See, Sah! I Tink You Are One of de Peace Corpse

A pleasant interlude this evening: I had a date with a Hanover coed! Her name is Casey, and she is writing a paper on the Peace Corps for her senior sociology class. She is from a small northern Indiana town, where her father is an elected public official. Casey has brown hair and green eyes, and yes, for the record, she is quite cute. She was attentive to her personal appearance but not fixy -- which I guess is my way of saying that her shoulder-length hair was squeaky-clean and combed but not fussed with, she wore casual but not slouchy clothes, and if she used makeup it was not detectable. She rode off on a bicycle after our interview. I didn't ask her if she has a Greek affiliation. I hope she doesn't. (Natalie will appreciate my sentiment on that.)

I met Casey at the library and she asked me lots of questions about my experience as a PCV in Nigeria and took down more than a page of densely written notes. One of her motives is to find out if she might like to volunteer herself. She majors in sociology and minors in Spanish, and she obviously has poise and sociability, so she might be a very good candidate indeed for one of the Central or South America countries.

She had met Emeka K. and Julie B., two other returned PCVs in our area. Emeka (pronounced Eh-MEK-ah: he was given an Ibo name by his RPCV parents, whose tour of duty in Nigeria overlapped mine a little) went to Guinea, and Julie served in Panama. Casey also interviewed a Hanover professor, Daryl K., who was a member in, I believe, a sub-Saharan African country. She asked me for names of other RPCVs in the area and I promised her I would try to get them to her. She is going to have more than enough material for her paper.

I told her that I am very proud and grateful to have been one of the earliest Peace Corps Volunteers. And so I am. I wear a cap from UCLA, the place where I had my training in 1962. I taught physics and math at a girls' secondary school in what was then the Western Region of Nigeria, and which is still the land of the great Yoruba people. When I went out of the school "compound," I would hear calls of "Oyibo!" (European) and bold young men who would walk up to me and say, "See, Sah! I tink you are one of the Peace Corpse." Then we would have a conversation about world politics, in which they were disappointed when they found out I was no expert. (I was never asked if I was a CIA agent, although some of my colleagues got that question from time to time.)

Let's just say that events that occurred there led to my life vocation. Casey asked me if I was glad I joined the Peace Corps and if I thought that the Peace Corps was a good thing. My answers to both were an unqualified "Yes."