Tag Archives: Peace Corps

Misery and hunger in land of plenty

San Francisco Examiner September 25, 1991

Misery and hunger in land of plenty

Dwayne Hunn
Bombay sidewalk hutments.

“Buck sheis de do, shab?  Khanna mangta hai.  Boock laga  hai…” he said, as he tugged my hand.  He stood belt level and I  turned away after glancing at him.  He kept holding and tugging, as  the teeming masses of Indians moved beside us on the sidewalk.

“Boock laga hai, boock laga hai, tora khanna mangta  hai…” he said as he rubbed his stomach and tugged my hand.  I tried  to look  at him as we kept walking in the crowd.  In  training  they had  told us that we would have to decide how to handle  beggars.  In  training, they had told us that 1/2 of India’s  beggars  were purposefully maimed.

“How do they get a statistic like that, does the  government go around and ask, `Did you purposefully maim your kid?'”  I  had skeptically asked.

During  my first five minutes in the streets, I had  trouble starring into the face of this boy whose cheek had a whole in  it the  size  of a Kennedy silver dollar, ringed  with  pus,  sores, exposed  teeth  and ugly gums.   Ahead, curbside on  the  street, were skateboards that American kids careen around on for fun.  In Bombay  they  are used by kids without hands, ankles or  legs  to reach  the  car or taxi at the light, grab its  handle  and  beg, “Paise de do, shab…  Gorib admi, shab..”

The  homeless  and  poor seemed to be  everywhere.   In  the financial district of the city, where piles of garbage were  left to  be picked up early in the morning, I naively asked the  scavenger, searching the piles which the rats always worked,  what he was  doing.   A weak “Khana (food), shab,” was his reply,  as  he continued  slowly  searching the mounds of garbage.  On  a  train trip, I laid on my pack at a village station and watched a family with a pants-less child defecate diarrhea on the train  platform, and use his fingers to lick it.

As  a kid living on the poor side of Cleveland, I  met  only one  beggar, whose cut foot my mother cleaned after  she  brought him  into the house and fed him.  As a Peace Corps  volunteer,  I saw them maimed and crippled and begging all day, everywhere.

Of  course,  I got to see the Taj Mahal, Ajanta  and  Allora Caves and stuff a kid from a working class family would not  have had  the  vacation money to see.  Those tourist  sights  made  me develop  a simplified philosophy of why the India I knew  in  the late-60’s  had the human problems it had, and has.  To build  the palaces for the rich, and naturally cooled, hand carved caves for the  influential religious classes took a tremendous  number  of  manhours and resources.  Energy that was not spent on  irrigation systems, infrastructure and education.

Little  did I realize how some of those experiences  working on Urban Community Development in the slums of Bombay would  prep me  for  today’s America.  My first work site, the  Worli  Chawls slum had  water available for only an hour a day,  usually  with enough pressure to reach the 2nd story of the typical four  story tenements, from about 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.  If you lived on the third  or  fourth story, you bucketed water up to store  in  your water drums.

For  years now I have lived in affluent Marin County,  California,  where in recent years we were limited to 50  gallons  of water per day per person.  The I captured rain water in drums and saved shower water in buckets and bucketed it to some very  basic toiletry  needs.  Homelessness and  begging has become a  growing problem  in  Marin   and a bigger problem in  Big  Brotherly  San Francisco.

On a shrinking planet whose resources are limited and  whose population  is  pushing 5 billion  with an increasing  number  of homeless and hungry, there is little justification in doing  more Taj  Mahals, even if we had powerful S&L financing and  visionary Trumph leadership.  There is obvious justification for increasing irrigation systems, infrastructure and education worldwide.

My  two  years of oversees work reinforced  my  belief  that there is a tremendous need for expanding the Peace Corps overseas and  its  resultant  educational benefits at  home.   Working  on affordable housing and land use problems in the North Bay of  San Francisco for almost 9 years continually exposed me to  opponents of  affordable housing, whose view of the world is  dominated  by preserving what they got and only allowing more palatial  estates to  be built.  How their relatively powerful actions play on  the stage the rest of the world must live on matters not.  They  fail to  see  how the use of our land to support  and  provide  energy efficient transit modes and affordable ownership housing  impacts not only those near their county borders but those oceans away in our  shrinking and ecologically fragile planet.  The NIMBYs  (Not In  My  Backyard)  elect NIMTOs (Not In My Term  of  Office)  who usually produce LULUs (Less than Useful Land Uses) by doing DECME (Density Erasers Causing Million Dollar Estates) projects  rather than meeting the working people’s and the environment’s  housing, transit and community development needs.

The  Maharajas’  produced  Taj Mahals by edict.   We  do  it through  a  more democratic process of meetings that  produces  a veiled but often similar result.  To a Peace Corps volunteer  who has seen and sensed what wasted hours and resources can do, it is hard  to fathom why people would fight to add another 2%  of  Marin’s land to the 88% which is already in open space, agricultural preserve and parks; rather than support a rail oriented development that would provide affordable housing, child care and less car-dependent communities.

Failing  to  comprehend  such logic, I often  fall  back  to thoughts Kishore Thakar, an Indian friend, left me.  Referring to his own caste-and-class riddled society he said, “People need  to walk a mile in other peoples’ sandals to understand the toil  and misery that goes into living the life of those who struggle.  For those  who move about easily,  the blisters developed  from  that walk  remove both the calloused perceptions some have  of  others and the scales that blind their view of what their actions do  to others.  It would do the world good if more people who move about easily  served a few years doing what you Peace Corps are  trying to do.

“Buddhists believe that each life should bring more enlightenment  and less need for selfish desires.    If in this life  we do  not become enlighten over what our actions cause  to  others, then  our reincarnation should be to walk endless miles  in  the sandals of those upon whom our actions stepped most heavily.”

Dwayne Hunn is a Mill Valley free lance writer.

 

Teaching from the Peace Corps

The Plain Dealer, Friday August 2, 1991

 Teaching from the Peace Corps

 By Dwayne Hunn

 “Buck sheis de do, shab?  Khanna mangta hai.  Boock laga  hai…” he said, as he tugged my hand.  He stood belt level and I  turned away after glancing at him.  He kept holding and tugging, as  the teeming masses of Indians moved beside us on the sidewalk.

