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Authors: Paul Theroux
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I went. It was now 1965, and I still had the draft to contend with.
It was a mess, and for a long while afterward I hated the Peace Corps and laughed at its pious advertising campaign: "The toughest job you'll ever love." Ha! I hated the bureaucracy, the silliness, the patronizing attitudes, the jargon, the sanctimony. I remembered all the official freeloaders who came out from Washington on so-called inspection tours, and how they tried to ingratiate themselves. "You're doing wonderful work here ... It's a great little country," they said; but for most of them it was merely an African safari. They hadn't the slightest idea of what we were doing, and our revenge was to take them on long, bumpy rides through the bush. "Sensational," they said. They went away. We stayed. Most Peace Corps volunteers know that feeling: the smug visitor leaving in the Jeep and the dust flying up, and then the dust drifting slowly down and the silence taking hold.
On the subject of Vietnam, these Peace Corps bureaucrats were surprisingly hawkish and belligerent. Most of them believed Vietnam to be a necessary war. The volunteers were divided. This was an important issue to me, because I had joined the Peace Corps specifically to avoid being drafted, and I was dismayed to find so many of its officials advocating the bombing of Hanoi. As a meddlesome and contentious twenty-two-year-old, I made a point of asking everyone his views on Vietnam. I believed the war was monstrous from the very beginning, and I have not changed my views. What astonishes me today is how few people remember the ridiculous things they said about Vietnam in the sixties.
No one now remembers how confused Kennedy's Vietnam policy was or how isolated the student movement was. I had been involved in student protests from 1959 until 1963, first against the ROTC, then against nuclear testing, and then against our involvement in Vietnam. How could I have been inspired by Kennedy to work in the Peace Corps? I had spent years picketing the White House, and in doing so had made myself very unpopular. When I applied to join the Peace Corps, this career as an agitator was held against me. It was all a diabolical plot, I felt. And there was the president with such styleâmoney, power, glamour. He even had culture! And I didn't know the half of it, for somewhere Marilyn Monroe was dialing his number, and somewhere else a Mafia moll was painting her nails in expectation of the president's visit. I had to fight my feeling of distrust and alienation in order to join. There were many like meâanti-authoritarian, hating the dazzle and the equivocation. And when the news broke that the president had been shotâI was sitting through a lecture in Peace Corps training, something about land tenure in the Nyasaland Protectorateâwe were all properly put in our place. More revisionism, more guilt, and I thought:
Get me out of here.
Â
Nyasalandâsoon to become the independent republic of Malawiâwas the perfect country for a Peace Corps volunteer. It was both friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems: poverty, ignorance, and disease. It had only a handful of university graduates. It had lepers, it had Mister Kurtzes, it had Horatio Alger stories by the score. It had a fascinating history that was bound up not only with early African explorationâLivingstone himselfâbut also with one of the first African rebellions, Chilembwe's uprising. It was the setting for Laurens van der Post's
Venture to the Interior.
The people were generous and obliging, and as they had not been persecuted or bullied, and had been ignored rather than exploited, they were not prickly and color conscious like the Kenyans and Zambians. There was a pleasant atmosphere of hope in the countryânot much cynicism and plenty of good will. The prevailing feeling was that the education we were providing would lead to prosperity, honest government, and
It was a mess, and for a long while afterward I hated the Peace Corps and laughed at its pious advertising campaign: "The toughest job you'll ever love." Ha! I hated the bureaucracy, the silliness, the patronizing attitudes, the jargon, the sanctimony. I remembered all the official freeloaders who came out from Washington on so-called inspection tours, and how they tried to ingratiate themselves. "You're doing wonderful work here ... It's a great little country," they said; but for most of them it was merely an African safari. They hadn't the slightest idea of what we were doing, and our revenge was to take them on long, bumpy rides through the bush. "Sensational," they said. They went away. We stayed. Most Peace Corps volunteers know that feeling: the smug visitor leaving in the Jeep and the dust flying up, and then the dust drifting slowly down and the silence taking hold.
On the subject of Vietnam, these Peace Corps bureaucrats were surprisingly hawkish and belligerent. Most of them believed Vietnam to be a necessary war. The volunteers were divided. This was an important issue to me, because I had joined the Peace Corps specifically to avoid being drafted, and I was dismayed to find so many of its officials advocating the bombing of Hanoi. As a meddlesome and contentious twenty-two-year-old, I made a point of asking everyone his views on Vietnam. I believed the war was monstrous from the very beginning, and I have not changed my views. What astonishes me today is how few people remember the ridiculous things they said about Vietnam in the sixties.
No one now remembers how confused Kennedy's Vietnam policy was or how isolated the student movement was. I had been involved in student protests from 1959 until 1963, first against the ROTC, then against nuclear testing, and then against our involvement in Vietnam. How could I have been inspired by Kennedy to work in the Peace Corps? I had spent years picketing the White House, and in doing so had made myself very unpopular. When I applied to join the Peace Corps, this career as an agitator was held against me. It was all a diabolical plot, I felt. And there was the president with such styleâmoney, power, glamour. He even had culture! And I didn't know the half of it, for somewhere Marilyn Monroe was dialing his number, and somewhere else a Mafia moll was painting her nails in expectation of the president's visit. I had to fight my feeling of distrust and alienation in order to join. There were many like meâanti-authoritarian, hating the dazzle and the equivocation. And when the news broke that the president had been shotâI was sitting through a lecture in Peace Corps training, something about land tenure in the Nyasaland Protectorateâwe were all properly put in our place. More revisionism, more guilt, and I thought:
Get me out of here.
Â
Nyasalandâsoon to become the independent republic of Malawiâwas the perfect country for a Peace Corps volunteer. It was both friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems: poverty, ignorance, and disease. It had only a handful of university graduates. It had lepers, it had Mister Kurtzes, it had Horatio Alger stories by the score. It had a fascinating history that was bound up not only with early African explorationâLivingstone himselfâbut also with one of the first African rebellions, Chilembwe's uprising. It was the setting for Laurens van der Post's
Venture to the Interior.
The people were generous and obliging, and as they had not been persecuted or bullied, and had been ignored rather than exploited, they were not prickly and color conscious like the Kenyans and Zambians. There was a pleasant atmosphere of hope in the countryânot much cynicism and plenty of good will. The prevailing feeling was that the education we were providing would lead to prosperity, honest government, and
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