[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was in May. It was in early May, and there were still icebergs on the Lake Baikal. That was pretty neat. One fifth, I think, of the fresh water in the world in this lake. I mean, it's a big lake, very deep, and there's nobody out there. I mean, a couple little villages on the shore, but it's amazing.

[Assistant] Have you been back since?

[User] To Russia? Once. And I'm going next week, as a matter of fact.

[Assistant] How was it when you went back, knowing you were only going to be there for a short time? Did you see it differently?

[User] [Pauses] Yes. You definitely see it differently. One nice thing about being DOR is, it's a very small kingdom, but you're the king. When you go back, you're not the king anymore, you know; you're just visiting. So you feel a little bit different. It was neat to see, especially the Russian people, they really treat you like they missed you, and it's like a family kind of thing, where even though I hadn't seen them in well, it had only been about six months, but it really felt like kind of a reunion.

[Assistant] Those eight or nine folks that have been there, the drivers and the clerical staff, they've had quite a few bosses, quite a few DORs. They adapt well to each one being there?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, that's true. Yes, they tend to be older, for the same level of responsibility. Rightly or wrongly, being an astronaut made a big difference to them. I mean, we talked a lot about whether it would be appropriate for the DOR to be a non-astronaut, and they really insist on it. The reason that I was always given is that they're going to respect you more, they're going to assume certain things about you.\n\n But the interesting thing is that their system is much less sort of respectful I won't say respectful, but maybe tolerant of astronauts than ours is. You know, here, when we think that something is a training class is not required or too long or too short or bad content or whatever, we make an input, and people will listen. They solicit your inputs, "How's it going?" kind of thing. In Russia, it's basically "Here's a plan. I don't want to hear any questions. Be there at the right time, the right place, shut up and listen," kind of thing. So having that as a background, it surprises me that they were so insistent about having the DOR be an astronaut. But maybe they treat the other people worse, I don't know. [Laughter]

[Assistant] Was that their only mandate for that office, or did they have other input into what they wanted?

[User] No, I think that was it.

[Assistant] In reviewing the last year or so of your life, is there significant accomplishment or a significant contribution that you would like to tell us about as a participant of this program, that kind of stands out in your mind as one of the most special things that happened while you were in that position?

[User] No.

[Assistant] All of it together?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, I think that was it.

[Assistant] In reviewing the last year or so of your life, is there significant accomplishment or a significant contribution that you would like to tell us about as a participant of this program, that kind of stands out in your mind as one of the most special things that happened while you were in that position?

[User] No.

[Assistant] All of it together?

[User] I mean, I just think that just by being there, you end up contributing a lot, and probably if you weren't there, somebody else would be there in your place, they'd probably do as well as you. But who knows? You make the calls on the spot as you see them, and each decision that you make, in some small way influences the way things turned out. So I guess all of us who have participated in that have made little contributions here and there which maybe have your name on it. My contribution was probably buying the vacuum cleaner, which I'm very proud of. We shopped all over for that thing.

[Assistant] Well, that's unique. Is this a unique vacuum cleaner, or just the fact that there's one there now?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No.

[Assistant] All of it together?

[User] I mean, I just think that just by being there, you end up contributing a lot, and probably if you weren't there, somebody else would be there in your place, they'd probably do as well as you. But who knows? You make the calls on the spot as you see them, and each decision that you make, in some small way influences the way things turned out. So I guess all of us who have participated in that have made little contributions here and there which maybe have your name on it. My contribution was probably buying the vacuum cleaner, which I'm very proud of. We shopped all over for that thing.

[Assistant] Well, that's unique. Is this a unique vacuum cleaner, or just the fact that there's one there now?

[User] Well, it's kind of a history behind it, but we bought this vacuum cleaner, and picking this thing up was really strange. You had to go through we had to go into this office, which was you had to pass through a bank in order to get to the office, and even to get in the bank, it's like going through airport security just to get in the bank. And we go up to the office and we did the paperwork, and they had a bunch of vacuum cleaners there, but that isn't where we were supposed to pick it up.\n\n So they gave me directions, and I explained them with a little map to the driver, and he went to this other completely different part of town behind these rusty gates and in this dimly lit warehouse, and lo and behold, there's this room full of brand-new vacuum cleaners in boxes.\n\n We took the thing back, and it promptly started eating all the carpet because this carpet was falling apart so bad. But there was less dust, though.

[Assistant] Well, that's quite an interesting story. Is the vacuum cleaner still there and being used?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, it's kind of a history behind it, but we bought this vacuum cleaner, and picking this thing up was really strange. You had to go through we had to go into this office, which was you had to pass through a bank in order to get to the office, and even to get in the bank, it's like going through airport security just to get in the bank. And we go up to the office and we did the paperwork, and they had a bunch of vacuum cleaners there, but that isn't where we were supposed to pick it up.\n\n So they gave me directions, and I explained them with a little map to the driver, and he went to this other completely different part of town behind these rusty gates and in this dimly lit warehouse, and lo and behold, there's this room full of brand-new vacuum cleaners in boxes.\n\n We took the thing back, and it promptly started eating all the carpet because this carpet was falling apart so bad. But there was less dust, though.

[Assistant] Well, that's quite an interesting story. Is the vacuum cleaner still there and being used?

[User] Well, I heard bad stories about it, that literally it was sucking pieces of carpet. So I don't know. But I saw it when I was there in December, and it was still around.

[Assistant]
Well, at least the trip was something to remember, anyway.\n\n I was going to ask Carol and Paul if they had any questions for you. Do you have anything you'd like to ask?

I can't think of anything right now.

Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

[User] No.

[Assistant] We certainly thank you for your time and for all your participation in the Shuttle-Mir Program, especially the oral history part. So, thanks again.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Well, first of all, I was interested in Latin America, and that's why I became a Spanish major in college. I have relatives living in Chile. And I was always interested in Latin America. In college, besides getting the Spanish major, I started doing a lot of volunteer activities, tutoring.

Student advisor leadership.

Student advising leadership program was some kind of a group that was formed.

[Assistant] In college?

[User] In college. I started doing a lot of volunteer sorts of activities. By then, I must have known about the Peace Corps because I was thinking of Peace Corps before I ever met him. Talking about do you want to do this.

[Assistant] Could you say which university?

[User]
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.

And mine goes all the way back to high school. We had an exchange student from Mexico which started it all, actually. And people who knew the exchange student he was in our high school class. We became friendly. And one of my closest friends went down to Mexico in high school, right after that and got into the whole thing of Mexico and persuaded me to go down shortly thereafter. That is now, I was already in college and I went down to a summer school program. Fell in love with the whole thing, got into it because the two of us in high school had sort of figured out that what we would do is, we would solve the problem of world poverty. That was our goal. And I thought it was actually an agricultural problem. Later on, I learned it was a political problem. And maybe that explains why I ended up as a political scientist. And so the year after that, I went down a second time in Mexico and now with the American Friends Service Committee, which is the action arm of the Quakers. And they have these programs, which are sort of a short version of the Peace Corps, except you're in a group of 10 or 12 volunteers and a couple were older who led us. And we went to a Mexican ejido with their.

[Assistant] A Mexican what?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
I grew up in Brooklyn, he grew up in Long Island.

And then when I graduated high school and my father died years before, just my mother and I. And so we moved into the city to get free tuition from the city university system. It's a great gift. My mother was originally from Brooklyn and then we met. And in our senior year, we both applied for the Peace Corps and got in and accepted to Brazil, a fishing village in Brazil on the coast.

Belo Horizonte.

And then simultaneously I was accepted into a master's program in political science and Latin American studies at University of Florida Gainesville. And so at that crossroads, we opted to do the master's degree and took a bye on the Peace Corps for what turned out to be exactly one year. And then we did, in the context of that program, reapplied. And I guess there's a story there, which is how we ended up in Costa Rica. In that graduate program, I met a guy named Frank San Vito, who was an older grad student, and he was telling me how interesting Costa Rica was. I was interested in Central America at the time. And he introduced me to a Costa Rican who was at the University of Florida getting her master's degree, and she was a Chinese Costa Rican.

[Assistant] Hmm.

[User] Her name is Alina Wachung, which will come up later in the tape. And because of that, when we reapplied, we said, could you send us to Costa Rica? And unbelievably they did. Because many of the volunteers in our group, like the one who organized this reunion that we're at today, spoke French and wanted to go to Africa, and they sent her to Costa Rica. So we were just lucky to get the country.

[Assistant] Sounds like you were.

[User] That's how we ended up there.

[Assistant] Yeah. You know, this question is not on the suggested list of questions, but was it difficult because you are a married couple being interviewed? Was it difficult as a married couple to get into the Peace Corps at that time?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Her name is Alina Wachung, which will come up later in the tape. And because of that, when we reapplied, we said, could you send us to Costa Rica? And unbelievably they did. Because many of the volunteers in our group, like the one who organized this reunion that we're at today, spoke French and wanted to go to Africa, and they sent her to Costa Rica. So we were just lucky to get the country.

[Assistant] Sounds like you were.

[User] That's how we ended up there.

[Assistant] Yeah. You know, this question is not on the suggested list of questions, but was it difficult because you are a married couple being interviewed? Was it difficult as a married couple to get into the Peace Corps at that time?

