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

How about this one? 1981, twenty-four years old, in the months after the coup, one hundred-thirty five pounds dripping wet.

I had to travel to the next country over, Togo, to get supplies, meet my Peace Corps buddies, and get very drunk. To do that I had to get down to the coast at Accra, maybe 150 miles.

Walked out to the main road and waited, if it was a taxi or bus you squeezed in and paid. More often than not a local would pick you up and give you a ride for nothing simply because your were an Obruni, we called it Obruni privilege (literally "White Privilege" ).

Sure enough that morning a beat-up old semi truck with tires down to the chords was hauling sacks of produce down to Accra, it squealed and smoked to a halt. I climbed up on top of the sacks on the trailer in back and rode up there in the wind. People along the road would see the Obruni up there and wave, and I would wave back. I felt like the Pope

Sure enough about two hours later the guy had a flat and limped to the lorry park in Nsawam, a town along the way. I was pretty thirsty by that time and stopped in a bar to have some palm wine (AKA n'sa fu AKA the fermented sap of the oil palm), about like beer but with more bugs and vitamins. There was a photography studio by the lorry park. Since the coup you had to get a government permit to leave the country, and for that permit I needed a photograph, my passport wasn't gonna be enough. So, with my palm wine buzz on, I wandered over to get a picture took.

When I took this photo I was quite aware of the fact that this photo was gonna be it, my official living on the Frontier like in the Old West photograph. After this I was never gonna experience another military coup, I was never gonna be getting my water out of an African stream, I was never gonna be eating the exact same food every day, I was never gonna be living in a mud-walled African village, and I was never gonna be that skinny again without trying. All of this and everything else, I was never gonna do again for the rest of my life. This was it, THE portrait, closest I'd ever come to looking like a longhunter, or fur trapper, or Confederate.

In short, I was at the top of my game and knew it. So I when this photo was took I was trying to look like a bada$$ like kids do in Middle School



The driver in the crowded, beat up little Toyota taxi I took after the photo was developed was much, much drunker'n me. I thought we was all gonna die, so was I pretty sober again by the time we got to Accra

April 1st one year I wrote a heartfelt, four page letter to my mom, saying that I'd got a girl in my village pregnant and that while she couldn't read or write or speak English (actually not true, most of 'em have the basics and all the village elementary schools teach in English), so while she couldn't read or write or speak English she was a really nice girl and I was gonna bring her home and try to find a way to make it work. At the end of the letter I wrote in big letters PS. APRIL FOOL!!!!

When I mailed it April 1st I failed to consider the fact that it might not arrive in New York State until June.

My mom never did get through all four pages, she tore it up and started crying She still doesn't think it was very funny, my sister does, she's the one who put the pieces together and finished the letter.

Actually, if I had it to do over? WTF a couple of African kids? Worse things coulda happened.

LMAO!!

Pretty fuggin' funny Birdie.

Hey tks Tex, will do.

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

Pretty cool. They even made a movie about that, didn't they?

"But first, UGU!"

-Gilbert Gottfried

Good stuff Mike! Thanks for the interesting stories and photos!

Thank you Birdie, I can neither think, type, nor think fast enough to post that many words.

Ron?... is that u? ...LA Times ; Ron Jeremy, porn star, charged with sexually assaulting four women

Look at you all young trying to be like Roger and schit........

I thought the Peace Corps was just a cover for CIA operatives.

Son of a gun! Birdie a CIA operative..........That puts a whole new twist on things.

Damn Birdy looks just like Cornel Wilde!!!! You animal!!!!

He could have passed for one of the guys from the band “The Doobie Brothers” 😜

Great read Mike! I always enjoy your stories. Can’t even begin to imagine how you managed it!

Ya, sorta like that, and it was mostly downhill.

