Embedded Files
I've documented my days as a Peace Corps Volunteer with letters, photos, and text descriptions. Click on any of the links here to jump to the chosen topic - or click the Next button at the bottom of this page to view all the pages in sequence.
Letters, Kuala Lumpur, President Johnson visits Malaysia, Japan, Vietnam, Mt Kinabalu, Borneo with Len, Visit to the Miao in northern Thailand, Turtles
Entry in the Malaysia Group XII book:
Peace Corps Training
On Nov 2, 1960, while an undergraduate studying math at Stanford University, I went to the Cow Palace in Daly City to listen to Senator John Kennedy give a campaign speech. In that speech he proposed forming "a peace corps of talented young men and women, willing and able to serve their country, as an alternative to peacetime selective service." In other words, The Peace Corps. Bingo! I was sold.
I graduated in June of 1964, spent the summer in Greece with Bruce and my folks, applied for the Peace Corps upon my return, was offered first a post in Costa Rica, then Ethiopia, and finally Malaysia, which I accepted. My Stanford girlfriend Becky Holt, who had already served one year as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines, advised against Malaysia ("it's just a lot of jungle"), but that only got me more interested.
So on September 1 of 1965, 235 trainees and I began an intensive three month program on Southeast Asian and Malaysian area studies, and intensive study of the Malay language. We were taught in Hilo, Hawaii, on the Big Island. Party of the training included time spent in a mockup of a Malay kampong (village), with our language instructors, all Malays, pretending to be residents of the kampong, the idea being to learn the Malay customs (and avoid social faux pas) before we got to Malaysia.
Actually, we began to commit social faux pas even before we went to Malaysia. In particular: three of us (myself included) started a rumor that there was a "hantu" (Malaysian ghost) in a nearby graveyard. In each of three successive nights one of us volunteered to sit in the graveyard past midnight. And each of us, in turn would come screaming back from the (nonexistent) graveyard, claiming to have seen the hantu rising from the ground.
This prank did not go over well with the Malay language instructors. They believed us. Hantus are very real in Malaysia. They threatened to leave the program and return promptly to Malaysia. Crisis! Our director instructed us to explain that it was all just a prank, that there was no graveyard and no hantu. We did so, the instructors were (somewhat) mollified, and agreed to stay on. Crisis averted!
A word or two about our Malay language instruction. The following is from a letter I wrote my parents in September of 1965:
The method of language instruction is completely different from anything I’ve had before, and terribly fun. We use no books, no papers, no pencils, take no notes, and do no homework. We just sit in small groups for four hours and drill. And when I say drill, I mean it. We volunteers call it the "anal oral" method. Our first day we spent the full time on about eight phrases, and about 15 words. You sit for such a long time, and repeat the stuff so many times, it eventually just sips into your head. And the less thinking you do, the better. I have now had four days of instruction, and I can already carry on a reasonable conversation about names, places, and food with the other volunteers: Andover took about one year for me to reach that stage. And Malay is so much fun! The verbs aren’t conjugated, the nouns aren’t declined, plurals result when you say the singular twice, and so on. But combinations of simple words, and phrases are used to make new words and phrases in such novel ways that it never seems to primitive. For example: the word for eyes is mata. The word for glasses is mata mata. And the word for dark is gelap. Hence, Mata Mata gelap: private detective.
And from the same letter:
Thus far, the American policy and history lectures have been dull, but only because a dull person has been giving them, and he makes way for a new man tomorrow. We get about three hours of lectures in this A.A.P. (Asia-America program) daily, and eventually they will cover the geography, political situation, religion, and modern history of most of Southeast Asia, plus a refresher on American history and politics. we have been given a sizable number of books to read, including Handlin's Race and Nationality in America, Max Learner's America as a Civilization, George M Foster's Traditional Cultures, Bragdon, McCutcen, and Brown’s Frame of Government, Robert Bone's Contemporary Southeast Asia, Jacobs and Bearwald's Selected Documents on Chinese Communism, and needless to say, a host of books on specialized topics in Malaysia. This part of the training may be the weak spot, but they certainly give you plenty to do in your spare time.
The PE program is all-time. Thus far we have had five days of tests on physical fitness and endurance. All modesty aside, I am-over all Malaysia Group 12 high scorer, and may be for all Malaysia groups as far. We had to do standing high jumps, sit ups, pull ups, 880 yard runs, 250 yard shuttle sprints, 50 yard freestyle swims, 15 minute distant swims, long hikes, and so on, and you would be amazed how badly out of shape the average Peace Corps volunteer is. Bruce would have probably outscored me easily, and Leonard certainly would have been in the top three. But I guess living in California has given me a false impression of the average American’s physical condition. With 42 states represented in our group (and, I think, only about a dozen from California), that average shows up stark and clear.