[User]
Yes, we were told that it was possible that one of us would be accepted and the other one would not be.

Oh, really? I don't even remember that.

I remember that. That only if both were accepted would they, I mean, one could not go as a non-Peace Corps volunteer. It was either both had to be accepted on their own or they would not accept the couple. So they were not going to accept one of them without the other, it had to be both. And each one on his or her own merit. So we knew that.

Well, let's be fair, that is, that we were accepted for training. At least in those days, the training thing was this process of deselection. One of the things that made training a very unpleasant experience in almost every way.

We heard that the rate of deselection was 25 percent.

So that meant, I guess in light of that, is that if either member of the couple didn't cut it, then the couple was out. Or I suppose you could offer a divorce at that point.

[Assistant] I shouldn't laugh because you already said before we started the tape that there were three married couples at that time in your group, Peace Corps Costa Rica, and one of you is still married.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] That's how we ended up there.

[Assistant] Yeah. You know, this question is not on the suggested list of questions, but was it difficult because you are a married couple being interviewed? Was it difficult as a married couple to get into the Peace Corps at that time?

[User]
Yes, we were told that it was possible that one of us would be accepted and the other one would not be.

Oh, really? I don't even remember that.

I remember that. That only if both were accepted would they, I mean, one could not go as a non-Peace Corps volunteer. It was either both had to be accepted on their own or they would not accept the couple. So they were not going to accept one of them without the other, it had to be both. And each one on his or her own merit. So we knew that.

Well, let's be fair, that is, that we were accepted for training. At least in those days, the training thing was this process of deselection. One of the things that made training a very unpleasant experience in almost every way.

We heard that the rate of deselection was 25 percent.

So that meant, I guess in light of that, is that if either member of the couple didn't cut it, then the couple was out. Or I suppose you could offer a divorce at that point.

[Assistant] I shouldn't laugh because you already said before we started the tape that there were three married couples at that time in your group, Peace Corps Costa Rica, and one of you is still married.

[User]
Yeah. And we were told back then that the rate of divorce among Peace Corps volunteers who married was much higher than the average for the country. Fifty percent. At the time for the nation, it was like thirty percent.

And I don't know if those are bogus statistics at all. I don't know where they really came from.

Special situations.

[Assistant] Yeah, it is.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yes, we were told that it was possible that one of us would be accepted and the other one would not be.

Oh, really? I don't even remember that.

I remember that. That only if both were accepted would they, I mean, one could not go as a non-Peace Corps volunteer. It was either both had to be accepted on their own or they would not accept the couple. So they were not going to accept one of them without the other, it had to be both. And each one on his or her own merit. So we knew that.

Well, let's be fair, that is, that we were accepted for training. At least in those days, the training thing was this process of deselection. One of the things that made training a very unpleasant experience in almost every way.

We heard that the rate of deselection was 25 percent.

So that meant, I guess in light of that, is that if either member of the couple didn't cut it, then the couple was out. Or I suppose you could offer a divorce at that point.

[Assistant] I shouldn't laugh because you already said before we started the tape that there were three married couples at that time in your group, Peace Corps Costa Rica, and one of you is still married.

[User]
Yeah. And we were told back then that the rate of divorce among Peace Corps volunteers who married was much higher than the average for the country. Fifty percent. At the time for the nation, it was like thirty percent.

And I don't know if those are bogus statistics at all. I don't know where they really came from.

Special situations.

[Assistant] Yeah, it is.

[User] For newly married couples, that extra stress often broke up marriages.

[Assistant] Huh. Well, congratulations on still being married. OK, I'll let you, whoever wants to go first. Describe your present family, work, current residence, interests.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yeah. And we were told back then that the rate of divorce among Peace Corps volunteers who married was much higher than the average for the country. Fifty percent. At the time for the nation, it was like thirty percent.

And I don't know if those are bogus statistics at all. I don't know where they really came from.

Special situations.

[Assistant] Yeah, it is.

[User] For newly married couples, that extra stress often broke up marriages.

[Assistant] Huh. Well, congratulations on still being married. OK, I'll let you, whoever wants to go first. Describe your present family, work, current residence, interests.

[User] Well, speaking for myself.

[Assistant] Or you could speak for your family together.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, I must have heard about it through the PBS. I don't know how else you could learn about it. I didn't know anyone personally who was a volunteer among the people I knew. Maybe there was something in college? I don't know. I do remember the ads for the Peace Corps, glass half full or half empty. I remember that one very well. And seeing people out there in Africa working with poor people. I was interested in doing something about poverty. I became socially concerned in high school, didn't get involved with political organizations, but knew about poverty. There were things going on in New York City, I mean, there was protest. Well, the civil rights movement was going on, and the Latin American connection was always there. In college, I went to Mexico one summer to improve my Spanish. And that opened up my eyes to another culture. So Latin America booming all the time, and we forgot to mention that our honeymoon was spent in Puerto Rico.

[Assistant] OK.

[User] Which is ironic because that's where we returned for Peace Corps training.

[Assistant] Oh, you did?

[User] Years later, that was very ironic.

[Assistant] How did you hear about it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Which is ironic because that's where we returned for Peace Corps training.

[Assistant] Oh, you did?

[User] Years later, that was very ironic.

[Assistant] How did you hear about it?

[User] Because of the Kennedy thing. And I followed every moment, you know, I used to read actively read the newspapers in those days. I probably remember something about the speech at University of Michigan, you know, and Sargent Shriver and later, as we can relate, we became we got to know the one who followed him, Jack Vaughn, he was the next director of the Peace Corps and we saw that connection. And so that, for me, I mean, I just knew about it, and I kind of from the moment I heard of it, I said, that's for me. I mean, I can solve the problem of hunger.

[Assistant] The moment you heard about it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Years later, that was very ironic.

[Assistant] How did you hear about it?

[User] Because of the Kennedy thing. And I followed every moment, you know, I used to read actively read the newspapers in those days. I probably remember something about the speech at University of Michigan, you know, and Sargent Shriver and later, as we can relate, we became we got to know the one who followed him, Jack Vaughn, he was the next director of the Peace Corps and we saw that connection. And so that, for me, I mean, I just knew about it, and I kind of from the moment I heard of it, I said, that's for me. I mean, I can solve the problem of hunger.

[Assistant] The moment you heard about it?

[User] Yeah, I mean, it was like, I said, this is what I want to do. I want to do this. I was like, that's me. And the reason I joined that Quaker thing was that I was, well, am I really sort of going to do this? I mean, am I suited for this? So for me, that was sort of a dry run for the summer to see whether I'd be willing to do that. You know, the three year treatments later on. It was working on it, I mean, it is certainly what I wanted to do.

[Assistant] Yeah. I know another part of this question is did you have a specific country or project in mind? You already spoke about you were going to maybe go to Brazil.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Because of the Kennedy thing. And I followed every moment, you know, I used to read actively read the newspapers in those days. I probably remember something about the speech at University of Michigan, you know, and Sargent Shriver and later, as we can relate, we became we got to know the one who followed him, Jack Vaughn, he was the next director of the Peace Corps and we saw that connection. And so that, for me, I mean, I just knew about it, and I kind of from the moment I heard of it, I said, that's for me. I mean, I can solve the problem of hunger.

[Assistant] The moment you heard about it?

[User] Yeah, I mean, it was like, I said, this is what I want to do. I want to do this. I was like, that's me. And the reason I joined that Quaker thing was that I was, well, am I really sort of going to do this? I mean, am I suited for this? So for me, that was sort of a dry run for the summer to see whether I'd be willing to do that. You know, the three year treatments later on. It was working on it, I mean, it is certainly what I wanted to do.

[Assistant] Yeah. I know another part of this question is did you have a specific country or project in mind? You already spoke about you were going to maybe go to Brazil.

[User] We didn't ask for Brazil. But we asked for Costa Rica simply because Mitch had met this Costa Rican graduate student in Florida. We had no knowledge of Costa Rica whatsoever, and Costa Rica was not a popular place to show up at the time.

[Assistant] Yeah, like it is now.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, I mean, it was like, I said, this is what I want to do. I want to do this. I was like, that's me. And the reason I joined that Quaker thing was that I was, well, am I really sort of going to do this? I mean, am I suited for this? So for me, that was sort of a dry run for the summer to see whether I'd be willing to do that. You know, the three year treatments later on. It was working on it, I mean, it is certainly what I wanted to do.

[Assistant] Yeah. I know another part of this question is did you have a specific country or project in mind? You already spoke about you were going to maybe go to Brazil.

[User] We didn't ask for Brazil. But we asked for Costa Rica simply because Mitch had met this Costa Rican graduate student in Florida. We had no knowledge of Costa Rica whatsoever, and Costa Rica was not a popular place to show up at the time.

[Assistant] Yeah, like it is now.

[User]
Forty years later.

Where we ended up in Costa Rica in part had to do with that woman.

Yeah, we chose that region of Costa Rica to live in, had to do with her father's farm being in general area.

[Assistant] OK. Next question. What were your friends and family's reactions when you were accepted? Were there any and did you have any hesitations or reservations? How did they react?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We didn't ask for Brazil. But we asked for Costa Rica simply because Mitch had met this Costa Rican graduate student in Florida. We had no knowledge of Costa Rica whatsoever, and Costa Rica was not a popular place to show up at the time.