“Boock laga hai, boock laga hai, tora khanna mangta  hai…” he said as he rubbed his stomach and tugged my hand.  I tried  to look  at him as we kept walking in the crowd.  In  training  they had  told us that we would have to decide how to handle  beggars.  In  training, they had told us that 1/2 of India’s  beggars  were purposefully maimed.

“How do they get a statistic like that, does the  government go around and ask, `Did you purposefully maim your kid?'”  I  had skeptically asked.

During  my first five minutes in the streets, I had  trouble starring into the face of this boy whose cheek had a whole in  it the  size  of a Kennedy silver dollar, ringed  with  pus,  sores, exposed  teeth  and ugly gums.   Ahead, curbside on  the  street, were skateboards that American kids careen around on for fun.  In Bombay  they  are used by kids without hands, ankles or  legs  to reach  the  car or taxi at the light, grab its  handle  and  beg, “Paise de do, shab…  Gorib admi, shab..”

The  homeless  and  poor seemed to be  everywhere.   In  the financial district of the city, where piles of garbage were  left to  be picked up early in the morning, I naively asked the  scavenger, searching the piles which the rats always worked,  what he was  doing.   A weak “Khana (food), shab,” was his reply,  as  he continued  slowly  searching the mounds of garbage.  On  a  train trip, I laid on my pack at a village station and watched a family with a pants-less child defecate diarrhea on the train  platform, and use his fingers to lick it.

As  a kid living on the poor side of Cleveland, I  met  only one  beggar, whose cut foot my mother cleaned after  she  brought him  into the house and fed him.  As a Peace Corps  volunteer,  I saw them maimed and crippled and begging all day, everywhere.

Of  course,  I got to see the Taj Mahal, Ajanta  and  Allora Caves and stuff a kid from a working class family would not  have had  the  vacation money to see.  Those tourist  sights  made  me develop  a simplified philosophy of why the India I knew  in  the late-60’s  had the human problems it had, and has.  To build  the palaces for the rich, and naturally cooled, hand carved caves for the  influential religious classes took a tremendous  number  of  manhours and resources.  Energy that was not spent on  irrigation systems, infrastructure and education.

Little  did I realize how some of those experiences  working on Urban Community Development in the slums of Bombay would  prep me  for  today’s America.  My first work site, the  Worli  Chawls slum had  water available for only an hour a day,  usually  with enough pressure to reach the 2nd story of the typical four  story tenements, from about 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m.  If you lived on the third  or  fourth story, you bucketed water up to store  in  your water drums.

For  years now I have lived in affluent Marin County,  California,  where in recent years we were limited to 50  gallons  of water per day per person.  The I captured rain water in drums and saved shower water in buckets and bucketed it to some very  basic toiletry  needs.  Homelessness and  begging has become a  growing problem  in  Marin   and a bigger problem in  Big  Brotherly  San Francisco.

On a shrinking planet whose resources are limited and  whose population  is  pushing 5 billion  with an increasing  number  of homeless and hungry, there is little justification in doing  more Taj  Mahals, even if we had powerful S&L financing and  visionary Trumph leadership.  There is obvious justification for increasing irrigation systems, infrastructure and education worldwide.

My  two  years of oversees work reinforced  my  belief  that there is a tremendous need for expanding the Peace Corps overseas and  its  resultant  educational benefits at  home.   Working  on affordable housing and land use problems in the North Bay of  San Francisco for almost 9 years continually exposed me to  opponents of  affordable housing, whose view of the world is  dominated  by preserving what they got and only allowing more palatial  estates to  be built.  How their relatively powerful actions play on  the stage the rest of the world must live on matters not.  They  fail to  see  how the use of our land to support  and  provide  energy efficient transit modes and affordable ownership housing  impacts not only those near their county borders but those oceans away in our  shrinking and ecologically fragile planet.  The NIMBYs  (Not In  My  Backyard)  elect NIMTOs (Not In My Term  of  Office)  who usually produce LULUs (Less than Useful Land Uses) by doing DECME (Density Erasers Causing Million Dollar Estates) projects  rather than meeting the working people’s and the environment’s  housing, transit and community development needs.

The  Maharajas’  produced  Taj Mahals by edict.   We  do  it through  a  more democratic process of meetings that  produces  a veiled but often similar result.  To a Peace Corps volunteer  who has seen and sensed what wasted hours and resources can do, it is hard  to fathom why people would fight to add another 2%  of  Marin’s land to the 88% which is already in open space, agricultural preserve and parks; rather than support a rail oriented development that would provide affordable housing, child care and less car-dependent communities.

Failing  to  comprehend  such logic, I often  fall  back  to thoughts Kishore Thakar, an Indian friend, left me.  Referring to his own caste-and-class riddled society he said, “People need  to walk a mile in other peoples’ sandals to understand the toil  and misery that goes into living the life of those who struggle.  For those  who move about easily,  the blisters developed  from  that walk  remove both the calloused perceptions some have  of  others and the scales that blind their view of what their actions do  to others.  It would do the world good if more people who move about easily  served a few years doing what you Peace Corps are  trying to do.

“Buddhists believe that each life should bring more enlightenment  and less need for selfish desires.    If in this life  we do  not become enlighten over what our actions cause  to  others, then  our reincarnation should be to walk endless miles  in  the sandals of those upon whom our actions stepped most heavily.”

 

Hunn, a former Clevelander living in California, was a Peace Crops volunteer in India.  The corps is celbrating its 30th anniversary.

What we can do for the world

San Francisco Chronicle.
San Francisco Chronicle.

   San Francisco Chronicle

THE VOICE OF THE WEST

 SATURDAY, JUNE 2,1990

 What We Can Do For the World

FOR MOST OF the 125,000 of us who worked with the Peace Corps, President John Kenne­dy’s 1961 inaugural words served as our invisible armband: “Ask not what America can do for you, but together what we can do for the freedom of man.”

Hopefully, President Bush was the world leader who said to Gorbachev during his visit to Washington: “Ask not what you can do for just your country, but together what we can do for the world.”

Bush should support legislation that provides for joint implementation with the Soviets of pro­jects that are designed to address problems In areas including care of the elderly and the disa­bled, health, and protection of the environment.