We will be taught most of the Malaysian national games, will spend a considerable amount of time in the water, since Malaysia is so water-oriented, and will have opportunities for 15 mile hikes every Sunday, if we so desire. Canoeing is also another requirement. My skin diving may have to wait a while (although I’ve already gone once, and can’t wait to go again). We should be in darn good shape by December.
The psychology program threw a wild curve at the math and science group 2 evenings ago. It seems our analysis will not be through the time honored methods of objective psychology, tests, and interviews, but by the rather new method which we have dubbed “the think-athon“. Each weekend starting this Saturday, a group of eight will head off to a grass shack around the island. There we will sit in a circle and talk through Saturday afternoon, evening, night, Sunday morning, afternoon, and evening, without a pause. By that time, so the theory goes, you should know what kind of a person you really are. So you sleep it off Monday, and write your own psychoanalysis on Tuesday, which is sent to Washington, and which is all Washington gets for your assessment.
From another letter I sent home: my requests for (mostly) math books (for my reading and studying pleasure - I hadn't forgotten that I needed to get my Masters degree when I returned):
Courant, Differential and Integral Calculus (vols 1 & 2)
Birkhoff and MacLane, A Survey of Modern Algebra
Hardy, A Course of Pure Mathematics
Cundy and Rollett, Mathematical Models
Kelley, General topology
Royden, Real Analysis
Wallace, The Malay Archipelago
Caratheodory, Theory of Equations (vols 1 & 2)
Alfors, Complex Analysis
Websters dictionary
And one more letter, which I called the"Waipio Valley Newsletter". It describes the week we spent in Waipio Valley, pretending to be in a village in Malaysia:
Hey, that valley is someplace. Take a look at a relief map of Hawaii someday, and the three topographic features which really stand out are two volcanoes and Waipio valley. It is about 3/4 of a mile wide, where it meets the sea, and is no more than a mile or two long. But other parallel valleys (four, to be exact) extend further inland, and interconnect with it. Its walls have about a 60° slope, while the walls to the sea are close to perpendicular; in fact, the horse and mule trails up the walls have steps cut in them, so the animals won’t slip. The only way the valley floor can be reached is by such trails and one equally rough Jeep trail, which we volunteers hiked down on. Rugged hiking, you ask? I answer, Hoo ha! Especially when your middle left toe is broken.
Well, we all made it down without much trouble, and then hiked across the valley floor to the Peace Corps southeast, Asian village, which consists of homes modeled after those found in the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. I slept in a Malay style home on stilts, on the wooden floor, with a mosquito net and a blanket to keep me company. The village has no electricity, no drinkable water, and shall we say modest sanitary facilities. We had to purify our own water, cook our own meals (after bargaining in Malay with the "shop owners" (Our Malay instructors) to get the prices down), be sanitary as best we could, and, in general, stay alive. It was fabulous. Ask me anything about slaughtering cows or chickens or even kerbaus (water buffalos), cutting them up, or cooking them. Go ahead, ask me something about fishing in streams with nets, or feeding pigs and ducks. I dare you to stop me on determining the sex of any rabbit of your choice. And can I cook curries, or kidneys, or rice, or chicken? You bet I can. How about making papaya preserves? Ask Edwards. I could continue like this for quite a while but you get the point. We learned a lot of basic, practical arts, which should help us immensely once we arrive in the host country.
The other main part of the week was learning more about Malay customs through direct contact with them. We were told the correct ways to enter homes, address people, eat, and sit; we were told how to treat women, children, elders, and important village functionaries; we were even told how to behave ourselves during a skull smoking ceremony if we ever chanced on one in the jungle (answer: you drink rice wine like crazy, and feed the ghosts at regular intervals). Finally, of course, we spoke a lot of Malay with our instructors, but this time, not according to the lesson plans, but according to what we wanted to talk about, just to show us, we could do it. That one week taught us a lot more about the Malay peoples than the five weeks of books, and lectures, which preceded it.
