Interview with Philip N. Dare, October 29, 2004

WILSON: Peace Corps Oral History Project interview on October 29, 2004 with Phil Dare. Phil, would you give me your full name please?

DARE: Philip Ned Dare.

WILSON: Okay. And where and when were you born?

DARE: Born in St. Louis, Missouri, 1938.

WILSON: And can you tell me something about your family, your growing up in St. Louis or wherever that took place, sort of a general background.

DARE: Sure. I grew up in -- it was probably one of the first suburbs of St. Louis. Well, actually, the first few years, first five or six years I was about a block away from Shaw's Garden, which I always looked upon as my secret garden. You know in those days you could just walk in and not have to pay. And then we moved out into this little 00:01:00suburb which was all these old Victorian homes, some of which had been built with materials that they had -- after the World's Fair in St. Louis, they had torn down and moved the materials out and built these old houses out there. And, you know, it was just almost like it was a little small town, a little country town in the big city and -- because there was a lot of people who had come in from the country and lived there. It was predominantly a blue collar town. But one of those that fits very much in with that image of, "It takes a village to raise a child," and they all took that upon themselves that not just a child, but every child. And, you know, they -- you know people would say, "Oh, Phil Dare, you know, well, he's a real brat," and "Yeah, but he's our brat." And they had they obligation to do something with me. But 00:02:00then in growing up somewhere along the line our generation was the first one really to head off to college and, of course, the problem was we did and none of us really came back, and so the little town has kind of done some real demographic changes. A lot of the old institutions and churches and things like that have pretty well died out and it's in recent years young people have begun coming back into it because they can get property cheaper there -- rundown, old houses -- and fix them up. And they're closer to town this way then going further and further out into the county.

WILSON: Do you have brothers and sisters?

DARE: Had a -- I was the oldest, a brother and a sister younger than me. 00:03:00My dad was a carpenter and Mom was just -- that was the era when all the mothers were home, pre-air conditioning and all that kind of thing, so everybody was out on their porches most of the time.

WILSON: Where and when did you go to college, Phil?

DARE: Right out of high school went to Enid, Oklahoma. Phillips University was a church-related college out there, and it was one of those where I think back on that, it was amazing that any of us ever got to school because we didn't have the vaguest notion. It was before that day when parents started taking children all around the country their sophomore year or junior year, whatever, and my parents didn't know anything about it. I just knew I was going to go to college, 00:04:00and I think it was February of my senior year in high school that the minister in the church there asked me about it and I said, "Yeah, yeah." And he said, "Well, have you applied anywhere?" "No." So he took me down to the school where he had gone, just drove me down there one -- a couple of days and we -- you know, I saw the campus and picked up the forms and all that kind of thing. But you know, you look back on that and you think accredited schools; we didn't know anything about, you know, what that was all about, and we just lucked into the fact that it was an accredited school. But it was four years then; graduated there in 1960.

WILSON: In 1960. And what did you major in or study there?

DARE: Well, I knew at that time, or I thought at that time I was going 00:05:00into ministry, so it was sociology, liberal arts mostly; humanities, liberal arts, sociology, things of that sort, history, psychology. And in those days undergraduate colleges, church colleges, had a lot of religion courses, biblical studies courses and things, so I took a fair number of courses there. So it was pretty much a general liberal arts major that you had. And then came here to Lexington -- this place was called the College of the Bible in those days -- to go to seminary, which was another three years after that. And you would end up with in those days a degree was another bachelor's degree, a B.D. it was called, bachelor of divinity. Halfway through that, though, I knew I wasn't going to be in the pastoral kind of ministry as I told people 00:06:00-- I have a tendency to tell people to go to hell rather than stay away from the place. So I knew that that probably was not good pastoral qualifications. And -- but at some point halfway through seminary I had done some teaching, I guess, in Sunday school with youth groups and decided, well, I felt more comfortable with that. Went ahead and finished the degree and then went across the street to UK to start a master's in history over there.

WILSON: So you came here, which now is called Lexington Theological Seminary --

DARE: Correct.

WILSON: -- in the fall of `60?

DARE: Yes.

WILSON: And did a two -- three year degree here?

DARE: About, yeah, a three-year degree; came here in 1960 about, oh, maybe a month after we, Nancy and I, were married and started seminary. She still had two years to go in undergraduate program, so she 00:07:00finished it up over at UK while I was in school here.

WILSON: Okay. And so that would be `63 that you --

DARE: Sixty-three, then graduated from seminary.

WILSON: And then went to UK?

DARE: Correct, and started the master's over there. I was teaching then part-time over at Midway College. It was actually Midway Junior College and Pinkerton High School in those days over in Midway, Kentucky. And they were phasing out -- it had been a grade school, high school and through junior college and they were phasing that out. When I was there I think sixth grade was the next one that would be finished. And then -- so I taught a couple of high school courses and a couple of junior college courses over there for about two years while I was working -- starting the master's before Peace Corps invitation came.

WILSON: And how did you find out about the Peace Corps, and what led you to join?

DARE: Well, it was an exciting era, the "new frontier" and all of this, and then suddenly I was in the classroom teaching at Midway when the word came that Kennedy had been shot. And so there was that feeling that had to do something in response to that year, you know, after the funeral and everything. There was a feeling of, you know, just of a great loss, and I heard that the Peace Corps representative was over on the university campus and there in the student center building. And went down there and we filled out the papers at that time, which 00:09:00I guess would have been `64. I mean it was early in `64 when they were -- because we said -- now I thought I would be finished with the master's in two years over there. As it turned out I still had the thesis to do when the invitation came in `65. Came, gee, I guess May, something like that, of 1965 when we got the invitation from Peace Corps. But it was that feeling, and then that was the era of the civil rights movement and everything so it was -- there was a real positive atmosphere certainly for young people in those days that things were different, things were, you know, really turning around. And we were doing the ethical things and the moral things that we should have been doing a long time ago and are beginning to get the country up to its ideals. And so, you know, it was -- as I said, it was an exciting time 00:10:00and we just wanted to jump into the mix.

WILSON: And so your wife Nancy also applied and you went then together? What -- do you remember anything particular about that process of applying and response? Did you have a choice of countries?

DARE: We put India down, actually, as our first choice. And when the invitation came it was for Malaysia. I had been taking some classes -- Nancy and I both had taken some classes under Amry Vandenbosch who had been talking in the classes about Malaysia and the federation had -- was -- had been forming about that time. And so we were aware that there was a Malaysia. And when the invitation came -- but I wasn't 00:11:00finished with the master's yet and I wasn't sure I should do this just yet. You know there was a hesitancy that, well, I really should close this chapter before I go on, but I was nervous that, well, you know, would the government just say I had schlepped them off and never send it? And so I told the Dean Travis Rawlings over at Midway about this and that I was wrestling with it, and that was at lunchtime. I went ahead and went back with the class and was in the middle of class teaching -- he had gone home; he loved to refinish furniture. He had gone home and he had his paint clothes and everything on, and all of a sudden the door to my classroom opened and he walked in with his paint clothes and everything on and he said, "Been wrestling with this, thinking it over. You've got to go!" and he just turned and walked out of the room. Now, he may have been wanting also to get rid of me, I don't know. But anyhow, I took him at his word and we packed 00:12:00everything up and moved it into our parents' homes, and I think this was our first airplane trip, headed out in August of `65 to Hawaii, and that's where we did our training.

WILSON: And can you tell me something about your training in Hawaii?

DARE: Well, we figured that even if we didn't make it through training, and that three to four months in Hawaii was definitely, you know, at someone else's expense. My goodness, how could you pass that one up? It was a great experience because it was a real good transition from mainland U.S. because here, first you were confronting -- you were with other cultures very different from anything we had known, you know; certainly the Hawaiian or the Polynesian culture, but a lot of 00:13:00Japanese and Filipinos, too. We were on the big island Hawaii, and the first couple of weeks was in Wainuinui -- no Pepeekeo. Excuse me. But it was a little sugarcane village, and there was a school that had been abandoned, a little kind of a u-shaped woodframe school. And the first few nights they would have -- you know, they had about eight couples, as I remember, in a room on just old cots. They had the wires up separating us but they hadn't had the sheets put up yet that would separate you, you know. And there were several -- Nancy and I had been married now five years by that point, but there were some couples that showed up that had just gotten married. I think they were planning on using this as their honeymoon and needless to say, they were somewhat 00:14:00crestfallen when they walked into the room. And, oh, boy! But we were there for about -- this was Malaysia 12, so there were several other groups finishing up their training at that point heading on out and this is why they had us located out there on a temporary basis. But it was a beautiful -- my goodness, it was a beautiful location, this Pepeekeo. On the one side you would cross down the sugarcane fields and then out to the ocean. And then on the other side just -- it just went right on up to the Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa and the saddle in between. And incredible sunrises and sunsets, and there was -- and the people there were so incredibly hospitable, and I mean I don't 00:15:00remember how far out from town we were but it would have been a good walk. And so you remembered certain things; you know, toothpaste or aspirin or something, you better get. Started out walking -- we never once walked the whole distance into town. Once you got up on the road on the highway they would just pull over and pick you up. Now the problem of it was it would be several hours later before you could get the toothpaste or the aspirin and they would take you all around and show you this or that and take you to their homes and show you their homes and everything. So we got to meet several people and stayed in their homes, you know, on weekends or when we had time away from the training. And there was a period there of while we taught in the schools in Hilo, Hawaii where they also put us in a home for that 00:16:00period. There was a two to three week--I can't remember exactly but there was a period--

WILSON: With a home stay?

DARE: And there was a home stay while we were there and so we stayed in this home of a family that he was a manager of one of the sugar cane operations there and got to see all that from the planning, the harvesting, the bringing it down to the factory there, and it was kind of interesting to watch mud and all go into this system and somehow it gets purified or cleansed out. But it was after several weeks then we moved into Hilo proper and stayed at what had been a hospital Wainuinui up on a hill there from town and can't remember the name of 00:17:00the waterfall that was right behind us--right behind the school--right behind this hospital there was some waterfalls. Waikaka or something, I can't remember I would have to go back and look at my old journal. A friend of mine gave me a two volume-- He got two reams of paper and he bound those for the two years we were going to be in Peace Corps for us to keep journals. And so we did a pretty good job of writing down experiences and things that help refresh memories as we go back.