The sooner American and Soviet “peace corps volunteers” can serve under that invisible armband, the more quickly we will have fewer hungry and angry people.

At about $20,000 per volunteer per year, there are few better long-term investments. Shift­ing the $400 million (and climbing) that goes into building a single B-1 bomber to funding for 20,000 U.S. volunteers for a year In an American-Soviet Peace Corps would be a giant step toward a kind­er and gentler mankind.

This Peace Corps would start with Soviets and Americans training, living and working to­gether in their respective nations. Then volun­teers would live and work together on problems facing lesser-developed nations.

The world needs concerted and coordinated efforts from the superpowers so that they may better understand each other and global needs.

An American-Soviet Peace Corps would be a small step that moves all of mankind forward.

Dwayne Hunn is a former Peace Corps volunteer in India. He now lives in Mill Valley.

 

Peace Corps Dir. Coverdell, Kennedy, Boxer

Peace Corps Director  Coverdell on the American Soviet Peace Corps (ASPC) proposal.

Peace Corps Director Coverdell, one of several PCDs to support ASPC.
Peace Corps Director Coverdell, one of several PCDs to support ASPC.
Paul D. Coverdell Director
United States Peace Corps
1990 K Streel, N.W, Washington, D.C. 20526

 Office of the Director

November 14, 1989

Dear Dwayne:

Thank you for your recent, letter.  I enjoyed speaking with you at the Norcal Returned Peace Corps volunteers meeting in San Francisco regarding the American-Soviet Peace Corps proposal.  It is always good to hear feedback and suggestions from RPCVs. You will be pleased to know that meetings with Congresswoman Boxer and Congressman Kennedy have already been scheduled to further discuss this proposal.

Your interest in our Urban Initiative is also most appreciated.  I, too, feel Peace Corps should actively return to the cities, where Volunteers can have a significant impact on the development of these urban areas.

Again, thank you for your letter and information regarding the American-Soviet Peace Corps proposal.

Sincerely,

Paul D. Coverdell Director

United States Peace Corps

Peace Corps Director Coverdell’s letter in pdf, November 14,1989

While window is still open

Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Open Forum:

“Gorbachev world needs you.”

Gorbachev we miss ya...?  But push Putin to do the right thing anyway.
Gorbachev we miss ya…? But push Putin to do the right thing anyway.

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 9-15-1989

While the window is still open, FORUM

Dwayne Hunn

Gorbachev  has  opened  a window of opportunity to  the  world.   His changes give all politicians fewer excuses to not redirect military spending to pressing  social and humanitarian needs. While the window of  opportunity  is open,  we must establish programs that will open so many windows  that  the fresh, warm  air of new ideas will never again be closed by cold or hot wars.

One means of doing that is with an American-Soviet Peace Corps.

An American-Soviet Peace Corps would act much like the American Peace Corps established by President Kennedy in 1961.   Soviet  and  American volunteers  would  train for at least three months in  language,  custom, and work  skills  essential to their job performance.  From the  start  of  training until completion of service (usually two years later) a Soviet and an  American would  be roommates and workmates. This small program difference from the American Peace Corps could make a world of difference.

The results should be clear to all of us who have experienced living and working alongside strangers on projects that we knew were  worthwhile endeavors.   Interpersonal bonds will be built between the Soviet and  American volunteers as well as with those in whose nations the work is done.

From  their  time of service onward, each volunteer’s  “working  bonds” will allow all involved to more easily “reach out and touch someone” who  may be  half way around the world.  The world will more quickly become a global village of friends.

These working bonds will make it more difficult for radicals or  narrow minded bureaucrats to develop national hatred for nations  whose  volunteers have  worked at the grassroots level with their people.  The world  will  more personally  understand national needs and desires  because more people  from the  world’s  most  powerful nations will have worked face-to-face with  the people of nations in need.

Since 1961 approximately 125,000 American Peace Corps have served  in underdeveloped  nations  around the world.  Millions of people in underdeveloped nations  have  been  touched by the  efforts  of  those  volunteers. Without those efforts and resulting relationships, many of those nations would probably have more antagonistic policies toward America.

Consider this.  The Peace Corps was withdrawn from Nicaragua in  1979, as  the  Sandinistas  wrenched  power away  from  the  American  supported President  Somoza; and from Iran in 1976, as the Ayatolla’s  campaign against the  American supported Shah began toppling the Shah’s regime. An  American Peace Corps may not have been wanted in those countries during those troubled periods, but had an American-Soviet Peace Corps been in existence then, an option other than military support could have been added to the means  of reducing tensions in those areas.

Neither the American Peace Corps nor the American-Soviet Peace  Corps should  be  a  tool  of  diplomatic  policy.   It  is  obvious,  however, that international  crisis most often stem from the failure to provide  unmet  basic needs  — such as food, sanitation, health and literacy.  The state of today’s world does not presage that delivery of those needs is about to drastically improve.

  • The Green Revolution that started boosting world grain production in the late 60’s peaked in the mid-80’s. Consumption and population has continued to increase and carryover stocks of food have been falling.
  • Each year land area 6.5 times as large as Belgium becomes so impoverished  that they are unprofitable to farm or graze.  Desertification  marches on  as people in need cut trees for fuel and heat; erosion results from  the lost  root structures; rains erode fertile lands; rangelands for grazing are reduced and what remains is overgrazed.
  • Global temperature records spanning the last century show that the five warmest  years have all occurred in the eighties – 1980,1981,1983,1987,1988.   With  global  warming  comes  the  depletion  of  the  ozone    Scientists tell us that restoring the lost rain forests is one of the means of checking the disasters global warming and ozone depletion bring.

Of course, the profligate lifestyle lead by those of us born into the rich nations  of the world — carbon dioxide spewing automobiles for  the  shortest trip; chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs, alias freon) dumped into the atmosphere  from  air  conditioners,  refrigerators,  aerosol  sprayers  and  fast  food  carryout containers;  plastic, aluminum and convenience throwaways substituted for the most  minor social inconvenience polluting our shrinking landfills;  these  acts do  more  to  ravage  the  atmosphere than do  the  forest  cuttings  of  the struggling,  uneducated  and  unaware poor.

