Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Bird Watcher: Peace Corps Stud

Back to Africa, and the hike.... I used to write letters every week or two to my family back then, long ones, took like two or three days to write. Out of boredom as much as anything else. When I went I wanted to be Joe Peace Corps, out in the boonies, so they smiled and gave me what I requested. I still recall the Peace Corps landrover driving off, leaving me and my bags by the side of a dirt road, like I was being dumped off in the fields Turns out there is NOTHING to do in a small, isolated village, except drink. I figure one-third of humanity might be alcoholics. Women? Anyone with ANYTHING going for 'em at all gets out of the villagesand lives in the towns and cities. All ya got in a village, even a big one of 2,000 like mine was, is the unending drudgery and poverty of subsistence farming, hand labor.

Actually I had wanted to go to the Phillipines or to Thailand for the women, and I would have come prob'ly back married like every other guy who went there, and today I mighta had an overweight Asian wife and a passel of half-Asian kids and grandkids by now. But I don't. Actually the Peace Corps was already going Feminist and Politically Correct forty years ago. I'm pretty sure even if they did have openings in Asia when I was applying I might have got de-selected, precisely because of my interest in the women.

Back then Peace Corps was trying out new methods of screening for the volunteers, what they DIDN'T want was guys going over there and just letching and boozing, or even worse what they didn't want is for people to quit and come home early. During a week-long program in a hotel in Philadelphia everything you said and did was carefully evaluated. Fortunately I was in a control group, the two former marines and former Puff the Magic Dragon Vietnam vet crewwman or course were de-selected on the basis of comments they had made, so they threatened the Peace Corps with legal action and got in after all.

Anyways, back to the hike,,,, here's a map I drew in the letter dated August of '81 I about the trip....