WILSON: So you kept those through training and your whole two years?

DARE: Mmhmm.

WILSON: Oh, that's wonderful.

DARE: And had some anthropology friends years later said I should go into anthropology when we got back from overseas that I had a lot of good notes there for that.

WILSON: Well tell me something about the actual training. You were training to be teachers?

DARE: Mmmhmm, this of course in the early days of Peace Corps they were very open to generalists. And that's what most everybody was. It was predominantly-- It was a large group now, it was well over 100 that started out and with the exception maybe of a half a dozen all fairly young folks some right out of college, some few years out, but it was all I would say most all of us were in our twenties and a few that strayed over into their early thirties. But then there were about four or five couples that were 50, 60 somewhere in there. Training was also very nice in Hawaii in that not only were you exposed to this kind of 00:19:00a nice little entryway into more of an Asian culture but we had the advantage of the East/West Center over in Honolulu. And they would bring professors over, they also brought Malay instructors. I forget how many--at least a dozen language instructors from Malaysia came to teach us Malay and that every morning you would spend all morning long with language. Sometimes that strayed over into the afternoon; there might be a break of an hour in which you would have somebody from the East/West Center talking to you about history, economics, politics, whatever of Malaysia, political science, oh sociologists, economic professors, all kinds of professors would come and work with us on so 00:20:00many afternoons also would come. There was a lot of physical exercise and things of this sort in the afternoon, Phys Ed, hiking. One of the things we all had to take was a swimming test because where we were heading was a lot of rivers and so on. And my swimming skills were not that good. In fact I had sort of taught myself to swim late in while I was at Phillips, while I was out at school there and had not been a very good teacher. So one of the things you had to do first you swam back and forth a lap or two and then you had to just stay alive in the water for about 15-20 minutes just out in the-- Well the result 00:21:00was I ended up in remedial P.E. because I--my swimming skills were not that good. But it actually was very advantageous because I got to do a lot more swimming than the others did. But oh just you would learn the sports, sepak raga and things that the Malaysians would be playing; they'd teach you those kinds of sports as well and games. And you would be playing with a lot of the Malayan instructors, the male instructors particularly if you were playing any kind of soccer. Sepak raga which was a, it's a bamboo kind of a ball and you play it like volleyball but with your feet. It's over a net back and forth. Well they're extremely skilled with it; I mean they will go up and spike it by leaping in the air and doing a flip and spiking it with their foot 00:22:00and come back down. Needless to say we never reached that level and I don't know that anybody really ever tried because all you could think of were broken necks. But it was a fun sport to watch but it was an incredible skill really. But there was a week where we would also they took us away from Wainuinui down to Waipeo Valley and took us down into the valley and we just slept on floors. They had duplicated things like long houses and so on and you had one 24 hour alone experience where they would take you out, they would just tell you here's, you know, a little bit of food and some matches and here's how you get 00:23:00to--a little chart--of how to get to it in the valley. Nancy had a pretty nice experience. Hers took her up into the up higher into the-- I mean it was down these beautiful hills on each side or mountains on each side and hers went up near the waterfalls. Mine I had to go down, way down towards the ocean and at some point then was to cross a little stream. You know the stream was not much wider than this rug, you know, about 6 ft. across something like that. Okay, first step in up to my knees, second step in up to my waist, so I lifted everything up and threw the, you know, my little satchel with some food and a blanket, threw it across to the other side and just kind of went ahead and I thought this little thing I was going to be kind of wading you 00:24:00know. So I was soaking wet by the time I got to the little place which was a little grass shack back in a lot of growth, brush and started a fire to dry my clothes. And I forget what it was we had to cook but it was getting dusk and I started hearing rustling in the brush over there. And I looked and my goodness I never saw so many rats in my life coming from everywhere. And you know so I just would jump up and down and think I would scare them away and, you know, wouldn't hear them for a while and finally as I got dried out enough and it was getting dark I went into this little shack which was maybe 6 by--4 by 6--something like that in size. And laid down on the floor and put the 00:25:00blanket over me, had a mosquito net too and the mosquito net, and would doze off and then I would wake up because there were things crawling on me. And these rats were looking for food which I had tied up, you know, on a rope hanging from the top of the thing anything I had for breakfast. So I would have to wake up and start shaking the place and banging on things and they would run away and then finally I just tried to stay awake, you know, to scare them off every time. But you would doze off and then you would feel something around you so that was, you know, I thought this was one of those experiences that I didn't need. I was hoping we wouldn't have this every night while we were overseas. But let me think what else. Hilo was-- All of that of course was, I mean Hilo didn't have a direct flight in at that time. And so it 00:26:00was still fairly remote part of Hawaii. It was a well just beautiful in that on one side. You learned about windward and leeward side of things and you started up the island and it's of course tropical, and you get up higher near before you cross the saddle road between the hills between the volcanoes and you go-- And you get up near the top there and suddenly the vegetation changes to pines and things of that sort and you know it's very lovely but then you get over and after a little bit of a drive coming back down it's like the plains. And you know there's no trees, oh a big King Ranch people had a big ranch on the other side of the hills there. And you know so on Sundays we would 00:27:00usually have the day to ourselves. Although Saturdays is where you all lined up for your shots and usually a shot in each arm and maybe somewhere else and something in the mouth. I remember the very first Saturday we had all that everybody was looking forward to, you know, ok boy we're all going to go to town and whatever that shot was everybody was laying in those cots that night because I think it was that DPT thing and it really did--

WILSON: So you had a sizeable medical--?

DARE: Oh yeah, just about every, you know, every Saturday there was something you all lined up for and, you know, there was the DPT and the malaria kinds of things. And there was a rabies prep kind of a thing. It was a shot; I think it was mainly to see if you might have any kind 00:28:00of reaction to rabies shots because there were a couple of students who were deselected because they did have severe reaction. And since at that time rabies was rather common in parts of Southeast Asia they just felt like it would be too risky to send you there. Oh I can't remember-- There was gamma globulin was a shot that everybody really looked forward to--

WILSON: For hepatitis?

DARE: For hepatitis and it felt like somebody had inserted a softball in your rear end because it was based on your weight upon entry and most of us all lost weight in training you know. So we always had an extra cc or whatever shoved in there that we really didn't have room for.

WILSON: So was there also a teacher preparation part of the--?

DARE: Yes, yeah more once we got up into Wainuinui that we began having that and a lot of science and math prep because that was the thing that Malaysia was really needing a lot more of were science and math teachers. And so there were a lot of people coming in and teaching us how to do the new math and just basic science things. There was others that not as much time as probably spent on some of the other areas; English first was going to be the lingua franca out there because it had been a British colony. So you knew that while you were-- Malay would be very helpful to have when you get outside of the schoolroom, the classroom; the classes were going to be taught in English at that time. And so you didn't, you weren't having to worry about how you 00:30:00were going to teach a subject you were very unfamiliar with you were just having to learn and teach it in a different language. So that at least was helpful. But as I said most of it was in science and math that they were training us in because that was what their greatest need was. Now as it turned out when we got out there Nancy and I didn't teach either one of those subjects. She ended up being in a primary school and also supervising the English teachers and also supervising some English teachers in a school up river about an hour and a half, two hours by river boat or by long boat. And I taught English and 00:31:00history and geography which I hadn't had a geography class since sixth grade but and geography was taught there on a-- Everything we taught was also towards these exams so you had pretty much an idea of where not to stray.

WILSON: This was on national exams in Malaysia?

DARE: Yes, well there was a-- They had an exam at the end of primary six and at the end of form three which would be ninth grade I guess that would have been and at the end of form five they sat for the Cambridge overseas exam and that determined whether they could go on to form six, college, etc. Form six was a two year kind of a junior college program and it was a very traumatic experience for the students if they-- I 00:32:00mean you know if they failed those exams that meant the end of their--

WILSON: And they got just one shot at it?

DARE: Yes. And so there were stories, news reports of suicides and things were-- Young people just had failed their family. I mean this was in an area where ancestral worship or ancestral reverence is very high; it wasn't just a matter of letting down mom and dad and a few aunts and uncles but you let down generations before and generations to come in a way was their feeling. So you know that put extra stress on a teacher too. And the students knew what the outline was going to be and they would-- If you started talking about something that-- If you finished with the curriculum and you had a couple of weeks to go 00:33:00you didn't add something new, you went back and started over again and touched on points because the students knew what was coming and they would say , "That's not going to be on the exam." So they-- You know that was a little bit stiff and stilted and hard to get comfortable with but you did it because you knew the pressure that these kids were under.

WILSON: Backing up just a second, so you completed your training in Hawaii. Was there a-- You mentioned some place something about medical deselection. Was there another evaluation?

DARE: Yeah, there were psychological exams. You took a-- You know that Minnesota Multiphasic and things like that but you took some other exams that I couldn't remember them all. And there was several psychologists that were there that would interview and talk to you on a several times--

WILSON: And what was the purpose of all that?

DARE: Well there was a, you know, they wanted to be sure they weren't sending somebody over that would just collapse over there or couldn't handle, you know, in a very different culture. And you were going to be alone in many, many cases you know. I mean they would say, "Now some of you will go into the ulu, way up river, and you will be, you know, you will be there with just grade school kids whose English level is only going to be, you know, first, second, third grade kind of a thing. And this, unless you're really strong mentally and physically it will be difficult for you to live all by yourself like that with just all these children around. And you may be the only teacher or 00:35:00maybe one other teacher who maybe only has the equivalent of a ninth grade level of English or something like that so--" You know there would be people that they would be worried about that couldn't handle that and so they were-- There was a fair number that were deselected.

WILSON: So then you went directly from Hawaii to Malaysia? And what was it like when you first arrived?

DARE: Well we first we had-- In those days what they said they would do is that, you know, after your training you would have a week back home and then they would send you. But because you were already out in Hawaii and it would be too costly they just gave us a week in Honolulu and then sent us out.

WILSON: Oh.

DARE: And a clothing allowance or something like that as I remember in order to get some clothes to be heading out there. And then you just 00:36:00they load us all up on a 707 and we headed for Kuala Lumpur and we landed on Wake Island which all of us looked down there and weren't sure how that was going to happen. I mean when you-- It didn't look like the runway would be long enough and we landed on Guam. And of course this was at the time Vietnam was going on and Guam was a base for all the B52s.

WILSON: Yeah.