[Assistant] Yeah, like it is now.

[User]
Forty years later.

Where we ended up in Costa Rica in part had to do with that woman.

Yeah, we chose that region of Costa Rica to live in, had to do with her father's farm being in general area.

[Assistant] OK. Next question. What were your friends and family's reactions when you were accepted? Were there any and did you have any hesitations or reservations? How did they react?

[User]
I think both of our sets of parents were terribly upset and, well, were very nervous, concerned, nervous, and like they're afraid that something would happen to us. You know, the dangers of being out there in the wild.

And they were right in that since we were in an extremely remote area, I mean, we did have a health crisis. I mean, we're talking about days before we could get her medical help.

So there were hazards out there.

There were hazards so.

Venomous snakes.

You know, fast forward to having children and having, boy, I'd be, a kid of mine went into the Peace Corps, I'd be damned scared.

And our mothers actually visited us in the Peace Corps, in our Peace Corps site. And they did leave scared.

And then they got really scared.

Then they really got scared.

[Assistant] Maybe they shouldn't have come. Oh no.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
I think both of our sets of parents were terribly upset and, well, were very nervous, concerned, nervous, and like they're afraid that something would happen to us. You know, the dangers of being out there in the wild.

And they were right in that since we were in an extremely remote area, I mean, we did have a health crisis. I mean, we're talking about days before we could get her medical help.

So there were hazards out there.

There were hazards so.

Venomous snakes.

You know, fast forward to having children and having, boy, I'd be, a kid of mine went into the Peace Corps, I'd be damned scared.

And our mothers actually visited us in the Peace Corps, in our Peace Corps site. And they did leave scared.

And then they got really scared.

Then they really got scared.

[Assistant] Maybe they shouldn't have come. Oh no.

[User]
I can see that.

They saw the reality and they were even more scared.

I think we should probably at that point talk about when the, in that period where the Peace Corps was going to take us in, there was this security clearance or background check rather. Background check is a better word. And that was fairly unpleasant part of the whole thing because the people who went around asking questions were Civil Service employees, but they presented themselves with the flipping of a card or a badge to neighbors in my mother's apartment building and your parents' apartment building. They didn't live more than two miles from each other in Brooklyn. And people thought it was Secret Service. And I think that I have the feeling that they wanted it to sound that way. And so of course, after they called, what is the Secret Service doing investigating Mitchie?

[Assistant] Mitchie? I've been calling you Mitchell.

[User]
Well, don't call him Mitchie.

In her case because her parents are not English speakers, they're immigrants to the United States.

[Assistant] What country are they from?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Of course people are eating rice and beans two times a day though, that's what they were living on. So the natural, the cultural process that led Costa Ricans to eat rice and beans together, was the same that the body needed to combine incomplete proteins to make a complete protein. I didn't have to tell them that, they're eating that anyway. And if they weren't eating whole proteins like fish and chicken and beef, it's because they couldn't afford it. It wasn't there. And if it was there, they couldn't afford to pay for it.

Just now that I think about it, these weren't entirely random. That is to say, in the case, I think the men were trained in cooperatives. I think it may have been a gender division there, but that's because the Peace Corps itself had linked up within Costa Rica to the co-operative movement, which at that time was actually run partially out of the private sector by a bank in Costa Rica that ran these things. And the idea was that there were cooperatives all over Costa Rica, and the idea was to assign a volunteer to work with the cooperatives to help them with their accounting, their promotions.

[Assistant] A co-operative that already existed?

[User]
Oh yeah, I don't know. I think the essence of the villages are out there probably were in parts selected, oh, there's a co-operative. In our case, there was a coffee co- operative, and it's a long important story about that. And the nutrition centers were another aspect of it. CARE had linked up with the Peace Corps to try to help the development of these centros de nutricion, which was to provide nutrition to the kids.

CARE and USAID. AID provided plastic plates and kitchen utensils to use in the preparation of the food. CARE provided powdered milk, and I think CSM.

[Assistant] What's CSM?

[User]
CSM was a high protein.

Soybean, corn starch, and milk. So corn was asked for soybean and with milk. So it was a composite of beating to make a higher protein.

[Assistant] I've never heard of that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Oh yeah, I don't know. I think the essence of the villages are out there probably were in parts selected, oh, there's a co-operative. In our case, there was a coffee co- operative, and it's a long important story about that. And the nutrition centers were another aspect of it. CARE had linked up with the Peace Corps to try to help the development of these centros de nutricion, which was to provide nutrition to the kids.

CARE and USAID. AID provided plastic plates and kitchen utensils to use in the preparation of the food. CARE provided powdered milk, and I think CSM.

[Assistant] What's CSM?

[User]
CSM was a high protein.

Soybean, corn starch, and milk. So corn was asked for soybean and with milk. So it was a composite of beating to make a higher protein.

[Assistant] I've never heard of that.

[User] Well, it was an experiment. I mean, they were trying to see if they could improve the nutrition of, this is for preschool children and lactating mothers to help them. These nutrition programs were specifically targeting preschool children and lactating mothers because there were school lunch programs. That was something else. I think CARE did.

[Assistant] They did have school lunch programs?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
CSM was a high protein.

Soybean, corn starch, and milk. So corn was asked for soybean and with milk. So it was a composite of beating to make a higher protein.

[Assistant] I've never heard of that.

[User] Well, it was an experiment. I mean, they were trying to see if they could improve the nutrition of, this is for preschool children and lactating mothers to help them. These nutrition programs were specifically targeting preschool children and lactating mothers because there were school lunch programs. That was something else. I think CARE did.

[Assistant] They did have school lunch programs?

[User]
There were school lunch programs, that's what Mitch ended up doing. Vegetable gardening and school lunch program, but I worked with the nutrition center. In the first year, we were watching the building being built.

And that's not just the garden, just to conclude the idea of the nutrition center. So the nutrition center. [tape break]

[Assistant] OK. Let me see. We're talking about the training. This question is more specific to it, but let's see if there's any of things you haven't talked about yet. Yeah, where the training was.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Well, it was an experiment. I mean, they were trying to see if they could improve the nutrition of, this is for preschool children and lactating mothers to help them. These nutrition programs were specifically targeting preschool children and lactating mothers because there were school lunch programs. That was something else. I think CARE did.

[Assistant] They did have school lunch programs?

[User]
There were school lunch programs, that's what Mitch ended up doing. Vegetable gardening and school lunch program, but I worked with the nutrition center. In the first year, we were watching the building being built.

And that's not just the garden, just to conclude the idea of the nutrition center. So the nutrition center. [tape break]

[Assistant] OK. Let me see. We're talking about the training. This question is more specific to it, but let's see if there's any of things you haven't talked about yet. Yeah, where the training was.

[User] We started about the nutrition center, I just wanted to get the.

[Assistant] OK, go ahead. Sure.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
There were school lunch programs, that's what Mitch ended up doing. Vegetable gardening and school lunch program, but I worked with the nutrition center. In the first year, we were watching the building being built.

And that's not just the garden, just to conclude the idea of the nutrition center. So the nutrition center. [tape break]

[Assistant] OK. Let me see. We're talking about the training. This question is more specific to it, but let's see if there's any of things you haven't talked about yet. Yeah, where the training was.

[User] We started about the nutrition center, I just wanted to get the.

[Assistant] OK, go ahead. Sure.

[User] The nutrition center concept involving a tripartite agreement and the Ministry of Health provided this bacalao, which was a little pill that the kids got, which would be probably for.

[Assistant] What did you say, bacalao?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We started about the nutrition center, I just wanted to get the.

[Assistant] OK, go ahead. Sure.

[User] The nutrition center concept involving a tripartite agreement and the Ministry of Health provided this bacalao, which was a little pill that the kids got, which would be probably for.

[Assistant] What did you say, bacalao?

[User] Yeah, that's codfish.

[Assistant] OK. I've heard the word.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The nutrition center concept involving a tripartite agreement and the Ministry of Health provided this bacalao, which was a little pill that the kids got, which would be probably for.

[Assistant] What did you say, bacalao?

[User] Yeah, that's codfish.

[Assistant] OK. I've heard the word.

[User]
So that was their contribution. It was the milk and the CSM thing, and so the kids would get milk. They would get this high nutrition tortilla. And so I think in our case, since we were a couple, it was a perfect village that they put us in because there was a nutrition center in embryonic form that was going to be built. And there was this cooperative which supposedly had this problem that I was going to come in and fix.

And let me explain about the nutrition center, because they had something in the United States called Nutrition Center, which are stores that sell vitamins. The problem was malnutrition among children and also lactating mothers. Malnutrition was measured by weight for height. That was the way you measured malnutrition back then. I don't know if it's changed any since then. So they would have all the little preschool kids that they had to be five and under. And they come into this place to be weighed and measured for height. And based on that, they were put into categories and either not malnourished. Or first degree, second degree, and third degree malnutrition, third being the worst. Third degree, when we see these pictures today of the children in Africa where they're emaciated and you can see their skeleton is shown, that's third degree. But there are these three degrees and each. If you were even first degree malnourished, you have the right to the nutrition center food. And we were trying to get the women who are nursing and their babies to come in and also drink milk and have this high protein food so that they would give better milk to their babies and they'd be better nourished themselves.