The part of the program in Waipio Valley I most enjoyed, was neither the practical arts or the Malay living: it was getting to know Waipio and its people. And here I could type for hours. That valley is one of the very few remaining spots in Hawaii, where pure Hawaiians work and live, and it only supports about 15 of them at that – but what a group they are. These men and women – and some kids – live completely off the land: their fruits they pick, their meat they hunt (usually boar), their fish they catch both in the sea, and in the streams, and their vegetables they raise. For spending money, they expert taro (ugh, incidentally), lotus plants, and some rice. They don’t depend on anybody for their living. I have never in my life met people so close to the soil. We made several close friends with these people – mine were Clarence and Raymond Dash - and we all promised to return someday and spend more time with them. [I'm afraid I never returned]
One part of Waipio, which we couldn’t help being interested in was it “mythology “. The Hawaiians are superstitious people in general (I haven’t met one who doesn’t really believe in Pelé, the volcano goddess, for example), but the Waipions go beyond superstition: their ghosts are an integral part of their lives. There isn’t an acre in that valley which doesn’t have a scary story to tell – the shark boy, the old Hawaiian roads, frequented by long-dead ancestors of present inhabitants, the trees which cry like babies, the graveyards with their special ghosts. Clarence has lived in Waipio all his life, and knows as much about it as anyone, and he will not just function if he thinks the ghosts are restless, let alone visit any of the places they frequent. Man, have I got some fantastic ghost stories to tell, but unfortunately, no space here to tell them. Remind me in two years, OK?
What little free time we had from our studies we spent hitchhiking to Hapuna Beach, on the dry side of the island (our side was mostly sugar cane fields and rain), to get a little sun, a little surf, and best of all, to raid the beachside outdoor buffet at Rockefeller's Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, at that time the only hotel on that coast (the raiding was easy: because there was nowhere else to stay, everyone assumed we were hotel guests). It was at Hapuna Beach that I saw my first ray, and sea turtle.
Once the training program was over we were given a week off for R&R in Hawaii. Most of the volunteers spent it in Honolulu; I and five others opted to hike across the dormant crater of Haleakalā on Maui with its cinder cones (of which there are 14), silversword plants (which bloom only once before dying), and tame nene geese (having no natural enemies, they walked right up to us). We stayed in three wilderness cabins in succession, and saw no else.
First days in Malaysia
Training and R&R over, we flew to Kuala Lumpur via Wake Island and Guam on Dec 7, 1965, for five weeks or in-country training and sightseeing - mostly the latter. First impressions: Malaysia is HOT. Hot and sticky and humid. And wet. Here's hoping I can acclimatize. A few volunteers stepped off the plane, took a look around, didn't like what the saw, and decided to return home. No comment.
What better way to document my first days in Malaysia than copying the air letters I sent home (and my mother kept): Here's one dated Dec 13, 1965:
Dear parents,
At the moment I’m sitting in the home of an old Peace Corps volunteer in Weng, a small kampong about 50 miles east of Penang. We are surrounded by a rubber plantation, groves of coconut palms, bananas, lots of kerbau (water buffalo), and five local Malay boys, checking out the newcomer. I’m chewing on sugarcane and eating tiny bananas in between sentences, not to mention keeping up a stunning conversation in Malay with the gang. The weather is cool and pleasant, and soon we will play a little rattan ball. (keep it in the air with your feet) to work the appetite up for the evening. Things are, in other words, and, as usual, perfect.
I will remain in Weng only three days, and then move onto Ipoh, the Cameron Highlands, back to Ipoh for a Christmas Eve feast, on to Penang through New Year’s, and then back to Kuala Lumpur. On January 4 or so, I leave for my permanent post, but until then, it is free tour time, care of the Peace Corps. My eventual destination is still unknown (to me), but I have been informed I am eligible to teach upper sixth form math (I think only one or two others are eligible in my group), so this limits me to the peninsula (hardly any six forms in Borneo, it seems), possibly Penang, or Malacca. Either place would be fantastic, so keep your fingers crossed.
I visited Penang yesterday with a few other volunteers, and let me tell you, that is one fine island. We hit the snake temple and the Ayer Itam temple, and Penang Hill, and the duty free shops, but best of all were fun little shops, and their fun little owners and customers. The
passeggiata time in Penang begins at 10 AM, and continues through midnight: Indians, Malays, Chinese, some Saigon officers from Saigon, Russian sailors, and one or two Europeans. It’s really pretty wild. I am eating myself into a frenzy with Chinese, Indian and Malay dishes, and no adverse reactions to date.
Before Penang, we had about three days free in Kuala Lumpur (not counting required talks on money, health, saving face, etc.), and the capital city is also wild, especially the new $10 million mosque and the brand new National Museum. And to record all these marvels, a friend bought me the all-time camera in Hong Kong: a Nikon automatic, with case and close up lens, for $85 (US price of camera alone: $170). Expect slides arriving at regular intervals from now on. And if you want anything from a duty-free port (cameras, radios, tape, recorders, clothing, jewelry, etc.), just give me the word. And now back to the gang. Lots of love, and wow, things are fine.
Sam.
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