DARE: So that was kind of an eerie experience too to come into that airport there and get refueled. Today of course planes could probably fly the whole thing without the refueling. Came into Kuala Lumpur, got in in the evening and they took us out to a-- What was the-- It was a little kind of a junior college outside of Kuala Lumpur, took us out there, it was in December. The way the school system is set up out 00:37:00there is you're really in trimesters and-- But the December break is about a five week gap in between sessions and so the school was closed so we stayed in the dorm rooms which were really almost like going to a campground and they were just sort of little pods, open, you know, no windows or anything just screens. But the thing that all of us remembered was that oh my gosh, all the time we had been in training they had tried to give us the food. There was-- They tried to not on every night to give us food that was supposedly Malay.

WILSON: And introduction to Malay?

DARE: Yeah, an introduction but when we got there, if this is what Malaysian food is like we've got a long two years ahead of us. Because 00:38:00they had the students were doing the cooking and oh, I mean it was after a couple of days of this people were really not sure whether they were going to be able to hold out for two years until someone discovered an A&W in downtown Kuala Lumpur and suddenly there was this, you know, this great sale of hamburgers going on downtown. We were there I guess a week or a little over a week, went over to the Parliament and a few places like that and were introduced to various people. And then you were on your own to get to wherever you were to be assigned and we were going to be going to Sarawak which was-- So we had to go all the way down to Singapore and we stopped at Malacca and but you just-- You 00:39:00could do it by bus or do it by taxi. So several of us just got into a bargain with a taxi driver to take us down and got to Singapore. And Singapore was, I mean this was one of those where here's this-- The federation had just begun and they had pushed Singapore out because it was predominantly Chinese population which would tip the scales pretty much as far as Malaysia was concerned. And so here was this little island that was going to try and be a nation and I mean it just released-- All of us had a hard time imagining how in the world this tiny little island out there can make it. Sewers were open sewers and the stench was pretty heavy and yet there was something about it that fascinated us all. I mean it was-- Everybody liked it but there was, 00:40:00you know it got to be one of our favorite places because many times on breaks and that you would go over to Singapore before you would go anywhere else. Years later went back, you know like thirty years later and it-- What a change you know, what a dramatic change but we saw it when it was in its infancy as a nation and then dramatic improvement. And then flew over to Kuching, Sarawak, still had several weeks before we were to go up into our various assignments. And so in that period there we worked with some people from Australia, New Zealand on preparing radio lessons in English--English instruction--and preparing 00:41:00outlines for native Malaysians to teach English whose English itself was maybe not that good. And so this was one of those where we really were getting even more. Well we were sort of adapting in many ways what our instructors they way they had--the process they had taught of repeating, repeating, repeating. They would repeat; you would repeat. I mean it was predominantly oral way of learning the language at first. So we spent most of the days doing this kind of thing as well as getting some more in country training as to--

WILSON: But somebody had set this up for you?

DARE: Yeah, Peace Corps there. One of the funny things about that experience for us though, here we are halfway around the world and we kept running into all these people from Kentucky or Kentucky backgrounds out there in Malaysia, out there in Sarawak and 00:42:00particularly in the little town that we went to that was, you know, way up the Rejang River. And Malaysia was divided into five divisions at that time--political divisions. And each one of those divisions and the missionaries that came out there and so they wouldn't confuse people as they were working with them, okay the Anglicans will have this division, the Catholics this division, the Methodists would have this division, so on. So we were in the Methodist division and there was this hospital of a group of missionaries up there in this little town of Kapit and there was a hospital and a secondary--a primary and a secondary school. Many of the people, the missionaries were Asbury graduates. My headmaster was Chinese fellow, secondary school, who was 00:43:00a graduate of Berea College. Nancy's headmistress was Ohio University, the Peace Corps doctor that came around every so often and would give us shots and all that was one of the first graduates of UK's med school and also his father had been a minister over here at Victory Christian Church. And he comes knocking on the door you know and there's this Kentuckian-- And some of the missionaries were from Ashland, Kentucky. So here we are, you know, halfway around the world and we're still in Kentucky.

WILSON: So you were actually stationed-- Let's go back on that.

DARE: Okay.

WILSON: What was the name of the place where you--?

DARE: In, Kuching was the city, we stayed out at Batu Lintang which was a school outside of Kuching which also had been a prison camp during the 00:44:00Japanese occupation during the war. It was, oh I don't know, we had-- We all got issued bicycles; that was the primary was of getting around. And it was maybe 45 minutes outside of town and we would everyday go into town and go to our lessons and training, more training and that and then go back at night. You could I think meals as I remember most of the time were always on our own except on Christmas day we were there and they had a big meal fixed for us there. But I don't remember eating much out there. So you would find Chinese shops in Malay shops.

WILSON: So this was not your permanent assignment?

DARE: No this was--

WILSON: Tell me something about where your permanent assignment was.

DARE: We were about four or five weeks there in Kuching before.

WILSON: Okay.

DARE: Four weeks I guess it was before then we were sent and they put us on a boat over to out down the river, out the ocean, back up the Rejang River to Sibu and there were a couple of days there in Sibu and then you would-- Some fanned out to go further out this way down river or whatever in that area, and there were, I don't remember, five or six of us that got on this boat going up the Rejang and some would get off at various places along the way. You know that was going to be their town and we went on up. Kapit was the last town that before you hit the rapids on the Rejang River, Pelagus Rapids. So the boats didn't go any further beyond that point. And there were these motor launches that would go up there. They took, you know, it was probably only 00:46:00ninety miles.

WILSON: With Phil Dare. Phil, you were talking about going up river to your permanent assignment.

DARE: And I was saying how long it took especially if there had been a lot of rains. If the river was up you got down river in no time flat but it took you forever to get back up river against that current. And so we went-- You were on this boat with people and livestock and everything else, you know, and you were chugging up there and get in about midnight. And so you just slept on the boat that night and the 00:47:00people greeted us that were, you know, take us to our assignments and where we would be staying and so on the next morning. Bill Funk was this gentleman from Ashland, Kentucky who was the one that actually met us to start showing us where we would be and where we would live. The first six months we actually lived even further up the river and across at a place called Seputin because it was-- They were building a shop house in Kapit that we would eventually live up above there because the school was supposed to take care of us as far as lodging was to be concerned, but they hadn't finished the shop house. So the first six months we lived on up river about fifteen minutes more by longboat on 00:48:00the other side. And we would have to come down to go to the school everyday and then go back up, you know, to this little house that was right next to the jungle. And it was a place that was being--that the missionaries were all leaving and there was a point for about two or three months where the last missionary left that area and Nancy and I were the only ones living over there with the boat driver. But it was right against, you know, it was a little compound. I forget what they're using it for now; the government has taken it over it's I think another Ag kind of a school. But it was right against the jungle and pretty much alone up there, you know, for at night you were on your own. And depending upon this one boat driver to get you if anything 00:49:00happened and you had to get over to town-- Then after about six months we moved back down and into the town and up above the Chinese shop house; we were on the-- There would be the shop house below, the Chinese family lived in the next level up and we lived above them.

WILSON: And what was that accommodation like?

DARE: We had a bedroom and we had another little room that was where we would be, kind of where we could read, study, eat. And then there was the whole top floor would others could have lived there or rented there with a common kitchen and a common bath and everything. And there were other apartments along that way but nobody chose to do that so we were alone up there. I guess they weren't too sure they wanted to, you 00:50:00know, share facilities with the Orang Puteh.

WILSON: Orang Puteh were native people or Americans?

DARE: Would be the gringos, the--

WILSON: Okay. And can you describe for me sort of what a typical day would be in your life?

DARE: Well school started right around 7:00 or 7:30.

WILSON: This was a primary school?

DARE: Well Nancy taught in the primary, I taught in the secondary.

WILSON: Okay.

DARE: And so we would come through the town, part ways, and she would walk past this lovely lily pond that was on the way to her school and I walked along the edge of the river and had to fight the geese that would come after you, you know, and climb up this hill to a place called Pantu which was where the secondary school was. And it would 00:51:00start at about somewhere probably it was 7:30. And it would start with all the kids, everybody outside lined up, and they would sing the national anthem and get instructions for the day, and then they would all go to their school--all go into their classrooms. There was a room, kind of a-- And everything was pretty much open. You know the windows you could-- They were kind of the Venetian blind type windows that would crank shut, but a lot of them were just regular just nothing, I mean hardly any glass in the things. And you would have to be careful walking around the school building because sinus problems were rather commonplace out there in that where you have several hundred inches or rain all the time. And so they were not--didn't have any hesitancy of just getting rid of it, right out the window. 00:52:00So you had to be careful. But there was a room that was set aside for the teachers to, you know, prepare and get together and talk with each other. A lot of the students there were accommodations or housing because the students from up river from the particularly from the tribal groups would come down and stay in the--

WILSON: So this was a boarding school?

DARE: In that but there were the town's kids would just come out to the school. So yeah, it served both purposes. And it was, well it was a school because they, while we were out there, they opened a government secondary school for the first three forms 1-3 and that was for those who had passed the exam of primary 6 to go into. Those who hadn't 00:53:00passed the exams in primary 6 this missionary--this was the school I taught at was a mission school.

WILSON: Methodist?

DARE: Methodist mission school, yeah. And that was five grades out there for the kids who had passed that primary school exam and so weren't able to go to the government school and it gave them that second chance as far as moving up to the possibility of college. There was no second chance after form 5 if you failed the exam there that was it. Now as time went on and people began, you know, a certain level of middle class income began to develop there were ways-- You just sent them off to Australia or New Zealand or someplace like that and they got them enrolled in a school. But in those early days it was very-- 00:54:00And it was something like only it wasn't even a matter of passing, it was I think like 30% of those who passed even, I mean it was-- The money was such that would get the scholarships.

WILSON: So how many classes did you teach and what forms?

DARE: I taught, I think I taught form 3, 4, and 5; I taught the upper forms. And I taught geography in form 4 and in form 5, taught English in forms 3, 4, and 5. Form 3 was pretty much grammar and things like that and form 4 was moving up. Form 5 got more into, a lot more into literature. And one of the fascinating things about teaching 00:55:00literature out there was of course you had Shakespeare to teach.

WILSON: You're teaching English literature.