[Assistant] That was the powdered milk?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, powdered milk, CARE powdered milk. So that was the mission of the nutrition center. And also, I saw it as a way of keeping hygiene. It was one of the few places in the entire town that had indoor running water, a sink, a little sink for children, and a toilet to flush. None of these children had ever seen a flushing toilet and none had running water.

[Assistant] Did they have latrines or just go out into el campo?

[User]
So the poor did not have latrines and would go out and what came out of them went down the river, got into the river, and they'd drink the river water. The whole cycle of amoebas and all kinds of parasites.

We've jumped the gun because here we are in the field already in the Peace Corps. The training then I think had a logic to it. And the assumption that was made is that the cooperatives were having problems because the people just didn't know how to run them right. Or couldn't get the accounting right. And so.

[Assistant] When were these cooperatives formed?

[User] Cooperatives began in Costa Rica in the '50s, and it has had a very, very successful actually. The first cooperative, which was started in Costa Rica in 1942 during World War II because they confiscated property that was owned by German families when Costa Rica declared war on Germany, some allege for the United States. And they turned this property over to their peasants who were working there to do something.

[Assistant] To get away from the German families?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
So the poor did not have latrines and would go out and what came out of them went down the river, got into the river, and they'd drink the river water. The whole cycle of amoebas and all kinds of parasites.

We've jumped the gun because here we are in the field already in the Peace Corps. The training then I think had a logic to it. And the assumption that was made is that the cooperatives were having problems because the people just didn't know how to run them right. Or couldn't get the accounting right. And so.

[Assistant] When were these cooperatives formed?

[User] Cooperatives began in Costa Rica in the '50s, and it has had a very, very successful actually. The first cooperative, which was started in Costa Rica in 1942 during World War II because they confiscated property that was owned by German families when Costa Rica declared war on Germany, some allege for the United States. And they turned this property over to their peasants who were working there to do something.

[Assistant] To get away from the German families?

[User] Because they were stealing, they were taking, they were stealing the property. They were taking away the property from Germans who in some cases lived in Costa Rica for generations. But that was part of the nature of exercise with the internment of the Japanese in the United States. And the bank ran and this co-operative movement became very, very successful throughout the country with this thing called Dos Pinos, which is a dairy cooperative. And throughout Central America and many parts of Latin America, Costa Rican products, milk, ice cream, yogurt are sold. And there's another cooperative called Victoria, Victoria from the war victory, which made sugar, the first refined sugar in Costa Rica. And so but this is now a whole generation later, and there are many cooperatives, savings and loans, and I'm trained in this. The training was boring, miserable. I don't know how much I learned. Accounting to me is, you know, I guess if I had to be accountant, I would think about, you know, the suicide. I know, you know.

[Assistant] Sorry, any of you accountants who are listening.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] SNA, the Sistema Nacional de Aguas Subterráneas.

[Assistant] Oh, OK. It's a Costa Rican acronym.

[User]
Yeah, so what we did was to try to connect villagers and their project to resources outside the town. During the time we were there, the water system was not filled, but the design was done. And eventually the water system came in. So it's not that we brought the new water source. We connected resources to make it possible for there eventually to be a potable water system, which is there to this day.

We got involved in all kinds of health-related activities. For example, there was no, when we came to this county, there was no doctor in the entire county, for how many thousands of people?

Twenty thousand people living there.

And no doctor. There were, the only medical staff there for all those people were two nurses. One was a British volunteer nurse, sort of like Britain's Peace Corps. She was an obstetrics nurse. And there was an American nun who was also an obstetrics nurse, and the two of them did all the medical. They ran a clinic. They were the only trained medical people for the entire county. And they specialized in delivering babies. And yeah, that was it. And so.

[Assistant] Two nurses for 20,000 people.

[User] Right. So the community, they heard, there was we'd heard, a unidad mobile, a mobile unit of medical personnel that went around the countryside and would visit any given town once every maybe once a month, something like that. So doctors would come in in a jeep, one doctor, and.

[Assistant] From the government?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Right. So the community, they heard, there was we'd heard, a unidad mobile, a mobile unit of medical personnel that went around the countryside and would visit any given town once every maybe once a month, something like that. So doctors would come in in a jeep, one doctor, and.

[Assistant] From the government?

[User] Yes, this was a government sponsored program. The doctor, the unidad mobile, would arrive, I think, was maybe just once a month, and would dispense medicines. This was called medicina empírica, empirical medicine. In other words, you had no medical history for these people. People would show up sick, women would come with their children from the mountain side, they would have walked hours. And the doctor would give out antibiotics or something, I don't know what, whatever he had. Every medicine that he gave out had been, I believe, donated from other countries and we heard it was expired medications that no longer could be sold on the market.

[Assistant] Yeah, it could be.

[User]
That's what we heard. Unidad mobile, was that what they were fighting for? They were fighting for a big stuff.

The unidad mobile existed already. Can you explain what that product was?

Yeah, that the doctor would out once a month maybe.

Unidad mobile was a CARE and the Ministry of Health. In those days, the Ministry of Health took care of public health. It wasn't like it is today. So the Ministry of Health provided the physician and the pharmacist and the nurse and the driver, actually, with the pharmacy dispensary and the public health educator. CARE, I'm sorry, USAID provided the jeeps, which were American jeeps. And the key element was that in order to get one of these things, the community had to organize, get itself together, and charge each patient a token fee. It was essentially a colon or some tiny amount of money, which was couldn't, wasn't going to them, was going to go to the community for community development purposes.

[Assistant] It was going to the community?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Yeah, it was a magical formula. The community couldn't get the health service until they organize themselves, A. B, they agreed to charge every patient. But the money stayed there for the purpose of building a community center, which is how the whole nutrition center. We can describe how that happened.

So the committee, the comité de bienestar comunal, and that was community welfare committee. They were the leaders of the community. This was like maybe a group of five or six people. President, vice president, secretary. And two others. And they would meet on a regular basis, and we were involved with them, they invited us and we attended all those meetings and they tapped our resources. They wanted us to get involved and they wanted us to get connected to help them in their struggles. And this is what they ended up doing. So when they went to the municipality in the county seat, which was San Vito de Java. We would go along to the municipality meetings and sit there as the community leaders would beg and plead for a doctor to be sent to the county. And eventually they did get a fixed doctor.

[Assistant] You know, I don't know if we ever did state this. What was the name of the community you were assigned to in Costa Rica?

[User] Agua Buena de Coto Brus. Coto Brus is the canton. It was a new canton, new county, that had been founded only a few years before, split away from Golfito, which is where the United Fruit Company had its central operations, and therefore it was a brand-new municipality. And I mentioned earlier.

[Assistant] Were you by the coast? Because you mentioned.

[User] It is a coffee growing area up in the mountains, a thousand meters.

[Assistant] And what was the nearest large town or city?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Agua Buena de Coto Brus. Coto Brus is the canton. It was a new canton, new county, that had been founded only a few years before, split away from Golfito, which is where the United Fruit Company had its central operations, and therefore it was a brand-new municipality. And I mentioned earlier.

[Assistant] Were you by the coast? Because you mentioned.

[User] It is a coffee growing area up in the mountains, a thousand meters.

[Assistant] And what was the nearest large town or city?

[User] San Isidro de El General, which was about five hours away. We were very, very isolated. The only way to get from our village out there was to go down to sea level and cross the river, which had no bridge. And during the rainy season, this is an area which got storms from both the Atlantic and the Pacific side. So it had an average of 15 feet of rainfall a year, which is about the highest of any place on the planet.

[Assistant] Sorry, started laughing. Fifteen feet?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] San Isidro de El General, which was about five hours away. We were very, very isolated. The only way to get from our village out there was to go down to sea level and cross the river, which had no bridge. And during the rainy season, this is an area which got storms from both the Atlantic and the Pacific side. So it had an average of 15 feet of rainfall a year, which is about the highest of any place on the planet.

[Assistant] Sorry, started laughing. Fifteen feet?

[User] I don't think there's any place higher than that.

[Assistant] Rainforest country.

[User] It was deep rainforest all around, and when the rains fell, which was throughout about nine months out of the year, the river was impassable.

[Assistant] I'm sorry, nine months of the year, you said?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I don't think there's any place higher than that.

[Assistant] Rainforest country.

[User] It was deep rainforest all around, and when the rains fell, which was throughout about nine months out of the year, the river was impassable.

[Assistant] I'm sorry, nine months of the year, you said?

[User]
Nine months. There was only a very short January, February, March was the only dry season. Even that period would rain. During the rest of it when the rains got really vicious in September and October, you couldn't leave. No. That's when you got sick. And that's when we, you know, we couldn't cross. And you can tell that story.

It was like in India, where you, um.

Like monsoons.

Monsoon. It would be days and days of nonstop pouring rain.

[Assistant] Yeah, I've been, well as an aside.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was deep rainforest all around, and when the rains fell, which was throughout about nine months out of the year, the river was impassable.

[Assistant] I'm sorry, nine months of the year, you said?

[User]
Nine months. There was only a very short January, February, March was the only dry season. Even that period would rain. During the rest of it when the rains got really vicious in September and October, you couldn't leave. No. That's when you got sick. And that's when we, you know, we couldn't cross. And you can tell that story.

It was like in India, where you, um.

Like monsoons.

Monsoon. It would be days and days of nonstop pouring rain.

