As to the Piece Corps itself Birdie, do you think it was, and is worth the time, and money spent?
Compared to everything else we do, it was cheap PR for America. Most people who get to work with Americans actually like us. The leader of the coup, Flt. Lt. JJ Rawlings actually had Peace Corps teachers in school. Now you can think "so what! a bunch of friggin' Leftist Liberals", not always true even today, and much less so back then.
When the coup was going down New Years '80/'81 I hurried to the lorry park and got one of the very last beat-up old busses out of town. Nobody liked to be stuck in Accra around the Peace Corps office, they would find something for you to do or think you were screwing off. Maybe I made a mistake.
The day of the coup two friends of mine were sitting on the roof of the Peace Corps house where we stayed, listening to the gunfire and explosions and watching the rockets fly. Just when it was getting dark and the streets were deserted a taxi screeches up to the house, lets a guy out, and hurries off. It was an American who had been seriously hurt in a car accident, needed medical attention.
My buddy went out on the street looking for anyone passing by, no one around, streets deserted. Just then a LandRover passes by and stops. It was JJ Rawlings hisself. He asked what the problem was, gets out, moves his firearms around and makes room for the guy in back on the floor. My buddy climbed into the passenger seat and off they went, over to the American Embassy Compound. During that journey my buddy was racking his brains trying to think, here he was in the middle of history, what on earth should he ask the guy?
So, the fact that JJ Rawlings had Peace Corps teachers might have prompted him to help an American in need, in the middle of the coup.
Other than that, I used to hear gossip about the Peace Corps guy before me in my village, who nearly choked to death when the tubes and wiring of a boiled African giant snail got hooked on his epiglottis. So much so that I used to tel them that before the White man came they had nothing to talk about.
It's been a while but they might still talk about me howling at the moon and passing out in the middle of the road
Actually, they probably DO still talk about the White guy who won the big five mile cross-country race, against Africans, that was me. The biggest moment of glory in my life that didn't involve a woman