DARE: Yes, and you're teaching English literature. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, how am I going to teach Shakespeare to kids whose English level is--" I mean they didn't mind just plowing right into English, you know, and butchering it to pieces and they really, you know, weren't hesitant or shy about trying their English out. They loved Shakespeare. And I thought, "This is weird because you know try to teach Shakespeare and find who kids who love it here in America or in--" You know I mean, "Oooo, that's hard to understand and." But they and I said some of the funny--fun plays; nicest plays we saw in Shakespearian plays were high school kids down in Cebu and ones over in Kuching. We saw high school kids put on Shakespeare plays and 00:56:00they were fascinated by it. And it was no problem at all teaching Shakespeare down in Malaysia out in Sarawak and Borneo! There were some complications of trying to teach some things in context. You know here's-- I mean I would see some of the exams they would have to, you know these Cambridge overseas exams and one of the essay questions was something about you're to write an essay on your feelings and emotions on the first day of snow. You're two degrees north of the equator! Or thoughts that come to mind while sitting at the railroad station, you know, and there was a little train over in Saba that, you know, ran a 00:57:00little bit. But I mean there were no trains in Kuching or in Sarawak anywhere or anywhere else in Borneo I don't think. So there were these, you know, you just have to say, "Well think of it like a boat. You know you're waiting for the river lodge. Work with that you know. Or think of it as when the monsoon season's going to start. What comes to mind? What are your thoughts?" You know you'd have to try and translate some of that for them.

WILSON: What about other things outside the classroom related to the school? Were you involved in any of those and what were they?

DARE: The-- One of the things that I did there was a-- I ate with a lot of the--some of the teachers also lived up there on the hill and stayed there--and so I would always eat lunch with the teachers there. 00:58:00And there was a woman that was an excellent cook and her husband was an excellent hunter and so we had all kinds of exotic dishes there. Eat with them and then a lot of times do things in the afternoon with the students either athletics. They had sports day each year in which they would divide up into houses and compete against each other in that so you would work with them on that. Tried to introduce softball, they all wanted, I mean they all wanted to learn some American sports and tried to introduce softball which was a real challenge. I didn't think, I thought it was a pretty simple game but, you know, getting them to remember to not carry the bat with them when they ran the bases and no these are the way you run to these bases and not that way and not to second and you know. Then with geography a lot of it got into 00:59:00contour geography was a lot what they also had to be able to read and understand so I would work with them on that in the afternoons and maybe build a mound or something and then show putting the ribbons around different contour levels and how--what that was--so they could look down on an actual 3-D dimensional object and get why those rings were all on a flat piece of paper. Would also engage in-- Well they also knew about folk dancing. They knew Americans had folk dancing and so they wanted us to do that. And I forget one of the missionaries out there had some records--square dance records. And so we were able to do some of that with some of the basic, you know the Virginia reel 01:00:00and a few things and they loved it. I mean it was just, you know, they just couldn't get enough of it. It was very simple culture at that time; it wasn't complicated. Having grown up in Missouri on the Mississippi and making trips up to Hannibal, Missouri and Mark Twain country and all that, a lot of times what I would do with the kids for their English exams was I had them kind of Mark Twain's life on the Mississippi, "Life on the Rayjong." So each one of their essays would try to each week you know work it around life there on that river and you know so that they would have this-- Well they would be thinking about it but have something hopefully they would hold on to and look back on years later. And we did--we went back there years later--there was one that remembered that and brought it out and you know and how 01:01:00it had changed you know from that point. There was oh in the evenings there was a little theater in town that-- Well it would start out with a loudspeaker that would play, "Let's go do the twist" and things like that up and "Down in the Valley," you know, and you would go to the little movie theater and you know watch usually a grade B movie from India or-- The ones that were most popular were the ones that came out of Japan, the Samurai movies or out of Hong Kong there were the Shaw brothers and their symbol looked a lot like the Warner brothers only it was SB instead of WB on it. And there were movies that came out of there that were variations on that kind of the Lone Ranger theme, you 01:02:00know, of the Samurai that goes into the village and cleans up the crime and everything and goes on. There was a blind Samurai, there was one that had to fight mostly with crutches, I mean there was all kinds of variations on this theme of the Don Quixote.

WILSON: What else did you do for recreation?

DARE: Oh visit a lot. The kids, once you got to know the kids in that, they would have you in their homes. They would take you across and go up across the river and there was a little stream that fed in and go up there and there was a waterfall up there that was fun to ride over into a deep pool underneath, you know. And so they all liked to do that 01:03:00and you'd go swimming up there. You could walk out to the longhouses; there was one not too far away. And walk out and there were the Ibans and you know just spend time with the Ibans and learning their culture.

WILSON: This was a different ethnic group?

DARE: Yeah, in the town itself we were mostly Chinese. There was a Malay compound outside a little settlement of Malays which would be mostly Muslims. And then the Chinese lived right in town above their shops most times, and then the Ibans were the tribal group that was indigenous group that was most in that area. There were others further up river, Kayans and then the Penans and so on--

WILSON: And were your students a mixture of these ethnic groups?

DARE: Oh yeah, yeah.

WILSON: Yeah, okay, I'm sorry I distracted you.

DARE: Well no there were a fair number of Ibans, Kayans, the different Chinese dialects, mostly Foochow and Hokkien, were the two dialects in the town. And so when we got there the Malay that we were taught was Mahska Kibangsan which was kind of the national Malay. It really wasn't Bahasa Kebangsan, but when we got to Kapit most people spoke Iban as the kind of lingua franca for kind of communicating with the hill people who would bring their products down, the sheets of latex, rubber trees all up in there, and rotan or rattan that they would bring down and trade that. And that would be out in the town 01:05:00there. You watch the marketing and trading going on. Coffee shops were everywhere. This little town of I don't know under 1000 people, it must have had 20 different coffee shops. Now they also had beer and other things to drink but they were just Kedai's little shops for drinking beer, lemonade, coffee. And it took us a while to get used to the coffee because they just roasted it right there on the streets; start a little fire and put the beans and just burn them really--I mean it was really past French roast. But after a few months of Nescafe we were ready to try it and got used to it. It was a very strong roasted coffee. When we first got there the confrontation, 01:06:00a confrontassi was going on between Malaysia and Indonesia. Sukarno didn't want-- He wanted Malaysia to be a part of Indonesia; it was all similar anyhow so it should be a part. And so the confrontation was going on and the first six months we were there the presence of the British forces were there and the Nepalese Ghurkas were also in the town because it was just not far and you were--from where we were by through the jungles and you would be up over the hills into the Kalimantan side--the Indonesian side of Borneo. And there were some streams just down river that flowed out of that where insurgents, where Indonesians could have come over and did--some activity had gone on. 01:07:00But that was, you know, we had to kind of get used to people walking around with guns on and that sort of thing at first, you know the first few months we were there. And then it was over and they were gone. It was fun though too in a way to kind of observe how the shopkeepers worked with the situation. There was one woman, Miss Pohghee, her shop she had-- When the missionaries first came there she would have all of their servants--the people that cleaned the house and did their laundry and that--anything they threw away bring to her. And so all the canned goods and things they brought to her, you know take them out of the trash and take them to this Pohghee and she would just get the 01:08:00addresses off the labels of those things. So here we were in you know two days journey up river in Borneo and there was Jif peanut butter and Jell-O and stuff like that on there. Now it was very expensive so we couldn't afford it on what we were making but it was just funny to walk into a, you know, a shop house there and see all these American brands--Kleenex and everything sitting on the shelves. And that made the missionaries happy but as a result she was the one shopkeeper who was in great shape when the British and all that were there; she was able to deal with them and very quickly and, you know, she had stuff that they could use right away and then she would just do things for them like mattresses and she would-- She was one of those if you looked around and you'd ask her about something she didn't have-- "can get." And sure enough she did. Visiting of course with the various 01:09:00shopkeepers was always a good thing to do and because the British had been there and then the missionaries had been there they had two images of Europeans. Everybody who was from the West was European. So they had these two images: missionary image that didn't ever come in and drink--drink a beer or anything in town you know, they just come into town and go to church and get some groceries and go back out, not have much to do, maybe the post office. British who drank from crack of dawn to set of sun and then found some ladies of pleasure you know. And here were these people Phil and Nancy and there was another Peace 01:10:00Corps fellow who was he was up river most of the time but he would come down and stay in one of the government buildings there, and we didn't fit in. We would drink a beer but I didn't go over to the hotel where the-- There was an old hotel there that and visit late at night, you know the comfort zones. I went home with this woman, you know, that was with me all the time. And it took them a while to get used to that. I wasn't a missionary and I wasn't a soldier. What else can you be you know? It was a-- And so that was kind of fun. It was the-- The town also was-- The paramount chief of the Ibans, Temenggong Jugah, had a dwelling, had an apartment there and he would as the paramount 01:11:00chief he was also a federal minister in the Malaysian government. So he was in the parliament, he was in the cabinet, and so he would come back to town every so often and getting to know him was a fascinating experience. But because of his presence there and because the, you know, they were trying to-- Sarawak and Sabo were not all that crazy about being a part of the federation; they never thought much about it. And the people over in the Malay peninsula, I mean, there are people over there that I meet, Malaysian students who have never been to Sarawak. You know they just never think of going over there. It's still kind of like going over that eastern Kentucky I guess would be how they would think of it you know. And that was one of the reasons we were there teaching was a lot of the teachers didn't want to go up into the jungles to be teaching, you know, because they had this image that it was just so primitive and barbarian. But because of 01:12:00his--the Iban chief Juko was there--we got to meet the Prime Minister Tungku Abdul Rhman, the father of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak who was the deputy Prime Minister, governor general of Sarawak, and the-- Oh what was his title now? He would have been the I guess the president or the chief minister--chief minister of Sarawak. They all came up and they would have big celebrations, big parades into town, you know, and all the schools would be dismissed, and the children were handed little Malaysian flags to wave. And then they had the old Kubu which was an old fort that had been built many, many generations before in Sarawak. 01:13:00This was the government building but they would have some kind of a festivity of a dinner or a reception or whatever in the fort and maybe a dance or some kind of entertainment that night but-- So here we were, I mean we were supposedly the ones out in the boonies and we got to meet, you know all the dignitaries of the country there that people in Kuala Lumpur never did see or meet you know in the capitol. And that was, you know that was a real great experience too for all of us.