Yet, it may  be  that  only  by working  with the poor on their needs can we learn enough to make the  rich and  the poor more aware of the care needed to preserve our  fragile  planet. Watching the destruction of our environment on the television news or reading about  solutions in a newsmagazine will never foster the lifestyle change  that results from working on and against the problem.

Returned Peace Corps volunteers often say that the Peace Corps experience “taught them more than they  were  able  to teach.”  The same lessons would be etched into the American-Soviet  PCVs character.  Coming from the classroom of the world where needs and desires are more basic, their experiences would help change the wasteful lifestyle that harms the environment and harmonious social progress.

While attending Cleveland’s St. Ignatius High School, the Jesuits had me reading books by Dr. Tom Dooley and Albert Schweitzer.  Thoughts about the authors’ work among the poor in less developed areas of the world never left some  corner  of  my mind.  Years later I was part of a  Peace  Corps  Urban Community  Development Group working in the slums of Bombay where  maimed beggars,  poor  people  scavenging  garbage piles for  food became common sights and where rats  outnumbered  the population 5-1.

Years later, from comfortable Marin County California, those memories prompted me to try to start a model Soviet American  Peace  Corps  with  foundation funding.  Failing to raise the needed funding, I sought Congressional support.

In the spring 1989 session of Congress, Congresswoman Boxer introduced HR 1807 requesting:

“… the President to conclude agreements with the appropriate representative of the Government of the Soviet Union to create the United State-Soviet Peace Corps.”

A United States-Soviet Peace Corps could give the world cleaner skies under which fewer hungry and fewer angry people could sleep.

 

TV 50 editorials

During the late 1980’s I did a number of these TV public service announcements pushing the ASPC.  Imagine how much healthier our and Russia’s relations with the world would be today had we built it 20+ years ago.

Feel free to do your own PSAs on TV or to just a couple friends… or pests.

While at it, why not ask past supporters and now Senators Boxer and Feinstein to bring back the American Soviet Peace Corps (ASPC) and link it with the American World Service Corps (AWSC).

TV50 – EDITORIALS TWO

BY DWAYNE HUNN  PEACE CORPS#2 March  1988

GRANDPA HENRY

USED TO SAY “SHARE

A FOXHOLE WITH A

STRANGER AND

YOU’LL COME AWAY

WITH A FRIEND.”

AMERICANS AND

SOVIETS SHOULD NOT

SHARE OR FACE EACH

OTHER ACROSS FUTURE

FOXHOLES.  INSTEAD

THEY SHOULD

SHARE A SOVIET

AMERICAN PEACE

CORPS WHERE COLLEGE

GRADUATES FROM

EACH NATION TRAIN,

WORK AND LIVE

TOGETHER.  A SAPC

THAT EMULATES THE

PEACE CORPS SUCCESS

IN:

1) WORKING ON THE

BASIC PROBLEMS OF

POVERTY

2) LEARNING ABOUT

THE WORLD’S TRUE

NEEDS &

3) MAKING FRIENDS

TREATIES BREAK

DOWN WHEN RADICAL

LEADERSHIP CHANGES

TAKE PLACE IN

GOVERNMENTS WITH

PHILOSOPHIES AS

DISPARATE AS OURS.

THAT’S ONE REASON

WHY WE SHOULD TAKE

ADVANTAGE OF THE

GORBACHEV/REAGAN

ERA AND

INSTITUTIONALIZE A

SAPC.

SHOW GRAPHIC

IF 20,000 SOVIETS

AND AMERICANS

SERVED TOGETHER IN

LESSER DEVELOPED

COUNTRIES OVER THE

NEXT 10 YEARS, NO

MORE BERLIN WALLS

WOULD GO UP AND

ONE WOULD COME

DOWN.

GRAPHIC OUT

WRITE CONGRESS.

TELL THEM

AMERICA’S

LEADERSHIP SHOULD

GO TO GORBACHEV AT

THE JUNE SUMMIT

AND SAY “ASK NOT

WHAT YOU CAN DO

FOR JUST YOUR

COUNTRY.  BUT ASK

WHAT, TOGETHER, WE

CAN DO FOR THE

WORLD.”

.PA    ————————

TV50 – EDITORIAL ONE

BY DWAYNE HUNN PEACE CORPS #1

DID YOU KNOW THAT

UNTIL 1987

MILITARY MARCHING

BANDS HAD A LARGER

BUDGET THAN THE

PEACE CORPS?

THAT THE

PEACE CORPS 1986

BUDGET OF

APPROXIAMTELY $110

MILLION EQUALS ITS

1966 BUDGET?  WHAT

HAS CHANGED,

HOWEVER, IS THE

NUMBER OF

VOLUNTEERS SERVING

IN LDCs — FROM A

1966 PEAK OF

15,500 TO 5,500 IN

THE WORLD’S NEED

HAS NOT LESSENED.

WHAT HAS CHANGED,

OVER THE 25 YEARS

SINCE PRESIDENT

KENNEDY STARTED

THE PEACE CORPS,

IS THE DIRECTION

OUR LEADERSHIP HAS

GIVEN OUR NATION

IN DEVELOPING A

GLOBAL STRATEGY

FOR PEACE.

IT COSTS

$20,000 TO PUT A

PCV IN THE FIELD

FOR A YEAR.

TRANSFERRING THE

MONEY NEEDED TO

BUILD ONE B-1

BOMBER WOULD

DOUBLE THE SIZE OF

PEACE CORPS.

HELPING POOR

COUNTRIES BECOME

SELF SUFFICIENT

MAKES THEM FUTURE

TRADING MARKETS

AND HELPS

THEM REJECT

RADICAL “ISMS”.

ENLARGING      THE

PEACE CORPS MAKES

US A SMARTER

NATION AND THAT

WILL SAVE US FROM

MORE COSTLY

PROBLEMS LATER ON.

 

Some ASPC coverage

Imagine if those seeds had been growing for 30 years...
Imagine if those seeds had been growing for 30 years…

 Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1985, Marin Independent Journal

OPINION  \ EDITORIALS

 We must plant the seeds of peace

By Dwayne Hunn

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE the deserts have spread over once-produc­tive African lands. Now African famines are the harvests being reaped. In our Latin American back yard inflation soars, insurrections take innocent lives, governments tumble and communist regimes spring up or become more likely.