[Assistant] Yeah, I've been, well as an aside.

[User] In Honduras you had?

[Assistant] In Costa Rica. [tape break] OK, now you can continue.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Nine months. There was only a very short January, February, March was the only dry season. Even that period would rain. During the rest of it when the rains got really vicious in September and October, you couldn't leave. No. That's when you got sick. And that's when we, you know, we couldn't cross. And you can tell that story.

It was like in India, where you, um.

Like monsoons.

Monsoon. It would be days and days of nonstop pouring rain.

[Assistant] Yeah, I've been, well as an aside.

[User] In Honduras you had?

[Assistant] In Costa Rica. [tape break] OK, now you can continue.

[User] What was key here is that when I said this set me on my entire career. We were seeing was the ability of impoverished villagers in the middle of nowhere as it was to organize themselves. We didn't come in and say, get organized. They had already established this committee. The committee was established with the enormously intelligent logic of setting up this welfare committee, the comité de bienestar comunal, so that they could tap into this resource, namely a visiting doctor.

[Assistant] Did they request a Peace Corps volunteer?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] But I'd like to talk about language because I think it played an important role in our effectiveness. I came into the Peace Corps speaking Spanish fluently because I'd been a Spanish major in college. I spent a summer in Mexico. I had no trouble understanding Costa Ricans speaking Spanish whatsoever. I did have trouble in Puerto Rico in training because I'd never heard that dialect of Spanish, the Caribbean dialect, where they don't pronounce their S's at the end of syllables. Instead of saying esta es la casa de Bonita, they would say, esta es la casa de Bonita, where they aspirate their S's or just delete them completely taken off. And so I had trouble understanding Puerto Ricans for the first six weeks until one day, like magic overnight, I suddenly understood the Puerto Ricans around me. It was like a crystallization of the brain, you know? But the pattern has set in my brain unconsciously. But I haven't studied the dialectology of.

[Assistant] What was the word you just used?

[User] Crystallization?

[Assistant] No.

[User] Dialectology? I hadn't studied dialectology at all.

[Assistant] Oh, about dialects. OK.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Dialectology? I hadn't studied dialectology at all.

[Assistant] Oh, about dialects. OK.

[User] I hadn't studied dialects, right. And I had to on my own figure out Puerto Rican Spanish without anyone telling me, without reading a book about it. And one day I suddenly understood people. I had no trouble in Costa Rica because they don't do that in Costa Rica. They speak with all the S's, and it's a very easy dialect in Spanish to understand. When I came there, I was speaking Spanish of the type I learned in college, so I was using grammatical forms of the subjunctive, for example, that Costa Ricans were not using very much.

[Assistant] The subjunctive.

[User] Not that way. Yeah, I mean, they were using the subjunctive in the less standard way. I was thinking more standardly than they were in many ways. The book Spanish, educated Spanish. So they would say, oh, you speak Spanish better than we do, which is ridiculous because I didn't. I mean, it was because they thought just because I was using the standard grammatical form and I'd studied vocabulary items that they didn't have. I sounded educated that I spoke better than they did it. So they had a great impression of my ability to speak Spanish. I could speak clearly, understandably. I could communicate well from the very beginning. And that impressed the leadership, especially this one man who was the richest man in the, oh sorry.

[Assistant] I'll stop it one minute. OK, we were talking about your Spanish.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And I understood everyone. I could communicate with the people I talk to well. And I had no, I had no problems whatsoever understanding. And they understood me. So I think that was really important. However, the cultural meanings behind what they were saying, that took me years to understand. And I give these examples to my classes. When we had friends over for cafe in the afternoon, coffee and cake or something and we'd say, would you like coffee? And the answer would be, no me importa. I don't care. Which in America sounds like I'm not very enthusiastic, which sounds like I don't really care. I'll take it or leave it. And they would say that all the time. They'd always say, no me importa. Me da igual. It's all the same to me.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And but after a while, I realized they really wanted that very much. They wanted to have coffee and cake with us. But that was the polite way of saying yes.

[Assistant] It was?

[User] Yes. And in the coastal and countryside among peasants, that's the way you accepted an offer politely. You didn't say, oh, I would love to. No one ever said that. So I just learned, it grated on me terribly, but I learned to understand it. That's the polite way of accepting an invitation to have tea.

[Assistant] And how long did that take you to grasp that, a year?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] And but after a while, I realized they really wanted that very much. They wanted to have coffee and cake with us. But that was the polite way of saying yes.

[Assistant] It was?

[User] Yes. And in the coastal and countryside among peasants, that's the way you accepted an offer politely. You didn't say, oh, I would love to. No one ever said that. So I just learned, it grated on me terribly, but I learned to understand it. That's the polite way of accepting an invitation to have tea.

[Assistant] And how long did that take you to grasp that, a year?

[User]
A year. There was another thing if you ask people, do you want the dark meat or the white meat of chicken? That was a real delicacy. The chicken was really expensive, not to be found. They'd have to kill their own chickens. And they didn't because they wanted the eggs. And they would never tell you which one they prefer. They just would not say because it was rude to express a preference.

In my case, my Spanish, I'm a lousy language student, although I eventually became fluent in Spanish. And I had this experience that I mentioned, the summers in which I learned very little, my Spanish in Mexico the first time. Tú eres? And I said, tú eren? And I couldn't get it. I mean, it's simple.

[Assistant] They didn't say, usted es or something like that?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
A year. There was another thing if you ask people, do you want the dark meat or the white meat of chicken? That was a real delicacy. The chicken was really expensive, not to be found. They'd have to kill their own chickens. And they didn't because they wanted the eggs. And they would never tell you which one they prefer. They just would not say because it was rude to express a preference.

In my case, my Spanish, I'm a lousy language student, although I eventually became fluent in Spanish. And I had this experience that I mentioned, the summers in which I learned very little, my Spanish in Mexico the first time. Tú eres? And I said, tú eren? And I couldn't get it. I mean, it's simple.

[Assistant] They didn't say, usted es or something like that?

[User]
You didn't tell her what eres means.

But our closest friend in the Peace Corps, Francisco Mehia, rest in peace, came to our house virtually every afternoon around 4:00 or 5:00, generally in the rain, because it was almost always raining. And sat there across the table, asked me for coffee, he would say, no me importa, and she would serve him coffee, and we would have, you know, some bread or whatever we have. And he was my window into Costa Rican life, telling me all about the Costa Rican civil war and politics in the country and the agrarian reform struggles and the land struggles. I intensely wanted to learn that stuff.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] And so by listening to him, because he spoke a very, very clear Spanish and was very patient and very slow.

[Assistant] What a gift, I have to say that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
So we got him tilapia.

This is part of the nutrition part. Yeah, we found that the tilapia was a super high protein fish that was very easy to raise. We started with him as the perfect sample.

We had a pond and we seeded it with tilapia. And I bought a pH kit so we could measure the acidity of the water because it had to be the right way. We put lime in to get it right. We have wonderful photographs of planning and stuff, and all the villagers came around to see the tilapia ponds.

We'd try to fish the fish out on Good Friday. So they could have, because that was a custom to eat fish on Good Friday. But they couldn't, they didn't have a net to fish it out with. So they use coffee sacks.

No, they used tarps for the top of the trucks. But now we know why nets have holes in them.

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User] You put a tarp and it sits there, and when it goes down, the fish all went away. You know, I realized all the like. We never knew, we lived in New York. We didn't know what bridges did, I mean, they were there. Until we lived in a place where there was a river but no bridge.

[Assistant] Yeah, then it hits home.

[User] Now there is a bridge, but we didn't know why. You know, what was the deal with bridges?

[Assistant] How long did it take you, do you think, to be able to converse in Spanish then, Mitch?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] You put a tarp and it sits there, and when it goes down, the fish all went away. You know, I realized all the like. We never knew, we lived in New York. We didn't know what bridges did, I mean, they were there. Until we lived in a place where there was a river but no bridge.

[Assistant] Yeah, then it hits home.

[User] Now there is a bridge, but we didn't know why. You know, what was the deal with bridges?

[Assistant] How long did it take you, do you think, to be able to converse in Spanish then, Mitch?

[User]
I can't give you a time, it's just that the combination of that. The mail came to the town three times a week when the little aviamento landed in the coffee cooperative and brought in all mail along with the newspaper. I used to joke, I said if there's a nuclear war and the world gets destructed, three days later, we'll read about it in the newspaper.

We were the few people getting newspapers in the town.

And so I read every word.

I didn't read the paper.

[Assistant] Did you understand it?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Now there is a bridge, but we didn't know why. You know, what was the deal with bridges?

[Assistant] How long did it take you, do you think, to be able to converse in Spanish then, Mitch?

[User]
I can't give you a time, it's just that the combination of that. The mail came to the town three times a week when the little aviamento landed in the coffee cooperative and brought in all mail along with the newspaper. I used to joke, I said if there's a nuclear war and the world gets destructed, three days later, we'll read about it in the newspaper.

We were the few people getting newspapers in the town.

And so I read every word.

I didn't read the paper.

[Assistant] Did you understand it?

[User]
Well, the point is that little, it was so easy, because there were the events going on and I could fill in the blanks. And little by little, that's why I developed a really good vocabulary because I was reading all the stuff.

