came from villages 10 miles to parade before visiting dignitaries and for holiday celeaway where Western civilization had still not reached but brations. I, in fact, brought they had been forced into the my camera, to record what I expected to be some coloreducation syndrome introduced by the French; go to ful festivities. school, learn just enough so It turned out, however, to that you know how much be a political meeting, prebetter off many other people sided over by a major from are, then suffer with knowlthe ramshackle Togolese edge that was at once too army. much and too little. The major was talking about the attempted coup My own suffering was and telling the assembled limited. I found quickly schoolchildren and local ofI enough that could get along ficials that Communists h?J without a lot of what we conbeen behind the revolt. That sider to be necessities here. the major could have tripped 1 And came to cherish things over a Communist on his like a cool glass of water ( I way to the local bar without had a kerosene-rurefriger- recognizing him and that the ator), a refreshing breeze at local villagers had even less the sunset of a hot African of such abstract summer day, an evening conception did not matter. politics visit from a student wonderThe real point of the gathing if I had received any it turned out, was that ering, cookies from home lately, four local men had been arthe starkly deep blue African rested and charged with nights that were almost alIn the coup. Sudcomplicity ways accompanied by the denly these four men were sound of drums and flicker marched out, guarded by of fires in the distance. I soldiers with submachine also came to live a second and ordered to take off existence by mail and soon guns, clothes and lie on the their to began writing every friend as the crowd, recogand relative I could think of. ground,friends and relatives, nizing So things became routin-ized- . began to edge away, murmuring. During the school vacaThe major announced thai t, 1966, 1 went tion, on a vacation trip the government would be to the game preserves of lenient. Then the soldiers East Africa, then finished picked up wooden staffs the layoff bv working for the about three feet long and began to beat the men on the ground. Women and children local market or walked long distances, things they had never seen white men do. My 100 or so students, who ranged in age from about 13 to 25 (students could and did keep repeating grades even if they had already passed them, since jobs were scarce and school at least kept them occupied), were curious about the United States, d and were generally and some bright and some slow, some ambitious and some lazy, not unlike the mixture of a class in an American Company Is Booming g denominations when subservience before a white man was the law. They were surprised when I did my own shopping in the xtmmmmm the d'rector was out ot the country, and Fox sent me a telegram saying. "Q o m e Lome immediately." I knew he was serious about it nen he sent Hamlin all the wty back to get me in his jeep for speed's sake And when i gof to Lome, Fox told me he wanted me to write a letter of apology to the local government man to whom 1 had complained. Fox and 1 had a longstanding personality clash, so the meeting was less than cordial and ended with him giving me an ultimatum: Apologize or be sent home. 1 found out that Peace Corps had already gotten itself into trouble with the Togolese government on the day of the coup attempt because some Volunteers who had just arrived in Togo had inadvertently become mixed up in a parade organized by the rebels. So though Fox had no: heard anything about the Kande incident until Hamlin reported it to him. he was nervous and not about to take any chances. After thinking it over for an evening, I told him I could not apologize and still maintain my self-respec- t, not to mention the respect of my students and friends in Kande, who would no doubt learn of any apology as they had of the protest. State Your Home Owned KM Ofcm - Full Service Bank 125 00 B |