Our answer? Politically, the out-of-power party blames the in-power party for not implementing a long-range plan to combat such tragedies and evils. What I propose is a program for which both parties can take credit – the Democrats for initiating it and the Republicans for expanding it. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator of this decade, could assure his place on the list of great presidents by a simple bold but peaceful move.

In the early 1960s, Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps first director, said:

    “If the Pentagon’s map is more urgent, the Peace Corps is, perhaps, in the long run the most important…What happens in India, Africa, and South America – whether the nations where the Peace Corps works succeed or not – may well determine the balance of peace.”

    In 1966 America spent $114 million to send 15,556 Peace Corps volunteers into service, the most dollars ever committed to volunteers.

At the time, Sen. Jacob Javits proposed a Peace Army of a million young men. Labor leaders advocated a service corps of 100,000. The Peace Corps first deputy director, Warren Wiggins, called for a corps of 30,000 to 100,000.
In 1984 America spent approximately $108.5 million and sent approximately 5,200 volunteers into service.
What happened? Had the world’s plight improved so much that we could cut the Peace Corps by two-thirds? Were the hearts and minds of enough Third World people swayed to see the economic and social benefits of the democratic way? Had communist-inspired tur­moil and revolt diminished? Did we find a better way to let the world know who we Americans were than by exporting our skills, courage and heart through the Peace Corps?
From 1965 to 1974, we assigned 2,582,304 soldiers with a budget of $138.1 billion to defoliate, mutilate and whore over the countryside of Vietnam. The cost for these services was $53,480 per soldier. In that same period we sent 108,579 Peace Corps volunteers with a budget of $956 million to teach, build and inspire over the world. The cost was $8,809 per volunteer.
If America had used the Southeast Asian war budget to send volunteers into the world, America could have sent more than 15 million people out to plant crops, ideas and ideals. Which choice do you think would have most benefited our long-term national security de­sires? Our economy? The global village’s needs?
Former California Congressman John Bur­ton in his last Washington Report to his constituents wrote in 1981:

“When I was first elected to Congress eight and one-half years ago, some of the issues facing us were the war in Vietnam, the escalating arms race… Now as I leave Congress, the issues are American involvement in Nicaragua and other parts of Central America, which might become the next Viet­nam, the nuclear arms race typified by the MX missile…”

What America needs today is leadership that will put 100,000-plus volunteers into the field of economic development:

  • Challenging communist economic ideas with practical programs.
  • Helping Africa reclaim its desert and grow food.
  • Pitting the character of the working volunteer against the slogans of radicals and terrorists attempting to antagonize the masses.
  • Establishing the economic and education­al infrastructure of developing countries.

Then we need leadership that challenges the Russians to do the same. President Reagan is the only leader that could do this today.

In 1963 President John Kennedy said:

“In some small village, volunteers will lay a seed which will bring a rich harvest for us all in later days.”

  He was right. It happened. But the crop comes from small gardens. We should be tilling fields upon fields. The time is late. We need to lay more seeds.

Dwayne Hunn of Mill Valley sewed in the Peace Corps in India from 1966-68 and speaks to groups about the importance of the Peace Corps.

When strong players partner-up, do good teams grow from them?
When strong players partner-up, do good teams grow from them?

Marin Independent Journal, Wednesday July 2,  1986

Partnership to build a better Earth

By Dwayne Hunn

DARTH VADER need not battle homeless white knights eons from now if treacherous frontiers are conquered today.

Reagan:  Gorbachev, my boy, the whole world knows your economy is not red hot and your Ukrainian breadbasket is leaking hot wa­ter. You also have some money and media problems that even you must admit.Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev could assure this result at the next summit meeting. Their conversation could go something like this:

On the other hand, our stock market is sizzling and I am cutting our peoples’ taxes.  With so much spare change, I am about to give another $300 billion to the Pentagon.

Since you Russians have this penchant for wanting to keep up with the Pentagon Jones.  I can imagine what this does to the nerves of the Politburo’s allowance-givers.  So I am about to make you an offer you would be a fool to refuse.

Gorbachev:  Why would a politician such as you make me a good deal?

Reagan:  Maybe because it is the right thing to do, or because I am tired of you and those Democrats calling me a gun-swaggering cowboy.

Gorbachev:  What is in it for me?

Reagan:  You help your nation’s image without marching in your army or mercenaries.  You force your snobbish international delegates to learn some etiquette.  You give your increasingly restless young people and many of your older ones – who instead of getting wiser have of late only been getting drunker – an outlet for their pent-up energies.

Gorbachev:  You talk like we should re-engage in the Olympics.  Is this your big deal?

Reagan:  In a way.  It’s an Olympics where your comrades will train, prepare for combat and compete on the same treacherous fields with our Americans.  The races will go on for so long that your

comrades and my Americans will win hundreds of thousands of gold medals.

These will be cast from the lasting bonds of friendship that we carry for each other and forged by the respect of those whose fields we triumph on. Those bonds will be our mutual security pact, stronger than any piece of paper we ever sign.

Gorbachev: How much does this deal cost in dollars or rubles?

Reagan:      Not much, considering how much it will save and how much world trade it will bring us. I could probably give you an esti­mate if you could tell me how much it is costing you per soldier in Afghanistan and merceneary in Af­rica.

Gorbachev: (Coughs.)

Reagan:      Well, I understand how we big kids sometimes blunder in our foreign adventures, so let me estimate from some gross figures we once tabulated.

From 1965 to 1974 we sent 2,582,304 of our finest young men and women, with a budget of $138.1 billion, to bring peace to Vietnam. That cost $53,480 per soldier. We lost many of our finest. Many who returned are mutilated and confused. We still pay a price for them.

Gorbachev: Yes, you do misuse the word “peace,” don’t you?

Reagan: Well, yes, don’t we both. So let me throw my deal on the table, knowing full well that in my hand I hold the most massive bunch of top guns and that I am willing and able to trump you should you refuse my simple offer.

This year I have an elite corps that numbers about 5,000. Since 1961 about 100,000 of these sol­diers have served around the world. They have cost this government less than $10,000 per soldier:

You had no soldiers to offset them. I propose that you deploy the same elite corps and within five years build the force to 100,000 per year. America will match that increase.