We had a shortwave radio. So he was being tuned into the news and reading it in Spanish. You know, he could.

Figure out what was happening.

[Assistant] Now, when you were alone in your house?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Well, the point is that little, it was so easy, because there were the events going on and I could fill in the blanks. And little by little, that's why I developed a really good vocabulary because I was reading all the stuff.

We had a shortwave radio. So he was being tuned into the news and reading it in Spanish. You know, he could.

Figure out what was happening.

[Assistant] Now, when you were alone in your house?

[User] We spoke English.

[Assistant] Yeah, OK.

[User] Oh yeah, we spoke English.

[Assistant] Did you help him with his Spanish, Sue?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] We spoke English.

[Assistant] Yeah, OK.

[User] Oh yeah, we spoke English.

[Assistant] Did you help him with his Spanish, Sue?

[User]
She was my voice into the community originally because I didn't know what was going on. In addition to the daily discussions with him, we intended many meetings, sometimes several a week with the community development association, the welfare folks.

Believe me, it went on for hours.

I didn't understand what was going on. I had a terrible headache.

I had a headache, too.

[Assistant] But you understood, I'm guessing.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh yeah, we spoke English.

[Assistant] Did you help him with his Spanish, Sue?

[User]
She was my voice into the community originally because I didn't know what was going on. In addition to the daily discussions with him, we intended many meetings, sometimes several a week with the community development association, the welfare folks.

Believe me, it went on for hours.

I didn't understand what was going on. I had a terrible headache.

I had a headache, too.

[Assistant] But you understood, I'm guessing.

[User]
I understood but I had a headache from concentrating so much on what people were saying. I mean, there was stuff, contextual stuff I didn't understand. I don't know what they were talking about.

But then actually, as I began to learn and so what was happening is that is that you ask about the couples on all fronts with the constant overlapping. So it was a construction of nutrition center, which allows the nutrition center to get built and nutrition programs open. But it gave Susie the idea of the kindergarten. Where are we going to get a classroom? Here it was. There was this building, with a floor, a roof, sinks, everything, used for half hour a day for the kids.

[Assistant] The nutrition center, only half an hour a day?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
There were no rural kindergartens. All the kindergartens were around the capital city and the largest, the county seat of the areas around the capital, but no rural area had a kindergarten.

Of course, as soon as our village got it, the county seat wanted one.

They were jealous.

What is this?

How come you have a kindergarten? They imitated us. It started spreading.

And before you know it, everyone was getting it.

[Assistant] Wow.

[User] Once they saw that you could.

[Assistant] You guys were movers and shakers.

[User] Yeah, that was a tangible kind of thing, we felt as well. We brought something to this town and it continued and it was never taken away as far as we know.

[Assistant] I'm jealous, anyway, but I wanted to just to. We talked about this when the tape was off. As a married couple, I asked, do you think you would have accomplished that the same amount that you have or been able to like Mitch with your, I can say poorer Spanish, would you would you have been able to accomplish this if you had gone by individually?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Once they saw that you could.

[Assistant] You guys were movers and shakers.

[User] Yeah, that was a tangible kind of thing, we felt as well. We brought something to this town and it continued and it was never taken away as far as we know.

[Assistant] I'm jealous, anyway, but I wanted to just to. We talked about this when the tape was off. As a married couple, I asked, do you think you would have accomplished that the same amount that you have or been able to like Mitch with your, I can say poorer Spanish, would you would you have been able to accomplish this if you had gone by individually?

[User]
No, doubt it.

No. We were accepted as a couple, which is important. There was no issue like I was looking for young girls to marry. That was over. We were doing our thing and we were accepted by the elders of the community.

Yeah, they really appreciated, we felt appreciated by them. We felt that they understood that we were working hard for them and the community. That we were really doing everything we possibly could to help the community. We felt that they had the same trust as we had for them. They also knew how much we respected them, the mutual respect for each other.

[Assistant] I want to ask you a question only because your Spanish is, he said, it was more perfect I'll say.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yeah, that was a tangible kind of thing, we felt as well. We brought something to this town and it continued and it was never taken away as far as we know.

[Assistant] I'm jealous, anyway, but I wanted to just to. We talked about this when the tape was off. As a married couple, I asked, do you think you would have accomplished that the same amount that you have or been able to like Mitch with your, I can say poorer Spanish, would you would you have been able to accomplish this if you had gone by individually?

[User]
No, doubt it.

No. We were accepted as a couple, which is important. There was no issue like I was looking for young girls to marry. That was over. We were doing our thing and we were accepted by the elders of the community.

Yeah, they really appreciated, we felt appreciated by them. We felt that they understood that we were working hard for them and the community. That we were really doing everything we possibly could to help the community. We felt that they had the same trust as we had for them. They also knew how much we respected them, the mutual respect for each other.

[Assistant] I want to ask you a question only because your Spanish is, he said, it was more perfect I'll say.

[User] No, it wasn't perfect.

[Assistant] Well, you are very fluent, OK? I'll rephrase that. If you had gone as a single woman, I'm sort of beating a dead horse I suppose with this, because I was a single woman in Honduras. Do you think you could have accomplished some of this? Most of this?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
No, doubt it.

No. We were accepted as a couple, which is important. There was no issue like I was looking for young girls to marry. That was over. We were doing our thing and we were accepted by the elders of the community.

Yeah, they really appreciated, we felt appreciated by them. We felt that they understood that we were working hard for them and the community. That we were really doing everything we possibly could to help the community. We felt that they had the same trust as we had for them. They also knew how much we respected them, the mutual respect for each other.

[Assistant] I want to ask you a question only because your Spanish is, he said, it was more perfect I'll say.

[User] No, it wasn't perfect.

[Assistant] Well, you are very fluent, OK? I'll rephrase that. If you had gone as a single woman, I'm sort of beating a dead horse I suppose with this, because I was a single woman in Honduras. Do you think you could have accomplished some of this? Most of this?

[User] No, I don't.

[Assistant] Even though you were fluent.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Yes, telling them how this resource.

[Assistant] A high school teacher? Oh, he was rich. I'm sorry. I had to interject that.

[User]
He owned all the land and sold off parts of it to other people.

His son went to West Point. Little connections. And yet when he saw this as the resource around which the entire community pivoted, the community development center, this thing was all related to having this doctor come providing the resources. If you take this away from us, they're stripping the community of its form. And they won. The ministry reversed its policy and put back the unidad mobile.

Yeah, but eventually, in the two years they sent a sixth doctor, a permanent doctor to live, who worked in the clinic. Remember the guy who failed his exams?

Yeah, but he, no, he was. He was seen to be a doctor with the British Peace Corps at a hospital in Sao Vito. But he lived in Agua Buena.

Right. But he was going to be in one. He wasn't going to be unidad mobile.

Well, what happened eventually in Costa Rica is that health services became much more common and they established what we call puestos de salud. And eventually.

[Assistant] When did that happen?

[User] After we left.

[Assistant] OK. There was, can I interrupt, was there a Ministry of Health of some sort?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
He owned all the land and sold off parts of it to other people.

His son went to West Point. Little connections. And yet when he saw this as the resource around which the entire community pivoted, the community development center, this thing was all related to having this doctor come providing the resources. If you take this away from us, they're stripping the community of its form. And they won. The ministry reversed its policy and put back the unidad mobile.

Yeah, but eventually, in the two years they sent a sixth doctor, a permanent doctor to live, who worked in the clinic. Remember the guy who failed his exams?

Yeah, but he, no, he was. He was seen to be a doctor with the British Peace Corps at a hospital in Sao Vito. But he lived in Agua Buena.

Right. But he was going to be in one. He wasn't going to be unidad mobile.

Well, what happened eventually in Costa Rica is that health services became much more common and they established what we call puestos de salud. And eventually.

[Assistant] When did that happen?

[User] After we left.

[Assistant] OK. There was, can I interrupt, was there a Ministry of Health of some sort?

[User] The Ministry of Health.

[Assistant] But they didn't have clinics in a lot of rural areas.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The Ministry of Health.

[Assistant] But they didn't have clinics in a lot of rural areas.

[User] Not then. Not yet.

[Assistant] OK.

[User]
Social security became universalized in Costa Rica, and the Social Security started opening hospitals, including a hospital in the county seat in San Vito, with these little puestos de salud.

That was years later.

Years later.

[Assistant] Could you guess what year maybe?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Not then. Not yet.

[Assistant] OK.

[User]
Social security became universalized in Costa Rica, and the Social Security started opening hospitals, including a hospital in the county seat in San Vito, with these little puestos de salud.

That was years later.

Years later.

[Assistant] Could you guess what year maybe?

[User] Oh, this is all when you get into the late '70s and maybe the hospital was opened in the early '80s.

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm just curious because of my health background.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Social security became universalized in Costa Rica, and the Social Security started opening hospitals, including a hospital in the county seat in San Vito, with these little puestos de salud.

That was years later.

Years later.

[Assistant] Could you guess what year maybe?

[User] Oh, this is all when you get into the late '70s and maybe the hospital was opened in the early '80s.

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm just curious because of my health background.

[User] But this one doctor who was finally sent to the county because the rich man Ernesto offered him free housing, that's why he chose to live in Agua Buena, instead of the county seat, which had all the stores and the better food and everything. So he was a young guy with a young wife. His wife was about 24 and he was about 28 or something. He'd gotten his medical degree in Mexico because apparently he could not get into a Costa Rican medical school.