What happened was, with absolutely nothing else to do besides drink, I would go distance running most every afternoon in an old pair of Keds I found in the 'Bruni Wawu (Dead White Man) section of the local market.. Due to a lack of protein during a record dry season, this fell off to maybe six miles a day round trip out to the highway and back, all flat. Then, after two years I went home for a month for my brother's wedding and came back for my third year all proteined up, plus this is when Peace Corps started supplying us a box of 18 cans of tuna each month, which I would eat secretly in my room, one every other day (the locals shared everything). I came back a new man and I was ripping off the five miles uphill to the village of Adomfe (which translates to "up here it is nice:) no problem. Five miles up, five miles back, every day, got so I knew every patch of gravel to avoid, every patch of loose dirt.

About a month later they announced there was gonna be a sports day, including a five mile footrace down the mountain from Adomfe. The students asked me if I was gonna run, I said I was thinking about it and they would just break down in peals of laughter, they thought just being African made 'em like Kip Keno or something. Actually they were in great shape from barefoot soccer, but didn't run cross country. Different skills. Here's two of my students from back then to give folks an idea of the nature of the competition, it weren't gonna be a pushover regardless.



Didn't occur to me until just now, but that's why I'm looking off to the left in my own photo, that's what they had you do back then.

So the big morning comes and we all pile into the beat up old Bedford truck that the school had, all the kids are laughing, on the way up the hill the other runners are making jokes. I didn't say anything, I knew exactly how long I had to run, felt like I knew every foot of ground along the way. We all climbed out on the main drag through Adomfe, the Ref is looking at his watch, we were to start at 8am exactly, the sun slanting through the huge silk cotton trees. Somebody had gotten a starter pistol (which may have been the reason for this whole event in the first place ). The other runners are stretching, jumping up and down, doing jumping jacks etc..... I was just pacing a good way off to the back, breathing and concentrating.

"Bang!" off they went, sprinting off down the hill. I was in the zone, in rythm, I knew exactly how hard to pace myself. Caught and passed them one by one over the first two miles, didn't even look at them, I was concentrating. The village of Wankyi (pron."Wenchi") half way down, hundreds of people gathered along the road. Who comes out of the forest first? The White guy, Obruni, by then I couldn't even hear any footfalls behind me. Didn't look, didn't care. Total stunned silence as the Obruni runs past and disappears down the hill, I didn't look at the crowd either.

Two miles later I clear the forest and head out on the loose, gravelly, uphill main drag through my village, 2,000 people lining the road. Stunned silence once again, broken by the occasion expression of astonishment (in Ghana you open your mouth, hold your open hand over it and say "ah...ah" or "shweh... shweh"). I'm pushing the pace now, I know the exact route to take up that stretch, not far to go.

Top of the hill and.... my school!

Three hundred students jumping up and down shouting "Meestar Mike! Meestar Mike!" The home stretch was to run around the soccer pitch, which I do with that joyous, chanting escort. I get on the far side round the top of the pitch, down to the last 100 yards. The first guy behind me has just got to the far end of the pitch.

Cue in "Chariots of Fire" and make everything slow motion. Two of the girls are holding up a string I gotta run through, I throw my arms out wide and I do so

I'm gonna guess that was in October. It was 1982, early in the dry season. I was there, that was me. The prize was a single can of evaporated milk, the sweet milk of victory, I chugalugged it right there, sweetest milk I ever drank......

Pretty much been downhill fer me ever since and now I can't hardly run around the block.

We had two former Marines and a guy who had crewed a Puff the Magic Dragon gunship in Vietnam in my cohort. Pretty sure they weren't operatives tho. What were we gonna report on, the number of lizards crawling across the walls at night?

Ya, people have always mistook me for a hippie. Actually, fourteen years later I seen the extras in the "Braveheart" battle scenes and knew instantly those were my people. Turns out I was right, they filmed those parts in Ireland



Pfffttt... fourteen million Ghanaians were doing it every day, without the backing of the United States of America either. If I got seriously ill, 48 hours later I would be in a hospital in West Germany getting the very best medical care in the world. When they got seriously ill, they just died mostly.

Bah!, I was in better shape in 82 as well!


Thanks Friend!

Which one are you?