You will not supply them with anything more than we supply ours  — enough food, money and shelter to live like the people whom they fight alongside against hunger, illit­eracy and deprivation. You’ll also teach them a language and techni­cal skills and the initiative to think and work on their feet.

Gorbachev: What do you call this army?

Reagan: We call it the Peace Corps.

Gorbachev: What if I can’t get my government to agree to this dangerous and radical proposal?

Reagan: At the Peace Corp’s 25th anniversary in September, 1 may have to convince America to assign 100,000 Peace Corps volun­teers to duty. In the hearts and minds of the world’s people we will bury you and your philosophy —and we will do it without misusing the word “peace.”

Dwayne .Hunn of Mill Valley suggests  that anyone who thinks this proposal makes sense should clip and send the column to President Reagan with a note asking, “Why not?”

Novato's World College West campus was ready to start model ASPC.
Novato’s World College West campus was ready to start model ASPC.
March 18, 1987 Novato Advance

Model Peace Corps proposed at WCW

By Dwayne Hunn

World College West would become headquarters for a Model East-West Peace Corps if a pro­posal for use of part of the Buck Trust Major Project funds is approved.

The idea, according to originator Dwayne Hunn, is to build something similar to the United States’ successful Peace Corps program that would include volunteer youths from both the United States and the Soviet Union.

After training at World College West, young men and women from both countries would work together, in villages, slums, schools, recrea­tion centers and other places throughout the world.

The program would begin with 25 young Russians and 25 young Americans learning side-by-side with the hope it would be emulated by other countries throughout the world until even­tually there would be an “invasion” of Peace Corps volunteers from all nations.

In his proposal, Hunn says the project would have a number and variety of beneficial results, including:

–Building personal communication links that foster inter­national understanding.

–Reducing international tension by building bonds of friendship through healthy and peaceful side-by-side work

–Promoting economic develop­ment in lesser developed countries.

–Aiding Mann County and the Bay Area, because volunteers would work on self-help projects in the area as part of the training pro­gram.

–Developing a comprehensive program that would be applied locally, nationally and internationally

–Sponsoring conferences, seminars and discussion groups in Marin to help further understan­ding between nations.

The training, which would be conducted at World College West, would include:

–An introductory one-week training class to teach problem-solving, fear-facing, communica­tion, teamwork and trust.

–Intensive course work in Rus­sian and English, the language of the planned host country, skill training for the work requested by the host country and culture of the host country. .

–Field training in a Bay Area program that would help those in need in the area.

–A physical training program that would emphasize team sports.

The Soviet and American youths would live together throughout the program.


 

We must plant the seeds of peace

 Tuesday, Sept. 3, 1985, Marin Independent Journal

OPINION        EDITORIALS

 We must plant the seeds of peace

 Dwayne Hunn

 PEACE CORPS                            

 FOR MORE THAN A DECADE the deserts have spread over once-produc­tive African lands. Now African famines are the harvests being reaped. In our Latin American back yard inflation soars, insurrections take innocent lives, governments tumble and communist regimes spring up or become more likely.

Our answer? Politically, the out-of-power party blames the in-power party for not implementing a long-range plan to combat such tragedies and evils. What I propose is a program for which both parties can take credit – the Democrats for initiating it and the Republicans for expanding it. Ronald Reagan, the Great Communicator of this decade, could assure his place on the list of great presidents by a simple bold but peaceful move.

In the early 1960s, Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps first director, said:

“If the Pentagon’s map is more urgent, the Peace Corps is, perhaps, in the long run the most important…What happens in India, Africa, and South America – whether the nations where the Peace Corps works succeed or not – may well determine the balance of peace.”

In 1966 America spent $114 million to send 15,556 Peace Corps volunteers into service, the most dollars ever committed to volunteers.

At the time, Sen. Jacob Javits proposed a Peace Army of a million young men. Labor leaders advocated a service corps of 100,000. The Peace Corps first deputy director, Warren Wiggins, called for a corps of 30,000 to 100,000.
In 1984 America spent approximately $108.5 million and sent approximately 5,200 volunteers into service.
What happened? Had the world’s plight improved so much that we could cut the Peace Corps by two-thirds? Were the hearts and minds of enough Third World people swayed to see the economic and social benefits of the democratic way? Had communist-inspired tur­moil and revolt diminished? Did we find a better way to let the world know who we Americans were than by exporting our skills, courage and heart through the Peace Corps?
From 1965 to 1974, we assigned 2,582,304 soldiers with a budget of $138.1 billion to defoliate, mutilate and whore over the countryside of Vietnam. The cost for these services was $53,480 per soldier. In that same period we sent 108,579 Peace Corps volunteers with a budget of $956 million to teach, build and inspire over the world. The cost was $8,809 per volunteer.
If America had used the Southeast Asian war budget to send volunteers into the world, America could have sent more than 15 million people out to plant crops, ideas and ideals. Which choice do you think would have most benefited our long-term national security de­sires? Our economy? The global village’s needs?
Former California Congressman John Bur­ton in his last Washington Report to his constituents wrote in 1981:

“When I was first elected to Congress eight and one-half years ago, some of the issues facing us were the war in Vietnam, the escalating arms race… Now as I leave Congress, the issues are American involvement in Nicaragua and other parts of Central America, which might become the next Viet­nam, the nuclear arms race typified by the MXmissile…”

What America needs today is leadership that will put 100,000-plus volunteers into the field of economic development:

  • Challenging communist economic ideas with practical programs.
  • Helping Africa reclaim its desert and grow food.
  • Pitting the character of the working volunteer against the slogans of radicals and terrorists attempting to antagonize the masses.
  • Establishing the economic and education­al infrastructure of developing countries.

    Then we need leadership that challenges the Russians to do the same. President Reagan is

the only leader that could do this today.

In 1963 President John Kennedy said: “In some small village, volunteers will lay a seed which will bring a rich harvest for us all in later days.”

He was right. It happened. But the crop comes from small gardens. We should be tilling fields upon fields. The time is late. We need to lay more seeds.

Dwayne Hunn of Mill Valley sewed in the Peace Corps in India from 1966-68 and speaks to groups about the importance of the Peace Corps.

Peace Corps: Planting the Seed of Hope

Glendora Press January 14, 1970

Peace Corps: Planting the Seed of Hope

(Editor’s Note: Following is the last in a series of series by Glendora High School teacher Dwayne Hunn relating his experiences as a member of the Peace Corps in India.)