WILSON: You have mentioned a couple of times through here or made reference to food either when you first came in the country or it was badly prepared and then cut to someone else that you were acquainted with who was a good cook. What did you eat normally and how was that 01:14:00prepared?

DARE: Well we could get chicken. You could get chicken there easily enough, wild pig and wild deer. Now the problem with that was we had to be at school by early in the morning. And so you know if they would slaughter an animal at that time it would just be right out there, there would be a couple of people that would just have a wild creature. You would see it maybe the night before or a day or so before and then they would slaughter it, and they didn't do that curing thing you know. It was just slaughter it and-- And you didn't say, you know I'd like some pork chops or I'd like-- You know they started at one end and you get a kati or a little over a pound and you just, you know you could stand around and wait and say, "Okay now!" What we did was Ms. Pogee 01:15:00the shopkeeper I was telling you about, we just asked her because the thought of, you know, by the end of the day when school was out we would come through, the flies had pretty well covered that meat and we weren't sure, you know, sitting out in that temperature that it would be a good idea to get much of it. So she would always go down, it was usually along the river that they would do this, she would always go down there and whenever we would ask her to get us some meat and she would get it and take it back and put it in her refrigerator for us and we'd pick it up on the way. We had electricity. Now the first six months when we lived up the river there we didn't. We only had it about two hours, three hours at night; it was a generator. And up there we would catch the rainwater and boil it and everything, refrigerator was one of those gas where you put the kerosene in and 01:16:00that was kind of a fun experience too. But when we moved over into town I mean the water was fine. I never got sick; I got the flu one time but everybody in town had the flu.

WILSON: Did you boil your water?

DARE: Not in town, no.

WILSON: So there was a public water supply that was--?

DARE: Public water treatment plant and--

WILSON: --safe?

DARE: Yeah. And we just never had any problems with that. You would take your malaria pills. I don't remember what they were now but we would take those once a week on Sunday and that was pretty much it. But pretty much we tried to cook a lot of whatever, you know, was out there in the way of well the vegetables that would be there, you know, some things that no matter how you fixed them they still tasted like elm leaves. But that was one of the green--

WILSON: So different from--different vegetables then you would have at home?

DARE: Yeah, a lot of different vegetables and different fruits. 01:17:00Occasionally someone would come in with corn; they would-- There was one family that was fascinating. He was a student of mine and they lived outside of the town in an area and they were doing a lot of things that were, you know, these government Ag experimental, you know, like Ag agents would come out. They would try these things and a lot of them, you know, didn't want to try any of that stuff. They would try all kinds of things. One of the things they had was a pig pen built out over a pond so that the droppings and everything would just fall into the pond. They would-- It was kind of a recycling process; they had fish in there. But they also then a lot of the stuff they would put on their gardens. They knew, you know, they really were doing a lot of experiments with vegetables that nobody else was trying 01:18:00up there. And so they came in every now and then with corn on the cob which was very new to folks out there. They were quite fascinated with this. So every now and then there would be corn on the cob available but most of the time, you know, the fruits were more-- A lot of different fruits that you would eat but then we would eat in town also--

WILSON: Tropical fruits?

DARE: Yeah, yeah-- We would eat a lot times just go in town. More often then not the Chinese shop houses; there was one Malay restaurant that we would go and eat in, a little tiny thing where they at night would sleep on the tables and you know that kind of thing. And that was a great place for your curry. But then they also would have, oh you know the teachers would have banquets or if there was a wedding or something 01:19:00like that or anything. When we first landed it was-- We landed in Kapit, Chinese New Year was going on and so everybody walked around from place to place and visited all the Chinese and you ate at each one of those. And a few days after that was the end of Ramadan so then you would all go out into the Malay compound and you would go from home to home and visit and eat again you know. So not only was this a great experience gastronomically but it was fascinating to watch each other-- them celebrate each other's festivities or their holidays.

WILSON: And the conversations that you had out and about were those in English or in Malay?

DARE: Some would be mostly in English because of the people that were going were a lot of times teachers or sometimes the teachers would go, 01:20:00you know, would go with us to a place where no English was spoken. We would try our Malay but it was, you know, sometimes incomprehensible to them because the dialect they spoke was more Iban which we had to begin learning while we were there then. And through a variety, I mean through some of the missionaries I tried to learn some Iban, but also through the Iban students. I would work with them on their English, they would work with me on my Iban and picked up enough that we were able to go on up into further up river and spend, you know, times a week or so working up there. You know in the holidays when the breaks came you still were supposed to find a project unless you were taking your vacation, your holiday. But because there were three break periods there you didn't take a vacation every time. So different 01:21:00things, one break I remember we went up and it was a fellow, an American missionary, that was way up river there and he was working to try and get --most of what the native people grew was hill rice which had a very nice flavor; it was a very nice rice but it didn't produce nearly as much as wet paddy. So he was trying to show them, you know get them into the idea where streams came down out of the hills, they could put a little dam there and they could create a wet field. So we went up there and we spent a week there stomping around in this wet paddy planting rice with some of the kids that were in the longhouses right next to this place trying to get this idea. Okay, here's a way to supplement so that you grow your own rice rather than when you run 01:22:00out of your rice going into town and paying a rather exorbitant price at that time. Another time we went up and it was a school and we were putting steps up -- a work project -- from the river up to the school there and then leveled off an area for them to have a volleyball court. It was all on a kind of a hill and so we just, we kind of stripped the top off, like being from Kentucky we know how to do that. And so they could play volleyball and things of that sort. There was one project that really grew and grew and grew. It always bothered me that these kids were having to stand and this place where they stood every morning, you know, to sing the national anthem was also where they played volleyball and it was just mud -- 250 inches of rain -- it was mud most 01:23:00of the time. And so you know I talked to the people that supposedly were the board chairmen of the school. I said, "Now you know I can during one of the breaks get some Peace Corps friends to come up and, you know, we can pave that spot." Which was maybe a little bigger than this, oh on out there, you know the size of a volleyball court plus the area around it would be what it would have been. I said, "You know we can do the labor if you can get the materials. We'll provide the labor for this." Well they decided they had just a built a-- You know you went, the Pantu sat up on this hill and you went down a hill and back up another hill and they had built another building over there and that 01:24:00was going to be forms one two and three and then form four and five would be on the other side. And they had just built that and they were just finishing that up, and so it was even muddier over there than on the side that had grass and mud mixed together. So they thought, "No it would be better to do it over there and build a basketball court." One of the interesting things was that sports were segregated. Chinese liked basketball; the Malays liked soccer. And never the twain should meet it seemed like. So you know being young and naive we said, "Oh okay." So I had the wonderful experience of watching fundraising going on. It all took place in about 30 or 40 minutes. The two members of 01:25:00the board sat down, created the list of all the Chinese shopkeepers. And they went-- And I had no idea he was the number one shop, I mean his shop didn't look any different than a lot of others you know and he dressed in the shorts and what looked like they were sitting around in their underwear. And they went to him and they talked about it back and forth and he reached over behind the safe and opened the safe and pulled out the money, put it on there, and they talked a little bit more, he pulled some more money out and put it on there, they agreed, and put by his name how much. Then they started going to the next shopkeepers after that, you know number two, number three. The system was such that you knew, okay you saw how much, and they would also go to some of the lower shopkeepers too. You knew if you tried to give more than the person who was upper, if you tried to give more than 01:26:00number one or if you were number ten you tried to give more than number two or something like that, that was ostentatious showing off. But if you gave less than some of these down here that are, you know, in the bottom that was humiliating. It was going to be seen, you know, and everybody knew what you were going to give.

WILSON: So the list was public?

DARE: Yeah, I mean it was public as far as all the shopkeepers were concerned. It was less than an hour and we were back, had everything raised. I thought, "What a great idea to bring back to church fundraising!" But I said, you know, we had Malay students. I said, "What about the Malay kampong? Are we going out there?" "Ah, they don't have any money." That was it. Now that wasn't the end of it. One day the boat comes up with all the cement sacks on it and it comes up the day after school is out so most of the students are now 01:27:00on break. There were a few there. The boat is there and he has to have it unloaded in order to get back down to town by noon. So we're out there early in the morning. This one missionary teacher--a short term missionary teacher and myself and a couple of students and we are loading, unloading these sacks of cement across a plank from the thing and then across this way and then up this hill. And you know we're doing this for a while with these things on our back and after I don't know maybe an hour or so there was no way my legs or anybody else's legs were going to get us up those hills and get done in time without stopping. So we just had to take it off and get it up on the little bridge that crossed over between the two in the ravine there between the two hills and get that covered and get it down. Well we 01:28:00were completely covered also in cement stuff which was very impressive to the townspeople because, I mean, they all said, "Oh, you look like a coolie!" You know they were very impressed that we had done this but then we had to get the sand and the gravel by boatloads and bring that and haul it all up. And you know ultimately it came down to by the time we got all of the materials there--the sand and the gravel and that was you just went to up river and you went up little streams to get sand and gravel and that kind of thing--it boiled down to that we got all the supplies there, we had everything in place, we had it leveled off and ready to go. But by then there wasn't going to be enough time for-- I mean everybody was going to have to get back and so there wouldn't be enough time to mix it and pour it so they were okay. They had the worst of it done and the Chinese fellow came in and--

WILSON: Finished the project.

DARE: Finished and got the court.

WILSON: But collecting the sand and gravel and moving that concrete was a Peace Corps project?

DARE: Yeah.

WILSON: You had other Peace Corps people who came in and helped?

DARE: Yeah and we had a number who just we invited up that you know were friends that were always happy to get out of the delta and come up into you know this was a little more in the highlands. And Kapit was kind of a--it was a wonderful place; also you met a lot of people. But a lot of the Peace Corps people would come up to go further on up past the rapids. Usually you walked around the rapids going and coming and then you got in a boat up there. The driver could weave his way through the rapids and take you on up to Belaga which was way up river and that's where the Kayaks and the Kayans and some of the other tribal people were. So a lot of them, you know, wanted to go deeper 01:30:00into the interior of the jungle of Sarawak would come, and so they gave us a couple of days before they went on up you know. Or maybe on the way back they would spend a day or two and work with us. So we had a pretty good turnover of Peace Corps folks coming through that could give us a day or two days in addition to those that came up for the whole three weeks in that break period. And then there were a couple of teachers that one was from India who, you know, he said, "I could never do this back home because, you know, it would not-- I would be looked down upon. And what are you? Have you forgotten your caste, rank, your status? You're not supposed to do this kind of thing." Well he was fascinated because he was getting to drive a boat; he was getting to do all kinds of things that he, you know, no you can't. He talked about how that would be, you know, in India you would see if something was a project or something needed to be fixed, he said, you 01:31:00know the American or the British engineer would jump in there and fix it but the Indian engineer couldn't do that. That was going to have to be the mechanic that would do that, you know, that would have to get in there and fix that kind of thing.