[Assistant] But he was Costa Rican?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] Oh, this is all when you get into the late '70s and maybe the hospital was opened in the early '80s.

[Assistant] Yeah, I'm just curious because of my health background.

[User] But this one doctor who was finally sent to the county because the rich man Ernesto offered him free housing, that's why he chose to live in Agua Buena, instead of the county seat, which had all the stores and the better food and everything. So he was a young guy with a young wife. His wife was about 24 and he was about 28 or something. He'd gotten his medical degree in Mexico because apparently he could not get into a Costa Rican medical school.

[Assistant] But he was Costa Rican?

[User]
He was Costa Rican. And within a couple of months, he moved to the county seat, he didn't want to live in our town. So everyone was so disenchanted with him. The doctor living in our little town, you know? The problem was that we had all, we would receive free medicines from Germany, and he couldn't read English and he couldn't read German. He would ask me to tell him what the label said on the medicine in front of the. I was trying to translate. My German was not good enough. The English, I could tell him. But he knew neither English or German, that's what he was giving out.

But years later, then electricity came, water came, telephones came, doctors, you know? That's all what happened in this little village, which was in the middle of nowhere, eventually became. A bridge was built. Bus service came in.

[Assistant] Who were the early settlers? You said it wasn't begun until '41. Were they Costa Ricans?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
It was World War II that did it. In World War II, the United States was trying to find, make a land route to the Panama Canal because there was a concern that there was German small airline companies around that were going to bomb the canal and put it out of existence, which would have crippled the war in the Pacific. So they drove, the idea was to drive the Panamanian highway down to the Panama Canal, and this village was on the initial route, later it was changed, to go through there. And we saw a penetration road was built from the coast up to this area, and this area was where the road was supposed to go. There it was, the road. And with the road came the people. And the road was built by a company called Wanderlust, based in St. Louis, Missouri.

And there were kids with American names, little kids called Roosevelt with blond hair, the product of, you know, this company.

[Assistant] Yeah, OK.

[User] When the war ended, that literally the day that the war ended, the construction stopped, the machinery was left to rot there on the ground. That was the end of it.

[Assistant] But the people stayed?

[User] The people stayed. But now there was a penetration road up there, there was a way of getting in. And then at the end of the war, this group of, we assume, from Mussolini, the Italians set up an Italian colony in Costa Rica.

[Assistant] In that county seat?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] When the war ended, that literally the day that the war ended, the construction stopped, the machinery was left to rot there on the ground. That was the end of it.

[Assistant] But the people stayed?

[User] The people stayed. But now there was a penetration road up there, there was a way of getting in. And then at the end of the war, this group of, we assume, from Mussolini, the Italians set up an Italian colony in Costa Rica.

[Assistant] In that county seat?

[User]
San Vito de Java, yeah. San Vito was named after this Italian, Vito Sansonetti.

And so they created this thing, which to be a diversified farm. Most of the colony failed, mostly Italians went back to Italy. A small number of Italian restaurants are there and a small number of the bakers who would send us the bread.

The baker's son became a diputado, a member of the Legislature.

That's a whole other story.

[Assistant] You've got a lot of stories. Um, I think, anything before I talk about like the end of your two-year experience, anything else you want to add about your projects? You've spoken a lot about them.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The people stayed. But now there was a penetration road up there, there was a way of getting in. And then at the end of the war, this group of, we assume, from Mussolini, the Italians set up an Italian colony in Costa Rica.

[Assistant] In that county seat?

[User]
San Vito de Java, yeah. San Vito was named after this Italian, Vito Sansonetti.

And so they created this thing, which to be a diversified farm. Most of the colony failed, mostly Italians went back to Italy. A small number of Italian restaurants are there and a small number of the bakers who would send us the bread.

The baker's son became a diputado, a member of the Legislature.

That's a whole other story.

[Assistant] You've got a lot of stories. Um, I think, anything before I talk about like the end of your two-year experience, anything else you want to add about your projects? You've spoken a lot about them.

[User] There were so many other people. There was an American who lived out there on the border with Panama, and Darryl Cole. They used to tell there was a guy called Darren Cole. And he lived there. He had come out during the Korean War, I think, as a protest against the war and lived out there his whole life, married, and create his own organic farm along the border.

[Assistant] How far away were you from the Panamanian border?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
San Vito de Java, yeah. San Vito was named after this Italian, Vito Sansonetti.

And so they created this thing, which to be a diversified farm. Most of the colony failed, mostly Italians went back to Italy. A small number of Italian restaurants are there and a small number of the bakers who would send us the bread.

The baker's son became a diputado, a member of the Legislature.

That's a whole other story.

[Assistant] You've got a lot of stories. Um, I think, anything before I talk about like the end of your two-year experience, anything else you want to add about your projects? You've spoken a lot about them.

[User] There were so many other people. There was an American who lived out there on the border with Panama, and Darryl Cole. They used to tell there was a guy called Darren Cole. And he lived there. He had come out during the Korean War, I think, as a protest against the war and lived out there his whole life, married, and create his own organic farm along the border.

[Assistant] How far away were you from the Panamanian border?

[User]
30 minutes on foot?

It was about two miles, two or three mile walk from our thing to the Panamanian border. It was right there. It was an area of border dispute. It was an area where the coup occurred in Panama, there were all kinds of people going across the border and some shooting pains in that area.

We would go there, there were a couple of stores there that sold important stuff, imported Cadbury chocolate bars, Campbell's soup cans, and cheese and, yeah, this is what saved their lives. We became vegetarians in Peace Corps for lack of meat around the thing, right?

[Assistant] Uh huh. Are you vegetarian still?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
30 minutes on foot?

It was about two miles, two or three mile walk from our thing to the Panamanian border. It was right there. It was an area of border dispute. It was an area where the coup occurred in Panama, there were all kinds of people going across the border and some shooting pains in that area.

We would go there, there were a couple of stores there that sold important stuff, imported Cadbury chocolate bars, Campbell's soup cans, and cheese and, yeah, this is what saved their lives. We became vegetarians in Peace Corps for lack of meat around the thing, right?

[Assistant] Uh huh. Are you vegetarian still?

[User]
No. We became vegetarians again when our daughter became a vegetarian in high school. It was then we dropped that, but there was no meat. There was a butcher who would kill a cow. Display the live cow before he killed it. The live cow looked diseased, you know, the ribs showing. We wouldn't go near the things that he used to kill. Then he ran off into the mountains and disappeared, so that was the end of the butcher shop in town.

Well, that story and he had a dog, a hunting dog, who used to come to our house.

We would feed his dog baloney, mortadella.

And then the dog became very sad, like the head down at one point. And I tried to feed her and put my hand in her mouth, and she wouldn't eat. When she disappeared, we learned that there was a rabies epidemic in the area, but it was dumb rabies where they, instead of being angry, they do this.

They get lockjaw.

[Assistant] I never heard of that. I mean, I've heard of rabies. But dumb rabies.

[User]
They don't get angry. They don't bite.

They just think that like this. And so the dog was caught by our friends and they cut off the dog's head.

[Assistant] Because of the rabies?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
No. We became vegetarians again when our daughter became a vegetarian in high school. It was then we dropped that, but there was no meat. There was a butcher who would kill a cow. Display the live cow before he killed it. The live cow looked diseased, you know, the ribs showing. We wouldn't go near the things that he used to kill. Then he ran off into the mountains and disappeared, so that was the end of the butcher shop in town.

Well, that story and he had a dog, a hunting dog, who used to come to our house.

We would feed his dog baloney, mortadella.

And then the dog became very sad, like the head down at one point. And I tried to feed her and put my hand in her mouth, and she wouldn't eat. When she disappeared, we learned that there was a rabies epidemic in the area, but it was dumb rabies where they, instead of being angry, they do this.

They get lockjaw.

[Assistant] I never heard of that. I mean, I've heard of rabies. But dumb rabies.

[User]
They don't get angry. They don't bite.

They just think that like this. And so the dog was caught by our friends and they cut off the dog's head.

[Assistant] Because of the rabies?

[User]
We had to bring to the capital and have it tested.

They put it into a paint can, and the Peace Corps doctor told us, you have to get in because this thing is filled with nódulos negros.

[Assistant] Say it again.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
They don't get angry. They don't bite.

They just think that like this. And so the dog was caught by our friends and they cut off the dog's head.

[Assistant] Because of the rabies?

[User]
We had to bring to the capital and have it tested.

They put it into a paint can, and the Peace Corps doctor told us, you have to get in because this thing is filled with nódulos negros.

[Assistant] Say it again.

[User]
Nódulos negros.

Nodules, black nodules.

And so we came in and.

[Assistant] Got rabies shots?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
We had to bring to the capital and have it tested.

They put it into a paint can, and the Peace Corps doctor told us, you have to get in because this thing is filled with nódulos negros.

[Assistant] Say it again.

[User]
Nódulos negros.

Nodules, black nodules.

And so we came in and.

[Assistant] Got rabies shots?

[User]
Every day. Every single day, I ended up with 25 shots.

I had 11.

They were they were subcutaneous, very, very painful in those days. But nowadays it's much like three shots or something. And we didn't want to. The problem was, he said, that if you don't take the vaccine, you're going to die. And if you do take the vaccine, you may die from the vaccine because.