By DWAYNE HUNN 

These months were not like the first. These flew. Socially I was beginning to aculturize myself. I had my third and forth date. I swam more often at the British swimming pools. I and fellow volunteers met an American engineer, who dined us into better health and partied us into better spirits while arguing us back into remembering how the mainstream of Americans thought and life was filled more with doing projects than with searching for projects to do.

The garden, library, and milk program continued to func­tion well. The orphanage still held my heart and two days a week in my schedule. But the brunt of my work centered around the school. My philosophy regarding increased involvement by these well-to-do students in their nation’s needs became more sophisticated.

In other words, fewer words were spoken this semester but more action was achieved. A few pictures, like the beg­gar at the foot of the building, plus some talk in key circles got the program into motion.

The year before a half dozen students made a trip with two of the British teachers to help build wells in Bihar. No wells were actually built. Instead, the group got involved in food distribution and, more importantly, they lived with the hungry, ate as they did, and tried to work under those conditions.

This year I wanted to get more kids involved and get them to actually accomplish something. Through a rugby contact I found what I needed.

Sister Teresa and her three assisting nuns were amazing people. The home was a tragic and wonderful place. In Build­ing Three one couldn’t miss the deaf and dumb, groveling paraplegic as he squirmed and groaned across the floor. He made the other pathetic humans there pale in comparison,

The men in Building Two all had their senses, but were without the use of such things as their leg, or arms, or couldn’t control their urinary cycle. Building One had every­thing the other buildings had, only there the ancient people continued what was called life.

The Cheshire Home, and its patients unnerved me. But the four Spanish Catholic nuns prayed, worked and sang through their young lives as if they were cast far the Sound of Music.

I was pleasantly surprised at the ease with which I got 30 volunteers for the 10-day work camp. The British chairman on the board for the Cheshire Home was delighted with my idea of supplying labor while the board supplied money for most of the needed projects, the smaller other part of the money I was able to obtain from the Peace Corps.

After 10 days at the home we had built a new chicken house, painted and fixed much of the furniture, cleared and seeded some very tough terrain into a large garden, started and failed at establishing a handicraft class for the patients, painted and repaired the servants quarters and water pump, and helped cook meals for everyone.

For all but two or three of the group this was the first extended manual labor they had done in their 16 or so years of life. It was also the first time that any had worked for the lowest castes of Indians, rather than the reverse which they were accustomed to. It was the first time they had roughed it.

We slept under the stars near the newly developed gar­den and ate mostly rice, tasteless chowpatis, platins and gallons of tea. It was a hard diet for them to adjust to but, I think, it showed them something. They had engaged in a so­cially responsible act and had made it succeed. If the thought of the deed would linger, if the thought would plant a seed, if the seed would sprout into a habit, then this capable class of Indians could start adding richness to a great mass of humanity.

It was not all labor among the miserable. During the hot afternoons they found light, pleasant conversations taking place with the sisters adding a beauty to them. Afternoons also sometimes found fooling with their friends, the two Bri­tish teachers, or for those who thought they had energy to burn, jumping their two PCV’s and dousing — excuse me, trying to douse them in the nearby pond. It was hard work, but fun, and they were heroes when they returned to school after their summer vacation.

After the work camp I took my last break. I had been reading about the famine conditions in Bihar, though the lo­cal cinema houses had shown only one documentary on the drought and famine conditions — what was shown all the oth­er times made one feel that India was sprinting into the 20th century amid religious festivities, steel mills and agricultural wonders; now I wanted to see some of those conditions. So I again threw some stuff in my green bag and climbed aboard a third class train out of Bombay.

If the monsoon doesn’t come before the middle of June, most of India’s farmers suffer dearly. This was one of the states in worse shape than Bihar, only the government did not want to reveal these plights. Well, I never tried digging in the fields outside of the train’s windows but its parched, brown, barren condition drove the small farmers plight home.

After some days, I reached Benares, India’s holy city. Since it was early morning and I was feeling better, I quickly hailed a bicycle-walla and toured the city. The temples, the pagodas, the university, and the Ganges, with its dirty brown, but believed drinkable, holy water, were sights; but by the time the heat of the afternoon arrived they had lost their appeal to me, I left the bike man for the benefits of a small but air conditioned room. I had dinner, took two quarts of beer to my room, wrote in my diary, and slept. The next day I decided on the hill air over that of India’s hot stuff.

I trained to Patna, and seeing wells, and green patches along the tracks of Bihar state, I figured that her notoriety was at least making something happen here about the drought. Not much was happening along those miles of tracks through the other three states.

From Patna I flew to Katmandu, Nepal where I spent about five days, and then on to the Pokhara valley at the foothills of Annapurna for three days of trekking. I stopped in Delhi where I again met Ambassador Bowle’s wife, who with her husband had visited my chawl work site; and then I returned to Bombay to finish up a few months of work.

I wrote a few radio scripts comparing American and Indi­an histories of development, continued checking on the chawl programs, played and coached basketball, went to the orphanage, and taught and coached at Cathedral School. The remaining months flew by and when the end approached I debated about extending. A fellowship at grad school, thoughts of preparing more for a career, and the draft pulled me back and cut my travels home to a month.

I still wonder if rushing home was the right path. I know it was a most intense period of my life, I was flooded with new physical, mental, and emotional experiences. I was forcing myself to work on my own, to contemplate, to read, to write and to wonder just what a world of perceived misery, new friends, new acquaintances and new thoughts were doing to me, the person. Still don’t really know what all those vibrations did. Do know, I wouldn’t trade those experiences.

Why build these cities beautiful

If man unbuilded goes

In vain we build the world

Unless the builder also grows

Edwin Markham

You know, when the Peace Corps left town the heart of the heart of the rugby team left with it. But some native heart blossomed at about the same time. The Indian Police team, coached some by John Fuller Sessions and prompted on by the PCVs played the Berahi Shabs of the Rugby Club when we were leaving.

For the first time, the Police beat them handily. It looked like it might be a pattern. Competition would be keener from then on. Respect would soon became two-sided, and sweet. Somebody had made those losers believe they could become winners.