WILSON: What about your colleagues--your teaching colleagues and your interaction with them with host nationals? How many were expatriates? What was that kind of mix in interaction?

DARE: There were-- One was a Jimbun was an Iban fellow that he had gone a couple of years down here in Tennessee. Hiwassee, I think he had gone to school in I believe it was Hiwassee and this of course missionaries would find some students that really stood out and they would send them over to the States to get some education. As I said 01:32:00my headmaster had gone to school at Berea and years later after we got back there was one of my students who-- Well Ms. Pohghee, one of her sons, the shopkeeper I was telling about, one of her sons-- Well she had four sons and a daughter, all four of the children--the boys--came over; two to Canada and two to the United States to go to school. And Teck Hock came to Berea and went to school. I think he also went to Hiwassee a year before he came up to Berea College and graduated from there. But some of them were Chinese students; there were a couple of Malays, Ibans. There was this one fellow Ernest Herd who lives down in Nashville was a short term missionary that was out there and he was the hostel master and then he taught some classes. And there was a woman 01:33:00that my second year that came out that was a short term missionary. The Methodist church did a lot of that and was one of the first ones that did that. You're thinking about that as a ministry and they would come out for three years in mission fields and then decide whether that was where they wanted to go rather than do all that preparation, get out there, and bad choice you know. So there was just one other American, well the first year one other, two the second year. I'm trying to think if there's--

WILSON: Colleagues.

DARE: Yes. I really enjoyed working with them. That was also one of the rich experiences I think because you, as I said they were so welcoming and everything. Then they would welcome you into any kind 01:34:00of a festivity, a celebration in the family. There was one of the teachers, let me remember his background now. He was German.

WILSON: I'm sorry I've got to--

WILSON: Tape two of interview with Phil Dare Peace Corps Oral History Project. Phil you were talking about some of your colleagues when we ran out of tape.

DARE: Yeah. As I said, I was saying that it was-- I had taught you know a couple of years at Midway so I had some experience with that kind of thing and working with colleagues. And this was, it was kind of like a continuation except that many cases they had better food to serve you and you know there was a wonderful-- Well I forgot to mention when 01:35:00you asked me that one was also from India. He came out at just shortly after we got there he arrived and then later his wife came and she had her first child out there. And he was the fellow I was talking about with the enjoying the helping build the--

WILSON: The manual labor work.

DARE: The labor work and all this and she just was having a wonderful time being pregnant there away from home because she said she wouldn't be able to have any freedom, you know, she would have been kind of kept under a lock and key and all these people hovering over her. And she was kind of able to go her own way and be her own person out there. And we had you know it was a real fun experience with them because they wanted, you know, she was a great cook but she also wanted American food. And that was always funny that every so often they would, different people would want American food. And I remember she 01:36:00wanted, she had seen you know Thanksgiving pictures of slicing the turkey so she had us over and she had, you know, she baked a chicken and she wanted me to slice it. Well it was kind of hard to do; you couldn't slice very long with just a little hen there. The other thing was a, it wasn't one of the teachers but it was a fellow. His father also was a member of Parliament and Jimmy Soon was kind of a, oh one of those kids that I think the father was worried about you know where he was headed and what he was-- And so he wanted, he wanted Nancy to-- He said, "Sometime I want fried chicken like Americans have fried chicken." You know they hadn't heard of KFC yet but he knew we had fried chicken so he said, "If I bring you chicken some day will you fry it like American style?" "Sure, sure." So one Saturday he showed 01:37:00up with this holding this thing by its neck and it was a-- He had lost in one of the cockfights and he had the lost bird--the bird that went down in defeat. And it was something about it was impossible to get across the idea that this is not going to be the same as frying a chicken. And he couldn't understand why, I mean you really had to pull and tug to get that meat off the bone. But it was fun going through the pregnancy with Mary George and they were Kerala so a lot of names were George as the name that-- M. O. George was his and-- We had a lot of fun with them going through that and just experiencing all the things that they were having to adapt to as well as watching us adapt. Jimbun who was this Iban fellow, his father, no his grandfather had 01:38:00been Temenggong Koh who had been a paramount chief and you know I had remembered seeing something about him years before in "Ripley's Believe it or Not" because in those-- I mean these were the headhunters of Borneo, you know. And so there was something about they would decorate their hand every time they took a head, you know, their hands were another tattoo would be put on it. And his were all the way up the arm or something like that. So here was this guy, you know, Jimbun years later who has gone to school in Tennessee and is now back there teaching. The first year he taught there, the second year he got a government job over in Kuching. But his sister was a student in the school there and you know here was another, we got to go up to their 01:39:00longhouse and visit with their family. And that was even, you know, helped make it richer than just going in a stranger's longhouse because while they were very nice and everything, if you were part of some-- You know if somebody from the family brought you in then they went through the whole welcoming celebration with the meal spread on the mat and we would go through all of this. Anyhow it was a-- The Chinese teachers if anything festivities were happening there they would have you come out and you know celebrate. I was starting to tell you this Dennis Fraude, his father was German, his mother was a Thai Chinese mix as I recall, and they had gone through the experience. You know we're out there now 20 years after World War Two so they had gone through the 01:40:00experience with the Japanese occupation and had been in a camp. He-- In the hospital, this little hospital, it was a missionary hospital there in the town, there were several Filipino nurses that were there and he met this woman Bess and they got married and I was the best man in their wedding. And you know this was quite a festive occasion and I got to wear the, I think it's a baju kebaya, the Filipino shirt that's made out of pineapple fibers. Extremely hot, beautiful to look at but a very, very-- Let's no air come through it and, you know so I mean we were, you know very quickly involved in the lives of these people. It was and I was fascinated by that. One of the things that was probably the most formative experience I had was the very first 01:41:00day we got into Kapit. And this fellow, a townsperson there who spoke very good English, met us and he was showing us around also and just kind of quizzing us about different things. And he asked me, he said, "Tell me, why are you here? Why would you leave your home, all modern conveniences and come out here in Borneo?" And about the time I started opening my mouth he said, "But don't say to help us." I have no idea what I said because I know I was having to really regroup really fast. But I've thought about that so many times that that was-- And I use 01:42:00that example a lot of times with the seminary students here. You know you go into these churches, don't go with the idea that you're there to set them right and turn it all around and make a difference for them. They've really been out there for generations you know and have managed to do quite well when you think about it. Okay, they don't have all of the conveniences that we had at that time but it put a different image-- You know and I would see things like well they only made $250. The Ibans only made average of $250 a year. Well they didn't need a lot. The jungles were full of food and you know they got their meat and everything out of that way. They didn't need-- You know they didn't have a need for television. They didn't have a need for all of the things that we thought were necessities and you know seemed 01:43:00very, very happy with their life. Now granted as once the western world began to intrude more and more then that $250 would be a real sign of poverty, but none of them thought they were living in poverty. At that time, you know, it was only the West that thought they were living in poverty. But it really did frame the way we went about I think doing things was that we really, as I think most Peace Corps people had so much more to learn than we had to give, and if you can go at it with that attitude then what you do believe-- Because when we went back it was fascinating when we went back how many of our students came forward to want to do things with us, to show us around, to show us all the changes, to tell us about how their children now went to Europe and to Australia to school and how they would take family vacations. Nobody was doing that. We went to Thailand on one of our holidays and came back and they wanted to see our slides, they wanted 01:44:00to-- Well some of them went to Thailand then years later, you know, when they-- Their income helped let them do that.

WILSON: Well that's a good transition into another question I was going to ask about what-- What do you think the impact of your Peace Corps service was on the country?

DARE: Well I think Nancy and I have wrestled with the whether we made any impact, you know, or any contribution and I think we would never-- You know for years I think we always thought if there was any it would have only have been they saw a different kind of a European. Okay, there are more than two types of Europeans. There's a third kind that 01:45:00you know would sit down in the coffee shops and go to the movies with them and after the movie come back to a coffee shop and talk about the movies and you know be amused when they said, "Do you have Coca-cola in your country?" You know this kind of thing. Just sitting on the pier with Jimmy Sung two or three in the morning just talking about him, listening to his stories and then he would be interested. He would always want to know how we did it you know and so there was I think more of just us being there in the town sharing and talking and you know we would get a National Geographic. And it would show them pictures of things back in the States. I remember doing this and this 01:46:00one missionary saw it and she said, she was a missionary way up river and she said yeah that she had done that and was showing them a picture of the Empire State building and the women just, ohhh they just clucked their, you know, were so sad. And she said, "What's the matter?" Well they were feeling so sorry for the women that had to haul the water up in that building! So those kinds of events, you know those sort of stories were able to explain and show them things. You would try to describe your house that you lived in and as you were describing it, you know it began to sound more bizarre and you know we had a room for a living room, we had a bedroom, we had a dining room, we had a-- And then the room underneath with this huge fire in it, this big thing with fire and pipes going through it and just trying to imagine what they 01:47:00were picturing. And they had this image that when winter came we all went inside and stayed you know throughout the winter and then came back out. You know we hibernated or something and so no here's what we do. And you'd try to get pictures from home of people playing in the snow and that you know. So you know I guess if we made anything it would have been just made the world a little bigger that we realized when we came back that they wanted to show us things of their travels now. You know who had been our students and even some--one that I taught with you know he had done a lot of traveling.

WILSON: And what about the impact on you?

DARE: Oh incredible. I mean that was, yeah that's definitely that watershed period. I mean everything is when you don't read the news, 01:48:00you don't watch the news. It's very hard to watch the news period but I mean you don't, you certainly don't read the news in the same way because you can no longer just think of them in terms of an ethnic group or a national group you know. It's Ms. Pohghee, it's Bangau and Anso and Jimbun, it's Udau Sigau who had these ear, you know that was a tribal-- The men would have these long earlobes; they would put these heavy weights in them to pull them down and he felt you know self conscious about this.

