Peter Pan Syndrome

Do Peace Corps Volunteers ever "grow up?"

From the air I view the Congo river, a muddy, meandering waterflow whose breadth where it separates Brazzaville from Kinshasa is truly impressive. Though I first came to Africa twenty years before, such names still captivate me even if I can now lecture on the difference between Congo-Brazza and Congo-Kinshasa, between Guinea-Bissau, Guinea-Conakry, and Equatorial Guinea. Though I graduated college without knowing the difference between Niger and Nigeria, I have since written books about them.  And still, a journey through Africa excites me as much as my original atlas explorations did as a boy.  All thanks to the Peace Corps.

But that excitement reflects an inner tension: the role former development Volunteers assume when wearing a suit or otherwise “going professional.”  Think of it as Peace Corps meeting Peter Pan. As young idealists, we penetrated local society and understood day-to-day life in ways that neither Foreign Service diplomats nor graduates with mere doctorates come close to.  Now that we have “moved on” and “grown up,” do we abandon our proclivity for the humble citizenry in favor of the élites who are now our counterparts?  Or, despite our fancier clothes and higher credentials, can we still remain true to our camaraderie with “the people”? 

My first encounter with RPCVPPS (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Peter Pan Syndrome) occurred just one year after my service ended.  A summer internship with the State Department in Nigeria teamed me up for a week’s tour with agricultural specialist George Pope.  “Whenever I check in at hotels in this country,” he wryly told me, “they always register me as Pope George!”

It was over a looming hotel stay that the Syndrome first manifested itself.  For sure, he had per diem, and I did not.  George felt bad for me, and offered to pay half the cost for my room.  But after Peace Corps hostels in Niger, even the cost for a hotel room divided in half in Nigeria seemed extravagant; I stubbornly insisted on spending the night in our vehicle.  “You’re not in the Peace Corps, anymore,” he reproached me, as I spurned his kind offer.  But in mind, and long thereafter, I responded, “Yes, but I should act as if I am.”

Now that we have “moved on” and “grown up,” do we abandon our proclivity for the humble citizenry in favor of the élites who are now our counterparts?  Or, despite our fancier clothes and higher credentials, can we still remain true to our camaraderie with “the people”? 

Now, two postgraduate degrees and decades later, I still occasionally represent Uncle Sam.  One memorable time as a Fulbright scholar, at a seminar on democratic institutions at the Université de Ouagadougou.  In Burkina Faso, a land that I still remember being called “Upper Volta” when I was a child.  Now, as a professor, how faithful do I remain to the Peace Corps Volunteer still inside me?

Virgil Bohdeen, the American Cultural Center director in Burkina responsible for the seminar funding (and therefore my participation in it) was but one post away from retirement.  Slight in build, his white hair and well-groomed beard projected a wise appearance in age-revering Africa.  A rich life experience justified the appearance.  In six months he and his wife Dianne would leave Burkina Faso for Uganda, after a diplomatic career that had also taken them to Tunisia, Nigeria, Romania, and Denmark.  

Virgil seemed uncommonly committed to his job. Most Foreign Service Officers become jaded after the initial thrill of roving the world on a diplomatic passport wears off.  A new post becomes a new hassle, another uprooting, a further obligation to learn the quirks and foibles of a new set of “host nationals.”  (In State Department lounge jargon, the entire world is divided into two kinds of people:  AmCits [American citizens] and HCNs [host country nationals].  Often the latter are more simply referred to as “locals.”)  But not Virgil.  He genuinely enjoyed what he was doing, and with the Burkinabé with whom he was doing it.  It does not surprise me to learn that his first experiences abroad were as an evangelist.  “But I just wasn’t cut out to be a missionary,” he realized.  And so he became the next best thing to a vendor of religion: a professional propagandist (and I use the term neutrally, with no disrespect implied) for the American way of life.

Still, I did not envy his diplomatic career or luxurious lifestyle.  As an RPCV, I prefer to choose the society in which I will be immersed, and I do not need to be served meals at home by white coated cooks.  I do not revel in being issued, as was the technological case at the time,  embassy-issued walkie-talkies with personal code names. Expatriate neighbors should not be so keen to lop off part of their veranda to install swimming pools in the arid Sahel. Nor should they be so boastful of having a pool – even if it was a requirement of their Dutch foreign service – in a country where drought is a regular threat.  Of course, one is obliged to maintain a certain standard when in the diplomatic corps.  But for one whose most meaningful African experience occurred while living in a mud hut in the outer bush, certain expectations of urban expatriate life I still find nauseating.