To me, that’s what building’s about. To me, that’s what the Peace Corps was about. I like to believe that many peo­ple from our group planted some seeds, started some projects, laid some foundations that will help those men build their own world, and grow too.

 

 

 

 

India Elite Has Chance To Aid Own

Glendora Press January 11, 1970

India Elite Has Chance To Aid Own

By DWAYNE HUNN

It was during the first monsoon that I would take on an­other extra-curricular activity which would introduce me to another life style in India.

Dave, one of  our UCD23 basketball players, who was in the unsuccessful UCD land development attempt, was a founding manager and captain of Fordham’s revived Rugby program of l964-65. Thus he had become interested in playing the sport and accepted when he was asked by some British chaps to play for the Bombay Gymkhana Club.

Lynus, another PCV, but one who did very little work and devoted most of his time to partying, drinking, and girls, also played. Dave introduced me to a few of the Rugby play­ers and they invited me to play, as I did. Rugby, a combina­tion of the skills of football and basketball without the pads, was fun. But a major part of the game was the drinking and partying after the game. On a PCVs’salary, we could not go that route often, but the hospitality of the British helped us to do so.

Their parties were a welcome diversion, for they had good food and sometimes some pretty girls. The young Bri­tish chaps were obviously interested in the latter attraction of those parties. We were too. However, the pretty girls ran a poor second to the attraction the food they put on the table held over us. The British, at first, were amazed at how repeatedly we’d return to the serving table and how long into the party we’d eat.

Educationally, rugby was a good window into British thought concerning the Indians. Many of them were embarrassed for us because of the conditions we lived under and felt we were foolish to try to teach the Indians by working from their level.

John Fuller Sessions, a British teacher at Cathedral School and rugby captain, saw this ruler-shah philosophy among both whites and Indians at the club, social, and edu­cational level. I realized it by working and living with the lower echelon, being part of the rugby club, and through at­tending rich Indians’ parties.  Not wanting to believe this was a natural trait of the upper classes, I decided, following John’s suggestion, to do some teaching at Cathedral School.

I was interested in entering teaching as a profession aft­er returning to the states and thought this might he a unique teaching experience. But that was not my main motive for teaching at Cathedral School (CS). CS did not seem to need good teachers as much as good workers were needed in social action programs.

I realized this. I also realized my language deficiency and that I would not be here forever. I felt, though not without a retort from my Christian-bred conscience, that it was not my, or America’s, prime responsibility to rectify inequities in a nation that was not mine by birth or citizenship.

I felt, with support from my conscience, that if I could, in some way, make Indians who possess the native and economic tools to see and feel and work against the inequities, then I would have done my, and America’s, part.

 Cathedral School was one of the three best schools in Bombay. It had the likes of the son of the Chief Minister of Bombay and the niece of the Prime Minister Gandhi. It also had the sons and daughters of those struggling middle class-families who knew the value of a good school’s name in get­ting their kid a little further ahead.

I started teaching part way through their first semester. I taught, and in some cases first had to learn, subjects such as British and Indian history, Indian geography, moral sci­ence, physical education, journalism, world history, and an honors course.  In all of them I found a setting to express my philosophy that they, the well-to-do, must get involved with their nation’s problems, which they so easily ignore or over­look.

How hundreds of well-dressed and well-fed kids could he chauffeured daily past the beggars, pass them walking to lunch at the local restaurants, and when asked in class to de­scribe what they noticed on the back street — say nothing about the baby who lived on the sidewalk, or the others, was beyond me.

I continued to take my bike into the main street, grab onto a speeding truck, and whiz to the orphanage from Cathe­dral School. Worli was also still on my visit list. But with se­mester break I also found the other work situations condu­cive to a month break for personal travel. I threw a leather bag over my shoulder and with some money from home and what I had been able to save, I was soon flying to Thailand to visit a PCV buddy from the Pakistan group we had both trained in before switching to our present country programs.

Thailand was hosting the Asian games, Dave was hosting me and his Thai friends felt they must host us. What a con­trast Thailand offered. The people were healthy, strong, and proud. Bangkok, in parts, looked like street corner shopping centers back home. Stores had window displays, streets were clean and officers directed traffic, nights were clear, quiet and romantic.

Dave mixed very little with Americans other than PCVs. He was down on the military and the influence they had in Thailand and found his Thai friends much more entertaining.

Even the trains were a joy to ride and the rich, verdant scenery was part of the eason. The green land and healthy brown people were helping me unwind from the grimness of India.

I took a ferry to Penang Island, found a cheap, little room, and walked in the drizzling rain to attend Mass on Christmas Eve in Malaysia. It was a lonely, pensive, and happy, though not merry, Christmas. I thought the typical thoughts — home, family, old girl, the past year’s rich and different experiences.

Later I laid in bed trying to assess just what all those influences were doing to form me, the man I would be.

The next day I found the PCVs who had been in Bangkok the week before and accepted their then extended hospitality. They lived in a pleasant little suburban house, exemplifying the fact which the PCV no longer hides, that not all PCVs ­are living in gutters. I stayed for three or our days, and dug their food too. I also dug the island and its deserted beaches, rolling hills, and neat secluded huts, all of which I saw first hand during my one-day, 52 mile bike trip around the island.

In Ipoh I visited with the family of a Malaysian whom I played rugby with in Bombay. They treated me like an honored guest. Yet, it took me a day to realize just how far their hospitality was extending.

My arrival at the Deen’s home coincided with Ramadan, which meant that all Muslims were fasting and praying Koran from dawn ‘til dusk. The Deen family, being especially religious, was eating at 4 p.m. (sunset) only, while they were feeding me gigantic and scrumptuous portions three times a day.

It was comfortable being in a family setting again and nice being treated as an honored guest. It was more than nice to know that this was happening to a stranger from a land 7,000 miles away.

I left the Deen family knowing a bit more about one devoted Muslim’s interpretation of his religion. Watching Mr. Deen spend hours in front of his TV listening to the chants of the Koran reader, talking with him about his beliefs and mine, and reading a Muslim book he gave to me made me feel how insignificant any comparative  religious learning I had been exposed to was. I left the Deen home with gratitude, love, and another little inkling of what brotherhood was about. I left for the road, and I stuck out my thumb. A few days later, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and their people were just pleasant memories. I was back in Bombay to work for nine months.