Or paralyze you and you die from the paralysis.

They took our blood and sent it to the Center for Disease Control, and after the tenth shot, we still didn't have high enough titers.

They had just created the duck embryo.

[Assistant] That's what I think I had in Honduras, yeah.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
Nódulos negros.

Nodules, black nodules.

And so we came in and.

[Assistant] Got rabies shots?

[User]
Every day. Every single day, I ended up with 25 shots.

I had 11.

They were they were subcutaneous, very, very painful in those days. But nowadays it's much like three shots or something. And we didn't want to. The problem was, he said, that if you don't take the vaccine, you're going to die. And if you do take the vaccine, you may die from the vaccine because.

Or paralyze you and you die from the paralysis.

They took our blood and sent it to the Center for Disease Control, and after the tenth shot, we still didn't have high enough titers.

They had just created the duck embryo.

[Assistant] That's what I think I had in Honduras, yeah.

[User]
As opposed to the horse embryo.

That was over in time and it was just kind of a scary.

On the border, so we were vegetarians because we had no refrigerator. And so I was like, no. The two little stores that sell food, they were called pulperias. The woman would have maybe three or four eggs for sale each day. And I didn't want to buy all of them because I knew other people wanted them too, so I'd buy like two eggs a day sometimes. And tuna fish was available. And but this store on the other side of the Costa Rican border would have gouda cheese imported from Holland, that did not need refrigeration either way up high and it got down to 40 degrees at night and maybe 75 during the day or 80. And that cheese kept itself good for like two months and did not need refrigeration. So we lived on that. I became very creative in cooking with cheese. I made these mini pizzas on the stovetop, you know, so I didn't have an oven either. I had a three burner propane gas stove.

[Assistant] It was like kerosene or?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User]
As opposed to the horse embryo.

That was over in time and it was just kind of a scary.

On the border, so we were vegetarians because we had no refrigerator. And so I was like, no. The two little stores that sell food, they were called pulperias. The woman would have maybe three or four eggs for sale each day. And I didn't want to buy all of them because I knew other people wanted them too, so I'd buy like two eggs a day sometimes. And tuna fish was available. And but this store on the other side of the Costa Rican border would have gouda cheese imported from Holland, that did not need refrigeration either way up high and it got down to 40 degrees at night and maybe 75 during the day or 80. And that cheese kept itself good for like two months and did not need refrigeration. So we lived on that. I became very creative in cooking with cheese. I made these mini pizzas on the stovetop, you know, so I didn't have an oven either. I had a three burner propane gas stove.

[Assistant] It was like kerosene or?

[User] It was gas, like propane gas.

[Assistant] OK.

[User]
Like when you would barbecue today, you know, the tanks.

So there'd be two regular sized burners and one tiny one. And that's what I cooked on, right? I used the cheese for melting for pizza, combined with potatoes. It was a challenge eating then. And I was not, you know, I was in my first year, my second year of marriage, and I wasn't an experienced cook. Going to the Panamanian border to get that kind of saved my life. And the Cadbury chocolate was great psychologically.

[Assistant] I am tempted to ask you a question. I'm going to put it on pause. OK, now we're taping again. I just was curious to know since they went in as a married couple and still are married. How many years have you been married now?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It was gas, like propane gas.

[Assistant] OK.

[User]
Like when you would barbecue today, you know, the tanks.

So there'd be two regular sized burners and one tiny one. And that's what I cooked on, right? I used the cheese for melting for pizza, combined with potatoes. It was a challenge eating then. And I was not, you know, I was in my first year, my second year of marriage, and I wasn't an experienced cook. Going to the Panamanian border to get that kind of saved my life. And the Cadbury chocolate was great psychologically.

[Assistant] I am tempted to ask you a question. I'm going to put it on pause. OK, now we're taping again. I just was curious to know since they went in as a married couple and still are married. How many years have you been married now?

[User] It would be 41 this month.

[Assistant] Felicidades, congratulations! Did the Peace Corps maybe strengthen your marriage? You were married just a year, you said, when you went in. I got permission to ask them that.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] It would be 41 this month.

[Assistant] Felicidades, congratulations! Did the Peace Corps maybe strengthen your marriage? You were married just a year, you said, when you went in. I got permission to ask them that.

[User]
Well, I think it gave us common experiences that were very intense. Heavy duty experiences that we share and struggling with the community together, I think that brought us together in a way that we wouldn't have in United States. We would have been doing our own thing in the U.S. He was going to be a graduate student, I was going to graduate student, studying our own different fields. It's not that kind of experience. This is getting involved with people all the all day, every day, seven days a week. So close personal relationships in a way that we never have since.

By the time we left, sort of we and the community and everything sort of blurred. I mean, there was no longer a me or you or the community. It was just everything was everything. It was everything that happened in that community seemed to be our issue, you know, and problem. And we were so engaged in the struggles, the water system and the nutrition center and the schools and the teacher. The school teacher used to steal the vegetables out of the school garden, and how to deal with that. And some of the fathers didn't like the fact that they were planning these nutritional things and they wanted to put. [tape break]

[Assistant] OK, we're going to. Anything else you want to say about the marriage part, Mitch? It's been said.

[User] No.

[Assistant] OK, we're going to just talk about for time's sake. How would you evaluate your experience in the light of Peace Corps' three goals? Do you remember the goals? Well, this is like to provide technical assistance where requested, to help promote better understanding of Americans by people served, to help promote better understanding of other peoples by Americans. Do you feel like do you want to comment about technical assistance? How was your service in terms of that, were you able to provide technical assistance?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] No, Ernesto was the rich guy whose son went to West Point.

[Assistant] Oh, oh.

[User]
This is a town that had two little pulperias, grocery stores, and a store that had dry goods and like stoves and fabrics internationally. But this little town with only a couple of places to buy anything had a movie theater, because Ernesto wanted a movie theater in his town. And every weekend on Fridays and Saturday nights they showed films.

He always said he wanted to provide some healthy entertainment. So instead of the people drinking at the bar, he wanted on Friday and Saturday to go to a movie?

[Assistant] Yeah.

[User]
And years later, because in our second year, when we either a parent came back or a parent. We took, our parents subsidized us with film for slides and we took pictures and we'd sent it to them.

But they would develop them in the U.S.

Then we brought them back and had a slide show for the entire town in the movie theater. He charged 50 percent, a nominal fee, for the community support, for the poor kids.

And then we'd put up a poster saying see yourselves in real life. See yourselves in the movie. And so we did a slideshow on the movie screen in this movie theater. And they enjoyed that. And oh yes, for the fundraiser, we sold popcorn for the first time. No one had ever eaten popcorn. They got popping corn. And this woman, Lolita, in her kitchen, popped the corn, and we sold it also for a nominal fee. And people loved that. No one was eating popcorn in San Jose movie theaters back then in '68. It was not known then.

[Assistant] Boy, you accomplished so much. I'm jealous.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] I learned how to make pizza. There was no Pizza Hut yet in Costa Rica, you could not buy a pizza. So I taught her how to make pizza from scratch from my Fannie Farmer cookbook. And she remembered, that she knows how to make pizza, you know, with the natural ingredients available in the town, you know. This is so laughable. Because everyone knows what pizza is now.

[Assistant] I don't know if you want to comment on this, because I sort of wanted to get on tape what you kind of told me before we started and all. But there's another question. Did you think you helped promote better understanding of Americans?

[User] The ugly American thing was, there are people who, you know, maintain ties there for years. People remember us as whether you and I were considered to be imperialists or spies or people who were doing damage. But we ended up being scholars and wrote scholarly works on the country.

[Assistant] And this is, which leads to the question we've talked about some but if you have any other thoughts about this. What was the effect of you on of your Peace Corps service? How did it change you? I mean, you've talked about this before we started the tape and sometime during the taping, you mentioned your careers. Do you want to say anything else about how the Peace Corps experience?

[User] I mean, my first books were on political participation.

[Assistant] How many books have you written? I don't know. I really don't.


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] The ugly American thing was, there are people who, you know, maintain ties there for years. People remember us as whether you and I were considered to be imperialists or spies or people who were doing damage. But we ended up being scholars and wrote scholarly works on the country.

[Assistant] And this is, which leads to the question we've talked about some but if you have any other thoughts about this. What was the effect of you on of your Peace Corps service? How did it change you? I mean, you've talked about this before we started the tape and sometime during the taping, you mentioned your careers. Do you want to say anything else about how the Peace Corps experience?

[User] I mean, my first books were on political participation.

[Assistant] How many books have you written? I don't know. I really don't.

[User] On my CV I have 140 articles and something like 20 books.

[Assistant] That you've written, 20 books?


[System] Act as an information elicitation agent for oral history.

[User] On my CV I have 140 articles and something like 20 books.

[Assistant] That you've written, 20 books?

[User] Or edited.

[Assistant] Caramba!

[User] Perhaps more than that. But the focus of that work in those early days when we came back for the dissertation, I got to connect up with an American from Texas. It was to look at the view of Latin America from the point of view of the United States was the problem is these people don't do anything. They said that, you know, a Mexican sitting under the cactus with a sombrero, sitting on his ass, doing nothing.

[Assistant] Uh huh. Right.