The author during his time as a PCV in Niger

I haven’t traversed Africa merely to sit in a bare, dark classroom and listen to dry, academic lectures.  Ouaga’s street life beckoned; its street food is irresistible. With a roadside hawker of meat skewers I banter in African stall vendor French.  After dinner I spend more time waiting for the vendor to secure fractions of pennies’ worth of change for my bill than in actually downing the kebab.  To have left sooner would have been to display the haughtiness or the impatience of the rich.  But there is a price to pay for such RPCV rigidity…

Is it street meat or pre-speech nervousness?  My stomach is in a mess in the hours preceding my presentation.  Fortunately, I have so far avoided having to sit immobile on any of the campus toilets.  Frantically waving one hand to ward off squadrons of mosquitoes while holding my member with the other hand has been a sufficiently challenging inter-panel urination. These are moments when, despite the headaches and bad dreams they cause, I am glad to have begun doffing anti-malarial chloroquine tablets. 

Malaria is not my problem now, though: intestinal indiscipline is.  Lunchtime at the restaurant is spent reviewing my text and regretting having ordered mutton to accompany the rice. The waitress is solicitous, inquiring if I had drunk the local water; she commiserates that even she has stomach troubles when shifting from one village water supply to the next.  Leftover bits of lamb, in aluminum foil and a plastic bag, leave the restaurant for my hotel room mini-fridge. They will wind up in the metal bowl of a blind beggar passing in front of the Palm Beach Hotel before I check out the following day. 

But before delivering my thanksgiving offer of meat to the gods via the blind man of Ouagadougou, I first have to get through my speech in French on the origins of American democracy.  My approach is to compare the first forty years of the American and Burkina experiences.  Parallels are not perfect but they are plausible.  And, thanks to French version of Pepto Bismol, my digestive tract does not spring a leak.

Abidjan, a major metropolis and layover city for travel to Burkina, attracts its share of ambitiously mobile beggars from throughout West Africa. Many of them are Hausa, the people whose language I learned as a PCV.  Some of them are blind.  Unlike in Western countries, however, these mendicants carry themselves with dignity.  For them, begging is not a disgrace – it is a profession. 

The author during his time as a PCV in Niger

Walking back to my hotel along a major thoroughfare from a nearby supermarket (well-stocked with French wines, cheeses and chocolates) I run into such a group of Hausa beggars.  They are especially cheerful for it is Ramadan, and the little sighted girl who accompanies them is wearing a colorful festival dress and has sprinkled little sparkles on her face.  We banter in Hausa, the blind beggar remaining nonplussed when informed that he is speaking to a white man.  As usual, the subject of marrying the girl and taking her back to America crops us.  “Only if she likes me,” I tease, as I have thousands of times.  Then the elders ask when I will produce the dowry.

It takes me a moment to realize why the motorized passersby of Abidjan gawk at the spectacle of a white man conversing on the pavement with one of the city’s legions of blind beggars.  But of all the millions of people in this high-powered, high-rolling city, with whom else can I commune?  

Recalling that it is Ramadan, I turn back and give the girl an additional hundred French West African francs “on account of the sallah,” the holiday.  Just another RPCV habit.

In the nation whose name, in English, translates as “Land of the Upright Warriors,” I have been gifted an animal-skinned bow-and-sheath filled with arrows.  It smells foul and will later, once I make it back to my family in Mauritius, attract the driveling attention and snatching of a neighborhood dog.  No one had yet thought of defining it as out-of-bounds for airline security purposes, however.  Although drawing the attention of agents and passengers alike, it passes muster as hand luggage.

I don’t know what I would say today were I asked again to lecture about American democracy in the country whose name translates as Land of the Upright Warriors.  But it really doesn’t matter. I was beckoned to Burkina Faso via Côte d’Ivoire to lecture and Africa, as always, teaches the American more than the other way around.  Sometimes more in traffic roundabouts than in seminar rooms.  And certainly more to the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who is prepared to listen, regardless of how s/he is now dressed up.

Bill Miles (Niger 1977-1979) is a professor of political science at Northeastern University and the author of My African Horse Problem.