If there is such a thing…

After a year in Peace Corps, the Country Director ended his term of service, and moved back stateside. The new Director to replace John, was named Howard. He was young, maybe 30 years old. He was officious and a bureaucrat. Howard, it appeared, had grown up to be an A-hole. It might not have even been his fault, but he was one, and had decided to go with it. He spoke to the volunteers like they were children. Even me, and I was obviously older than him, and his talking down to me grated on my nerves. But he was Country Director, so I avoided him, and tried, in my Sam way, to keep a low profile.

About two months into his term of service, one of the volunteers in country had been caught not showing up for classes because he had decided to go on a mid term vacation down to Durban, South Africa, and hang on the beach, and do some surfing. And drinking. Durban was like Ft Lauderdale in Florida, a tourist town with lots of beaches and bars. He got caught because his headmaster had called Peace Corps to find out if they had withdrawn their teacher for some reason. Howard, being the supreme bureaucrat, had jumped on that with both shiny wing-tipped feet.

The outgrowth of that was a new rule. All Peace Corps Swaziland volunteers were to turn in the passports that we had been issued as part of the paperwork of application, before coming across the pond. The passports would be locked up in the PC safe, and there was a small form (bureaucrats love forms) that you should fill out, requesting permission to leave the country, and where you were going, for how long, at which time they would get your passport out of the safe, and give it to you, to be turned in again when you returned to Swaziland, and filled out another form. Jeez.

I personally did not think this was legal. The volunteers were all adults, and joining the Peace Corps did not rob you of any freedoms that you were privy to as an American. And the little shit was just flexing his power, and in a pointless way. Being a volunteer at a very remote site, I was not in town very often, and it was a good 3 weeks after he issued his new edict that I got the notice in my mailbox when I came next into town. I reacted in a mature and responsible way by crumpling up the notice, and muttering “What an A-hole” as I threw it into the recycling bin. I couldn’t turn in my passport, because it was out at my school, hidden in the ceiling of my bedroom in my house in the teachers quarters.

As luck would have it, before I could escape the office, Howard caught me, and came over, sneering, and demanded I turn in my passport. He could have just asked the volunteers to turn their passports in. They would have. It was Peace Corps, not the military. No rules or edicts were necessary. We were all grown ups, except maybe for Howard.

Me: Gee, Howard, I don’t have it. It is hidden out at my school. I didn’t think I would need it to take the bus into town.

Howard: (barking at me like a small chihuahua) Didn’t you get the notice about turning your passport in? I put it in the boxes 3 weeks ago.

Me: Yes Howard, I got the notice 5 minutes ago. I don’t come into town often because it is an all day trip, and I am very involved in my community on weekends when I am not teaching. I will try to remember to bring it in on my next trip into town.

Howard: Try hard, Sam. When will you be coming back to town?

Ya know, this is just not the way people need to talk to me. Bullying didn’t work. My dad was the biggest bully that ever lived, and Howie-boy could not hold a candle to my dad.

Me: Howard, I will be coming back into town when I feel it is necessary to come back into town. The passport is hidden in my ceiling, and requires some disassembling of the ceiling to get it. I will do my best to remember to get it next time.

Howard: I hope that will be soon, Sam. Everybody but you has already turned theirs in.

He just couldn’t let it go.

Me: Well, Howard, I have never been a herd animal. I stopped worrying about what everybody else is doing some years ago. I have already told you that I will try to remember. That is the best I can do. Now, if you will excuse me…

And I grabbed my mail, and walked out of the office. Jeez, what an A-hole. Yapping at me like that. I wanted to yank his pants down like the little boy he was acting like, and spank him on the bare hiney. 

Next time I was in town, about a month later, even tho I did my best to sneak into the office without him seeing me, somebody ratted me out, because I was famous now, for being the only renegade volunteer to not turn his passport in, and he caught me getting my mail.

Howard: (putting his hand out, palm up) Passport!