WILSON: So when you see something about Malaysia it's individuals, it's not--

DARE: It's individuals and you read about the fires in Indonesia and the smoke that's going over and you get on the email and you get on the phone and you try to find out how are you doing with all that smoke out there. You know you don't just say oh that sounds bad and okay I wonder what's on tonight and turn the television on and move onto 01:49:00something else. You know you hear of an earthquake or something like that, I want to be sure they're okay. You know I don't know what I'm going to do if they're not you know but I'll certainly if something's happened and I can find a way to get some help out there I would do it. So it personifies it, it gives faces to the culture. It's not just a culture anymore, it's the people and the individuals and it's tastes and smells and you know we'll open up a chest that may have a skirt--an Iban skirt--one of those hand woven skirts or something in it. Open it up and there would be the longhouse smell is still there you know. And oh, you know it just pumps the memories back up and it stretched also that, you know, I didn't really think I was going to do-- I'd just 01:50:00come back and finish the master's and then try to get a job teaching somewhere. But I knew when I came back that no I've got to go on and this time I'm going to add the Asian element to it. I want to know more about Asia. My area was American diplomatic history so-- Well at first when I got back I applied to the East West Center out in Hawaii because I was fascinated with that storehouse of wisdom and knowledge. And I got a letter back saying well no, you didn't get accepted, that I didn't make the cut. So we pulled everything up out of our parents' basements and loaded up a truck, came down here, rented a place and talked about going on finishing the thesis and going on, got in the 01:51:00doctoral program.

WILSON: Here at UK?

DARE: At UK, when a letter came from Hawaii saying well somebody had dropped out of the program and I could come now you know. And I've always wondered what would have happened, why we took the cautious route. Well, we're already down, we've moved again, we're located, we've got started on this, let's instead of just saying, "Oh sell it all and go." You know we didn't have that much but somehow we took the more conservative route and stayed here but I did the Asian American, you know, just linked it to a kind of a diplomatic relations particularly with Japan at that point.

WILSON: So there was a clear career impact as well as a personal impact?

DARE: Yeah, and funny a thing was too. You know I sit here in this library, there was this in the school there at Ponto, the secondary school, people had sent all these books out and they were just in a room--just stacked in a room. And somehow, I mean I hadn't thought ever about going into library work or anything like that, but I said, "Well they shouldn't just be in boxes and that." So we got some money to get some shelving and started putting the books in and locating this type of book. And of course the Peace Corps in those days gave you book lockers. And you know because they thought you would be in areas where you wouldn't have anything to read and we were able to transfer a lot of that material out into the school that would be useful. So we working with a couple of the form five students put together the library 01:53:00while we were out there never thinking that this would be a prophecy-- this was a prediction of my future. You know that I was actually taking on another step there that, you know, when the doctorate thing didn't work out-- As I said all of it qualified me to be the house mother in Eastern's football dorm and after about two or three years of that--

WILSON: But you did finish a--?

DARE: I finished the doctorate.

WILSON: --doctorate, yeah.

DARE: Yeah, that was in the 70s and there just weren't many jobs out there. And when I went to one of the history conferences and there were 200 people lined up for this one job on a 9 month contract at University of Nebraska I thought, "Okay it's time to find something else." That's when I went back to library school and got that degree.

WILSON: So you finished your PhD in--?

DARE: '75.

WILSON: Okay, and then you went back to the UK Library?

DARE: Yeah, finished it in '78.

WILSON: Okay, and then what?

DARE: Then I worked at UK in the library over at King Library in the reference department. They were on the last year of an NEH grant for bibliographic instruction and it was with the English department and you know the freshmen term papers and all that and library use and so on. And so I came in on the last year of that grant and then after it was over they hired me on as a regular. And I was there until '84 and then came over here. The fellow who had been the librarian here--

WILSON: And you're-- This is a theological seminary and your job here now is?

DARE: Well I came over as what they called the head librarian and so I was head librarian until-- Well I still am that but it will be four 01:55:00years in February when the dean suddenly died. Supposedly I stepped in as the interim but it's been an interim that seems interminable.

WILSON: In what ways are you still in contact either with Malaysians or Peace Corps people from your Peace Corps days? And you mentioned something about having gone back I believe to Malaysia at some point.

DARE: We went back in '95 thirty years later. I had a sabbatical and was wanting to get back out there. I had been wanting to get back out there for years and family and things come along and you just couldn't do it. So this was you know I had this opening of a year off from work here. '95 also was-- We had developed some real good friendships 01:56:00with through the international hospitality program--Malaysian students, students from Taiwan, students from Japan and so on. So we wanted to go back. '95 was the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war and the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki so we thought okay let's go back. We had seen it and on '67 we had been up there. And in the mean time had gotten to know several people who were principals of school out there and so on. So we went out there the first part of the trip to spend in Japan and to be at those observances--fiftieth anniversary observances of those two cities. And then came on down to Malaysia, well stopped off in Hong Kong for a little bit, and came into Malaysia 01:57:00then mostly into Borneo and then later on over into peninsula and Kuala Lumpur. Then back by way of Taiwan where one of the students who has written several books about his experience here in Kentucky as a student has included us in it; we were host family for him. And everywhere we went it was just incredible; I mean we thought we were royalty. I have never been treated so openly and warmly. I don't-- To this day I've never seen a Taiwanese dollar or whatever they call it because they wouldn't let us--wouldn't even let me cash travelers checks there and his wife was a banker. But then some of those friends have come over. Ms. Pohghee one son, Teck Hock, is down at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He stayed over here; all the others went back home but he 01:58:00stayed as a CPA down there. And so every now and then she will come over and visit and they always bring her up--

WILSON: This was the shopkeeper?

DARE: The shopkeeper and they'll bring her up and that's always fun. Now showing her grandchildren, see this basket, see this cutting board, see this batu lesong, the mortar, pestle? I bought them in your grandmother's shop. And when we went back in '95 she had us stay in her shop in her apartment part upstairs and stayed there with her and one of her sons is now pretty much running the shop. That kind of contact, through the IHP [International Hospitality Program at University of Kentucky], Peace Corps we-- Other than the people that we had gone into Malaysia with we kept in fairly close contact with a number of those for a long time and we'd get together on occasions and then it, you 01:59:00know, it just kind of began drifting apart and not really having that kind of connection. And a few years ago got more back into trying to do things with the Kentucky RPCVs and have found that very, you know, a good experience to get back in touch with folks that have had that experience, those Peace Corps years. Next year, next summer we've been getting some email from some people. There's a few of them that are putting together a fortieth reunion of our training out there in Hilo.

WILSON: Your Peace Corps group?

DARE: Peace Corps group and so we think we're going to be able to go out there for that. And there's a wedding, two of our students from Sri Lanka are getting married and we may go on out to Sri Lanka for-- They're pretty close together and the dates are fairly close together; 02:00:00we may go on out to Sri Lanka for the wedding. Although we're somewhat hesitant to do that because we don't want to be-- Knowing how they are about treating you, about hospitality, I could see where suddenly we would be the center of the celebration and not Bashan and Maya. And so we're hesitant, if we do it I think we'll just sneak in the back door and not announce ourselves.

WILSON: What about the impact of Peace Corps on your family?

DARE: I don't think it had any. They know we did it; they know we like to have international students around the house a lot. They'd always be over for Thanksgiving and things, you know, all the festivities and holidays we'd try to bring them in. They know we have a particular fondness for Asian culture, students, food, etc. But and they've 02:01:00seen, you know, the statues and the paintings and the pictures and the souvenir stuff we brought back and the blow pipe which I hid, finally put away because I was afraid. I didn't want that around with adolescents in the house. But I don't think it ever registered much with them. We really toyed with the idea of taking them with us in '95 when we went back but there was no real interest in that. They didn't seem the least bit--

WILSON: And you have how many children?

DARE: Two.

WILSON: Two.

DARE: Both were adopted. But they just you know even though they've 02:02:00heard us talk about Malaysia and they've heard us use Malay terms and things I doubt they could point to Malaysia on a map even though we've had maps around the house and we've had all that. If they, I mean I might be dumfounded but my impression is it never took with them. They liked the curry, they like it when I fix curry or sate or some of those things or Nancy fixes some of the Chinese dishes we learned how to fix out there. They like that but and they-- Some of the students we've had in they've really enjoyed them and got to know them real well. Others ehh, they haven't related to at all.

WILSON: What other kinds of international experiences and so forth have you had? You've talked about going back, you've talked I guess about the involvement with the international student program here at UK and 02:03:00so forth. Anything else over the years and what do you look forward to in the future?

DARE: Well I-- Yeah I definitely want to pick up-- I mean I regret that I lost; you know that I wasn't able to follow through on some of that international training and things that I had, diplomatic history and so on. I've always been fascinated with the Patterson School programs and I try to participate or you know go over to as many of those as I can and have been even in recent conversations with-- I go to their conferences and so on you know whenever I, if I can get away from here I try to attend their three day conferences and so on. And would like to see some-- The seminary has some programs like with the social work 02:04:00and the gerontology and music and that joint degree kind of things or certificates and that and cross counting courses. And I've been talking with John Stempel about that possibility with Patterson School that if some of their students felt like that you know religion and diplomacy have got to get back together somehow because believe it or not religion is very much in the middle of a lot of the international situations out there for good or for bad; it's both ways. And so it would-- It seems to me it would be very important for them, anybody in diplomacy to have some knowledge of why so they don't get blindsided by a Salman Rushdie novel Satanic Verses and think oh that will go away in a week or two you know and it just kept getting bigger and 02:05:00bigger and more complicated. Why would that be an issue? Why would these people care about a dumb-- It's a fiction book! You know and this sort of thing, but also I think students over here need more exposure to well I teach a course on globalization and religion. I taught a course over here on Asian religions and you know the students need to get into that side of-- They can't do ministry without being aware of the context of what they're going to be working in. It's not the four wall thing, it may be called a sanctuary but if they stay in there all the time they're not doing ministry. And if they're unaware of the world, they're unaware of most of their people who are very much caught up in a globalized world. And how does that impact them and how is it 02:06:00going to impact things like a church and religion and where is it all heading? And what can they do about it? That kind of thing, so you know I really do feel that that's a program that I've been talking with him about as some way we can figure out to let courses be counted back and forth across the street and help the students just see the world as a little bit bigger than it is.

WILSON: Which reminds me of another question: how do you think your Peace Corps service has affected the way you look at the world?

DARE: Well that it's not as simple as the sound bites that come across in news. That everything out there, I mean, is a lot more complex, that 02:07:00just watching the politics of Malaysia alone while we were out there and government changes and you know the complexities of a population that is maybe 50% Malay--which means about 50% Muslim--somewhere in the 30s of Chinese, and then you get the mixture of indigenous and Indians and others that are out there. And how when you don't have a, you know, a homogeneous population you can't be, you can't pass the laws you think would work for your country; they just won't work. And a year after we left, two years after we left there were some riots out in Malaysia. Chinese were herded into the stadium and all that kind of thing there in Kuala Lumpur. Many were killed. So those tensions that 02:08:00are out there with the different ethnic groups just pointed out and we could see how just even in the little town we lived in how careful you had to be with the things you said, with the things you did, with the way they would plan. They would have a thing like Regatta Day, it was kind of like a big festival there in the town and they would have longboat races and so on. Well when you have those different ethnic groups you have to be sure you don't do something that's insensitive to the other group there. Be careful what kind of food you have cooking and the smoke flying all over the place because if it's pork and you've got a bunch of Muslims running around, they don't even want to smell the smoke you know. So and something as complex as globalization you know I get very disturbed by-- I mean I like to think of myself as 02:09:00somewhat liberal but I get disturbed by liberal voices that take a one side view only of this issue that it's, you know, well capitalism is the big issue and the big problem and the US is kind of the devil incarnate of capitalism and that's what the world's problem. And yet when we went back to Asia in general thirty years later, I mean dramatic economic changes had taken place out there and there was a rising middle class and there were a lot of things going on. Now what was it a couple years later the Asian crisis hit too. So some came though it much better than others did; some came through it by not having anything to do with the World Bank or IMF and others you know leaned on them very heavily to try and get through the period and so 02:10:00I-- You know I think the complexity of the world is what, you know, is that it's a much more intricate thing. There's a book sitting up on the shelf there called The Asian Way of Thinking. I always loved the title; it's a much better book than the title sounds. But the title and the-- Because that is the way a lot of Americans and westerns look at, "Well that's just the Asian way of thinking," you know.

WILSON: As if there was one way.

DARE: As if, yeah, as if there's one way. There's one Asian. You know I just think that that's-- Well the world is, that's why I love the world, it's fascinating because it's got so many facets.

WILSON: So what do you think the overall impact of Peace Corps has been over the last 40 years?

DARE: Well it's hard to say in recent years. I mean it's good to still 02:11:00see young people signing up for it and I'm glad it looks like there may be an upswing in that. I think the impact probably was greater on those who went and came back. I think that it did do a lot in those early years to show people overseas a different kind of an American, an American that didn't have to stay in expensive hotels whenever they came to visit out there that-- And that's probably still true. You know business people who go they stay in four star hotels and eat the hotel food and maybe get out and run to the, and maybe just meet in the conference rooms there or something like that. Whereas you know in 02:12:00Peace Corps you stayed in the little dollar a night hotels or whatever and showers down the hall that didn't have hot water and maybe you had poured water in the toilet to flush it yourself, you know just splash it on through and that kind of thing. Oh, Americans can do that thing too; you know they're not so snooty that they can't be involved in just getting down, getting dirty. And as I said that day we walked through covered with cement dust on us, probably was one of the days that, you know, a lot of them wished they'd had cameras out there not only because the red haired monkeys--the Amo' Ka as the Chinese would sometimes refer to us--you know that they're not just above us but they can actually get down there and do coolie work and I think that was-- 02:13:00You know if we had an impact I think it was that which was what the intent of Peace Corps was that we would work at whatever level. If we're working with teachers we'd work at that level and we would live at that level and experience life as they were experiencing it as much as possible.

WILSON: What kind of a role do you see for Peace Corps in the future?

DARE: Well depending on how it's sold, I would love to see. I put the posters up here at the seminary because I know there are seminary students who they are pretty sure they don't want to do congregational ministry, you know serve a church per say, but they want to do something of a service nature but they're still not sure what it is. Missionary kind of thing is not that open, I mean not that many 02:14:00governments want missionaries in unless they're medical or you know can bring a skill in. But you know just to come out and teach they don't really need that much more in a lot of places. So I encourage students that would like to do something on a global nature, an international nature, try Peace Corps. It's first you'll be there in a different culture, it can give you some transition time while you're thinking through this, but also it's a lot better way to kind of think your future through while you're maybe mapping out some of the future, maybe you're getting an experience of what you could do with your future rather than just sit in your room and read another book or go on the website and say, "I wonder if I could do this, I wonder if I could do that." Get out and see. I've had Patterson School brochures over there 02:15:00on the display racks. You know maybe this is really what you need to do -- for one thing, there's all kinds of NGOs so that maybe this is where your work is going to take you. Be aware of what they are, be aware that they're out there, and so many of them aren't. They don't even know what that acronym is. NGO, what is that? You know you have to-- And UNICEF and UNESCO, it's something to do with the UN isn't it? What? That kind of thing, so that is-- It does seem like when a day with we've got the information technology is so incredible that we have a lesser informed of the world-- People are less informed about the world than well what is it CNN has fewer foreign correspondents than they did before 9/11? And so--

WILSON: Okay well that's sort of the end of my formal questions. Have I missed anything that you would like to talk about or do you have a final story from those days that you'd like to share?

DARE: Oh gosh. There was one experience that we knew we must be making the transition or we must be doing something different and right, I don't know. As I mentioned these different experiences that would, where the Prime Minister would come and different, you know the deputy Prime Minister would come and there was one of those. And I don't remember which one it was now but we were up in the Kubu there and it was a-- There was a reception and there was dancing and I think the chief minister came over to Nancy to dance. He wanted to dance you know with her and so-- But while we were standing there, there was an 02:17:00Australian fellow introduced himself and he was from this logging camp. His parents owned this logging camp on up the other side of the rapids. We had seen it, had gone up to Balaga a couple of times and that's a logging camp over there, taking out the forest. Well he invited us to come up some time. Well we thought okay that's one of those you know. But he said, "I'll send a boat down Saturday." Oh okay, well we had to teach Saturday morning in school so it wouldn't be until noon and then we'd have to be back on Monday. So that Friday night though was one of those nights when Jimmy Soon decided he wanted to talk. And we sat out on the pier there on the river until two or three in the morning just talking with him about everything and he would tell us about, you 02:18:00know just some interesting stories about bloodlines and all that kind of thing. So we didn't get much sleep, had to be up at school by 7 or 7:30. We just sort of threw a few things, a change of underwear I think is about all we threw in, maybe a shirt in a little bag and took it off to school with us because he was-- We weren't even going to have time to get back to where we were living. So when school was out there was his boat, very nice kind of a yacht you know. And we get this thing up to the point there where the logging camp is and I said it was above the rapids, it was right at the bottom of the rapids. Anyhow we get off the boat and go in to his place and it's quite lovely. And we go into this place and first thing he says, "Well what would you like 02:19:00to drink?" Lemonade or something like that, well he opens up and he's got a liquor cabinet that, you know I mean he's got every brand of beer you can imagine at that time. And we're sitting there and you know he starts asking me things about do I play polo. No, I don't play polo. The day goes along and he takes us up into the see the operation, you know we'd go up into the forest there and were very disturbed when we see, you know, a whole acre bulldozed down to get maybe one tree that's going to be used for veneer, plywood or something like that. And asked if he reforests, "No, and wouldn't pay us. No." And so we're getting a little disturbed by this approach he takes to things. His parents aren't there, at this point they're somewhere. Do we, are we you know 02:20:00interested in water sports? I like to canoe and things like-- Well he was meaning yachting and things like that and I forget there was one other thing that he asked in the course of the time that was there, that his fiancee was an Olympic sport or some sort. But it was also one of those where you had to have some money to get engaged in the sport. Anyhow as the day went along and you know we just everything we would ask we began to sound like bumpkins or--

WILSON: Phil Dare. Phil, you were talking about your experience with this Australian logger and his lugging methods when we stopped.

DARE: Well when we come back down, you know, out of the woods. In fact we rode down the truck with one of Ibans driving this big log truck coming down and we're talking to him about things and got a very different read on timbering out there. And then he said something 02:21:00about dinner, you know we would have it next door. There was one of the managers of the timber operation lived next door but he was gone but his wife was there. And so he said you know you may want to go change. And I go I'll change my underwear and my shirt you know but I had forgotten to bring a razor so and we were so tired by this point too because we had not got much sleep the night before and here it was. And we hadn't eaten. We had nothing for lunch because we had come straight from school. So we hadn't eaten and he hadn't served any snacks or anything when we got there. So we come back down, well he not only changed he got dressed. I mean he was in a suit and here we 02:22:00were you know khakis and blue jeans or something. I don't remember the shirt. And so we go next door and she said, "What would you like to drink?" And of course we knew by this point that they meant something more than just lemonade or pop or so and so we had a glass of wine and she brings out these hors d'oeuvres. Well I'm afraid Nancy and I looked like vultures that just swept down on these hors d'oeuvres for something to eat. It was not until after 9, 9:30 I think before we finally sat down at the table which was a very elaborately set table with all the, you know fully set, everything candlelight. The whole thing and here are all the servants bringing out lamb and I forget what all. I mean it was just one course after another. And then he wanted to know if I played chess. Well I was pretty sure I didn't play at the level he played so I said no. I didn't want to get into chess at that 02:23:00hour because it was almost midnight and I was just having to fight sleep something. And it went on like that. I mean we were-- The next day he was I think just as glad to get rid of us as we were to get-- But when we got down back to town his mother's boat was there, his mother's yacht was there so we couldn't just jump off and go back into town. We had to get and visit with her some more and she would talk to us and she said, "Well I just can't imagine any Australian young person coming out and living in these conditions that you were living in." Well of course there were the, what was the VASA? The Australian volunteers--

WILSON: Yes, yes there was.

DARE: I mean they were out there too some places, we ran into them from time to time. But we knew we had definitely done a better job of adapting to the climate and environment than they were doing. They had 02:24:00just transplanted all the luxuries out there and we were kind of almost proud of ourselves.

WILSON: Well good story and thank you for your time.

DARE: Well thank you Jack.

[End of interview.]