Me: Oh, shit! I wasn’t gonna come into town this weekend, and as a last minute thing, the headmaster asked me to pick up some things for him, so I decided spontaneously at 5am this morning to come in, and I just plumb forgot it. Ncesi kancane Mkhulu. (which means, in siSwati, “Sorry, but only a tiny bit sorry grandfather”. SiSwati had some really useful common phrases in it, and I knew that Howard did not speak the language of the country he was directing )

Howard: Sam, I told you last time to bring the passport in. You have not, so let me put it more strongly. Either have your passport in my hand within 2 weeks, or when you next come in, pick up your plane ticket home.

Oh, man.

Me: Sit down for a minute, Howard. ( I went over and sat on the sofa in the volunteer lounge. I smiled at him, though it cost me dearly to do so.) There are a couple things that I wish to discuss with you, since we are here, and all. First, I wish you would find a way to get over talking down to me, like I am a teenager. I am 10 years older than you, and deserve the respect that anyone would pay to their elders. You don’t need to bark at me. Nor threaten me with consequences for some vague, as yet to be seen actions on my part. I have done nothing since I got here except to be the best Peace Corps volunteer that I am able to be. All this adversariality is unnecessary. You catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar. Also, I wish to remind you that I am an American citizen, and an adult, and have given up none of my constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to join Peace Corps, and come here to Swaziland. While it is true that the passport you want me to turn in technically belongs to Peace Corps because they issued it, I have my own personal passport because this is not my first time abroad. And I will not turn that passport in, because it is mine, and I own it. Nor am I willing to fill out your form to tell you when I am leaving the country, where I go, and when I come back. It is not your concern. If I break the rules, and am not teaching when I should be, or causing some other problem, then send me home. Otherwise, I am an adult, and know the rules, and would not be here at all, if the hierarchy had not found me worthy to send. I will try to remember to bring my passport in next trip, which will be in two weeks, because it is end of semester, and I am traveling to Lesotho with a couple other volunteers over the 3 week break between semesters. Please don’t speak to me with disrespect again. It is not necessary, and unworthy of your position in the hierarchy. Just so we understand each other, huh?

I have to give him credit. He sat and listened to the whole thing without interrupting me. But, man, was he not happy. And he held that against me for the rest of his year and a half term as Director. He tried to catch me in something. Anything. When the teachers went on strike, he drove all the way out to my school, sure that he was going to bust me teaching, instead of refraining from any action and sitting in my house until the strike was over. In his suit coat pocket, clearly displaying my name, was a plane ticket back to Austin. Which he was disappointed to not be able to give me. 

Unfortunately for him, I was the quintessential Peace Corps volunteer. My headmaster loved me. I had 4 community improvement projects going on near my school, for which I had written and received grant money to do them. I had gotten no girls pregnant. I did not drink, except at the occasional gathering of volunteers at various schools. I did not try to leave the country during the execution of my primary job, that of being a teacher. I was editor of the volunteer newsletter. I was on the separation committee that reviewed any early terminations, if any. I was using at least half my pay to pay for school fees for girls at my school who were going to drop out because their families had no money for them. I was teaching Sam’s Survival Session to the training groups that came after mine. And I had turned in my PC passport the next time I came into town, and never saw it again. I kept as low a profile as I could, and took to hitting the PC office on Saturdays, when he was not there. Country Directors don’t work weekends. I avoided the axe until he went home, unrequited.

3 years later, back stateside, I heard about a new program with the Peace Corps, called Crisis Corps. It was a program where they could re-activate your status as a volunteer, and you could be sent for short contracts of 6 weeks, to countries that had need for somebody with your skills. I had been back and forth emailing the Crisis Corps recruiter about a contract that they had in Hungary, evaluating buildings along the Danube River that had been damaged by massive flooding the year before, to decide whether to rebuild them or tear them down and start again. There was a severe shortage of people able to evaluate the buildings, and not much was being done about them. I am not an engineer, but I could do that well enough, most likely. The recruiter was excited to have found someone to fill the slot, and we put all the paperwork together, and he sent it in. I called him the next week, and he sounded disappointed to tell me that my contract had been turned down. I asked him why, and he said that the director had kicked it back to him, no dice. I asked who the Crisis Corps director was… of course it was my old nemesis Howard, getting in his last lick.

Ye reap what you sow. I should have kept my mouth shut back in Swaziland, given Howard his undeserved respect, and I would have been gold.

Oh well.

It ain’t easy being Sam.